The Damagers

by Donald Hamilton

  “Calling a man a rattlesnake isn’t running him down?”

  I said, “From a fellow rattlesnake, it could be a compliment, He looks like a fairly tough young fellow, and if you’re going to follow me and Lorelei III around in that junior-grade destroyer escort, I’m glad you have somebody on board who may be able to handle the trouble you’re asking for. But don’t try to kid me he’s a just childhood playmate.”

  She drew an uncertain breath. “I didn’t realize that he was… I’m not very bright about people, I guess.”

  I said, “Mrs. Bell wished him off on you, didn’t she?”

  “Actually, the whole idea was Mrs. Bell’s,” Lori said. “That was the message on my answering machine when I got home to Newport: I was to call her at once. She sent me right back over to Montauk to skipper this boat along the same route as before, again at twice my regular rates; she said she wanted you to have reinforcements available. Billy was on board when I got there.”

  When we returned to the marina after a pleasant meal, Barstow was still polishing away at Gulf Streamer in the fading evening light. He greeted us as if he were truly happy to see us, and gave Lori a hand to help her aboard, lifting her up to the deck without apparent effort. She invited me aboard for an after-dinner drink, but I asked for a rain check. There was no real reason why Ziggy should have come to the deckhouse doorway to welcome me home, like a loving bride, but the fact that she wasn’t in sight made me uneasy.

  I walked down the dock and stepped up to Lorelei III’s side deck. The slight roll of the boat in response to my weight should have alerted anybody on board to my arrival, but Ziggy didn’t appear or call a greeting. I drew a long breath and palmed the .25. Then I caught a hint of tobacco smoke drifting out the open door. Okay. No professional waiting in ambush is going to alert the quarry by smoking; and amateurs seldom shoot you without doing a lot of talking first. I parked the firearm and stepped down into the deckhouse.

  The first thing I saw—in fact I had a hard time not felling over it—was an expensive, leather-bound duffel bag or sea-bag of heavy green canvas, with a polished brass plate displaying the initials T.O.B. The second thing I saw, seated at the corner table, was Mrs. Teresa Bell. I remembered being told that her maiden name had been Othman. She was again wearing a dark, snug, dressy black suit; this one let a triangle of white blouse show. There were again sheer black stockings and high-heeled black shoes. A .38 revolver I recognized lay on the table in front of her.

  I looked around. “Where’s Ziggy?” I asked.

  Mrs. Teresa Othman Bell tapped the long ash of her cigarette into a coffee mug she must have got from the galley, and said, “I hope you don’t mind.”

  “Tobacco smoke?” I shook my head. “No, ma’am. I don’t expect to live long enough, in my line of work, to die from secondhand emphysema. You haven’t said where Ziggy’s got to.”

  Mrs. Bell gave me a hard, challenging look. “I sent Kronquist away. I told you I did not want you to use her. I cannot afford to have this already fouled-up operation further jeopardized by inadequate personnel.” She gestured toward the weapon on the table. “I relieved her of that. She said it was yours. I feel that unreliable young lady is better off without firearms.”

  She was clearly expecting an argument; but there was nothing to be gained by getting into a fight with her, so I merely shrugged.

  “So?”

  Mrs. Bell spoke calmly: “You once invited me aboard to assist you, if you recall, Mr. Helm. Well, here I am. If you would be so kind as to put my bag into the forward cabin while I finish my cigarette, I will change into a more suitable costume; I just drove down from Washington.”

  Her eyes still challenged me, slightly amused how as she waited to see if I had the gall to tell her I didn’t want her on board. But there was something else in her handsome, dark, predatory face. Behind the show of amusement, Mrs. Teresa Othman Bell was a worried woman.

  I realized that considerable pressure must have been exerted on this high-powered executive lady to drive her to the desperate expedient of leaving her Washington command post and joining the troops in the field. Apparently there were reasons why she could not afford, professionally, to have this operation go wrong, so she was taking over its management in person. It explained the presence of Lori and Billy Barstow with the big, fast sportfisherman. They were not really escorting Lorelei III south to give me support and assistance, as Lori had been told; they’d been sent along primarily to look after the interests of their commander in chief, riding with me.

  I said, “On this ship we carry our own bags, ma’am. And the crew does the cooking.”

  She laughed, and crushed out her cigarette, and rose. “As you wish. You are the skipper. Well, up to a point.”

  19

  I guess I was getting hardened to having strange women living at the other end of the boat; my rest was not disturbed by speculations about whether this one slept in a nightie, pajamas, or none of the above. In the morning, when I emerged from my stateroom aft, she was already working in the galley. I had to admit that I had no complaints about the industriousness of the crews I’d had on board: even Dorothy Fancher had done a good job on the dishes.

  My breakfast eggs were nicely scrambled, neatly mounded on the plate, and surrounded by a tidy fence of four bacon strips, one more than I usually allow myself, but I can be persuaded. The coffee was, shall we say, undistinguished, but that wasn’t the cook’s fault; there was nothing but instant on board. She joined me at the big table in the main saloon with her own plate and cup. I noted that she, also, had bacon, although I seemed to remember that it was a no-no for Arabs as well as Jews. I recalled that she hadn’t taken the anti-alcohol attitude of her forebears seriously, either. Or perhaps she took the traditional Muslim prohibitions very seriously indeed, seriously enough to rebel against them at every opportunity.

  She didn’t ask how I’d slept, or if my breakfast was satisfactory—if I didn’t like the food she’d prepared, her attitude said, I could damn well spit it out and cook my own.

  She said, “I want us to get under way as soon as possible, Mr. Helm. I’ve decided not to stop at either Solomon’s Island or Fishing Bay, as originally planned. I want us to head straight for the start of the Intracoastal Waterway at Norfolk, at the best speed we can manage. We should be there tomorrow morning.”

  I studied her across the big table. She was wearing a piratical red-and-white-striped jersey and crisp white cotton trousers that, I was pleased to see, were not fashionably baggy; they were just plain, straight pants. Her black hair was neatly brushed with the streak of gray prominently displayed. She’d worn considerable makeup the previous evening; presumably that was her business face. Her boating face, this morning, displayed hardly any cosmetics. Nevertheless, even without them, her dusky skin looked smooth and clear; I revised my estimate of her age downward a bit.

  “Tomorrow morning?” I said. “That means running all night.”

  “Yes.”

  I shrugged. “It’s okay with me, I’m all caught up on my sleep. But I hope you remember that we’ve got that souped-up navy radio station sitting right on top of us blasting the loran off the air. It’ll have to be mostly eyeball navigation, and it’ll be mostly up to you. I have trouble enough finding my way around the water in broad daylight.”

  “It’s no great problem,” Mrs. Bell said. “Actually, night piloting is easier in some respects. Chesapeake Bay isn’t all that narrow, particularly south of here, and the bad spots are well marked with lighthouses. We should have a favorable wind, judging by a weather report I listened to—after you turned in last night. It ought to be a fairly easy run.”

  “May I ask, what’s our hurry?”

  She smiled thinly. “There isn’t any, really,” she said.

  I frowned, feeling stupid. “Then why—”

  She said, “But they don’t know that, do they?”

  After a moment, I whistled softly. “Right on, baby!”

  “I prefer not t
o be addressed as ‘baby,’” she said.

  “Yes, ma’am,” I said, “Sorry, ma’am.”

  She started to speak sharply, obviously to tell me that she also preferred not to be addressed as “ma’am,” but checked herself.

  She said instead, “You see it, don’t you?” When I nodded, she said, “Tell me what you see.”

  I gave it a bit of thought before I spoke. “Well, while she was on board here, Dorothy Fancher got a pretty good idea of the schedule you’d set me—I made no secret of it—and she’ll have passed it along to Roland Caselius and his DAMAG goons, male and female. So they all know where to expect us the next two nights, right?”

  Mrs. Bell said, “If you tell me that I’m trying to elude them by doing something unexpected, I’ll be disappointed in you, Mr. Helm.”

  “Elude, hell,” I said. “You’re smart enough to realize that there’s no way of eluding them. It’s one of the controlling factors of the situation: they know we’ll be heading down the Waterway. They know that if they lose us on the Chesapeake, all they have to do is race ahead and wait along one of those narrow rivers or canals further south and pick us up again as we go by. Anyway, you’re obviously not trying to lose them; you’re trying to find them—and tease them into jumping right into your lap. Our laps. What’s the matter, do you have problems in Washington? Are they bugging you for quicker action?”

  “My Washington problems are none of your business.” Her voice was stiff.

  “Sure,” I said. “But you’re obviously trying to light a fire under the opposition by making it look as if we’d suddenly got hold of something… I mean, there I was, loafing along happily according to my easy schedule, a mere forty-fifty miles a day, content to have a partially disabled young lady for crew. Suddenly you appear out of the blue, along with a fast escort vessel. You boot the poor, handicapped girl off my boat and take her place… and then Lorelei III starts charging south at full throttle, running day and night, as if she suddenly knew where she was going and was in a hurry to get there. It seems likely that our friends—well, enemies—will draw certain conclusions, right?”

  “That is my hope.”

  I said, “You hope they’ll think we’ve finally found the missing logbook with the magic position written in letters of fire—well, numbers of fire. You hope they’ll figure that, if we know where we’re heading at last, they’d better really pull up their socks and get this damn boat sunk, but fast.”

  Mrs. Bell nodded. She drew a long breath. “On second thought, I will tell you something about my situation: this is an act of desperation on my part, Mr. Helm. I am counting on you to help me, because you want that man Caselius and this may bring him in to you; but of course Caselius means nothing to me or those above me.”

  “They’re making things rough for you, are they?”

  She spoke evenly. “It is always rough for a woman in Washington, particularly a woman of an unpopular race. When things go wrong… They are saying that I have accomplished nothing to secure the area for which I was made responsible, and that it was clearly a mistake to select a foolish minority female for the position simply because it might involve Arabs and she spoke Arabic and had the best performance record in the department.” She grimaced. “The fact is, Mr. Helm, that because it is the only thing I can think of to do, and because mission instinct tells me to do it, and because this operation will probably be taken away from me in a very few days, anyway, I am going to take this clumsy motor sailer and drive it down Chesapeake Bay like a speedboat and hope I startle somebody into action besides the fish.” She drew a long, ragged breath. “So you will now run quickly over to the boat ahead and tell your little friend Lorelei—what a name!—what we are going to do. Tell her, and Barstow, to be careful; if we do manage to get somebody upset with us, they may decide to dispose of our escort before tackling us. Then you will come back here on the double and take this boat out of here, because I have not yet had an opportunity to learn how she maneuvers. Well, go on, snap into it!”

  It didn’t seem to be the right time to remind her that she’d told me I was the skipper here, or to point out that I wasn’t really subject to her authority, anyway, and who the hell did she think she was, ordering me around like that, Captain Bligh?

  “Yes, ma’am,” I said meekly, and made a hasty departure.

  Outside the boat, with its still-drawn curtains, I found full daylight, although the sun had not yet appeared and might not make it at all: it was another damp, gray morning. When I reached Gulf Streamer, Lori asked me into the deckhouse. It was about twice the size of the one on Lorelei III and looked even bigger because, to my surprise, the forward end was not cluttered up with a steering wheel, engine controls, and navigation instruments; only a well-equipped bar. Apparently the big sportfisherman could only be managed from the flying bridge or the tuna tower.

  “Coffee, Matt?”

  “Thanks.”

  I took the mug she offered me. It had a leaping sailfish on it. Billy Barstow was sitting at the table nursing one with a leaping marlin. Well, I thought it was a marlin; the dorsal fin was somewhat smaller in relation to the fish. Lori’s mug had some kind of tuna on it, not leaping. She’d changed from her grubby engine-fixing clothes into the floppy white shorts and blue jersey I’d seen before. Barstow was still in his torn shirt and cutoffs. I had a feeling the relationship here had deteriorated significantly: Barstow wasn’t his bright and bouncing and super-smiling self. Maybe he’d made a pass and got slapped down. I passed on Teresa’s message.

  The red-haired man said resentfully, “Christ, Ma Bell sent you over to tell me to be careful? What does the old biddy think I am, a dumb school-kid with her the fucking teacher?”

  I said, “I’ve got some spare artillery if you need it.”

  “Look, you stick to your fucking business and I’ll stick to mine; I don’t come on a job without bringing what I’ll need.”

  That was two fights I could have had in the space of a few minutes. I passed it up. If I didn’t watch out, I was going to turn into a pacifist.

  “Sure,” I said mildly. “Well, we’re off. See you at sea.”

  “Maybe you’ll see us and maybe you won’t, but we’ll be there,” Barstow said.

  Lori looked unhappy but didn’t say anything. Well, he was her crew; she had to get along with the surly bastard. I wasn’t exactly distressed by the fact that she must have lowered the boom on him pretty hard; I just hoped for her sake that she’d be able to keep him in line for the duration. She didn’t see me out; but as I walked back toward Lorelei III, I heard my name called, and looked back to see Barstow making a show-off vault over the sportfisherman’s rail and landing lightly on the boards of the dock below.

  I waited for him to reach me. He stopped in front of me, clearly annoyed that he had to look up a bit; he was heavier, but I was taller. It would help, I thought, but not enough. He was not only strong as a bull, but he probably knew the Hah-Hah stuff, and I never go up against one of those bare-handed. If he came, I’d simply have to kill him. It seemed like something that should be avoided if possible—at least at the moment.

  He said, “I don’t like hotshot agents who talk against me behind my back.”

  I wanted to say that all I’d done was call him a snake, but that would not have been diplomatic. I said, “I’m sorry, I thought she knew you were one of Mrs. Bell’s operatives. I didn’t mean to spill any beans.”

  He was disconcerted by my placating attitude. He said irritably, “Hell, that little girl was just as sweet as she could be until you talked to her. I had her just about ready, but now she wont give me the time of day. Shit!”

  I was interested to learn that her recent experiences on board Lorelei III seemed to have turned Lori against not just one particular undercover operative, but the whole sinister breed; well, it was a good way for her to be. We don’t as a rule bring a lot of happiness to our ladies. Barstow glowered at me in a frustrated way, clearly wanting a fight. He glanced around to see if L
ori was watching; if she had been, he might have worked himself up to it. But she was not in sight, smart girl, and he wheeled abruptly and marched back to Gulf Streamer and swung himself aboard.

  Mrs. Bell had the deckhouse curtains cleared away and the diesel warming up when I joined her after casting off all but the bow and stern lines. She stepped out to deal with those, and I managed to get us out of there without hitting anything. I took it easy until the engine temperature was up; then I raised the revs to eighteen-fifty. We were logging eight and a half knots through the water as we passed the radio towers at the mouth of the Severn.

  “Is this as fast as she will go under power?” Mrs. Bell asked.

  I said, “Just about. At nineteen hundred the engine temperature starts to climb.”

  “Well, as soon as we make the turn down the bay, we’ll set the sails and see if they help.” She glanced at me. “If that is all right with you, Mr. Helm.”

  Some people can apologize and some can’t. I knew that she was deferring to me now because she’d thrown her weight around earlier. It was as close as this rather arrogant woman could come to saying “sorry.”

  20

  I’d started this cruise with a female navigator who looked like a reckless young Viking and sailed like one. My present nautical adviser looked like a staid middle-aged businesswoman; but when it came to hanging out the canvas, she also turned out to be a throwback to her wild seafaring ancestors. Timid Arab tradesmen sailing on a dhow with Mrs. Teresa Othman Bell in command would have pissed their burnooses for sure.

  As we emerged from the Severn River into Chesapeake Bay, we set the little mizzen, hoisted up its mast in traditional fashion, and rolled out the considerably larger mainsail from the tricky furling gear mounted along its taller mast, forward. The brisk wind was out of the northeast, off the port quarter when we turned onto the course that would, some time early tomorrow, bring us to Norfolk if we survived the weather, the folks trying to sink us, and Mrs. Bell.