The Ambushers

by Donald Hamilton

  “It’s Ernest Head,” Sheila said unnecessarily behind me. I heard the door close. She went on: “His wife is missing. He thought we might know where she is. When I said I didn’t know, he made me call you.”

  Looking down at the man on the bed, I had that half-smug, half-guilty feeling you get when your most diabolical schemes start to pay off.

  “He knocked on the door right after I got here,” Sheila was saying. “I guess I’d mentioned I was staying at this motel when I interviewed him last night. He stuck the gun in my face and forced his way in. He was talking rather wildly. He seemed to think I knew a lot of things I didn’t. I could probably have disarmed him sooner, but it seemed better to let him talk.”

  Her voice was still quite calm. I glanced at her. There was a darkness to her eyes, a tightness to her mouth, that indicated that being closed up in a room with a wild man with a gun hadn’t been quite as easy as she’d like to have me think, but it was a harmless and natural deception. Whatever had happened in Costa Verde, she’d made up for it here.

  “What did he have to say?” I asked.

  “His real name in Schwarzkopf, Ernst Schwarzkopf. His wife’s real name is... was, before she married him, Gerda Landwehr.” Sheila glanced at me rather accusingly. “You knew?”

  “I heard the names last night, you know where.”

  The man on the bed looked up. “Gerda,” he said. “Gertrude... Trudie... Where is she? What have you done with her?”

  Sheila said, “Currently Gertrude Head is a middle-aged American housewife with dark hair. I met her last night. But once, he says, back in Germany, Gerda Landwehr was blonde and beautiful—and strictly on the make.”

  “She just wanted fun,” Head protested. “All girls do. She wanted fun and money and music and dancing.”

  “They were going to be married,” Sheila said. “But then the Nazis came along, and the war, and Gerda got some better propositions and took them. She apparently had several uniformed playmates, one in particular, who got stationed in one of the camps—the same camp as a certain general we’ve heard of. I gather she made herself a bit conspicuous there. There was that woman who had lampshades made of human skin, remember? Gerda seems to have had a few ideas along the same lines.”

  “That isn’t true!” Head said quickly. “I told you! It was all lies, lies, made up by people who were jealous! Gerda never—”

  Sheila said, “Anyway, the war went the wrong way, and the Nazi bubble burst. One day there was a knock on Ernst’s door. He opened it, and there was his glamorous Gerda, starving, half-frozen, in rags. The hounds were on her trail. She’d been on the run for months. She could run no longer. All she wanted was a place to lie down and rest, she said. She didn’t expect his forgiveness. He could do as he pleased, just so he let her rest in his warm room for a moment, and gave her something to eat, before he called the authorities. You can guess the rest. He hid her out and finally, somehow, got them both to America under assumed names. They’ve been here ever since.”

  Ernest Head looked up. “We have led good, useful lives here. We have done no harm. Is there no end? Is she never to be allowed to live down a mistake made in youth, fifteen, twenty years ago? Why can’t you leave her in peace?” He hesitated. “At least tell me where she is. Tell me what is happening to her. Please.”

  I said, “Tell me what you think is happening to her.”

  “I think you are interrogating her somewhere, maybe abusing her. To make her talk.”

  “About what?” I asked. “About something that happened in a Nazi concentration camp fifteen or twenty years ago? You have led good useful lives here, Mr. Head. So you said. You’ve done no harm. What would your wife have to talk about at this late date that would be of interest to anyone?”

  There was a long silence. I made a slight sign to Sheila. She moved closer. Head was looking down at his hurt hand. I slipped a small case out of my pocket, which Sheila palmed. She went silently into the bathroom.

  “Well, Mr. Head?” I said.

  “There was a telephone call,” he said without raising his eyes. “Many months ago, almost a year. I saw Gerda’s face change as she answered. The man at the other end knew everything. It was blackmail. She had to obey.”

  “What were the orders?”

  “We often go camping in good weather. We were to drive south, into the desert, and camp there. And look for rocks. I collect rocks. A jeep came and took Gerda away. She was gone for two days. Then she came back and we returned to Tucson.”

  “Did she say where she’d been?”

  He shook his head. “But afterwards we bought the portable radio, and she would listen to the short-wave at certain times, and sometimes she would go out or people would come to the house, people I did not know.”

  I said, “Is it to be the Fourth Reich, Ernest? Here on the two American continents?” He didn’t answer. I asked, “How did Gerda take it? Was she happy when she came back from the two-day trip? Excited? Expectant? Triumphant maybe?”

  He looked up quickly and started to speak, but checked himself. “I told you,” he said sullenly. “She was forced to cooperate. She could do nothing else.”

  “She could have called the American authorities.”

  “And revealed herself?” He shuddered. “You forget, she is on the list. They are still after her. They will never give up. They are not human. If they learned where she was living, they would come, like vultures out of the sky.” He looked at me for a moment. “Perhaps you are the ones. The ones we have been fleeing all these years. If you are, I have only one thing to ask. Make it swift. Finish it. Don’t drag it out any longer. It has gone on long enough.”

  “Sure,” I said. “Now let me look at that hand.” I bent over him and took the hand and examined it. “It’ll take a doctor to set the finger. But we’ll give you something to kill the pain.”

  I had the one hand. I clamped down on the other before he could snatch it away and nodded to Sheila, who’d come up behind him. He gasped a protest, but I held him steady while she slipped the hypo into his arm. Catherine Smith and her Man Friday had no monopoly on the technique or the equipment. It’s practically standard among professionals these days. Ernest Head struggled very briefly; then he sighed and went to sleep. We arranged him comfortably on the bed.

  “How much did you give him?” I asked.

  “The max. Four hours,” Sheila said.

  “We’ll get somebody in to take care of him,” I said. “Maybe they’ll keep him at the ranch for a little, although they don’t really like to use the place for that purpose. Somebody’ll have to find out about his kids and make arrangements before too many questions get asked.” I frowned. “Where’d you put that .22?”

  “It’s on the dresser.”

  “Bring it along. These sawed-off .38s Washington keeps wishing off on us are too damn noisy.” I drew a long breath. “Well, let’s go find the infamous Gerda Landwehr.”

  17

  We took the little Volkswagen because the station wagon was starting to act up again and I didn’t want to wind up sitting by the roadside waiting for a mechanic. I had to run the bucket seat back to make room for my legs. Sheila got in beside me. I had a little trouble remembering where they’d hidden the reverse gear on this particular four-speed shift, but she volunteered no help. She remained silent as we drove away. When she spoke at last, her voice had a reproachful note.

  “You knew?”

  “That the Horst Wessel was beamed at Mrs. Head, not hubby? Let’s say I guessed.”

  “How?”

  “Head wasn’t followed, remember? It was the first thing we checked. If they were trying to drive him into some betraying action, would they let him cruise around town unescorted?”

  “Oh.”

  “And then,” I said, “there was Catherine’s exotic costume.”

  Sheila glanced at me quickly. “But she was obviously dressed to entertain a man, not a woman!”

  “That’s right,” I said. “With emphasis o
n the obviously. Why would she go to the trouble of getting all dressed up sexy for poor old Ernest, if he were the target? She had him scared silly, she didn’t need to seduce him, too. A dog whip was all she needed for Ernest. But we were butting in; she could expect a call from one of us. And we’d followed Ernest, remember? Max was undoubtedly watching. He’d have reported that we’d attached ourselves to the wrong member of the Head menage. Well, if that’s whom we thought important, Catherine wasn’t about to disillusion us, so she dug out her best black nylons and negligee to make it look as if she, too, were interested in a man across the way, not a woman.”

  “It must have been a strain for her,” Sheila said dryly. “Acting as if she were interested in a man, I mean.”

  I said, “As long as she could keep us chasing after Ernest, she had Gerda for herself. That’s the principle with which she started. I confused the issue a little by singing that pretty song with her—making myself look like a promising source of information right at hand—but once we got that misunderstanding straightened out, she returned to her original line.”

  “But you wouldn’t tell me,” Sheila said grimly. “You let me practically get heat exhaustion watching Ernest this morning, when you knew all the time—”

  “It saved you the trouble of acting natural for Max’s benefit,” I said. “I figured he’d be checking up to see if we were taking the bait. And then I didn’t know how sensitive your conscience might be.”

  “Conscience?” Sheila looked at me in surprise. “What’s conscience got to do with it?”

  I said, “You’re slow this afternoon, Skinny. All that sun must have affected the brain. I threw Gerda to the blonde barracuda last night. Don’t you remember? I looked her in the eye and practically told her she had one day to work on Gerda without interference. Now let’s go see what kind of a job she’s done.”

  Sheila started to speak but changed her mind. I aimed the Volkswagen towards Saguaro Heights. I had a moment of worry as we approached the place. Everything depended on whether or not the construction workers quit at noon on Saturday. If they’d been there all day, we’d have to look elsewhere, and it would be hard to know where to start. Well, it wasn’t essential that we locate the scene of the crime, but it would be tidier that way.

  As we approached the part of the development that was under construction, I saw that the half-built houses were all deserted except for some kids playing on the piles of dirt thrown up by a mechanical ditch-digger. The garage in which I’d spent an unpleasant hour the night before looked different in the fading daylight, raw and new and unfinished. I parked the VW around the corner, took the .22 from Sheila, and told her what to do. Then I made my way silently around to the side door of the garage and waited for her to do it.

  I heard her come running up to the big roll-up front door, laughing and breathless. Her voice reached me, high and childlike: “Hey, kids, let’s see what’s in this one!”

  As she rattled the door handle at that end of the garage, I swung the side door open and stepped inside. It worked like a charm. Max was caught flat-footed looking the other way. I hadn’t been sure he’d be here, of course, but I’d hoped for it, and he wasn’t a man I wanted to walk in on without some small advantage.

  He sensed my presence and turned, reaching into his shirt, but stopped when he saw Head’s long-barreled .22 aimed at him.

  “Easy,” I said. I raised my voice. “Okay, Skinny. Everything’s under control. Keep your eyes open out there.”

  Max was watching the gun. “The weapon isn’t necessary, Mr. Evans,” he said.

  “The hell it isn’t,” I said. “I told your girl friend, if there’s a doublecross all bets are off. What does this look like?”

  I gestured towards the woman tied in the chair I’d had the privilege of occupying the night before. Mrs. Gertrude Head, once the belle of the Third Reich, sagged limply against her bonds, wearing only a pair of sandals and a pair of pink trousers, the kind of cheap, tight, tapering high-water pants that have taken the place of the old-fashioned housedress in which my mother used to do her cooking and cleaning. I suppose that comes under the heading of progress. Mrs. Head had obviously been caught by surprise, at home. Her dark hair was in curlers, some of which had come unwound. She was quite dead.

  Well, they could hardly have turned her loose to talk. Maybe, after what had been done to her, she’d even been glad to have it come. Make it swift, Ernest Head had said, finish it. It hadn’t been swift, but at least it was finished. I thought the bone-deep brand on the forehead an unnecessary embellishment.

  Max stirred. “We got the information unexpectedly. We were going to tell you as soon as—”

  “Sure,” I said. “Sure, you were going to tell me. As soon as you got von Sachs out of Mexico, you were going to tell me. I bet Catherine’s on the road right now.” His expression told me I was right. I said, “You had to wait here to take care of me—you knew I’d be along—and to get the evidence out of here; you were going to join her later. Well, don’t hold your breath waiting for that happy reunion, Max.”

  “What are you going to do with me?”

  “You have a choice,” I said. “If you’ll let me take your gun peacefully, I’ll get some people in here who’ll just hold you where you can’t interfere. On the other hand, if you simply can’t resist scratching that itch under your armpit, well, we can work it that way, too.”

  “You won’t shoot.” His furrowed face was scornful. “You will not dare! You are an American agent. We have done nothing against America.”

  “I believe there’s a law on the books about murder,” I said. “I’ll have to check to be absolutely sure.”

  “Murder? Killing a Nazi slut who entered this country illegally—”

  I said, “Max, you’re making a mistake, friend. You’ll never reach that gun.”

  His deep-set eyes stared at me, daring me to act. His hand moved under his shirt. I shot him accurately through the forehead, and he came down joint by joint like a marionette when you release the strings from above. The little .22 cartridge seemed to make quite a racket in the confined garage, but I doubted that outside it would have been heard very far away.

  It had been heard by Sheila, of course. She was waiting for me outside. Her face was pale. “You killed him?” I nodded, and she said accusingly, “You knew you were going to, when you had me bring Head’s gun along!”

  I said, “It’s always a possibility when you’re dealing with people like Max. If it had to happen, I didn’t want to arouse the neighborhood by firing off a big .38.”

  She licked her lips. “But they’re not enemies, Eric! I mean, regardless of their methods... I mean, how can you justify...” Her voice faltered.

  “I know what you mean,” I said. “And I gave the man a choice, what more could I do? He was there to stop us, or at least delay us. That’s why she left him behind and went on alone.”

  “You don’t know that!”

  “He didn’t deny it,” I said. “And he was ready to make a sacrifice play to keep us off Catherine’s trail; he wouldn’t let me take him prisoner. I wasn’t about to monkey with him and get myself killed. Anyway, you shouldn’t be too quick to take things for granted.”

  “What am I taking for granted?” she demanded.

  “You’re thinking of Max and Catherine as agents of some earnest anti-Nazi group with an ancient grievance, like the people who got Eichmann, aren’t you?”

  “Grievance! That’s a mild word for it! You can hardly blame them for the way they feel after—” She stopped and frowned at me. “Aren’t they? She said they were.”

  “Catherine says a lot of things,” I said. “Some of them may even be true, but we have no real proof this one is.”

  Sheila blurted, “That’s just rationalization! You’re just saying that because you shot him!”

  I sighed. “Sure.”

  “And Gerda? I suppose she’s dead, too!”

  I said, “She’s dead.”

  “You
knew she would be, didn’t you?”

  I said, “Let’s continue the argument in the car, if you don’t mind. We’ve got things to do. We’ve got to make a phone call and find somebody who’ll dispose of the bodies, dead and alive, without too much embarrassing publicity. I don’t envy them the job. And then we’ve got to pick up our gear at the motel and get after Miss Smith.”

  I reached for Sheila’s arm to guide her over the rough ground around the half-built house. She pulled away, but after we’d got into the Volkswagen she drew a long breath and looked at me.

  “I’m sorry. Maybe I was... a little childish. It was just so unexpected.”

  I said, “It was real nice in the old movies where the good guys wore white hats and the bad guys wore black ones.”

  She smiled, but it was obvious she wasn’t quite sure which color hat I ought to wear. It’s a question I’ve sometimes wondered about myself. Presently she stopped smiling and frowned.

  “But how do you expect to catch up with the woman now?” she asked worriedly. “She may have several hours’ head start.”

  I said, “You don’t have much faith in the old maestro. We know where she’s going in a general way, don’t we? There’s only one road into Mexico she can reasonably take. And one of the nuggets of information I picked up along the border that I neglected to share with her is the fact that the international gate at Antelope Wells closes Saturday afternoon—it closed a couple of hours ago. She couldn’t possibly have got into New Mexico fast enough, after working over Gerda, to catch it open. And it doesn’t open again until Monday morning. By that time we’ll be lying in the hills above the town watching her go by.”

  18

  It wasn’t quite that cut and dried, of course; and some thirty-six hours later, watching the sunrise from a barren knoll behind Antelope Wells, New Mexico, I kind of wished I’d made the statement sound a little less definite.

  There was, after all, no law saying that Catherine Smith absolutely had to go through the town below to reach the Nacimiento Mountains. I mean, there was only the one road, but like most roads it had two ends. By making a detour of several hundred miles yesterday, she could have found a place where the border was open all weekend, and then swung far down into the Mexican state of Chihuahua to approach the Nacimientos from the south. It would have involved a lot of hard driving, but it could have been done. If it had been, we could wait here forever and get nothing but a few cactus needles for our trouble.