The Devastators
Page 13
“To the telephone. I will get our people on it.”
I said, “To hell with that. That’s just more time wasted.”
“What do you mean?”
I said, “Give us a little credit, Vadya. If an American research unit can’t track down an old Scottish name, what makes you think a bunch of your Russian experts can?”
“We have a very good organization,” she said stiffly.
“Sure. So do we. So do the British. And if we’re going to go the research route, our best bet is to get Colonel Stark on it. After all, it’s in his back yard, he’s undoubtedly got people who know Scotland intimately, and furthermore he’s got access to Walling’s place. Since the murder, there’s probably a cop at the door, so none of our people—yours or mine—can get in without shooting their way in, which won’t give them time for much library work afterward, before more cops arrive.”
She hesitated. “I am not authorized to cooperate with the British.”
“I didn’t think you were. And I’ll admit we don’t quite see eye to eye with them, either.” I grimaced. “If you’re going to put those clothes on, for God’s sake put them on. The suspense is killing me.”
She laughed in a preoccupied way, and climbed into the trousers, squirmed into the jersey, and came over to me pulling it down about her hips. Without Madame Dumaire’s artistically padded foundation garment, now part of a careless heap of clothes on the other bed, her figure was considerably less voluptuous than it had been, but she still wasn’t really constructed to be at her best in pants. But then, no woman is.
“Turn around,” I said, and I picked a price tag off her rear. “Fifteen shillings, sixpence? For a strong healthy girl with good teeth, it’s a bargain.”
She didn’t smile. “I am getting the impression you brought me along for a purpose, Matthew. What is it?”
“What a silly question,” I said.
“Stop it. Our love is a beautiful thing, no doubt, but it could have been consummated just as readily in London. Be serious, darling.”
“Sure,” I said. “Sex apart, I did kind of figure I might have some use for you up here. I hoped our research people could get me the necessary information. That would have been the easy way. Now we’ve got to do it the hard way.”
“Tell me.”
“Well, it occurred to me that you’re a lousy Red Communist agent, Vadya. And Madame Ling is a lousy Red Communist agent. And that gives you two lovely ladies something in common. I would say the differences between you aren’t insurmountable. Are you following me?”
She was silent for several seconds. Then she said, “Yes, I think so. Go on.”
“Madame Ling,” I said, “is probably sitting in Inverness right now, acting like a rich foreign tourist waiting for her car to be fixed. After being caught off base, so to speak, she won’t dare rush back to HQ, wherever it is—call it Brossach—without first making foolproof arrangements to make sure she won’t be followed. Well, there can’t be too many hotels in a little town like Inverness good enough for Madame Ling; she looked like a fastidious sort of person. You shouldn’t have a great deal of trouble reaching her by phone.”
Vadya said carefully, “I killed one of her men in London. At least I suppose he was one of hers, although he wasn’t Chinese.”
“I never heard of Peking getting particularly upset over the loss of a little low-class manpower. You did it to protect yourself, and to gain my confidence, of course.”
“I helped put her car in the ditch.”
“But you didn’t shoot to kill. Not when you saw who was in the car. It was unfortunate, but you’re not obliged to let yourself be wrecked, even by a fellow-believer in the doctrines of the great god Marx.”
She said quietly, “You are not being very polite, darling. I do not sneer at George Washington in your presence.”
It was no time to laugh, and maybe old George was as good a patron saint as any. I could certainly use all the help I could get, and he’d been a pretty competent guy in his time.
“My apologies,” I said. “Strike it off the record.”’
“What do you want me to tell Madame Ling?”
“Tell her?” I said. “Hell, that you’re ready to sell me out, what else?”
There was a little silence. Then she said, “Go on.”
“Why else would you have gone to the trouble of gaining the confidence of, and pretending to cooperate with, a nasty bourgeois type like me? You’ve been keeping an eye on me to make sure I did no harm to the great common cause—also, admittedly, you’ve been trying to find out for your superiors in Moscow just what their good friends to the east are up to. But now you figure it’s time for all good proletarians to join forces and, as a first step, to wrap me up and put me in the deep freeze before I have a chance to get really troublesome. Of course, you expect a little information in return for your help, maybe even a guided tour, so you can make your report to the home office look good.”
She hesitated and said dubiously, “Matthew, I—”
I said, “It’s a cinch. You get the drop on me convincingly, and turn me over to them. If you work it right, they’ll take us both inside, me as a prisoner, you as a trusted—well, more or less—ally. When the time comes, you help me get free and we go after McRow together, just the way we worked it in Mexico. Remember?”
“Yes,” she said. “Yes, I remember.” She picked up the map and started to fold it thoughtfully; then she looked back at me, having made up her mind. “You will have to trust me, darling,” she said.
It was as good a tipoff as a flashing red light and a warning rocket. Whenever they start talking about trust, they’re going to double-cross you. Well, I’d thought she’d see the possibilities, all of them.
16
In the morning, when we came outside for breakfast, the sun was shining. A few spectacular white clouds still hung over the mountains that edged the high valley or bowl in which the hotel was located, but elsewhere the sky was as blue as you could wish.
The sunshine turned the treeless moorland scenery from bleak to beautiful. It was really a hell of a fine, wild-looking country, and I wished I could go hunting in it, or even fishing, although I haven’t got quite enough sadism in me to really enjoy fishing. I can rationalize killing a living creature quickly, with one well-placed shot—after all, we connive at death every time we order steak—but letting it fight its heart out against a nylon leader, and then boasting about its game, despairing struggles over a beer afterwards, is a little too specialized a form of amusement for my simple soul.
Vadya said, “Someone has been in the car, Matthew.”
We had, of course, arranged the usual system of telltales to let us know if our transportation had been tampered with. I stopped admiring the view and checked the trunk and hood. Neither had been opened. The wheels had not been moved or lifted. Since it was a very low-slung little car, this made it reasonably safe to assume that nothing fancy had been hung on us underneath. But the left-hand door had definitely been opened.
I said, “Maybe Stark’s boys came to get their beeper.” That would explain its disappearance, if Vadya should notice.
She frowned. “Or maybe somebody has arranged to blow us up as we get in. After my phone call last night, Madame Ling knows where we are, and I don’t have a great deal of faith in that little yellow slut.”
“What a way to refer to a fellow-believer!” I said. “And I thought you people were always reproaching us for our racial prejudices… Well, it’s easy enough to check, in a roadster.”
I unsnapped and unhooked various fastenings and managed to work the cloth top free without disturbing either door. Sports car tops do not come down hydraulically at the touch of a button. They have to be dismantled piece by piece, folded, and put away by hand. At least this is true of the tops of inexpensive British sports cars. Having uncovered the cockpit, I examined the interior, and found nothing. I grasped the handle bravely and pulled open the suspect door. No explosion resulted.
Vadya was kneeling on the seat. There was a narrow luggage space behind. At the back of this was a removable panel leading to the gas tank compartment, which also served to hold the folded tonneau cover, and any other small items you cared to tuck out of sight. She had the compartment open before I could distract her.
“Just checking,” she said. “No, they didn’t get it.”
“Who didn’t get what?”
“Stark’s boys didn’t get their beeper. It’s still here.”
She picked it off the metal to which it clung magnetically, and showed it to me on her palm. It was the tiny British homing device, all right, identical with the one I’d sneaked out of there yesterday and left in the trunk of Madame Ling’s wrecked Mercedes.
I managed to conceal my surprise. For a moment I wondered if Vadya, or Madame Ling, was being very tricky; then I realized that I had simply underestimated Colonel Stark. The man had brains after all, and even a sense of humor. He’d found the beeper in the Mercedes, and then he’d had it—or another just like it—put back in my car in exactly the same place as before. This got me off the hook if Vadya should investigate, as she’d just done; it also told me that my message had been received and appropriate action was being taken.
Vadya said, “I think it’s time we got rid of this, don’t you? We don’t want interference by the British.”
Before I could give her an argument—I couldn’t think of a plausible one—she’d thrown the little transmitter into the nearby stream. Well, I wasn’t too eager to have Stark right on our tail myself, but I found myself feeling a little more hopeful about the guy. He might turn out to be of some use eventually.
I closed up the compartment, and set the overnight case behind the seats, along with a picnic lunch supplied by the hotel, and our thermos bottle, refilled. If everything went according to plan, I wouldn’t be at liberty long enough to do much eating or drinking, but I couldn’t let it look as if I were anticipating captivity. The sandwiches and coffee indicated, I hoped, that I was innocently looking forward to a full, energetic, outdoors day spent searching for a place called Brossach.
“Give me course and speed,” I said as we drove away, “and estimated time to target.”
“Turn right when you reach the highway,” she said. “Go on through the town of Ullapool and several miles further—she didn’t give me the exact mileage—and turn left toward the coast on a little one-track road. The sign is supposed to say Kinnochrue. They’ll be lying in wait for us somewhere on that road.”
“Sure,” I said. “Well, let’s hope they make it good. I have a reputation of sorts to maintain; I can’t just fall into their arms or they’ll know it’s a plant.” I paused to give the right of way to a couple of shaggy sheep, and swung the Spitfire onto the main road. Presently I glanced at the mirror and said, “Well, there’s one of them already. Our little tan Austin-Cooper from London, with only one man aboard. He must have had a long, sad, lonely ride up here, grieving for his lost friend, the guy you finished off in Nancy Glenmore’s room. I guess he’s supposed to shepherd us into the trap.”
Vadya had her purse open and was studying the mirror inside. She said, “I don’t recognize him. He is too far away.”
I said, “Quit your kidding, doll.”
She laughed softly. “Very well. I do recognize Basil, although I never did know him well. I guess I was just… well, ashamed to admit that we have people like that, self-seeking, ambitious, and cowardly.”
“I never heard that Basil was yellow.”
“He did not have the courage to keep faith with the Party!”
“Oh, that,” I said.
“Furthermore, he did not have the courage to die in a situation that required his death. The details do not matter—it was hushed up, of course—but that is why he became a traitor. He knew that his career with us was finished so he switched his allegiance elsewhere; now, finally, to the Chinese. A cheap, dirty little turncoat, but well trained and quite clever. Do not underestimate him.”
“I’m not likely to,” I said. “He made a sucker of me in London. Almost a dead sucker, or a kidnaped one.” I glanced at her, and said, “Talking about kidnappings.”
“Yes?” Her voice was cautious.
“You have Winnie, don’t you?”
After a moment, she glanced at me. “Yes. I have her.”
“Aren’t you ashamed of yourself? Framing poor Madame Ling like that? Where’d you get the woman to impersonate her?”
“As you said yourself, an Oriental stooge is no harder to find than an Occidental one, in a cosmopolitan city like London. As you also said, I wanted you to myself, but of course you could not be permitted to know I had arranged it, so I threw the blame on Madame Ling.” Vadya laughed. “I did not think I could get as much… cooperation from you, if you had a wife along.”
“And the kid, Nancy Glenmore? Did you have her disposed of, too. For the same reason?”
Vadya was not offended by the question. She merely shook her head. “No. Basil must have ordered that. I might very well have done it, but I did not. And your little blonde playmate is quite unharmed and will be released as soon as I can get word to the people who hold her. Are you angry?”
“Sure,” I said. “I’m mad as hell I let you out-bluff me when I had that strap around your neck.”
She laughed. “You are a sentimentalist, my dear. I knew you would not kill me, or even hurt me badly, no matter how threateningly you talked.”
I grinned. “Crowe-Barham wouldn’t agree with your opinion of me. He thinks I’m an uncouth Yankee brute. If he’s still alive, poor guy. You didn’t happen to get any word on him from Madame Ling?”
We hadn’t discussed the details of her telephone conversation the night before. Sleep had seemed more important, once she’d let me know that contact had been established and satisfactory arrangements made.
Vadya said, “No, even if I’d thought of it, how could I have asked? What interest could I have in your friend? I merely made my offer, we haggled a little over terms, and she consulted her associates and came back to the telephone to let me know what I was expected to do. When we stop, of course, I will point my gun at you.”
I said, “Sure. But be damn certain you don’t do it before we stop, or I’ll have to go through the motions of piling up the car, or doing something equally desperate and messy.”
What I meant was that it’s only on TV that a guy in a fast-moving vehicle, with a steering wheel in his hands and a hot engine under his foot, lets himself be held up by a character with a mere pistol, who obviously can’t shoot since if he does his victim will be sure to wreck the heap and take him to hell for company.
“I will wait,” she said. “Then I will get your revolver. Then they will come up and take you prisoner.”
I asked, “Did the Ling make any provision for communicating with you again if something went wrong?”
“Nothing is supposed to go wrong. But she gave me an emergency number to call, yes.”
“And just how are you supposed to be selling this lonely coastal detour to me?”
“Why, I called our people in London, did I not? And they were very efficient—much more than yours—and discovered that the Kinnochrue road goes on past Brossach, which is a very old castle, crumbling into the sea, only a few stones left on the edge of the cliff. It was the ancient home of the clan McRue, destroyed in one of those bloody Highland feuds you read about. Since this obscure clan died out long ago, and since there is not enough of the castle left to attract tourists, and since it is a long way from the road and the cliffs are not safe, hardly anybody knows about it. So said Madam
e Ling, pretending to trust me with important information. I am fairly certain that Brossach is not on that particular road, and it may not even be an old castle on a cliff, but that is what I was told to tell you.”
I said, “Well, with luck they’ll take us there, wherever it is. I’m glad we came across the Ling when we did. Or she came across us.”
“What would you have done if she hadn’t?”
I shrugged. “They knew I’d got information from Walling, and they didn’t know I didn’t know what it meant. As long as I headed in the right direction and looked as if I knew where I was going, they were bound to try to stop me. We couldn’t help but run into somebody you could make your treacherous offer to, somewhere along the line.”
She laughed and patted my arm. “Darling, you are an ingenious man and a good poker player, even if you are sentimental about women.”
I opened my mouth to warn her not to count too much on my famous sentimentality; then I closed it again. If she wanted to keep thinking I was a soft-hearted slob, that was her privilege.
17
I had been warned about the one-lane roads of the real Scottish hinterland, and the courtesies and conventions governing their use. They are, for the most part, smoothly paved and well maintained, but they are barely wide enough for a single car—just narrow little tracks of black asphalt winding through the rocks and heather.
At intervals, there are passing places marked by white, diamond-shaped signs set high on tall posts for better visibility. If a car comes up behind, you are supposed to pause at the next passing place and let it pull around you. If one approaches from ahead, you are expected to wait at the next passing place for it to go by, unless it reaches a diamond first and waits for you.