The Silencers mh-5

by Donald Hamilton

She turned her head to look at me. There was dust on her cheek and a kind of hopelessness in her eyes. She said something, but I couldn't make it out. I rolled over once, which brought our faces close together.

  "He had him killed!" she gasped. "Naldi. One minute Naldi was standing there and then… and then he was dec41 Like that!"

  "Sure," I said. "Just like that. Now, listen…"

  "You lied!" she cried. "From the start, you lied to me, tricked me, made love to me, used me…"

  "Sure," I said. "And you lied to me, tricked me, made love to me and double-crossed me."

  She stared at me for a long moment. Then she made a small, short, bitter sound that might have been a laugh. It was hard to tell with the noise.

  She said more calmly, "He's going to kill us, too, isn't he? If we don't… What can we do?"

  It occurred to me she'd come a long way from the pampered Texas beauty who'd frozen in panic in San Agustin Pass. Like most people, it had turned out, she had a lot of hidden talents, some good, some bad.

  "Listen closely," I said. "Something Wegmann said makes me think we'll have company in here pretty soon, and I think I know who it'll be. When he comes, you blow your top. Flip it good, understand? You can't stand being tied up, you're revolted by this filthy floor, you're going crazy with the terrible noise, get it? Make a goddamn spectacle of yourself. Create a diversion. Okay?"

  She hesitated. "Do you think… do you think it will work?"

  "What will work? Don't worry about anything like that; that's my department. Try to be a real actress, glamor girl You're a woman in terror for her life. Don't think about your lousy pride, or your appearance, and don't, for God's sake, give one thought or look to me or what I may be doing. That'll wreck it instantly."

  She was silent again. Her eyes studied my face for several seconds. Her tongue came out to moisten her lips.

  "All right," she breathed. "All right, Matt."

  I said, "And now let's get over and confer with the mysterious gent behind you. 1.1 you roll over twice, you'll be just about there."

  "All right," she said again, but she didn't move at once. "Darling," she said.

  "Yes?"

  "You bastard," she said. "You lousy, calculating bastard."

  I grinned at her. "You bitch," I said. "You dirty, double-crossing bitch."

  She gave me a funny, shaky little smile, lying there, very close to me. Then she hunched herself around a bit, preparing for the awkward journey back into the corner. I saw her start and turn her head quickly. The man called Romero reared up just beyond her, having apparently made the trip while we were talking. His lips moved. I shook my head to indicate I couldn't hear a word.

  It took us several minutes to get all three of us sitting up cozily, heads together, so we could converse above the engine noise.

  "All right," I said to Romero, "let's start with you. You're a ham with a mike and a cheap tuxedo, telling the girls to take it off all the way. You're a lousy mountain driver. What else are you?"

  "Listen-" he began angrily.

  Then he checked himself, grinned and spoke one word.

  I stared at him. I don't mean that it proved anything conclusively. In a government the size of ours, you can't supply a universal, reliable recognition signal for all undercover agencies; there'd be a leak somewhere. Anyway, I guess we just don't trust each other enough to put our lives in each others' hands, which is what it would amount to under certain circumstances. But there is a word of sorts, changed from time to time, and he had the current one. So, probably, did every foreign agent from Maine to California. As I say, it didn't prove a thing-except that it made a lot of things that had happened make sense at last. I gave him the proper countersign. His eyes widened slightly.

  "Jim Romero," he said.

  "Matt Helm," I said. We don't use the code names with outsiders. "Why the hell don't you watch where you're driving?"

  "Why the hell don't you watch where you're kicking?" He grimaced. "My God, what a foul-up! Did you have any trouble with Peyton?"

  "What about Peyton?"

  "He's my boss on this job. I put him on your trail after I missed you in the mountains. He said, if he saw you, he'd have you watched until the time came, and then pick you up in the general round-up he was planning Just before the test."

  "He won't thank you for the tip," I said. "He met with a kind of accident. I kind of had to jump on him with both feet."

  "So he went for you himself? I figured he'd want the credit of getting those films back." Romero make another face. "Tough, aren't you? You and your damn big feet! Where was Peyton's Man Friday while this was going on?"

  "Bronkovic?" I said. "Why, he was trying to kill me, but the lady, here, got to work with a blunt instrument in the nick of time."

  "Bronkovic isn't a bad guy," Romero said. "Peyton you can jump on all day, as far as I'm concerned. I suppose you have guys like that in your outfit."

  "Maybe," I said, "but we try not to give them quite so much authority. Just where did you come into this, anyway? What were you doing down in Juarez?"

  He said grimly, "I was doing all right, until you people butted into the case, that's what I was doing. I had a swell cover as M.C. in the joint, and everything was going fine. Then, first, along came that girl of yours who went over-I suppose she was yours. We may have our Peytons, but at least our female agents don't fall into bed with the first handsome creep with a fast line… Well, never mind that. She was kind of a nice kid, but mixed-up as hell in both the sex and politics departments: a real naпve save-the-world type, fundamentally." After a moment, he glanced at Gail. "Excuse me, ma'am. I forgot. She was your sister, wasn't she? I heard you say so that night, up on the stage there."

  "It's all right," Gail said dryly. "We're all kind of mixed up in my family. If we weren't, I wouldn't be here."

  "And then," Romero said to me, "just as we had things all set up to catch everybody with the goods-Naldi, your girl, Gunther, everybody-this lady comes wandering into the trap with Gunther. Well, that was all right. More grist for the mill, we figured. Then somebody heaved a knife and everything went to hell. None of my people could get where they were supposed to, the way everybody was milling around. You practically ruined me when I tried a fast retrieve-and who the hell were you? You ran off with the lady and the goods, saving the day for the other side, as it looked to us. Gunther got away in the confusion. Naldi… well, we had nothing conclusive on Naldi, so there wasn't anything we could do but keep an eye on him. He was too big to grab on mere suspicion. It was a mess."

  "Tough," I said. "If your chief in Washington had been willing to cooperate with mine, we might all have got to-gather in time."

  "Hell, your girl went over," Romero said. "He wasn't going to explain our set-up to you after that, maybe putting us all in jeopardy-me, for instance, making love to that damn mike in broken English. Anyway, there wasn't a damn thing for me to do, afterwards, but take off after you and try to get the films back. I sent a query to Washington on you, of course, but I guess nobody was speaking to anybody by that time."

  "What films?" I said. "They were sent off the next morning."

  "How was I to know that. You did have them. At least she did," he said with a gesture towards Gail. "I was lying there on the stage, groaning loudly, remember, while they were being passed. Weggann, Carrizozo, the kid said before she died. I hated that. It was a new name to us; I thought it might be a lead. I gave it to Peyton with the rest of it, of course; but he said for me to work on it myself and try to do a better job than I'd done to date. You know that damn, cold, sneering voice of his."

  Romero grimaced. "I guess I got over-eager, so here I am."

  "How did they catch you?"

  "I was watching the filling station. A character in a power wagon drove in and made contact with Wegmann. I followed when the guy left. He came up in this direction. I was doing fine, shadowing him just like the manual says. Then I got stuck in the snow. That damn snow!"

  "That'll teach yo
u to follow a four-wheel-drive truck with an ordinary sedan," I said, "and when will you border characters learn the use of chains?"

  "When we get enough snow to practice on regularly," Romero said, "instead of just being buried in it once every couple of years. I was busy trying to dig out when they jumped me. They ditched the car somewhere and brought me here. It doesn't make me look very brave and bright, I know. Now let's hear about you."

  I told him enough to bring him up to date-enough to make him look curiously at Gail, revising his first opinion of her in the light of the information I'd given him. I guess he'd assumed she was one of us, a pro or at least a loyal and dedicated amateur. She didn't like my telling him so much, but we were all going to have to work together, and it was no time to horse around with the truth out of regard for her sensitive feelings.

  "Stop glaring at me and get your hands up front here, glamor girl," I said. "Pull my shirt out of my pants. Make me look real untidy. I don't have far to go, after the way they worked me over down there, I guess."

  She gave me a surprised look. "Pull your.. In Heaven's name, why?"

  "Don't ask," I said. "Just do… So there you have it, Jaime," I said, pronouncing it Haymie, Spanish fashion.

  "The name is Jim," he said stiffly.

  "Jesus!" I said. "The bird flies at ten, and I have to consider your tender Castilian pride, Mr. Romero? Call me gringo if it makes you feel better." I glanced irritably at Gail. "Watch it, I'm ticklish there… Now help me work the belt buckle around to the back where I can get at it."

  I hadn't thought about it up to that moment. I hadn't let a picture of it form in my mind. I hadn't let the words be part of my vocabulary. There had been no such thing as belt or buckle. After all, Wegmann had been around. If I could think of it, he could.

  "Slip it around," I said. "The belt loops are big enough, unless somebody's miscalculated badly. If you hear anybody coming, flop the shirt down over it."

  Romero said, "Ten o'clock is the time? It must be well past nine already."

  I said, "Of course, something may abort the flight. It sometimes happens. Or the thing may blow up on the launching pad or whatever they fire it from. If so, it'll make quite a bang, from what Wegmann said."

  "We wouldn't be so lucky," Romero said. "If they were sending up one of the new ones, maybe, but this is straight routine, I understand, just to give some instruments a ride and check a few tracking procedures."

  "I'm surprised they'd shoot at all with all those important people on the reservation."

  "There would have been no conflict if Rennenkamp's bunch hadn't postponed a week. Anyway, they're well over to the west, protected by half a range of mountains. I guess somebody figures it's safe to go ahead on schedule. Those old Wotans are reliable as streetcars nowadays."

  "What's a Wotan?" Gail asked. "What happens at ten? What are you talking about, anyway?"

  "Dear lady," Romero said, "a Wotan is a lousy damn guided missile of the ground-to-ground variety. That is, it's fired from the surface and hits a target on the surface instead of going off to chase airplanes or something. In other words, it's a kind of sell-propelled artillery shell, a great big bullet with a brain. Not the giant intercontinental kind they fire at Canaveral, of course, but big enough. You don't want to be around where it lands. Comprendre?"

  "Well, vaguely, but-"

  "This particular Wotan," the little dark-haired guy said, "will be armed and sabotaged in certain ways, Wegmann claims… Has he taken you on his guided tour, Matt?"

  "No, I guess he thought there wasn't time."

  "He showed me around when he first brought me up here. They're all alike, these masterminds. After working under cover so long, they like to share their triumphs with somebody. He's very proud of that thing in the tower."

  "So I noticed," I said. "What bothers me is, if it's half as good as he seems to think, why does he want to tell the world all about it? I should think they'd keep it as their ace military secret."

  "I wouldn't know," Romero said. "It hadn't occurred to me… He didn't say anything about that. He did say it was going to create a world-wide sensation and impress a lot of people with the power of Soviet science. There's no doubt he's right, if he can really pull it off."

  "Can he?" I asked.

  "Something's been raising hell with our missile tests down here, for years, off and on. There's never been a really good explanation for it. He claims to be it. If he is… "

  Gail said angrily, "Look, I'm just a poor little Texas girl who flunked math and physics. Will you bright, bright men just tell me in words of one syllable what it's all about?"

  I said, "Honey, at ten o'clock, if Wegmann's got the time right, that missile will take off and come whistling up the range. A bullet with a brain, Jim just said. A brain that can take orders. Well, our friend Wegmann has a machine that gives orders. You saw it. Now do you understand?"

  "But-"

  "At a certain number of seconds or minutes past ten," I went on, "that gizmo in the tower will pick up the approaching Wotan and assume control, blanking out all other signals in some way, don't ask me how. Then Wegmann will swing his sights around towards that camp across the valley, full of congressmen and senators and scientific geniuses including Dr. Rennenkamp himself. Even if Wegmann can't see it from here, he's already got the bearing, you heard him say so. I don't suppose his machine is bothered by a little haze. And the big bird, if everything works right, will just ride the beam right down into camp… Can they actually turn one of those things through ninety degrees?" I asked Romero.

  He shrugged. "Wegmann says so, this type, anyway." Gail said, "You mean… you mean just sitting here he's going to blow up all those people? Why, that's downright horrible!"

  That, I thought, was quite an understatement, in her soft Texas voice. I thought of Buddy McKenna, over in the shadow of the Manzanitas. Illegitimati non carborundum, he'd told me. Don't let the bastards grind you down. He'd had a premonition, I guess, the kind good newsmen get.

  I said, "Does it matter whether Wegmann is sitting or standing when he does it?" Then I raised my voice and cried, "What the hell do you think you're doing? Who invited you to the conference? Don't you come sucking around here, you treacherous slut!"

  I gave her a shove with my shoulder that sent her sprawling.

  XXV

  It was that damn racket. I should have been watching the door, of course, and I thought I was, but you get in the habit of depending on your ears as well as your eyes- and ears were no use in there. My vigilance must have slipped for a moment. Suddenly Gunther was there, pistol in hand-the little nickel-plated weapon with which he'd shot LeBaron, by the looks of it-closing the door behind him.

  We were all acting much too cozy and friendly, sitting there like three monkeys on a stick. Something had to be done about it fast, and I did it. Maybe it was a little rough on Gail, but on the other hand, it gave her a good springboard from which to dive into her act. After the first moment of shock, I saw understanding come to her. She started to look around, but checked herself in time. Her face puckered up nicely, and a couple of real tears trickled down her cheeks, as she stared at me reproachfully.

  Gunther was above us now. "I declare," he said, "a real pretty tableau. Let's see those ropes!"

  He checked my bonds and Romero's, then went over to Gail, who was curled up in a woeful little ball, watering the floor with her tears. He tested the ropes on her wrists and ankles, and nudged her with his foot.

  "Turn it off, honey," he shouted. "This is Sam, Precious. Remember Sam, the guy who knows you like a book?

  Anyway, he said something like that. It was hard to make out the exact words through the steady, pounding racket. I wanted to tell him he was dead, standing there in his big hat and high-heeled boots. That was what he'd been put here for, of course. He thought he was being given the responsible job of watching the prisoners, but Wegmann had given me the hint, and I knew Mr. Gunther was merely being kept on ice, so to speak, until Wegmann decide
d how best to dispose of him along with the rest of us. He'd been groomed for the part of Cowboy, and he was going to play it dead.

  I started to shout at him, to tell him so, but he would have thought it a trick to turn him against his friends-an old, corny trick to try on a smart man like him. It was better to let Gail handle it. She'd stopped sobbing at the touch of his foot. Now she raised her head, turning her streaked face up to him.

  "Oh, Sam!" she cried. "Sam, I'm so glad to see you, honey! You're going to help me, aren't you? We've always been friends, haven't we, Sam? You're not going to let them…" She stumbled prettily and convincingly over the words, "… kill me?"

  "Why the hell should I help you, Precious?" he asked.

  "Oh, Sam," she said, "you can't fool me, honey. I know you're good and kind…"

  I lost the rest of that, as she lowered her voice slightly. She wasn't following the script I'd roughed out for her, which was all right, but I was afraid she was overdoing it a little. It was pretty crude. But she knew her man better than I did.

  "Good and kind, am I, honey?" Still interested, he laughed at her, lying at his feet.

  "Yes, they tried to tell me you killed Janie-had her killed-but I know you didn't do anything of the sort. I just know it!"

  I didn't like that at all. I could see that she might want the final word on her sister's death, but it was the wrong place for detective work. I was getting the belt buckle around back where I wanted it, under cover of my disordered shirt, but if she annoyed him and lost his attention I'd have a hard time preparing and using it with him watching, particularly since my fingers seemed to have no feeling and hardly any strength.

  I lost some more conversation with all the noise. He was laughing again. "… so you think you know Sam Gunther, all you rich bitches doling out a little money here and a little there in return for a lot of flattery and a bit of loving? Well, the time is coming, Precious, when you'll be doing the flattering and I'll be handing out the money… As for your sister, she was sent to kill me, did you know that. To kill me!" He sounded shocked. "She broke down and told me so herself!"