"Why… why, you are serious, Matt. You are really threatening to torture and kill me-"
"Good," I said. "That's much better. You're really catching on. I knew the idea would penetrate eventually. However, I'm not going to torture you, not in the ordinary sense of inflicting pain in the hope of breaking you down. I do know you, Vadya. I know you're pretty tough. I don't expect you to spill anything just because it hurts. Therefore I'm giving you a clear-cut choice. If you talk, you live. If you don't talk, you die. It's as simple as that."
"I don't know where your wife is! I didn't even know she was… missing. I don't know anything about it!"
"Sure, sure," I said. I walked around the chair and dropped the belt over her head and drew the loop up tight enough so that she was pulled against the back of the chair. "Can you breathe?" I asked.
Her voice was strained: "Yes, barely. Matthew, I swear-"
"Just one thing more," I said. "When I cut you off, you obviously won't be able to talk. Hit the arm of the chair with your hand when you're ready to give me what I want. Okay? Are you ready for the question?"
"Matt, I-"
"Here it comes," I said. "The show is now on the air, and no extraneous dialogue is permitted." I drew a long breath and leaned forward to speak in her ear. "Where is Winnie?"
"Matt, you're making a terrible mist-"
I took a strain on the belt. Vadya's voice was cut off abruptly. She started to try to pull the noose free; then she remembered and beat one hand quickly against the chair arm. I slacked off. I heard her breathe deeply and raggedly.
"I told you," I said. "I warned you. Don't give me any of that innocent crap, Vadya. Here we go again. Where is Winnie?"
"Darling, how can I possibly tell you what I don't know-"
The noose cut her short. She started beating at the chair immediately, but I gave her several seconds before I eased off and let her breathe.
"I'm getting tired, doll," I said. "Third time coming up. It could be the last one. I can't spend all night on you."
"Matt," she cried. "Matt, you must believe me. I really don't know… I haven't any idea…"
I said, "Your Moscow alma mater will be real proud of you, honey. Maybe they'll even put up a little posthumous plaque in the hall for other trainees to see: In Memory of Vadya, Dumb to the Death. Hell, I know it's the prescribed routine, but is it really worth it? Would your employers hold you to it if you could ask them? Is one lousy little blonde worth the life of a trained, experienced agent?" I put a little pressure on the strap and leaned forward. "Where is she, damn you? Where's Winnie? Where are your people holding her… No, keep your damn hands down!"
"Matt, please, I can't breathe!"
"For God's sake cut it out!" I snapped. "Can't you get it through your head that you're going to die if you don't come through? For the last time, where's my wife?"
"Matt," she gasped, "Matt, I swear… Matt, don't!"
She was pretty good, all frightened and desperate. Well, I'd been pretty good, too, all mad and menacing. We were two old pros hamming it up for each other, but I was the guy holding the end of the noose.
"Goodbye, baby," I said. "When you get to hell, give my regards to your friend Max. He thought I was bluffing, too."
She grabbed for the belt with both hands as I yanked it up tight. She was too late to get her fingers under it. She came to her feet, clawing at her throat, and lunged away from me. I felt the loop pull even tighter, and let go rather than risk breaking her neck or some essential part of it.
I came around the chair fast, expecting to have a fight on my hands. Instead, I found her on her knees, clawing desperately at the strap about her neck. The soft black belt, instead of releasing when I let it go, seemed to have locked into place as if obeying some murderous impulse of its own. Vadya's eyes were bulging and her face was darkening. She fell to the floor, rolling about convulsively, while her frantic nails ripped the collar of her blouse and drew blood from her neck but made no impression on the taut black leather.
It was going a little farther than I'd intended. I mean, no matter what threats I'd made for effect, she was no use to me dead; and while I did owe her something for the fun she'd had with a hot soldering iron a couple of years back, it wasn't really a debt that weighed heavily on my mind.
I managed, after a couple of tries, to pin her to the floor. It took all my strength to hold her down while I shoved the loosened hair forward so I could get at the noose. I tried to free it, and it wouldn't release. I looked at it more closely-as closely as her violent struggles would let me-and realized at last just what it was I had found among Winnie's gloves and hose and hankies. It was no wonder she'd "accidentally" managed to leave it behind. It wasn't something a shy young bride would normally carry in her trousseau. It could have betrayed her, if her captors had got a good look at it.
Apparently I wasn't the only one in the organization who liked trick belts. This was a new one on me: an efficient, camouflaged garotte. The fancy buckle was actually a locking device, designed to jam solid when a certain amount of strain was put on it. Of course you could wear the thing as an ordinary, decorative belt, if you had a twenty-one-inch waist, until you needed it for other purposes. That was the idea.
Vadya's struggles were diminishing. I searched for a release catch and couldn't find one. I reached into my pocket for my knife, but realized I'd practically have to cut the girl's throat to free her, the way the strap was embedded in the flesh. While I hesitated, she stopped moving altogether. I took advantage of her stillness to make another quick study of the flashy buckle, and saw at last how it worked, and pressed the right decoration the right way. The belt came loose. I pulled it off and rolled Vadya over.
She looked very bad, but it hadn't been much over a minute, and they've been brought back from much farther away than that. I got her arms going, the way artificial respiration is done these days. It used to be you could sit on the victim comfortably and just push at the ribs, but this new method is supposed to be more effective. I haven't got a great deal of faith in it, but either it worked or she was getting ready to breathe anyway: pretty soon her chest started to heave and the ugly, congested color began to die from her face. Presently her eyes came open.
"Damn you!" she whispered. Her voice was a hoarse croak.
"Sure," I said. "Can you sit up?"
With my help, she managed to sit up against the end of the bed. She fumbled the tangled hair out of her face and felt of her bruised and lacerated neck. Her hand made contact with the dangling collar of her blouse. She grasped it with vague curiosity and held it out for identification. The sight of the torn rag of silk seemed to shock her. She let it fall and looked down at herself, dismayed by what her violent struggles had done to her Madame Dumaire disguise.
"Oh, God, what a mess!" she croaked. Then she shrugged fatalistically. A funny, wry little grin came to her lips. "Ah, well, as you say it is a working costume and expendable. But you will have to lend me your coat to go home in. Help me up, darling."
I helped her up and steadied her as she swayed. I said, "Don't get your hopes up, doll. There was a little matter of an address, remember?"
I heard her breath catch. She looked at me with an expression of horror. Her blue eyes were big and dark in her pale face.
"Oh, you can't…!" she whispered hoarsely. "I… I really don't know… Matthew, you can't, not again!"
There was real fear in her voice-at least it sounded very real. Doubt crept back into my mind. She was good, I knew, but was she good enough to keep up the act after being choked almost to death? For a while I had been absolutely sure she had the answer, but now I felt my assurance wavering.
I said, making my voice hard, "Baby, do you remember a garage in Tucson? And a chair with a man tied in it? And a nice new electric soldering iron plugged into the wall? Somehow, I don't seem to recall anybody turning me loose just because I happened to pass out temporarily." I picked up the belt and jerked my head. "Get back to your seat."
&
nbsp; She hesitated, and started to move dully toward the chair; then I heard a sob and she went to her knees, clinging to the foot of the bed. She turned her head painfully to look up at me. There were real tears in her eyes.
"Shoot me!" she gasped. "I mean it! You'll kill me in the end, anyway. Well, at least do it quickly, damn you! Don't put that… that thing on me again! It won't do you any good. I don't know anything about your damn wife! We haven't got her, I swear it!"
"If you haven't, who has?"
She hesitated. She looked away. "Go ask Madame Ling."
"Madame who?"
Vadya looked up again and spoke breathlessly. "She's the one who took your little blonde away. She and one of her men. I saw them from the lounge. Ask at the desk, they'll tell you. If you'd done a little simple investigating, instead of jumping at conclusions-"
I said, "Hell, I talked to the desk man. So what? An Oriental stooge is no harder to hire than an Occidental one, in a cosmopolitan city like London, and you'd know just where to go, wouldn't you?"
"Why would I lie to you?" she demanded. "If I had your wife, would I deny it? Would I not boast of it and use it as a club against you?"
I said, "You might be that dumb. And then you might be smart enough to know you'd never get any useful cooperation out of me that way. People in our line of work don't make good blackmailees." I drew a long breath. "Well, all right. Who's this Madame Ling supposed to be, anyway?"
chapter NINE
Les disapproved of me. He'd watched Vadya come out of the building with me, a bit unsteadily. She was wearing my raincoat to cover the more spectacular damage, but it couldn't conceal her wrecked hairdo and ruined nylons. It was hard to believe there was an agent around who still believed in a chivalrous double standard, but Les shot me a reproachful glance as I helped her into the Rolls and got in beside her. He was obviously regretting his part in this ungentlemanly affair.
We rode away in silence. After a while I asked, "Have we still got an escort, driver?"
"Yes, sir. They waited up the street, but they made no attempt to interfere in the lady's behalf. They are behind us now."
I glanced questioningly at Vadya. She shook her head to indicate she knew nothing about the car astern. It could even be the truth. She could be playing this as straight as she'd claimed-with a few mental reservations, of course. As for the car behind, the purpose of this open surveillance, and the identity of the shadowers, would probably become apparent sooner or later. In the meantime, I had to let Washington know what was going on.
I said, "Driver, please let me off at a pay phone somewhere near the hotel. Then you can take the lady wherever she wants to go." When the car stopped near a phone booth, I got out and turned to look at Vadya. "If I was wrong," I said, "I'm sorry. But only a little."
She was back in control again, if she'd ever been out of it. She laughed and managed to make her hoarse voice sound quite sexy as she said, "If you come by my room in the morning, darling, I'll give you back your coat. I might even give you breakfast, to show there are no hard feelings."
"It's a date," I said.
She pulled my coat collar closer about her neck. "You can let me off at Claridge's, Sir Leslie," she said, just to let us know that our childish play-acting hadn't fooled her: she'd known who he was all along.
I stepped back and watched them drive away. The little Mini went by as I was entering the phone booth. It was a neutral tan color and there were two men in it. I didn't recognize the driver, and I couldn't see the man in the left-hand seat clearly. The throaty sound of the exhaust made me look more sharply at the car itself, realizing that it wasn't a run-of-the-mill Austin 850, but the souped-up version known as an Austin-Cooper, modified by a race-car manufacturer for British drivers who wanted to make like Stirling Moss but who couldn't afford the price of a Lotus or an Aston-Martin.
Well, it was Les's problem now. London was his town, and he could presumably take care of himself in it. If he'd wanted my advice or help, he'd have asked. I got into the booth, called our local relay man-a guy I'd never met and never expected to meet-and told him to put me through to Washington. A few minutes later I had Mac on the line. I gave him the story fast. After I'd finished, he was silent for several seconds.
"Do you believe her?" he asked at last.
"Vadya? Hell, no," I said. "That is, I don't believe I scared her nearly as badly as she pretended. I mean, that on-the-knees please-kill-me-now routine was pretty corny. On the other hand, she could be telling the truth for reasons of her own. Like she just figured we'd played enough sadistic games for one night, at her expense, and it was time to toss me a bone. Or like she'd wanted to point me in the direction of this comic-strip Dragon Lady character all along, but figured she'd first better take enough of a beating to make it look as if I'd forced the information out of her. Which still leaves the question of whether a Madame Ling really took Winnie, or Vadya just decided to frame her for the job. Do we know Madame Ling?"
"We should." Mac's voice was dry. "I do. And you would, if you'd done the required amount of work in the recognition room."
"Yes, sir," I said. "I confess my negligence, sir. I may have concentrated on the nationalities I expected to have to deal with here in Britain. Besides, I don't have a very good memory for Asiatic names or Asiatic faces, even good-looking female ones. Vadya says this one works out of Peking."
"Yes. That is another reason I assigned Claire to you. There had been some unconfirmed rumors of Chinese involvement, and I thought her experience out there might be useful to you."
"Yes, sir," I said. "In the future, I'd be flattered if you'd share your unconfirmed rumors with me, sir. The British seem to have heard the same rumor, judging by the fact that they apparently hauled Crowe-Barham in from Hong Kong to work on the case. And there's no doubt that the knife-man working with Basil was Oriental, which seems to make a link between Basil and Madame Ling. Do we have any further evidence along those lines? Is there any suggestion, for instance, that when Basil escaped that Moscow firing squad, he headed east?"
"Not that I know of. He was supposed to be dead, remember. But it's certainly a possibility, and it would explain how he managed to drop out of sight so completely for so long. I will check our Far Eastern sources."
I said, "Vadya says Ling, female, is one of Peking's top agents, a very handsome, intelligent, and nasty wench of indeterminate age, unprintable character, and no scruples at all. That's just one woman's opinion of another, of course. The point is that Madame Ling seems to be fairly high-echelon material, maybe high enough to be given this whole McRow show to run, with Basil hired as a kind of field assistant. And if we make the wild assumption that Vadya was telling the truth for once in her life, these are the people who have Winnie."
Mac said, "Let us hope so. With a little luck, that could work out very well. At least it would put one of you in the enemy camp, so to speak."
Sometimes he seems a bit cold-blooded even for this business. "Sure, it's great, sir," I said sourly. "Always assuming, of course, that Winnie's still alive and doesn't wind up full of super-streptococci or something before I can find her and give her a hand. I haven't got a lead worth mentioning unless…" I stopped, frowning.
"Unless what, Eric?"
"Unless they're still interested in grabbing me, too. If so, their obvious move is to use Winnie as bait, particularly if they're inclined to believe our marriage is genuine. The note they left hints at some such intention. I mean, it warns me not to try to find her. Now, they know damn well I'm going to try to find her-unless I have some hope of making a deal for her. I think that's what they're hinting at here. What they're saying is, in effect: don't call us, we'll call you."
"Maybe, but you could be reading too much into that note, Eric. And even if you aren't, it could be merely a way of trying to keep you quiet while they get far away with Claire. But if they should get in touch with you, what do you propose to do?"
I said, "Why, in that case, sir, my anxiety for my bride wil
l of course be so great that I will eagerly obey any instructions given me, forgetting the most elementary precautions. I'll be caught with my pants down. It will be most humiliating, for an operative of my age and experience. That will put two of us in the enemy camp. Between us, we ought to get the job done somehow."
He hesitated briefly. "It's a risky plan, with both of you in their hands. And it depends entirely on their making contact with you. We can't wait too long for that. There are indications that Dr. McRow considers his work almost finished. Various friendly governments have reported feelers from underground sources. There have been hints of demands soon to be made-financial demands-coupled with veiled threats."
"We've got it from the other side of the fence, too, sir," I said. "Vadya intimated that her government was expecting some kind of international blackmail. Do we have any idea of just what we're all being threatened with?"
"The Black Death has now apparently been mentioned officially. You will recall that's what killed Buchanan, in a super-virulent form. In the fourteenth century, I am told, the old-fashioned brand wiped out twenty-five per cent of the population of Europe in a relatively short time."
"Well, I guess we've still got enough rats and fleas to pass the new version around, if somebody gets it started," I said.
"Precisely," Mac said. "Which brings us to Vadya's suggestion that our two nations cooperate for the good of humanity. Do you think there is any possibility that she could be sincere?"
"Vadya could never he sincere, she doesn't know how," I said. "But I think she means it up to a point, sir. I think her people are just as much in the dark as we are, but they'd like to know for sure how much that is, hence the frank and earnest approach. Anything they learn from us, under the circumstances, is gravy. Naturally, the minute Vadya and I, working together, turn up a good lead, she'll put a knife in my back, a bullet in my head, or a Mickey in my drink, and proceed, alone, to carry out her instructions concerning McRow, whatever they really are. Assuming I'm silly enough to let her."
The Devastators mh-9 Page 7
