Hamilton, Donald - Matt Helm 14

by The Intriguers (v1. 1)

  "Who could conceive that a supposedly civilized man like Arthur Borden would plan a deliberate massacre-"

  "Your men have been shooting at his, I understand. What's so inconceivable about his shooting at yours? What steps did you take when you received this information?"

  "I. . . I warned the individuals in question and arranged for protection where it seemed to be required. However, we were given the wrong date. We were led to believe that the attempt, if it was made at all, would be made on the seventeenth of the month, two days from now."

  Mrs. Love regarded him coldly. She said, "But you did know, and your agents were warned, and they died anyway? I'd hardly call that an attempt, Herbert. I'd call it a successful execution of a carefully laid plan."

  "We don't know that all the people listed-"

  She sniffed impatiently. "Don't quibble. You've checked on five of your key men, and all five are dead, if we figure that Mr. Dunn in Los Angeles isn't very likely to be returning from his yacht trip." She sighed. "It's really too bad. I had faith in you, Herbert. I counted on you. I was warned that your track record in this field wasn't impressive, but you talked a very good fight. You convinced me. Obviously, I was mistaken."

  "Mrs. Love-"

  She ignored him, turning back to me. "If you had to guess, Mr. Helm, how many other groups like yours would you say your chief had operating around the country?"

  I hesitated, then I shrugged, winced, and said, "Hell, it doesn't matter now. It's all over except sweeping up the pieces and dumping them into the trash can. If I had to guess, ma'am, I'd say none."

  She frowned dubiously. "Then you think the total body count is only ten, assuming that all your agents performed successfully."

  Getting smart, I refrained from shaking my head. "No, I didn't say that. You asked how many groups there were like mine. I think there was only one group like mine, operating independently. The list I was given pretty well covered the country, with the exception of a limited but important area on the East Coast. I noticed the gap when I received my instructions; and Leonard's man who died of botulism in Washington, DC was not on my list. I think that man and quite a few others-I have no way of estimating how many-were taken care of by agents working directly under my chief. I think Mac handled the critical East Coast area himself, leaving the hinterlands to me and my group. I figure that's why he had Leonard decoyed out of Washington, so he could have time to clean house without interference."

  "I see." Mrs. Love was still frowning thoughtfully. "That would make, perhaps, twenty or thirty human beings violently dead in one night. Do you feel no remorse, Mr. Helm?"

  "Do you, Mrs. Love?" I asked boldly. "You're the one who set the machinery of violence in motion. What did you expect when you started using men with guns, that nobody would ever shoot back?"

  She sighed. "Well, I must say, I find it a little shocking. If I'd thought there was any chance our little scheme would meet such direct and brutal resistance, I probably wouldn't. . . . Well, the question is academic now, isn't it?" She was silent for a moment, looking down at me; then she said, "Give my regards to the man you call Mac, if you ever see him again. You realize, of course, that I can't do anything for you here. The situation is out of my control."

  As she said it, she let her eyes touch, for an instant, the girl in the corner who had been bound and was now unbound.

  "Yes, ma'am," I said.

  She turned on her heel. "I'll want your pilot to take me back to civilization right away, Herbert. Oh, and under the circumstances, I think I would like another man along, armed. How about the young man beside him? I don't altogether trust Mr. Helm's assurances; they were just a little too glib."

  As she started down the stairs, or ladder, with Jernegan and Bostrom in tow, she glanced back casually, and I saw one eye close in what could have been construed as a wink. She was making certain that I was aware that, having first untied my accomplice, she was now reducing the odds against me by as many men as she could plausibly take with her. She wanted to be sure this was credited to her account. A tough, smart, old biddy.

  "Don't bother to see me to the boat, Herbert," she said. "Just get on with your fun and games."

  There were still too many men in the room, but two of them-Martha's guard and the radio operator-were basically non-combatant types, I hoped. At least they weren't, I hoped, the kind to die loyally for lost causes. I also h9ped that Martha was ready and not hampered by too many peaceful inhibitions after watching the terrible, brutal beating I'd received. I also hoped the gadget I'd given her would work after being soaked in swamp water. That was, 1 realized, a lot of hoping.

  Leonard waited until the runabout had pulled away and the sound of its motor had faded in the distance. I got up as he came for me. He stared at me hard for a moment, his hands closing into fists, and I thought we were going to have the sock-and-slap routine some more. Then he wheeled abruptly.

  "Give me that!" he snapped, snatching the revolver from the hand of Martha's nameless guard.

  "But, sir-"

  Leonard ignored the protest, if that's what it was. He came back towards me, deliberately, his knuckles white with the tension of gripping the pistol. it was no way to hold a gun for accuracy, but at that range he could hardly miss. There was a convincing look of ferocity on his handsome face. Even pussycats get mad.

  I circled warily past the houseboat's big steering wheel towards the electronics section, aware of movement behind me as the spectators scrambled instinctively out of the line of fire.

  Leonard raised the pistol and took aim. I stopped, facing him.

  "Twice!" he breathed. "Twice I had it all in my hands, all I ever wanted, and you, always you, took it away from me, Helm! Well, you're not going to live to gloat about it-"

  "Martha, now!" I shouted, throwing myself to the floor. He was an amateur to the last. He looked quickly towards the girl instead of doing his shooting first and his sightseeing afterwards. There was a sharp crack behind me, like the report of a firearm. An intense white light filled the pilothouse, brighter than the sunshine through the big windows. The light seemed to envelop Herbert Leonard's face, and his hands as well, as he tried to claw away the fiery, incandescent thing that had struck him. He screamed and fell to the floor, rolling back and forth in agony.

  Nobody moved except the thrashing man on the pilothouse floor and I. I hitched myself over to pick up, with my bound hands, the gun he'd dropped. I struggled to my feet, moved to stand over him and, by twisting and craning, managed to aim accurately enough to put a bullet into the back of his head and stop the noise. After a little while the flare burned itself out.

  I looked at the two men. Martha's guard raised his hands in a gesture of submission. The black radio operator spread his wide, with a little shrug, indicating that his field was electronics, not violence. Martha looked at me blindly for a moment. Then she threw the little flare gun away from her, turned, snatched the door open, and stumbled to the houseboat's rail, very sick.

  It took me a while, unassisted, to cut my hands free with Herbert Leonard's pocket knife, find the signaling device again, reload it, and go out on deck to fire another flare straight up into the blue Florida sky.

  Chapter XXXII

  Mac hadn't changed much. He still looked, if you didn't look too closely, like a banker strayed from the financial fold, in a neat gray suit that, in deference to the local climate, was a little lighter than his customary working uniform. His black eyebrows still made a striking contrast with his gray hair. His cold gray eyes hadn't changed much, either; but his voice was a little different, here in the admiral's living room, from the crisp, businesslike tones I was used to hearing over the phone or in his Washington office. It occurred to me that this was the first time in our long relationship that we'd met socially, so to speak, in a private house.

  "I haven't had an opportunity to speak with you, Eric," he said.

  "No, sir," I said.

  He'd been waiting on the Priests' dock when the Frances I
I brought us in. I'd given him the mission-accomplished sign as I stepped ashore, and with that off his mind, he'd turned his attention to his daughter. What the two of them had found to say to each other under the circumstances, I didn't know; but they'd apparently worked out some basis for coexistence, and it was none of my damned business anyway.

  "I want to thank you," Mac said.

  I looked out the window of the bright room at the dark screened porch from which I'd once eavesdropped on a political meeting. That had happened only twenty-four hours ago, but it seemed like the distant past. Through the wire netting of the porch, I could see the big sportfisherman lying at the flood-lighted dock as if she'd never left it, the shovel-nosed Whaler that had brought me armed help that I'd no longer really needed; and my own little craft, well, I still thought of her as mine, although actually she belonged to Uncle Sam and always had. The chewed-up prop had been replaced, and she was ready to go again, but the assignment was completed, and there was nothing more for her to do here or myself either.

  I turned to look at Mac. It was the first time I could recall that he'd ever thanked me for anything. Well, I guess it was the first time he'd had anything to thank me for. You can commend or reprimand a subordinate for the way he does his job, but you don't generally thank him for it.

  "Por nada," I said.

  He said, "I couldn't in good conscience put a sniper in a situation like that hampered by orders not to harm, particularly when a member of my own family was involved."

  "No, sir."

  "The other solution would have been acceptable. You understand that."

  "Yes, sir."

  He smiled faintly. "Of course, as the head of a government agency, I'm obliged to point out that your behavior was sentimental and reprehensible, but. . . . Thank you."

  "Yes, sir," I said. "The fact is that we've worked together for a hell of a long time. I couldn't shoot a kid of yours, job or no job. I hope you couldn't shoot one of mine. Where the hell does the admiral hide his liquor, anyway?"

  It was an undigestible mixture of personal and business relationships, and I walked away from it. If he didn't like it, he could go for tarpon in the morning and take it out on a fish. I found the liquor cabinet by tracking down the sound of glass clinking against glass. Martha was pouring herself a stiff concoction involving, mostly, vodka. She'd washed off the mud of the morning's adventures, but as some kind of protest, I suppose, she was back in her grubby pirate costume: the striped jersey, the white pants, and the frayed sneakers. She was talking with the admiral. When I came up, I reminded her of something.

  "Uncle Hank," she said, "when you port your helm, does the boat go right or left?"

  "Right, of course," he said, "but who ports any helms around here? What are you trying to do, impress somebody with how salty you are? The Navy command to the wheel is 'right rudder,' and that's what I taught you, young lady. . . . Excuse me. Laura seems to want me in the kitchen."

  When he was gone, I said, "Now you know."

  She made a face at me. "I wasn't trying to impress you with how salty I was! I was just . . .It happened so fast, and I didn't know what commands you were used to."

  I said, "Hell, I'm an old Annapolis man, didn't you know?" I grinned at her unbelieving look. "I spent a couple of weeks there once, taking a course in small-boat handling for spooks who might be put ashore on strange coasts. I learned to do things the Navy way, on the water, at least."

  "You're a surprising man, she said. "And a terrible one. But I'm glad you're here."

  "Why?"

  "I can count on you not to be sweet to me. Everybody else is being so goddamned sweet and understanding and forgiving I could urp." I didn't say anything. After a moment, she continued, rather bitterly: "Code double negative!"

  I grinned once more. "Cute, wasn't it?"

  "Does it always mean two days early, like the fifteenth instead of the seventeenth?"

  "Two days," I said, "or two hours, or two minutes, depending on how the time is given. It's just a little understanding between your dad and his more senior operatives. You won't find it in the official manual of procedure, so even if you'd mentioned it to Leonard-apparently you didn't think it important enough-it wouldn't have meant anything to him." I gave her my nasty grin still one more time. "It also means that the bearer of the code is untrustworthy and should be utilized accordingly."

  She flushed. "Like you utilized me, you and Daddy between you!"

  I said, "If you'd played it straight, you wouldn't have got utilized, would you?"

  "I had to do it!" she said. "I had to do something. It was all so wrong." She stopped. I said nothing. After a little, she said, "But I'd like you to know that before I told Leonard about Cutlass Key, I made him promise-it sounds naive as hell now--but I made him promise that

  Daddy wouldn't be harmed." 1 made no comment on that, either. She gave me a sharp, sideways glance and went on' defensively, "How could I know? After watching you and your cold-blooded friends in action, 1 had to believe that somewhere there were normal, decent people with a sane regard for human life! And Mr. Leonard seemed so civilized. How could I know he was just as bad as the rest of you?" She shivered. "I keep seeing his face," she said, looking at me. Her eyes were wide and dark.

  "It'll fade," I said.

  Martha shook her head minutely. "I don't know. Why aren't you telling me what a brave girl I was, saving the day by my heroic. . . . I didn't care about saving any days. I just knew that after he killed you, he'd shoot me, too. I did it simply because I didn't want to die. I did it, in spite of my. . . . convictions, simply because I was scared, that's why! That's how much my. . . .my ideals are worth, Matt! How am I going to live with that?"

  I said, "Cut it out. Everybody's scared. It's a perfectly natural-"

  "You weren't scared."

  I said, "Hell, this is the first time I haven't been petrified in twenty-four hours."

  "No, don't lie to me!" she breathed. "You don't know what fear is, that kind of fear. We were safe, and then you.

  You didn't really get mixed up about port and starboard, did you, Matt? That's what you told them, so they wouldn't know you'd deliberately let them catch you. You ran that boat aground on purpose when you could easily have got away, because you hadn't carried out your mission.

  Well, I suppose that's very admirable, in a way. But you'll excuse me if I find it just a little sick, considering what your mission was!"

  I looked at her for a moment longer. We'd come a long way around, but we seemed to be back just about where we'd started one evening in Mexico; and it was a circle we'd never break.

  Anyway, she was Mac's daughter. He was a good man to work for, in his field, but I had no desire to become a member of his family, even by association.

  I got out of there, out the front door, and headed towards the big station wagon I'd parked on the other side of the driveway, after cleaning up at the lodge. Then I stopped and stepped back into the shadows instinctively as a sedan turned in from the highway and pulled up behind the parked vehicle. A lean, feminine figure in pants got out. I moved forward. Lorna stopped and squinted up at me in the dark.

  "I can't make out your features, mister, but the elevation is familiar," she said. "Agent Lorna reporting, sir. Mission accomplished, sir." She drew a long breath. "Well, we pulled it off. I hope the man is happy. What happened to Carl, going suicidal like that and getting himself shot by a cop?"

  I said, "It's too hard to explain. Anyway, he got the man he was sent after, didn't he?"

  "Don't snap at me. You look as if you'd been taking a beating, both physically and psychologically. I think you need a drink and a woman."

  "I need a drink," I said. "I've had a woman."

  Lorna glanced at the house, as a youthful shadow showed briefly on a drawn blind. "Hell, that's not a woman," she said. "You can do better than that."

  As it turned out, I could.

  n, Donald - Matt Helm 14