The Devastators

by Donald Hamilton

  The implication was that she had not just come up from the south ahead of us as Vadya had been so careful to suggest; instead she’d come driving to intercept us from somewhere right here in Scotland, close enough that she’d seen no need to bring even an overnight bag. Madame Ling might not have been in London, kidnaping people, for months. After all, the only one who positively claimed to have identified her there was Vadya…

  14

  It was Vadya who suggested that we stop for the night, pointing out that we’d hardly be in shape to cope with any serious problems if we didn’t get some rest soon. I didn’t believe her reasons, but I didn’t argue with her suggestion. The place we picked, although it called itself a hotel, was actually a kind of slant-roofed, two-story mountain lodge, located well off the road in a hollow next to a wide, shallow, rocky, fast-running stream. It seemed to be a dual-purpose hostelry, catering to fishermen in summer and skiers in winter. Several trees grew in the hollow, giving the place a sheltered look by contrast with the bleak surrounding moors and mountains.

  There were about a dozen cars in the parking area. Numbers of the black-faced Scottish sheep grazed around the hotel. They were just about the wooliest beasts I’d ever seen, like ambulating haystacks. The nearest ones paused to watch us thoughtfully as we parked and went inside, where a man in tweeds rented us a second-floor room for the night and told us that the bathroom was at the end of the hall, that dinner was already being served, and that we’d get breakfast at seven-thirty in the morning. Here, as elsewhere in Britain, breakfast was included in the price of the room.

  I spotted a phone booth at the foot of the stairs and ducked back down to it while Vadya was making use of the facilities down the hall. I had no trouble getting through to our London relay, but when I identified myself in code he gave me the flat wrong-number routine that means get the hell off the line before you can be traced and don’t call again.

  I hung up and went slowly back upstairs, frowning. In a way it wasn’t an unexpected development. Colonel Stark had sounded like just the kind of stuffed shirt who’d lodge a protest through channels against my activities—real and imagined—even while he was having a tracking device planted in my car. I could guess that Mac didn’t want to talk with me because, in the name of Anglo-American friendship, he’d been instructed by higher authority to do something he really didn’t want to do, namely order me to look up our British compadres hat in hand and offer them my humble services even if it meant letting them have our Dr. McRow for a pet.

  It’s pretty standard treatment for a tricky official situation. After all, undercover communications are notoriously unreliable, and you can’t recall a man you can’t reach. I wasn’t really surprised at the medicine, it was the way it had been administered that disturbed me. In my previous message I had asked certain questions. Even if our London man considered his lines unsafe, he could easily have given me a coded hint of where and when I could pick up the information I’d requested. The unqualified cutoff, with no alternative contact suggested, meant that there were no answers available and none expected. I was on my own.

  When I re-entered our room, Vadya was standing in front of the dresser working at her hair and making dissatisfied faces at her reflection in the mirror. She glanced at me over her shoulder.

  “Where did you go?”

  I asked, “Do you want a lie or the truth?”

  “Oh, a lie, of course. Lies are always more amusing than the truth. Tell me you went down to lock the car and never even considered using the telephone.”

  I grinned. She made a final effort toward perfection, grimaced, threw the comb aside, came over to me and put her hands on my shoulders. I was glad to see that she was back in her high-heeled pumps. As far as I’m concerned, women in sneakers can stay on the tennis court where they belong. She looked pretty good for having spent almost twenty-four hours in her clothes. Somehow she’d got most of the travel creases out of the black linen dress, and while the black lace stockings had hit a couple of snags during the day’s adventures, the figured stuff apparently didn’t run like ordinary nylon, which made it ideal for a lady in our line of work: dark, durable, and sexy-looking. Hose-wise, what undercover woman could ask for more?

  With her hands on my shoulders, she looked soulfully into my eyes and said, “I am disappointed in you, darling, I am hurt. Here we are, alone again after two long empty years, but you do not relax for a moment. You plot and plan and sneak off to telephone. Can we not, just for tonight, forget that we are agents and think only of each other and our love?”

  I made an admiring sound. “Vadya, you’re great. You do that beautifully.”

  She laughed. “I should. I’ve had lots of practice. But I’ll do it even better after I have had something to eat and drink. Come on, I am absolutely starving.”

  There’s a rumor, started by the French I believe, to the effect that the British can’t cook. Being a meat-and-potatoes man from way back, I don’t go along with this libel. The liquor laws on the island are incomprehensible, and even when you can legally get a martini it’s atrocious, but the food has always seemed more than adequate to my simple taste. I may be slightly prejudiced by the fact that I’m a sucker for the white tablecloths and good service that practically always go with it, even in the remote Scottish Highlands.

  Of course, I was being skillfully seduced all through dinner, and that always improves a meal. This was apparently the real reason why Vadya’d had us stop for the night, and she was working at it hard and expertly. She continued to play variations of the basic theme she’d stated up in the room: we were two old pros, doomed by fate to fight on opposite sides, who’d once managed to snatch a moment of rapture nevertheless, and might find another if only we could keep the world and its conspiracies at bay, just for tonight. She was really very good. She almost had me believing that of all the men she’d met in the business, I was the one she always remembered, ever since that night in Tucson.

  We practically closed up the dining room, which didn’t make it very late, only about nine. There was still pale daylight at the windows when we went up the stairs. As far north as we were, in summer, we could expect only a few hours of real darkness. Back in our room again, I switched on the light, and then went across to pull the heavy curtains at the windows. They seemed to shut out not only the Scottish twilight, but all the world outside.

  Vadya was still standing by the door. When I turned back to face her, she made a small adjustment to the fragile-looking scarf she was again wearing about her shoulders—the scarf with which she had killed a man—but she did not move otherwise. I walked across the room and took her in my arms and kissed her. It took a while to do a thorough job. At last she freed herself with a little sigh of satisfaction.

  “Ah, that is better,” she murmured. “That is much better. I thought you were going to make me do all the work, darling.” She looked down, and loosened the scarf, and laid it aside. “Now you can take my dress off. Be careful. It is the only dress I have.”

  “Sure.” I unzipped her and stripped her of one layer of clothing, leaving her clad in a black nylon slip. I performed the operation with great delicacy, as if I were skinning a mink and wanted to be sure to preserve the valuable pelt. I hung the dress carefully in the wardrobe and went back to her. “Yes, ma’am,” I said. “One dress removed, intact.”

  She shook her head. “Matthew, you are being very difficult tonight. Very cynical and difficult. Anyone would think you suspected me of ulterior motives. How do I arouse you to real passion?”

  I said, “Keep trying. There’s still the slip and stockings. Taking off a woman’s stockings—black stockings, yet—ought to affect any normal man the right way. Sit down on the bed and we’ll give it a try.”

  A little anger showed in her eyes. “To hell with you, my friend,” she said softly. “I do not think I like you like this.”

  I said, “And I do not like you like this, doll. Don’t be so clever. It’s been lots of fun watching you work, but
you don’t seem to know when to stop. This is your old friend Matt, Vadya. Do you know how long I’ve been in this business? And still you give me the old please-help-me-off-with-my-dress line, for God’s sake, and expect me to go all helpless with desire, or something! Hell, I’ve pulled dresses off lots better-looking women than you and kept a steady pulse—well, almost steady. Steady enough.”

  She licked her lips. “What are you trying to say?”

  “It’s very simple,” I said harshly. “I’ll be delighted to sleep with you, but don’t expect it to get you anything. It’s been a long time since an attractive woman got my guard down far enough to profit by it. And she didn’t do it by treating me like a gullible boy.”

  She hesitated. “And… and suppose I did want something from you, how would you suggest I get it?”

  I said, “Well, you might try asking.”

  “Then I am asking.”

  I reached down and got Walling’s note out of my sock and laid it on the table and set an ashtray on top of it to keep it in place.

  “There you are. It names a certain place in the county of Sutherland, which starts just above Ullapool, which isn’t too far ahead along this road. There are maps in my inside jacket pocket. Number 58 is the one you want. Now can we go to bed and make love like adult people, or do you have some other childish techniques you want to try on me?”

  She glanced briefly at the small, folded square of paper under the glass ashtray. Obviously, she was very curious to see what was written on it, almost curious enough to make me wait while she looked, but that would have shown a lack of self-control. The paper was there and would still be there after we’d disposed of the more intimate and urgent business of the evening. She laughed softly and came into my arms.

  15

  Later, I heard her chuckle to herself, lying beside me in the rather narrow twin bed. I shifted position so I could look at her. There was still a hint of daylight in the room despite the late hour and the heavy curtains. She looked oddly pretty and girlish lying there in the dusk with her hair loose on the pillow.

  “What’s funny?” I asked.

  “You do not act very much like a forlorn bridegroom.”

  “You bitch,” I said fondly. “I should have strangled you while I had the chance. Anyway, I only got married. I didn’t join the Boy Scouts.”

  “Um,” she said, unconvinced, but she didn’t pursue the matter further. I heard her sigh. “It is really too bad.”

  “What is?”

  “You know I have orders to kill you.”

  This was supposed to startle hell out of me. I grinned and said, “By this method? I can’t think of a pleasanter way to go.”

  She laughed. “Oh, you are not to die until you have served us well, of course. And not at all if it interferes with more important business. But you have annoyed some of our higher people for a long time, and they would like me to dispose of you when this job is finished, if it is not too much trouble.”

  “And in the meantime you’re telling me all about it?”

  “Of course. You are not a fool; you have already considered the possibility, I am sure. So now I tell you about it with great frankness, and that makes you think I do not really mean it very much; that I am only talking to shock you. It is very good technique.”

  I said, “In that case, I’d better tell you that my boss has kind of hinted that it would be nice if I got rid of you, too, if it’s not too inconvenient.”

  She smiled, and stopped smiling. She murmured, “And the terrible thing is that we will do it, will we not? No matter what has happened between us, in the end we will both try to carry out our instructions.”

  “That’s right,” I said. “What happens in bed means nothing anywhere else. It’s something the suckers never remember, and people like us never forget.”

  “Of course.” She hesitated. “Matthew—”

  “Yes?”

  She drew a long breath. “Never mind. Turn on the light, please. I am going to look at your piece of paper.”

  “Don’t bother,” I said. “I can tell you what it says. It’s a note from a gent named Walling, to me. It says, Try Brossach, Sutherland.”

  “Brossach?”

  “That’s what it says.”

  “And why would this… this Walling send a note to you?”

  “I never talked to him alive, except on the phone, so I can only guess. But I figure he’d spotted my predecessor, a guy going by the name of Buchanan, as an American agent. At least Walling had spotted Buchanan as a fake, and later read that he’d died mysteriously. Walling made a couple of shrewd guesses. When I called up with practically the same line, Walling jumped to the conclusion that I’d been sent to follow up the case. Just like your people figured when they saw me in London.”

  “And had you been sent to follow up the case?”

  I grinned at her. “I told you. I just came over here on my honeymoon, nothing else. I’m strictly an innocent bystander, dragged into this mess against my will, but I can’t seem to make anybody believe it.” I shrugged. “Anyway, Walling was looking for help. He was scared. His partner had been run over by a truck, and his secretary had come down sick, and he had a hunch he was next, as he was. But he got the word out by Nancy Glenmore before he died.” I glanced at Vadya. “And don’t give me that know-nothing routine. You’ve been told all about Walling. And a lot about Buchanan, probably.”

  “Yes, that is your man who was found right up here near Ullapool.”

  “Correct. There’s something funny about that. If they really have their headquarters in this vicinity, you wouldn’t think they’d call attention to it by leaving dead bodies lying around.”

  “They have left other dead bodies around. With warning signs on their bodies. Not to mention people who have disappeared and never been found. There have been quite a number of those.”

  “But there wasn’t any warning sign on Buchanan’s body,” I said. “That’s my point. If he hadn’t been found by a tweedy doctor type on vacation, who didn’t like the medical aspects of what he saw, McRow’s super-plague might already be loose in the land. And those other cases all happened back while McRow and his patrons were still showing us what they could do, and while their operation was small and handy enough that it could easily be moved whenever anybody got close. But I have a feeling this Scottish station is the last stop on the line. I think they’re now set up for production rather than research, and they want to defend their privacy at any cost until they’ve stockpiled all the stuff they need to force the world to pay up, if that’s really what they’re after.”

  Vadya glanced at me sharply. “You do not think that is what they are after, Matthew?”

  “Well, it’s a hell of a big deal for just a spot of blackmail,” I said. “They could just be spreading that notion around to keep us and McRow quiet, thinking that we know what’s coming, and that we’ll have plenty of time to answer their demands when they’re made.” I shrugged. “I don’t know. In any case, if this is the critical stage of their operation, they wouldn’t have let Buchanan be found anywhere close if they could have helped it. I think he just got away from them, which is encouraging. If one man can get in and out of the joint, another can. Maybe even without contracting a fatal disease.” I hesitated. “There’s one thing that bothers me, though. If this is Madame Ling’s baby, why didn’t she just haul McRow back to the land of the dragon for the final step. They’d all have been safe there.”

  “Safe?” Vadya laughed shortly. “That is not our information. We are told that your crazy scientist’s process is not really safe anywhere. And if something should go wrong with a thing like this, Madame Ling’s superiors would undoubtedly rather have it go wrong half a world away from their own sacred personages.”

  “Well, that makes sense,” I said. There was something familiar about the scene. I seemed to be forever holding serious war councils in bed, with women I’d just made love to. Well, I couldn’t think of pleasanter circumstances. I went on: “But
it must be pretty tricky if they don’t even want it brewing in Outer Mongolia.”

  Vadya said, “They are probably very much aware that they are really the last people in the world who should be meddling with biological weapons. After all, the best targets for disease in the modern world are the crowded and underprivileged populations of Asia.” She frowned at the ceiling. “Brossach? It is a strange name. Where is it, darling?”

  I grinned at her. “Hell, if I knew that, sweetheart, I wouldn’t be confiding in you.”

  Her eyes narrowed quickly, and she turned her head to look at me. She started to speak, changed her mind, threw back the covers, got out of bed, and switched on the light. I watched her walk over to my coat, hanging on a straight chair. She took the maps from the inside pocket and, as an afterthought, threw the coat over her shoulders since the room was cold and she had nothing on. The effect was quite intriguing, but she made no attempt to capitalize on it. She just got the slip of paper and glanced at it to make sure I had quoted Walling’s message correctly; then she spread the right map on the unused bed and started scanning it carefully.

  I said, “You’re wasting your time. It isn’t there. I’ve looked. Furthermore, our research people can’t seem to find it. I called them from London the other evening when I talked with Stark—you remember—and I checked with them again tonight, but they had nothing for me.” That was true enough, even though it implied better communications than I’d actually been able to establish. I went on, “If they haven’t been able to find it in twenty-four hours, God only knows how long it will take them. I’m guessing it’s a specialized local reference of some kind, too ancient or insignificant to appear in the usual atlases or histories.”

  “Walling knew it,” she said without looking up from her examination of the Bartholomew map.

  “Walling was a trained and experienced genealogist. It’s possible that if we went through his library carefully, we’d find it mentioned in some beat-up old edition of some obscure and privately printed little genealogical monograph that Washington never heard of—” I stopped. Vadya had turned away to the overnight case we’d bought. She was pulling out a pair of new black pants and a new black jersey. “Where are you going?” I asked.