The Interlopers mh-12

by Donald Hamilton

  She got out of bed, quite unconcerned about her nakedness. Her figure was as trim and attractive without clothes as it had been with them, which isn't often the case except among the very young. She kicked around among the garments strewn about the carpet-hers and mine-to find the pants she'd discarded the evening before, and pulled them on without benefit of underwear. Then she unearthed her blouse from the same heap, made a face at its wilted appearance, and struggled into it. Wearing it open, like a thin, loose, ruffled jacket, she moved, still barefoot, to the dresser, where she peeled the paper sock off a motel glass and poured herself a healthy slug from a bottle standing nearby, tempering it with barely a splash of water from a pitcher.

  "You're sure you won't have some?"

  "Positive," I said. "I've got a long way to drive today, if I'm to make contact up in British Columbia tomorrow like I'm supposed to."

  I got out of bed and started dressing. I probably didn't carry it off quite as well as she had. Not that I was actively embarrassed, but we hadn't really been acquainted very long and I felt more comfortable after I'd got a few clothes on. When, after zipping up my pants, I glanced her way again, she was sprawled in the big chair in the corner, grinning at me.

  "Skinny, aren't you?" she murmured.

  "No skinnier than some others you've known. At least one other."

  Her grin vanished. "Why bring that up?"

  "Because it's the central fact of our existence, sweetheart-or should I say of our coexistence. At least I'm here because I'm supposed to look somewhat like a tall skinny guy you used to know pretty well. I was kind of assuming you were here for the same reason."

  "Well, I came here to back up your impersonation of him, if that's what you mean."

  "I wasn't told I'd be having any help from you. Quite the contrary."

  She laughed. "Neither was, I, darling. In fact, I was told I was staying in San Francisco on pain of drastic penalties, I forget just what they were. Probably a whole gaggle of government pretty-boys is searching for me right now, to lock me up for getting independent. But I could see this impersonation deal just wasn't going to go over, the way they had it rigged. Sooner or later, somebody was going to get suspicious of you, probably sooner..

  "Somebody did. Stottman."

  "Yes," she said, "and if you hadn't had a member of the lodge in good standing to vouch for you, your act would have been finished right there, wouldn't it? And so would you. That's why I managed to get myself sent up this way without letting those government jerks know about it, so I'd be handy if you needed me."

  "Your efforts are appreciated. Can I expect more assistance farther up the line, if required?"

  "I'll do the best I can. After all, I've done some good work for this creepy spy outfit; I've earned a certain amount of latitude. And Grant and I are-were-known to be pretty close. I don't think anybody will suspect anything if I continue to dream up excuses to be near him-you."

  I said, "Just the same it could be risky."

  "I told you, I got in this mainly for kicks. I don't mind a few risks." Her lips tightened. "I'm going to smash this whole lousy apparatus, no matter what it costs. At least I'm going to louse up this operation for them so they'll never put it back together-and you know how Moscow deals with failures!" After a moment, she asked in a totally different tone of voice: "What do you know about these other people, the ones who tried to have you killed so they could bring in their own imitation Nystrom?"

  "Very little, so far," I said, tucking my shirt into my pants. "I've seen three of them, but there may be more. There's a blond girl in jeans. There's the guy you saw in the vet's office, call him Nystrom. And there was a juvenile gun expert with moustache and sideburns, but he's dead."

  "You don't know what they're after?"

  "Well, that's fairly obvious, but I don't really know why they're after it," I said. "It seems pretty clear that they're trying to do the same thing we are: hijack the information Stottman and his friends-your ex-friends- have collected on NCS, whatever that may be."

  Libby glanced at me sharply, surprised. "You mean, you haven't even been told that? The government sure makes you boys work blindfolded! NCS stands for Northwest Coastal System, darling. Everybody knows that."

  "Sure," I said. "Everybody."

  "Well, almost everybody. Of course, only a few people know what it actually is; in that respect, security is very tight. But it's something very fancy being tested here in the Northwest, a defensive system of some kind, we hear, but that could mean anything. Nobody, but nobody, builds aggressive systems these days, or admits it if they do. Anyway, Moscow is very eager to learn all about NCS. And obviously somebody else is, too."

  "Maybe Peking," I said.

  Libby gave me another of her sharp, surprised looks. "Why do you say that? Were any of those interfering brats Oriental?"

  "No," I said, "but they could have been hired, couldn't they? Or persuaded by the customary, cockeyed ideological arguments? And if something interesting is being developed on this shore of the Pacific, the people on the other shore would seem like logical customers for the information. And I had a case over in Hawaii not too long ago where young people were being pumped full of highfalutin notions and used as suckers by shrewd professionals. That one was run from Moscow, but some Chinese agents were involved, too. Maybe they're not too proud to borrow a good idea from their fellow Marxists."

  She shrugged. "You're just guessing."

  I said, "Sure. But I don't think Bellman and Company dreamed up an operation like this on their own…

  "Bellman?"

  "That's the girl's name. Pat Bellman."

  "Is she pretty?"

  "Don't be corny," I said. "The kid's not bad. Not a sexpot like you, but not bad. Incidentally, if you were to button that damn blouse, I could keep my mind on our conversation without the distraction of wondering if I'm being seduced all over again and why."

  She made no move to comply with the suggestion, smiling up at me in a provocative way. Trousered women don't do much for me as a rule, but this one managed to overcome the handicap nicely. Lounging there half-naked, glass in hand, in somewhat bedraggled remnants of yesterday's elaborate fancy-pants costume, she was a wanton challenge to the whole male sex.

  The catch, as far as my libido was concerned, was that my mind really did want to know why. She was putting on a fine, tarty act for me-had been, ever since we met- but my instincts warned me it was just that: an act. Not that she was necessarily an unspoiled and innocent child at heart, but neither was she, I thought, just a sexy slob who normally drank whiskey at the crack of dawn. Last night, after a long hard day, when she'd had plenty of reason to relax with a couple of stiff ones, there had been no liquor on her breath. To the best of my knowledge, there are very few morning drinkers who don't lap it up at night as well. So why was the lady deliberately making herself look cheap and dissipated for my benefit?

  I looked down at her bleakly for a moment longer. When she didn't speak, I said, "Honest, it's a great routine, Libby. But what does it mean?"

  Her eyes narrowed. After a moment, she rose and drew the blouse closed over her breasts, buttoned it up, and stuffed it into her pants. Then she looked up at me and, after a little pause, laughed softly.

  "I keep thinking you're really Grant, I guess," she murmured. "He was kind of a coward where women were concerned. You had to make things easy for him. I mean, when we first met, I gave him the glamour treatment for weeks and nothing happened. Finally, I realized he was actually scared of touching the shining lady in her expensive clothes. I mean, he wanted to, God how he wanted to, but he was afraid he'd make me mad by mussing my dress or wrecking my hairdo or something. I had to let him catch me cleaning house with my hair tied up and some old rag on, drinking beer… Ugh, how I hate beer! As the man said, they ought to pour it back into the horse. But it's a nice, lower-class, down-to-earth drink, and we got lit on the nasty stuff, and it did the job. In a faded old dress with dirt on my nose and a skinfull of beer,
I was human enough that he dared grab me and maul me the way he'd wanted to for weeks." She grimaced. "That sounds pretty snide, doesn't it? I didn't mean it to. Actually, he was a sweet, shy guy without too much between the ears. Whereas you're a smart, cold, calculating bastard who knows everything about women. Aren't you?"

  "Sure," I said. "Everything except why this particular woman gives a damn whether I go for her or not."

  She said, smiling again, "I guess I underestimated you. I thought you'd just put it down to your personal magnetism. Most men would."

  "In my line of work," I said, "those who overestimate their personal magnetism tend to die very young. Come on, Libby, give. You want something, and it isn't me. What is it?"

  "Oh, I don't mind you," she murmured. "In fact, I rather like you."

  "Thanks."

  She hesitated. "Tell me something. That young punk with the gun, the one you shot-that would probably be the one who killed Grant, wouldn't it?"

  "Probably," I said. "Why?"

  She reached out and took me by the arms, drawing me closer, so close that our bodies touched here and there. The contact obviously wasn't accidental; very little about this girl was accidental, I warned myself. She looked up at me searchingly for a moment.

  She said, "Because I want you to get the rest of them, too."

  I was just as conscious of the fact that there was nothing but Libby under the thin pants and blouse as she wanted me to be; but this was beside the point.

  "Sure," I said. "Will just the scalps do, or do you want the ears, too? Or should I bring you the heads in a basket, individually wrapped like fancy oranges?"

  "Don't be funny," she said quietly. "I'm not joking. I want you to get the remaining two we know about-the girl and the tall man with the dog-and any others that may be working with them; I want them all. Dead." Her eyes were steady on my face. When I didn't speak, she went on: "I just paid you, last night, for the one you've already taken care of. Please don't think I fall into bed with every man I meet. I owed you a debt, and I paid it. Do you understand?"

  I said, "Libby, I'm afraid you're a screwball. I don't like working with screwballs."

  "That's too bad," she said calmly, "that's too bad, because you're stuck with me just as I'm stuck with you. And I'm telling you that for every additional one you get, you can collect the same fee. Me." She waited again for me to speak. When I didn't, she continued in the same cold, steady voice: "Of course, if you'd rather have money, I've got that, too. Name your price. But get them for me. Kill them for me. All of them."

  11

  HANK WAS SO GLAD TO SEE ME that he tongue-washed my face all over before darting off to take care of his business in the bushes. He was really a pretty good pup. In spite of having been locked up all night, he'd made no mess in the camper. He hadn't chewed up anything, either, although there was plenty of gear in there for him to exercise his teeth on if he got the notion.

  I should have played with him a bit-at least tossed him something to retrieve as a reward for good behavior- but at the moment human considerations took precedence in my mind over matters canine. I whistled him back, therefore, as soon as he'd concluded his rendezvous with nature, locked him up again, got into the cab of the truck, and hesitated, feeling for the bottle of vitamins in my pocket.

  It was still there, and whatever it contained besides dog pills was presumably intact since I was in a good position to swear that Libby Meredith had had no chance to get at it and, in spite of distractions, I was fairly sure nobody else had entered the room all night. I don't sleep that soundly, particularly when I'm not alone in bed. There were certain things I was supposed to do now to make Mr. Smith happy, but they didn't weigh on me very heavily. I had other things on my mind; I could play secret agent later.

  I started the truck and drove out of there fast, heading north. What I really wanted was a telephone, but I didn't want to be seen using one, since I preferred not to be asked, later, whom I'd been calling. Of course I'd used one in Pasco, but then I'd been following Mr. Smith's childish instructions to the letter, since there had seemed to be no good reason not to. Now the situation had changed rather spectacularly, and I figured I'd better be a little more careful until I'd heard Mac's ideas on the new developments.

  All the way up through Seattle, the freeway traffic was too heavy for me to determine whether or not I was being tailed. Even after I'd left the city limits behind, I still had enough company to make it look as if half the population of the state of Washington had decided to move up to British Columbia, but apparently most of these northbound emigrants were making for Vancouver, on the coast. When I turned off the big coastal highway and headed slantingly inland on a smaller road that crossed the Canadian border near a little town called Sumas, I had more privacy, but I decided to wait a little longer to be quite sure I was safe from observation.

  The border ritual was no trouble at all. I told the man I had a sporting rifle and shotgun, and he said fine, just keep the weapons unloaded and cased while in Canada. He didn't even ask me about sidearms as they generally do, so I didn't have to lie about Grant Nystrom's.357 which was chafing my hipbone. He just checked on Hank's rabies inoculation and waved me on.

  Pretty soon I was rolling eastward along a four-lane highway more or less paralleling the border. The day was bright and warm and windless, and the truck ran straight and true down the smooth pavement, like a locomotive on tracks. It's one of the mysteries of the automotive business, how few people really appreciate the virtues of the ordinary American half-ton truck. On the highway it'll keep up with the fastest traffic, and off the road it'll go just about anywhere you'd care to take a jeep. Please understand, I'm talking about the real truck now, not about all the dressed-up little bastard delivery vans that are sold under sporty names to people too proud to be seen in an honest, work-horse commercial vehicle with the engine Out front.

  The vehicle Nystrom had bequeathed me was a fast, powerful, and rugged machine. I wouldn't have matched it against a Ferrari on a twisty road-race circuit, but I thought it would probably run down any ordinary car on any ordinary back-country road, particularly one that was paved badly or not at all. For the sparsely populated areas of the continent toward which my mission was leading me, I couldn't have asked for better transportation.

  Since angling was still part of my act, I stopped to buy a fishing license at a tourist-bureau office set up along the highway to make such purchases convenient for visitors to the province. Afterwards, I turned north again, according to instructions, on a two-lane blacktop road leading up the Frazer River-a historic waterway, I'd been told: the ancient gateway to the interior. No single car had made the whole route behind me. Of course, somebody could have assigned me a surveillance team, two or three different cars taking turns, and probably Mr. Smith's people were using just this technique to watch over me, since I'd detected no signs of them. As for the opposition, the people in whom we were interested, if they were going to that much trouble it meant that my cover was blown anyway and a phone call more or less wouldn't make much difference.

  I wasn't really worrying about the whole west coast Communist spy apparat ganging up on me. What concerned me was the possibility that a single gent with a suspicious nature-say a guy named Stottman-might be running an unofficial check on my activities in the hope of catching me doing something Grant Nystrom wouldn't, like telephoning Washington, D.C.

  By now I'd taken as many precautions as the possibility would seem to merit, but just to be on the safe side, rather than be seen standing in a roadside booth, I stopped for lunch at a small-town restaurant that boasted an inside pay phone. As a final precaution, I made my report to Mac by way of our relay man in Vancouver, insuring that there'd be no incriminating record of a long-distance call across the border.

  "Indeed," Mac said when I'd finished. "Very intriguing. What do you make of the lady, Eric?"

  I said, "I know what she'd like me to make of her, sir. A crackpot nymphomaniac with alcoholic tendencies co
mplicated by an obsessive guilt complex-that's the picture she was painting for me, stroke by careful stroke. She wants me to believe that deep down in her subconscious she knows it was she who got Grant Nystrom killed by roping him into this courier job in the first place. I'm supposed to think that her mind rejects this knowledge and instead, in self defense, blames everybody else for her lover's death; her Communist pals-or ex-pals-and this gang of youthful interlopers that did the actual shooting. To keep from admitting her own guilt, she's embarked on a career of vengeance against everyone else involved. At least that's the theory I'm supposed to buy."

  "But you don't?"

  I said, "Hell, that isn't a picture, sir, it's a psychiatric caricature. She's just making it up as she goes along. This girl is as phony as a ten-dollar pawnshop Stradivarius. I don't know who she is, but I do know what she isn't, and that's a rich, dipso, nympho society woman who went Communist for kicks, talked her boyfriend into joining up with her, and is now overwhelmed with remorse because he wound up getting shot as a result."

  Mac said dryly, "You seem to have an attraction for interesting young women who aren't what they seem. Don't forget, whoever and whatever she is, this one did save your mission, and probably your life."

  "Yes, sir," I said. "I'm keeping it in mind. Question, sir."

  "What is it?"

  "She couldn't be one of ours, could she?"

  Apparently the question took Mac by surprise, because there was a rather lengthy pause. When he spoke, his voice had a stiff and offended note: "If we'd had any agents on the job who might possibly be of assistance to you, I would certainly have let you know when I briefed you, Eric."

  This, of course, meant nothing at all. If the girl was working for us, and there were good reasons for her to keep her mouth shut even with me, they were still good. And if those reasons had caused Mac to refrain from mentioning her earlier, he'd certainly lie about her now. In other words, asking the question had been just a gesture on my part; a way of establishing for future reference-if my suspicions proved correct-that I wasn't quite as easy to fool as people seemed to think.