Matt Helm--The Interlopers

by Donald Hamilton

  “What things?” Libby demanded.

  “I am supposed to determine who you really are, both of you, and how much damage your treachery has done, so that steps can be taken to repair it. Unfortunately, there isn’t time to perform the necessary research here. Your presence indicates that the scheduled drop in Anchorage has probably been compromised. We have therefore canceled it and set up another meeting some fifteen miles back in the wilderness where we’re not likely to be disturbed.”

  I said, “In other words, we ride.”

  “Exactly, Mr. Nystrom. The immediate question is, how do you ride. This is rough country, and fifteen miles is a long way on horseback, even for someone unencumbered by ropes and bonds. Furthermore, I prefer to have us look as much as possible like a bona fide hunting party, just in case a stray bush plane comes over. I will therefore let you both start out with hands and feet free. Your horses will be the two slowest; the rifles on your saddles will be unloaded. I am a good rider and an excellent shot. Jack over there is an excellent rider and a good shot. The information in your heads is of interest to us, but it is not valuable enough to save you if you should try to escape. I hope I make myself perfectly clear.” He turned and walked away.

  Libby called after him desperately, “I tell you, it’s all a horrible misunderstanding.”

  Nobody paid any attention to her. After a moment, she shrugged and turned to me with a wry grin. “Well, hell, darling,” she said, “at least I tried.”

  30

  I was untied and herded toward a shaggy little brown mare with an independent, mulish look that proved to be an accurate indication of her character.

  If I’d had any foolish notions of making a break for it and galloping off wildly with Holz’s bullets whistling around my ears, that little mare would soon have disabused me of them. She made it abundantly clear that she wasn’t galloping wildly anywhere. In fact, without a stout switch I’d never even have got her moving. All she really wanted was to stop and eat the willows and other green stuff along the way.

  Libby’s bony chestnut seemed a little more willing, but he was one of the worst equine stumblebums I’d ever seen, forever half falling over his own big feet. To consider a fast escape over broken country on such a shaky plug was obviously suicidal. By way of contrast, Jack, riding ahead, had a fine, leggy buckskin that obviously wanted to go; while Holz, at the rear of the parade, was mounted on a powerful bay with a ground-eating stride that kept it nipping at the moth-eaten tail of my reluctant transportation.

  Not that it made a great deal of difference. Even if we’d been mounted on registered thoroughbreds, we could hardly have made a race of it. It wasn’t that kind of country. The first stretch was wooded and mountainous, up a rocky trail that also served as a bed for a small stream, then over a fairly rugged pass, and finally down into a tremendous open basin by way of another running brook.

  The high ground was bad enough, but the lowlands were worse. Except for my one previous Arctic venture in Europe some years back, I’d never seen such wet country. When we weren’t actually splashing through puddles and streams, we jolted along to the steady squelching made by the horses’ hoofs sinking in the black ooze beneath the low brush and rank, hummocky grass that covered the landscape whether it was wooded or open.

  It started to drizzle once more as, working our way around the edge of the great basin, we swung northward, entering a long, gradually narrowing valley running up toward some snow-capped mountains. The ground got no drier and the trail got no better. Toward the end of the afternoon, with mountains slowly closing in on us, we came to a swampy little brown-water lake surrounded by soggy-looking evergreens on all sides except one, where an avalanche or landslide from above had left a bare and rocky shoreline.

  The horses picked their way through the jumbled rocks, crossed the small inlet of the lake, and presently forded a large creek or small river. The water here was the same milky blue-green color that so many streams seemed to be up here. We rode up the river for about fifteen minutes, crossed once more, and came to the camp: three more or less white wall tents and some grazing horses in a meadow that was edged with trees and overlooked by the towering mountains that formed the east wall of the dwindling valley up which we had come, still several miles wide at this point.

  The largest tent, in the middle, was equipped with a stovepipe, from which smoke was rising. An elderly, wrinkled, brown-faced gent, who could have been the father, or maybe even the grandfather, of the late Pete, came out to meet us.

  He took charge of Holz’s horse. Jack dismounted and came over to hold mine. Covered by Holz, who’d produced a small Spanish automatic, I slid stiffly from the saddle and, since there was no reason not to be a gentleman, limped over to Libby and helped her down. She was heavy in my arms. It was a moment before she could stand unsupported. I thought her weariness was genuine. It had been a long hard ride for anybody, even an expert horsewoman concealing her talents, if that’s what she was. I still hadn’t made up my mind about it.

  “Take them to their tent and tie them up,” Holz said. “I’ll question them later… Oh, just a minute.” He turned to face us. “Let me first make the situation quite plain. You will find your accommodations rather basic, I’m afraid: merely a roof over your head, and a canvas roof at that. You will have noticed that the afternoon is already growing cool; the temperature will probably drop well below freezing tonight. To combat the cold, it helps to be well fed. A ground cloth and blankets are also useful. Everything is available at a price. Do I make myself clear?”

  I managed a grin. “And the price is information? That’s pretty childish, isn’t it, Mr. Wood?”

  He shrugged. “I see that you are a strong man, probably accustomed to hardship. What does the lady think? Am I being childish, Miss Meredith?”

  She stared at him dully, but didn’t speak. She’d been ahead of me during the ride, and although I hadn’t seen much of her face, I’d thought she was making it all right, but now I was shocked at the way she looked.

  I don’t mean just the fact that she was rather spectacularly wet and muddy; I was by this time no sartorial masterpiece myself. What disturbed me was something dark and ugly and broken I thought I could see in her eyes. I’d seen it before, in people driven beyond their personal limits of endurance. It’s a hard thing to fake. I didn’t like it.

  I took her arm and helped her to the tent that Holz indicated with his pistol. It was, as he’d warned, no palace. The floor was bare, if you want to call it that; actually it was dirt, softly and damply carpeted with a mixture of old spruce needles, humus, and decaying leaves. While Holz covered us, Jack tied us up, and propelled us inside. I landed pretty hard. When I’d caught my breath, I heard an odd little whimpering sound beside me. Libby was crying helplessly.

  There wasn’t much I could do to comfort her with my hands tied. I said, “Take it easy. We’re still alive.”

  “I… I’m sorry,” she gasped. “I c-can’t help it. It just isn’t fair!”

  “What isn’t?”

  “This wilderness kick. It’s just not my thing, that’s all! I’m very g-good in cars and bars and penthouses, but that goddamn lousy b-bastard of a horse… God, I’ve got blisters, darling! And then it has to rain on top of everything. I’m filthy and soaking wet and my nose is running and I’m cold clear through… Look, I don’t intend to freeze to death in here, I’m warning you. I’m just not going to do it. I’ve had it. I’m through!” She sniffled. “I’m sorry, darling, b-but that’s the way it is. For b-brave little frontier heroines, you’ll have to apply elsewhere.”

  “Spell it out,” I said. “Just exactly what are you through with, Libby.”

  “I mean it!” she said defiantly. “To hell with the old school tie and all that jazz. I’m copping out, darling. They just picked the wrong girl for this pioneer bit. Anything it takes to get some food and blankets I’ll do, even if it means telling everything I know about everything. Even about you!”

  It was, of cou
rse, exactly the line she’d take to put pressure on me to talk if she were working with Holz. I warned myself that, judging by past performance, she was a good enough actress that there was no reason whatever for me to believe in her words or her tears. Nevertheless, I was aware of a new feeling of uncertainty. There had been too many odd, unexplained bits of behavior. Suddenly the reasoning by which I’d proved, to my own satisfaction, her guilty liaison with Holz, didn’t seem quite as convincing as it had back in Beaver Creek this morning.

  However, it really made very little difference whether she was now going to spill her guts through weakness, or whether she’d already betrayed me to Holz because she was working for him or with him. In either case, the man knew or soon would know all he really needed to know about me: my name. It made me feel no better to remember that I’d supplied her with the information, at a time when it didn’t seem particularly important.

  So far Holz had given no sign that he recognized me, but that could be just part of the cat-and-mouse game they like to play. My dossier was in files to which he had access, I was quite sure. With the name, he’d be bound to make the connection, if he hadn’t already. Knowing for whom I really worked, he’d know what I’d been sent here to do.

  “All right. Up, you!” It was the man called Jack, sticking his head in the canvas doorway. He was addressing me.

  I said, “Sure, if you tell me how.”

  He knelt to untie my ankles. “All right, come along and no funny business!”

  The big tent to which he took me was warm and comfortable, with a fire crackling in the sheet-metal stove. The elderly Indian was busy cooking something that reminded me I hadn’t eaten since early morning. At the rear of the tent, some planks had been laid across impromptu trestles to form a table. The chairs were just chunks sawed off an eighteen-inch log. Jack kicked one of these up to the table and wrestled me down on it with unnecessary force.

  I was beginning not to like the man very much, but I had to admit that, despite the plump appearance I’d noted this morning, he was no weakling. Besides, he didn’t look nearly as soft and flabby in the rough clothes he was wearing now. I decided that he wasn’t as much plagued with incipient obesity as he was simply built round to start with.

  Holz was sitting on the other side of the table, on another improvised stool, or chopping block. In front of him lay a number of exhibits: Grant Nystrom’s .357 Magnum revolver and holster, the Buck knife I’d picked up in Prince Rupert, and two black dog collars. There was also some other gear, including a fine, scope-sighted, bolt-action rifle and a box of 7mm Remington Magnum cartridges. They’re all Magnums these days, rifles and pistols both.

  “Well, Mr. Nystrom?” Holz said.

  “Is that a question?” I asked. “If so, rephrase it, and I’ll decide whether or not to answer it.”

  Jack swung a hard fist to the side of my head and knocked me off the log. I picked myself up with some difficulty, since my hands were still tied. Jack slammed me back down on the primitive chair.

  “Don’t talk like that to Mr. Wood,” Jack said mildly.

  I didn’t say anything. Holz waited a little; then said, “These are the collars we got from the dog and from the two boys in the delivery truck. They are worthless, as you doubtless know. Where is the real one?”

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  Jack knocked me off the log once more, and I went through the routine of getting up and being rammed back into my seat.

  When he was through, I said again, “I don’t know.”

  Jack started to raise his fist. Holz shook his head. “No,” he said, “that’ll be all, Jack.”

  “But, Mr. Wood…”

  “That’ll be all.”

  Jack shuffled out reluctantly. The Indian at the stove continued his cooking, oblivious of the rest of us. I faced Holz across the table, remembering that he’d killed, among a lot of other people, a colleague of mine called Kingston—but I hadn’t been fond enough of Kingston for it to matter here. Holz’s soot-black hair and mustache looked phonier than ever. Then I realized they were supposed to look that way. It wasn’t a question of deceiving anybody now, it was a matter of preventing anybody from recognizing him later.

  Shave the toothbrush from the upper lip, wash the dye and stickum out of the slick, shiny hair, throw away the silly, gold-rimmed, schoolteacher glasses, and you’d have a different man, one nobody who’d seen him in Alaska would find even slightly familiar. He had the dead-white, coarse, rather thick-looking skin with large pores that often seems to grow in eastern Europe. His eyes were a slaty gray color. They watched me steadily across the table. Abruptly and surprisingly, he gave a little laugh.

  “Well, Mr. Nystrom, are you satisfied?”

  “Satisfied?”

  “That was the type of interrogation you expected, was it not? I didn’t want to disappoint you.” When I said nothing, he went on, “Of course, we are no longer interested in the dog’s missing collar. We know that all five studs contained nothing but substitute messages. Four substitutions were engineered by the young men in that very interesting mobile laboratory, and the last one by me. I, of course, took personal charge of the real information from the final drop. From the young men in question, I got the material from the previous drops. They’d kept it in an ingeniously hidden safe in their van, the location of which they were persuaded to disclose to me.”

  He drew a small white envelope from the pocket of his heavy wool shirt and shook five tinfoil disks into his hand, answering one question posed by Mr. Smith’s compulsive secrecy. I’d never been told exactly what juggling tricks were being performed in the fancy lab van, but apparently it had been a simple disk-switch routine that you’d think could have been performed in an ordinary family sedan—if you didn’t know the way things worked in Washington. After a moment, Holz replaced the wafers in the envelope and put the envelope back into his pocket.

  “Persuaded,” I said. “As a matter of curiosity, which one did you persuade?”

  Holz smiled faintly. “That is a stupid question. You know perfectly well that the young fellow with the beard was the tough one of the pair. It was easy to determine. Any captive who wastes his breath telling me what I cannot get away with is obviously a fool and probably a weak fool. The bearded one kept his mouth shut; the other one babbled dire threats and promises of violent retaliation. So we started with him. It did not take long. He soon told us everything—well, almost everything.”

  “What didn’t he tell you?”

  “He didn’t tell us about you, Mr. Nystrom. His principles were at stake, it seems. He could be persuaded to tell us about things, inanimate objects, but he wouldn’t betray, as he put it, people.” Holz laughed shortly. “They draw all kinds of high-principled lines, these foolish young men.” He raised his slaty eyes to study my face. “Are you going to be afflicted by principles, Mr. Nystrom?”

  “Hell, no,” I said. “I lost my last ones years ago. What do you want to know?”

  “The collar. Just out of curiosity, I would like to know where it is.”

  “I honestly don’t know,” I said, which was technically true. I might guess, but I didn’t know.

  Holz stared at me for a full minute. Then he shrugged his heavy shoulders. “Very well. I’ll accept that. Will you give me your real name?”

  “Sure, why not?” If he didn’t get it from me, the way things were, he’d get it from Libby. I might as well get the credit for frankness. “The name is Helm, Matthew Helm. Cross-filed under the code name Eric.”

  “Ah. I thought there was something familiar…”

  He stopped. There was a lengthy silence. Well, it was about time he made the connection. As it was, my professional pride was hurt. I’d thought I was better known in the circles in which Holz moved than his reactions had indicated.

  “Yes, I’ve heard of you,” he said at last. I didn’t say anything, and he went on slowly: “What are you doing here? If I remember the dossier correctly, counterespionage is not your lin
e.”

  “Another organization had a dead man to match,” I said. “They needed to borrow a trustworthy agent, six-four, a hundred and ninety, blue eyes, white hair. The personnel computer doubled up in agony and vomited up my name. The hair was bleached, and here I am, Grant Nystrom at your service.”

  Holz heard me out, but he didn’t seem to be listening very hard. His eyes, narrowed, were studying me intently, and I knew that he knew, instinctively, what I was there for. I also knew, suddenly, that he wasn’t going to act upon this instinctive knowledge because he, too, had his professional pride.

  The sensible thing for him to do was to pull out his little Spanish gun, or load up the big 7mm, and shoot me through the head right now. But if he did that, right after being informed of my identity, I might, in my dying moments, have thought he was afraid of a fellow pro named Matt Helm. Or he might have thought he was afraid of me, and that would not do. So, to reassure both of us, he was going to behave toward me exactly as he’d planned from the start. Well, we all have our weaknesses, dogs or pride or whatever.

  “And the lady?” Holz said at last.

  I gave him the story Libby had given me, watching him to see what it meant to him. “She works for the same department as the bearded guy you got and his talkative friend, the people who drafted me for this play acting. She was planted on your San Francisco people some time back, I gather. She recruited Nystrom for them—the real Nystrom—and gave him the sex treatment, and he responded very well. She had him under perfect control and pumped him for information at will, whatever information she couldn’t get herself as a member of the cell in good standing. She was probably the one who recommended trying this impersonation when he got killed, but I don’t know that for sure. She did come along north to give me a hand in playing the role, and as you know I found her especially useful in Seattle.”