Matt Helm--The Interlopers

by Donald Hamilton

  “Down!” I whispered, glancing toward the other bed where Libby was sleeping soundly. “I get the message: you want out. Just hold your goddamn little black horses.”

  I glanced at my watch and found that it was later than it felt: six thirty-five to be exact. My alarm clock was set for seven—I reached over to switch it off—and I had an appointment outside the café at seven-fifteen sharp.

  I got up and went into the bathroom. Threats to the contrary notwithstanding, Libby hadn’t slept in her undies: she’d washed them and hung them on the shower rod to dry. It was another homelike, wifely touch. Fighting the early-morning battle of the nylons—well, just brassiere and panties in this case—reminded me again, nostalgically, of the comfortable state of matrimony from which I had resigned, or been fired, a long time ago.

  When I got outside, there was enough light to see by, but yesterday’s fine weather was gone and rain was falling: a slow misty drizzle. Hank thought it was great. He was a water dog; he liked rain. He took off happily through the puddles to transact his morning business while I zipped up Grant Nystrom’s ski jacket against the cold and pulled down Grant Nystrom’s Stetson to shield my face from the dripping moisture. Waiting, I checked the truck, and nobody’d been at it. I checked the parked cars, and the hard-driven little Mustang with the stone-cracked windshield was missing from its slot.

  “Excuse me,” said a male voice in my ear, “excuse me, but isn’t that a Labrador retriever? He’s a beauty. What’s his name?”

  I turned to look at a plump man in his early thirties. His rather citified hat and plastic raincoat proclaimed him a tourist, as did the rubbers he was wearing over his city shoes. Behind him stood a similarly plump woman almost totally wrapped in waterproof, semi-transparent plastic, except for her lower legs, which displayed very tight green pants ending just below the calves. Her bare ankles looked unbearably cold, and her low shoes were too flimsy to serve adequately as anything but bedroom slippers, which was exactly what they looked like.

  I spoke to the man. “Yes, he’s a Lab,” I said. “His name is Hank.”

  “No, I mean his full name. He’s pedigreed, isn’t he?”

  I said, “His registered name is Avon’s Prince Hannibal of Holgate.”

  “Thanks,” said the man and turned to the woman, “See, I told you that was a pedigreed Labrador, dear.”

  She said, “I’m getting wet. Let’s grab a cup of coffee and get going before this whole miserable country melts and runs away. Whose bright idea was it, coming to Alaska, anyway?”

  They went into the café. I checked the time surreptitiously. Ten minutes later, I whistled in the pup and locked him up in the camper, since he was pretty wet and Libby had made it abundantly clear that she didn’t even like dry dogs very much. Exactly fifteen minutes from the time the plump dog expert and his unhappy wife, if that’s what she was, had gone through the door, I went in after them.

  Inside, the tiny café looked pretty much like a railroad dining car, with booths on either side and an aisle down the middle. My people had the middle booth on the right-hand side. They’d finished their hasty coffee and were just leaving. There was no competition; I had no trouble establishing myself in the same booth, after first letting them go by.

  I ordered coffee, orange juice, eggs, and bacon, and went to work on the canned juice and the coffee while waiting for the main event. Only after the plate was put in front of me did I reach for the salt cellar. Seasoning my eggs carefully, I palmed the wafer of tinfoil stuck to the bottom of the cheap glass container, and contact number five was completed—but it still seemed like a silly game for grown-up men and women to be playing.

  When I returned to the room, Libby emerged from the bathroom, fully dressed, to greet me. She retreated hastily as Hank romped forward to say hello.

  “Damn that mutt!” she snapped, brushing at herself. “Why does he always have to put his great big dirty feet on… ah, hell! Come here, you black monster. I didn’t mean to hurt your damn little feelings.”

  She held out the back of her hand to let Hank sniff it and give it a couple of licks; then she scratched his ears forgivingly and laughed.

  “What are a few paw prints between friends?” she said ruefully. “After yesterday, I look like I’d been sweeping out the stables anyway; but I didn’t see any sense in putting on something clean until we get out of this mud and dust. If we ever do.” She glanced at me quickly, as if only now remembering what I was supposed to have been doing this morning. “My God, I forgot! How did the contact go? Did you get it?”

  “I got it,” I said. “I thought, as my self-appointed partner in this caper, you’d like to see it stashed away; that’s why I brought the pup inside. Hank, sit!”

  Obediently, he plunked his fanny on the floor, and I bent down to remove his collar, then stopped. There was a long silence as I looked thoughtfully at the black, metal-studded strap around his neck. It was the right color, and it had the right number of decorations of roughly the right shapes in roughly the right places. It even had the right, slightly faded, well-worn look. But it wasn’t the dog collar I’d come to know and love.

  I stood there for a long moment, thinking back; but I already knew the answer. The collar had been right yesterday. This morning it was wrong…

  “Is this what you’re looking for?” Libby’s voice said softly behind me. I turned, and there it was, in her hand. She smiled. “As your self-appointed partner, darling, I thought you were being just a little careless, letting him run around with all that priceless NCS information around his neck. So last night, after you were asleep, I just switched them to show you how easily it could be done.”

  I drew a long, slow breath. “Where’d you get the duplicate?”

  “I’ve had it right along. It was an obvious thing to bring, just in case. Here. Take this one.” I didn’t move at once, and she looked at my face hard. “Matt!”

  I said, “Damn it, the name is Grant.”

  “To hell with you, Matt! You really thought…! Don’t you ever trust anyone?”

  “Sure. And I can show you a scar for every damn time.”

  “After… after everything, you really thought I… you really thought I’d stolen…!” Her voice was choked. “Oh, damn you, Matt Helm! Damn you, damn you, damn you! Here, take your precious strap!”

  I ducked as it came flying at me. She grabbed her coat and suitcase and marched out the door. It was a great performance.

  All her performances had been great, I reflected grimly. She was a real trooper, a real pro, and I was full of admiration for her. I mean that. There wasn’t any resentment in me, any indignation, any feeling of wounded pride for the way she’d fooled me. I respected and admired her, and I was sorry she’d been given such a lousy script to play, because she deserved better. Holz and his associates should have been ashamed of themselves, to give such a fine actress such crummy material.

  I mean the richbitch routine with which she’d started out had been unconvincing enough, but the U.S. secret-agent line she’d had to fall back on had been a real turkey. Yet she’d put it over, selling me the farfetched notion that not only was she working for Mr. Smith, but that that gentleman operated his respectable government agency in a peculiarly complicated and two-faced manner. I must have been in an impressionable state when I bought that one, but bought it I had, at least provisionally.

  She’d been good all the way. As a pro, I thought with real pleasure of the casual way she’d treated security, to make me believe she was really pretty amateur after all. As a man who’d had a lot of approaches tried on him with sinister motives, I couldn’t help recalling fondly the infinite variety of her treatments of the sex theme.

  Of course, she’d made some mistakes; we all do. Her worst ones had been with the pup. Well, she’d had a difficult problem to solve. To forestall suspicion, she’d wanted to give me the idea that she hated and feared animals and wanted nothing to do with them, while at the same time she’d had to gain Hank’s trust so his
collar would be available to her when the right time came.

  I should have spotted the inconsistency at once, when he started putting his paws on her. A trained hunting dog does not jump on people unless actively encouraged—you don’t want sixty-odd pounds of retriever hitting you in the chest while you’re holding a loaded shotgun. Hank might lick my face when it was within his reach, in bed or in the camper doorway, but he’d never dream of expressing his joy at seeing me in the undisciplined way he’d suddenly started greeting Libby. She must have taken advantage of the morning they’d been alone in the camper, on shipboard, to get across to him what she wanted, so that later she’d have an excuse to put on her I-hate-dogs act for me.

  On the whole, however, her performance had been very, very good. She’d overcome the handicaps of a poor script beautifully. In the end what had betrayed her was a faulty intelligence system. She’d gambled and lost because nobody had informed her of the one thing she was bound to know if she was the trusted agent of Mr. Smith she claimed to be. She hadn’t known about the lab truck; she hadn’t known that we U.S. troops had, right along, been playing tricks with the stolen NCS data as we intercepted it. She hadn’t known that the stuff in the pup’s collar not only wasn’t priceless any longer, but was stuff we’d be happy to get into enemy hands. No matter how secretive Mr. Smith might be, he would have confided such essential knowledge to a trusted operative working for him on the sly. But Libby hadn’t been aware of it.

  I drew another long breath. My next move was obvious. Now that I had her spotted, now that I could guess how, or at least through whom, Holz planned to move against me, it was clearly up to me to act totally stupid, trusting, and fondly bemused, until I could see what kind of deadfall she was supposed to lead me into. That meant reassuring her by letting her have what she wanted—the real collar—regardless of how this would louse up the careful plans of Messrs. Davis and Smith.

  I picked it up where she’d thrown it, filled the last stud, gathered my belongings, and followed Hank outside. Libby was standing in the slow rain with the hood of her superspy trench coat pulled up to cover her hair. I guess she was realizing that the trouble with dramatic exits is that you’ve got to have somewhere to go afterward. I walked around to the rear of the truck and opened it. Hank jumped in without being told.

  I said, “Throw your bag in here if you’re coming.”

  Libby approached stiffly and set her suitcase inside the camper without looking at me or speaking to me. I closed the door and went forward, unlocked the left-hand cab door, got in, and pulled the latch across the way so she could join me. When we’d driven a little way, she tossed back her hood and unbuttoned her damp coat. She fastened the seat belt across her lap.

  “Here,” I said. She looked at me and at the metal-studded strap I was holding out. I said, “It’s the genuine article. Check it if you like.”

  “What am I supposed to do with it?” Her voice was cold.

  “You don’t like it on the dog. Where do you like it?” I tossed it into her lap. I hoped my voice sounded convincingly petulant as I went on. “There it is, all deliveries complete. You don’t approve of the way I take care of it, so hide it yourself.” I grimaced. “What I mean is, if you’re so smart, partner, you take charge of the lure until we’ve used it to hook the last little fish in Anchorage and can put it back in the tackle box where it belongs.”

  She hesitated before she picked up the collar and looked at it. There was a brief silence; then she said in a changed tone of voice, rather uncertainly: “Matt, you don’t have to… I didn’t really mean…”

  I said irritably, “Now what’s the problem, doll? First I catch hell for not trusting you and then I get a big song and dance when I do…”

  She said, very softly, “Darling, it’s all right. You hurt me, you really did, with your crazy suspicions, but it’s all right now.”

  As I say, she was good. Busy driving, I never did see what she actually did with the damn dog collar. An hour or so later we hit smooth black pavement. A sign featuring Smoky the Bear welcomed us to the state of Alaska and begged us not to set fire to it. At the moment, it was difficult to see how anybody could ignite any part of that soggy landscape.

  By the time we reached Tok, however, the rain had stopped. The U.S. customs-and-immigration man asked a few questions and passed us through. In smooth, quiet, dry comfort we rolled down the paved highway. After a while we encountered, on the right-hand side of the road, a big sign proclaiming the nearness of The Antlers Lodge. I pulled up at the gas station below the main building, which was constructed of peeled logs and located on a wooded knoll a little back from the road. Near the door labeled “Coffee Shop” stood a muddy Ford van.

  Libby said, “My God, look at all the horns! What’s that big mounted one, a moose?”

  “The one with the fancy shovels sticking out front? No, that’s a caribou,” I said. “Reindeer to you. The snooty white one with the swept-back stickers is a Dali sheep. Are you hungry?” It seemed a safe question. She never ate much before lunch.

  “No, but I could use a rest room.”

  As she moved off to find it, I got out of the cab and went back to release the pup, telling him to stick around. I would have preferred to leave him locked up, but I’d turned him loose at practically every previous stop, and I didn’t want anybody watching to think there was anything different about this one.

  I’d been tempted not to stop at all, since there was nothing to be accomplished here without the proper collar. However, I didn’t know how carefully young Smith and his red-bearded friend would be watching the highway. If they missed seeing me go by, they might hit the panic button and betray themselves, or me, by running back and forth looking for me when I failed to show up. This way, seeing me stop and go on without making the prearranged contact, they’d know something was wrong and, I hoped, proceed cautiously.

  A sudden animal howl of fright and pain spun me around where I’d been standing, ostensibly watching the man fill the gas tank, actually watching the corner of the station around which Libby had disappeared and wondering what she might be up to. I realized belatedly that Hank, despite orders, had taken advantage of my preoccupation to slip away. His cry had come from up the hill, near the main lodge.

  I ran that way hastily as the half-choked canine call for help came again. I was honestly worried. On this trip I had learned that it takes a lot to hurt or scare a Labrador seriously enough to make him open up and tell you about it. I pounded up the hill and around the corner of the lodge, where the brush was thick, and slowed down, drawing a breath of relief. There was an old barbed-wire fence running through the bushes, and he’d just got himself hung up on it, that was all.

  “Okay, pup,” I called. “Take it easy. I’m coming.”

  He stopped fighting it as I came up and awaited me, trembling, suspended half off the ground. I reached for the substitute collar he was wearing, caught in the rusty wire. With his weight on it, it was impossible to free it, so I unfastened the buckle to release him before tackling the wire. Only then did I realize that it would have been practically impossible for a dog just running into some loose fencing to get himself so badly entangled in the brief time he’d had.

  As the thought came to me, there was a movement behind me, and I knew that I’d found the elusive Mr. Holz at last, or he’d found me. Pain went through my head, and the world turned blazing white, then glowing red, then black…

  28

  I awoke in familiar surroundings. Somehow, even before opening my eyes I knew I was lying on the floor of my own—well, the late Nystrom’s—camper. It seemed to be proceeding along a reasonably well-paved road at moderate speed.

  I lay there, tied hand and foot, rocked back and forth gently by the motion of the rig. Without moving, I sent my mind on a quick perimeter check, so to speak, and detected no gun-bulge under my belt and no knife-bulge in my pocket. Well, that figured. I thought about my colossal, sentimental stupidity, since there wasn’t much else to thin
k about, except the pain in my head. I reflected bitterly on the philosophical truth that no matter how hard a man tries to be inhuman, or superhuman, he never quite makes it.

  On this job, I’d managed to be tough and professional and heartless practically all the way. To be sure, in just one instance, to cut down on the bloodshed that seemed to be getting out of hand, I’d taken the calculated risk of releasing somebody who perhaps should have been silenced instead—the returns weren’t in on that—but otherwise I’d killed ruthlessly as required. I’d refused, as it had turned out quite correctly, to let humanitarian considerations, or any other considerations, send me back to see about the driver of a car I’d wrecked. The best efforts of a clever and beautiful woman had failed to make the slightest dent in my armor of suspicion.

  And then, I reflected grimly, and then, knowing that the critical moment of the mission had to be close at hand, I’d let the frantic howling of a year-old pup send me rushing blindly into an ambush any first-year trainee could have avoided in his sleep.

  “Grant. Grant, are you all right? Can you hear me?”

  The voice was familiar, perhaps too familiar. Rather surprised to hear it here, I opened my eyes. As I’d figured, I was stretched out on the camper’s narrow floor, between the stove and the sink cabinet. My head was against the door. My feet were under the dinette table.

  Avoiding them with her own bound feet was Libby, still in her open trenchcoat, somewhat awry, and the natty pants costume that was now, as she herself had pointed out this morning, just a bit the worse for several days of strenuous wear. Her hands, like mine, were tied.

  Apparently Holz thought he was being clever, sticking her in here dramatically bound hand and foot to share my misery, keep an eye on me and, perhaps, learn something from me that somebody wanted to know.

  I felt a little stir of hope. If Holz did want something from me—and if not, why wasn’t I dead?—then I still had a chance. And the more carefully I played my attractive companion along, the better that chance would be.