The Infiltrators

by Donald Hamilton

  “They claimed it was a warning that he was about to be arrested.”

  “I know, you told me; but we pay no attention to their claims. We know they’re all pathological prevaricators, right? We assume that somebody decoyed him out of the house with that call so he could be grabbed and spirited away and killed, perhaps along with the subversive Bella… Where and when was she last seen?”

  “Bella Kravecki’s movements on that night don’t seem to have been clearly established,” Madeleine said. “All that ever came out was that when they went to her motel to arrest her she was gone. Well, the man at the desk remembered that she’d stopped by to check for mail and messages a little earlier in the evening. She was wearing jeans as usual, and a purple silk blouse and a big concha belt and a squash-blossom necklace; she’d picked up some Indian jewelry since she’d come to Santa Fe, and she liked to display it. It made her look like a dressed-up horse. All right, I didn’t like her. Neither did Roy. A big, dark, overbearing woman in her early thirties; I guess you could call her handsome. She got a phone call too, they remembered. That’s all anybody knows. When they came for her, her clothes and luggage were still in her room, her rental car was still in its slot in front of her unit, but no Bella.”

  “Well, to hell with Bella,” I said. “We don’t know enough about her to theorize about her—except that your husband did not run off with her for amorous purposes, right?”

  “Roy wouldn’t have touched…!” Madeleine checked herself, and spoke in a subdued voice. “Right.”

  I said, “So we assume that your Roy was lured out of his house, your house, so that he could be taken captive. We assume that he was then killed—killed that very night around two in the morning, if we accept your dream, so it probably didn’t happen too far from Santa Fe. Correct?”

  Her face was pale. She nodded. “Yes. That’s what I think, what I’ve always thought.”

  “How did he die?”

  She moistened her lips again. “I don’t know that. How could I know it?”

  I said, “I told you you weren’t using those good brains of yours. You heard him scream as he died, didn’t you? If you want to call it hearing. What kind of a scream was it? A scream of pain as they tortured him to death? A last wild cry of protest as somebody put a gun to his head and pulled the trigger?”

  She swallowed hard. She closed her eyes for several seconds, recalling that shocking night nine years ago when her successful, beautiful life had, for all practical purposes, come to an end in a dingy cell in the city jail. She opened them again, wide and dark in her pale face.

  “It was a… a falling scream, Matt.” Her voice was almost inaudible. “He was falling, falling, screaming, screaming; and then the scream was cut off short… Oh, God!”

  After a little, I reached across the table to take her hand. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean for it to get so rough. Do you want to stop?”

  She squeezed my fingers lightly and freed herself. “No, I’m all right. Let’s go on with… with your game. Can we figure out where… it was done?”

  I said, “You tell me.”

  “High?” she said in a tentative way. “A cliff? An airplane? No, if they’d shoved him off, or out of, anything like that, the… the body would have been found eventually, wouldn’t it? Low, then. A well? But they’re mostly drilled wells out there, and nobody could fall down one of those narrow pipes. There are very few dug wells, these days. So, a mine shaft.”

  She looked at me for confirmation. I nodded approvingly. “Now you’re getting the idea. It seems likely, doesn’t it? There are dozens of old mines within easy driving distance of Santa Fe. Gold, silver, coal, you name it. Used to be you could wander around that open country at will and you’d find old holes everywhere. Fences were just for cows in those days. If you really wanted to be dog-in-the-manger and keep people off your property you were supposed to use signs, but very few landowners bothered with POSTED or NO TRESPASSING signs. The good old days of the West. Nowadays the place is crawling with pompous characters with eastern ideas of property who think there’s something sacred about a few lousy strands of barbed wire. And many of the old mines have been bought up, and fenced and locked up, by speculators gambling that they can revive them profitably once the price of whatever-it-is gets up a bit higher. That was true even nine years ago. So you can no longer count on finding a nice accessible deserted mine shaft any time you’ve got a corpse on your hands.”

  Madeleine was looking at me curiously. “You sound as if you’d lived in New Mexico a long time. I didn’t realize that.”

  “I thought I told you. That was one reason I was picked for this operation.” I shrugged. “Hell, I was brought up in the state; I even lived in Santa Fe for several years, later, back when I was married.” I saw the question in her eyes and went on: “It was nice while it lasted, but she found out a little too much about the nasty character she’d picked to father her children, so she took off with the kids. A very gentle and nonviolent girl. That was back in the days I thought for a while I could turn gentle and nonviolent myself, but somehow it never seemed to work out.” I grimaced. “That was a long time ago. Skip it.”

  Madeleine was silent for a little, watching me; then she said, “And later you met your cave girl?”

  “My what?”

  “The archaeologist lady who knew all about caves, the one who got the same telepathic message from that old high priest you told me about. Your voice changed when you mentioned her. Is she still your… your girl, Matt?”

  I shook my head. “She was for a little, whatever you want to call it, but she went back to her career and her pompous prick of a husband. A very nice, very conscientious lady with a strong sense of duty. Shall we catalogue my love life some other time when we have a month or two to spare?”

  Madeleine laughed softly. “I’m sorry, it’s really none of my business. Just a nosy bitch.”

  I said, “Locating the mine will be your first order of business when we get to Santa Fe. Well, after you’ve settled your private affairs with your dad’s lawyer. Assuming that you’re still willing to work along with us on this, of course.”

  She said, “What else would I be doing, getting a job scrubbing floors somewhere?” The old bitterness was back in her voice as she went on harshly: “‘Expert scrubwoman seeks new position. University graduate and former member of the bar. Eight years of experience. Concrete prison floors our specialty. Last place of employment will supply glowing references.’” She shook her head abruptly. “Sorry. It keeps sneaking up on me. Yes, Mr. Helm, I will be happy to cooperate with your organization. All you have to do is keep me alive, although sometimes I wonder if I’m worth the trouble to you. Or to me.”

  I grinned at her. “Let’s make a deal, Mrs. Ellershaw. I’ll skip the phony compliments if you skip the phony despair. You don’t have to work so hard for my sympathy. I’m a most sympathetic fellow.”

  There was a little silence. Then she smiled reluctantly. “Ouch! I’ll consider myself spanked. I guess things really aren’t all that desperate, are they? I’ve still got four limbs and a head, and a nice man to drive me around and buy me clothes and feed me, at least for the time being… All right. I’ll make a thorough search of the records.”

  “It’s more in your line than mine; I wouldn’t know where to start looking,” I said. “Every mining property within fifty miles of Santa Fe, and the name of the current owner—correction, the owner as of nine years ago. These are careful people; they wouldn’t have left it to chance. They had it all figured out how they were going to keep that bright and inquisitive young lady attorney, Mrs. Ellershaw, from nosing around afterwards; and they must have laid their plans for disposing of her scientific-genius husband with equal care. They’d have had a suitable place to take him, a good deep shaft where he’d never be found, and where they wouldn’t be spotted driving in and out.”

  Madeleine swallowed. “I think it’s safe to assume that the property was actually owned by one of… of them, don
’t you? I mean, you’d hardly go up to a friend or acquaintance and ask for the key to Starlight Number Three, or whatever, because you’d like to drop a dead body down it next Wednesday. But I also think we can assume that the man who had the property then probably has it now. He wouldn’t have sold it complete with an incriminating”—she stopped, and swallowed again, and forced herself to go on—“an incriminating s-skeleton for the new owner to find. So I’ll concentrate on the properties that have been in the same hands for that many years.”

  It was kind of exciting to see the fine lawyer-mind beginning to function again in the once fine woman-body she’d also begun to take some pride in again after the years of neglect.

  I said, “Then we’ll check your list against the names of everybody we turn up even remotely connected with the case. If the same name turns up on both lists, bingo.”

  “Matt.”

  I glanced at her. “Problem?”

  She spoke wryly: “If I’d ever got up in court with a line of deduction as shaky as this—based on the dream of an exhausted and frightened girl, for heaven’s sake!—I’d have been laughed out of my profession.”

  I said, “Lady, when you got up in court with plausible evidence and sensible logic you were drummed out of your profession and thrown into the can for a good many years, remember?”

  She winced. “Well, it’s a point, I guess. What other wild flights of fancy do you want us to follow?”

  “We haven’t finished with your husband,” I told her. “We’ve agreed to operate on the assumption that Roy Ellershaw was murdered, but his death doesn’t necessarily prove… I mean, thieves have fallen out before. He could have been silenced because he was involved with our mysterious villains in something big and dangerous, rather than because he wasn’t. We’re working from your instincts, so let’s have your instinctive verdict. Roy Ellershaw, guilty or innocent?”

  “I’ve told you! Innocent!”

  “But innocent of what? From what you’ve said, I gather that there actually was a bank box stuffed full of fat, mysterious envelopes full of mysterious papers. Put there by you. Given to you by him. Your husband. In a disturbed state of mind, you said. So just how innocent was he?” When she didn’t answer immediately, I said, “Think hard. Would the Roy Ellershaw you loved and married have stolen important classified scientific documents entrusted to his care, for any reason? Is there any way he could have rationalized such an act to himself, being the man he was?”

  She hesitated. “But the papers were there, Matt! We’ve got to face—”

  “We don’t got to face nothing, baby. If we don’t believe it, if we find it inconceivable, it just ain’t so. Give me an answer.”

  “The answer is no!” she said with sudden vehemence. “No, no, no!”

  “And having stolen them, whether for idealistic or mercenary purposes, could this man who loved you possibly have given them to you to hide for him, putting you into terrible danger—actually sending you to prison and ruining your career and life as it turned out? You’ve already answered that, I think, but say it again.”

  “No!” she breathed. “Oh, God, no! That’s the incomprehensible thing, the horrible thing! It happened—it must have happened—but it couldn’t have happened. It didn’t make any sense at all. It wasn’t Roy at all, he just couldn’t have done it, any of it! But—”

  I said harshly, “You just won’t play the goddamned game, Ellershaw. Never mind the lousy buts. He couldn’t have done it so he didn’t do it. We go on from there: he didn’t do what he was accused of. He didn’t do what you thought he’d done even though it almost killed you to think so. So just what the hell did Dr. Roy Ellershaw do during that time you sensed he was seriously troubled about something? Let’s take it in two pieces. First, what did he do? Second, why did he leave you, his beloved wife, stuck with it?”

  “But if he didn’t steal anything—”

  I shook my head irritably. “Who says he didn’t steal anything? Nobody said anything like that, lawyer girl. Keep your eye on the ball. What was it we really said? It wasn’t that at all. Sure he could have grabbed something if he thought it really needed grabbing. We merely agreed that he was incapable of stealing secret scientific documents for which he was responsible. So obviously what he stole, and had you put away for him, wasn’t scientific documents and he wasn’t responsible for them.”

  There was a little silence. Madeleine shook her head in a bewildered way and said, “But several CADRE scientists testified at my trial…” She stopped, watching my face carefully. “Matt, are you trying to say that what Roy gave me to put in the bank, and what I did put there, wasn’t the material that figured in court? But that’s crazy!”

  I shrugged. “Crazy or not, that’s where our logic leads us. And it explains a great many things, doesn’t it? Did you identify the stuff yourself? Could you identify it?”

  She shook her head again. “As I said on the witness stand, I never really examined the materials Roy gave me. The envelopes looked the same. I had to admit that. But they were sealed, and I never looked inside. I told them that, too, but of course they didn’t believe me.” She licked her lips. “You mean… you mean I went to p-prison for helping to steal something I never really touched, something Roy never touched? You mean somebody took away the innocent papers Roy gave me to store for him and substituted the incriminating material on the strength of which I was convicted and sentenced? My God, that possibility never occurred to us!”

  I said, “I told you you’d taken too much for granted. Of course, it’s just a theory so far, but it fits pretty well, doesn’t it? And of course we don’t really know how innocent the original box contents were. Clearly they were dangerous to somebody, or that somebody wouldn’t have gone to all this trouble to get them back and kill or discredit anyone connected with taking them. That’s why you were pressed so hard to confess, of course. As long as you remained a respected and respectable member of the community you were a threat, but once you’d admitted to being a lousy sneaking spy, they didn’t really care whether you were locked up or walking around on parole or probation or whatever. Your word would have been worthless, just the shrill self-serving yapping of a confessed criminal.” I frowned. “The stuff that was used against you, I suppose it was properly identified.”

  “Yes.” She hesitated. “Well, within the limits imposed by security. Only the envelopes were displayed in court, but the contents were described in general terms, by CADRE scientists having the proper impressive clearance, as coming from Roy’s laboratory. It was all research data referring to the new LS-system that was being developed at the time. We were told that LS stood for Laser Shield. When perfected, the system was supposed to make us all safe from enemy missiles, very sci-fi. I didn’t understand it, and I doubt that the jury did. All we understood was that it was terribly important to the safety of the country, and that anybody who’d let the Russians have it, and perhaps learn how to penetrate it, was a wicked traitor to America.” She shook her head quickly. “Legally speaking, I shouldn’t use the word traitor, although of course that’s what everybody was thinking. But in law treason is a very specific crime that’s very hard to prove. It requires two witnesses, among other things. They never tried to pin it on me, officially; they were satisfied with the lesser charges. But of course the implication was always there.”

  I nodded. “But the invention involved was definitely a defensive weapon? It wasn’t anything that could possibly have tortured your husband’s conscience, as I suggested earlier?”

  “That’s right.”

  I said, “So there must have been a switch. Dr. Ellershaw got something and gave it to you for safekeeping, we still don’t know what or why. And something altogether different turned up in the hands of the prosecution to convict you.”

  “But how could—”

  “For heaven’s sake, Ellershaw!” I said irritably. “You’ve got a mind, why won’t you use it? What investigating officer probably opened that safe-deposit box and wh
at do we know about him? The likeliest candidate is your friend Bennett, the fastest slap in the West, isn’t it? One of the finest specimens of negative integrity around. Either he got those envelopes in the normal course of his investigation and looked inside and saw how he could cash in on them if he could only arrange a convincing substitution, or he’d been bought in advance and told what to look for and what to do about it if he found it. Probably the latter; the people we’re dealing with obviously don’t leave things to chance. But it’s no wonder Bennett’s nervous about having you loose again, knowing how he framed you. He’d sleep much better now if he could have tormented you into running yesterday, and put an ‘accidental’ bullet into the back of your head.”

  Madeleine shivered a little. “But what was in the box originally, Matt?”

  I shook my head and said, “We can’t even guess, yet, what it was your husband stumbled on. All we know is that it made him some extremely dangerous enemies. Ask yourself how a dim bulb like Bennett ever got the job of Director of the Office of Federal Security, not to mention the political backing to make that outfit as big as it has become. Obviously, Bennett took his payoff in prestige and power—but of course whoever’s behind him probably had very good reasons for setting up a powerful law-enforcement agency run by an ambitious but not very bright man who’d jump obediently at the crack of the whip. And if they were that strong, whoever they are, providing Bennett with the top-secret pieces of paper he needed to destroy you wasn’t very difficult for them.”

  Madeleine licked her lip. “It’s… kind of scary, isn’t it? People powerful enough to buy an agent of the OFS with promises and keep those promises. People ruthless enough to commit murder, and clever and influential enough to get away with it. People influential enough to rush a criminal case to trial and get somebody railroaded into the worst federal pen in the country on… on less than convincing evidence. And finally, people with access to secret materials in a high-security installation… It seems to have been, well, quite a can of worms that Roy opened up, somehow. So they kidnaped him—”