The Demolishers (43 page)

Finally he said, “She spoke to me just before . . . She told me to make certain you did not blame yourself. She knew it had to be done that way. ’ ’

“Thanks.”

“Vaya con Dios, amigo. ”

I watched him go out of the room, a stocky little man with a business to run; and where he’d learned to handle pistols and automatic weapons was his business. A little later, Sandra stuck her head in the door cautiously, deter
mined that I was awake, and enlarged the opening so that her companion could enter as well. Lester Leonard was wearing slacks and a gaudy sports shirt; the same thick spectacles were sliding down his nose. My daughter-inlaw was wearing a summery dress; the first time I’d seen her in a dress since she’d met me in the airport in Miami Beach. They asked the usual silly sickbed questions and I gave them the usual brave sickbed answers.

Then I said, “I thought you kids would be in jail.”

‘‘I feel like a fraud,” Sandy said. “Lester was the real hero, all I did was sit and listen to the shooting, and all the reporters want to make an antiterrorist Joan of Arc of me, so brave with my poor wounded arm, although really, ducky, do you think it’s
right
to take the law into your own hands like that?” She grimaced. “We’re being exported.”

“Deported,” said the boy.

She shook her head. “They’re washing their hands of us and sending us home to the U.S.; that’s still the same country, isn’t it? It’s got to be a different country to count as deportation, doesn’t it? We’re just being exported out of Puerto Rico.” She glanced at me. “Oh, I called Elizabeth and told her about . . . everything. She sends you her regards.”

So my former wife, the mother of my son, knew that the vengeance she’d asked for had been achieved. I wondered if, having had time to cool off, she’d still wanted it. I looked at the two young people by the bed. Both of them seemed to have put the grim retribution business behind them overnight. It was finished and they weren’t going to brood about the dead, loved or hated, any longer. A callous attitude, perhaps, but a youthful and healthy one. I found myself wondering if they were merely getting along well because they were nice kids thrown together by exciting circumstances, or if they were becoming seriously interested in each other. Well, he was pretty far out on the screwball side, but a smart girl could do a lot with him,

and when she was through she might have a genius on her hands. I was sure Matthew wouldn’t have wanted his young widow to mourn eternally. Then, as I had the thought, Sandra turned a little, and I saw that she did have a black mourning band on her arm.

“What’s that for?’’ I asked.

She hesitated, and her expression grew serious. “Actually, a policeman gave it to me since I didn’t have time to buy a black dress and he thought I should have something to show . . . That’s one reason they’re turning us loose, Matt. It gave them the excuse they were looking for; they could be bighearted and release us so we could attend Daddy’s funeral.” She shook her head quickly. “No, not the Caribbean Legion. It was that drug-chasing man who made me do a striptease, remember; the one whose agents got blown up in our Old Saybrook house? I won’t pretend to be totally shattered, you know we never got along; but he was still my daddy and it’s a shock. You always wish, well, that you’d tried a bit harder to . . .” Her voice trailed off. Then she grimaced. “I bet Lia looks great in black.”

“Bob Tallman,” I said.

“Yes, that was his name. The Dobermans killed him. Ugh.”

Lester said, “Sandy, we’d better get going if we’re going to catch that plane; and they won’t like it if we don’t. What’s the phrase,
persona non gratal
Or
personae non gratae,
plural? Good-bye, sir. I hope you get well soon.”

Sandra also told me to get well soon. I told them to have a good trip. Maybe I should have congratulated the boy on how well his home-brewed explosives had performed; but I wasn’t sure he was really aware of the deaths for which he was responsible. It had been an interesting technical problem and he’d solved it. The passion that had driven him to it would seem strange and a little embar
rassing now. It was better to let him go his own strange way without rubbing his nose in reality.

Mac came after lunch, in the same or another gray summer-weight suit. He told me I was doing very well and would probably be released in a few days. When I take the bad one that awaits everyone in the business, and am on my way out, I ’ll probably wait around out of habit until he can tell me officially that I’m dying.

“You seem to’ve pried the kids loose in record time, sir,” I said.

“Under the circumstances, they were not eager to prosecute knowing it would inevitably become a news circus.” I said, “I hear Tallman really blew his stack.”

“Yes. Of course Mr. Alexander Varek was well overdue. There is no grief in law enforcement circles, except for the fact that the act was committed by an officer of sorts. They’re calling it temporary insanity.”

“I gather it happened on the estate and the dogs killed him; but how did he get in? Security was pretty tight when I was there.”

Mac shrugged. “Mr. Tallman was, after all, a professional, Eric; and he did a professional job of penetration. If somebody hadn’t turned the Dobermans loose ahead of schedule that evening . . . Actually, the dogs didn’t kill him, although that was the first report we heard. They simply rounded him up and disarmed him; one of the guards shot him.” Mac stopped and smiled thinly and went on: “Asa dog lover, you will like this. Mr. Tallman could easily have shot both animals as they were coming at him, but he didn’t fire. He said before he died that they were good dogs just doing their jobs and he’d got the beast he was after, so why should he kill them?” Mac shook his head. “Anyway, you don’t have to worry about him coming after you, as he’d threatened to do.” He pulled the chair he’d taken closer to the hospital bed. “Now, is there anything you’d care to take up with me before I re
turn to Washington? As I recall, you were asking about a code that didn’t exist. Would you care to elaborate?"

I said, "I was just talking with Paul Encinias. Modesto. He told me he’d received a message from Washington a few weeks back. It had come through the computer by way of Dana—Dolores. It concerned some negotiations the Legion of Liberty had been conducting, or trying to conduct, with Sonny Varek. It appears that the CLL crew got a lot of its finances from the drug trade. And far from being the wild-eyed political fanatics blowing up people at random we were supposed to think them, they usually combined their politics with business. In other words, if you screwed the Legion on a drug deal, or refused to play ball, or whatever, you might just kind of accidentally find yourself in the middle of a loud patriotic protest incident. Boom.”

Mac said, “I am quite aware of this. Modesto sent several reports on the subject. It was a detail you didn’t need to know to perform your mission.”

“Good old need-to-know,” I said. “Anyway, that colorful old drug dealer up in Newport, Pirate Williams, had been shortchanging the Legion on the stuff he’d been getting from them, so he wound up victim of a terrorist atrocity, as an object lesson to others who might get greedy.” “That reminds me,” Mac said. “A certain Mr. Benison of a certain drug agency called to let you know that a certain big fish in that neighborhood is taking the bait; he thanks you for not muddying the water.”

“Well, I had no reason to interfere in his case, so I don’t deserve much thanks. I’m all for interdepartmental cooperation when it doesn’t hurt.” I paused and went on: “So the Newport explosion was actually a punitive action in the line of business. Modesto didn’t know the commercial reason behind the bombing here in San Juan that killed Dana’s husband and kid; maybe there wasn’t any. The Executive Board that managed the action end of things didn’t always consult the whole Council. Maybe when things got dull they’d set off a firecracker just for fun, so folks wouldn’t forget the Legion was still around. But the West Palm Beach job was a business proposition just like Newport.”

“To influence Mr. Varek?”

“To punish him for refusing to deal with them. Varek was a respectable citizen now, he told them, retired from the import business; he didn’t want to deal with the CLL, he didn’t want to deal with anybody.
No,
repeat
no.
There was some disagreement in the Council about what should be done about him. Normally they’d have slapped his wrist hard as a matter of course, but some members felt that Sonny Varek with his syndicate connections was too big to touch and they should just forget the whole thing. Modesto said that the message he received from Washington, signed Elsie, instructed him to throw his weight on the side of punitive action, suggesting the Varek daughter as a suitable target.” I cleared my throat. “As we know, Modesto was successful in swinging the vote that way. Angelita, with her bomb squad, went for Sandra and missed by just a little. But she got my son.”

Mac spoke without expression: “This order ostensibly originated in Washington? It was transmitted by computer?”

“Correct.”

“Signed Elsie. Could Modesto identify Elsie?”

I said, “Yes. The routine communications Modesto received from Washington were signed Dolores. Dana. Special action instructions were attributed to Elsie. It was a private joke between Dana and Encinias. Somehow one of them had learned the full name of the man at the top of this outfit. Arthur McGillivray Borden. Borden’s milk. Elsie the cow. So they picked that name to identify orders coming directly from you.”

Somebody ran a cart down the hall outside. It had a
squeaky wheel. Watching Mac, I reflected that any hospital’s medical equipment really ought to include an oilcan.

Mac spoke quietly: “Are you convinced of my guilt, Eric?”

I said, “It was pretty foolproof. There was no logical reason for the CLL to hit Matthew, so it wasn’t possible to sic them on to him directly. But they preferred restaurants for their dirty work; and if Sandra went out to eat, who’d most likely be with her? If the bomb got both of them as they dined and wined, fine, I’d be mad enough to come back to work for you. If it just got Matthew, as it did, ditto. And if it only got Sandy, it seemed likely that her young husband would feel strongly enough to look up his secret-agent pop and persuade him to hunt down the miscreants. Actually, Matthew was a nonviolent type and probably wouldn’t have reacted like that, but this wasn’t known to the person setting it up, and the problem never arose.”

Mac smiled thinly. “When can I expect to be shot, Eric?”

I studied him thoughtfully. “We’ve worked together a long time,” I said. “I know you’d sacrifice my son, or me, or your son, or yourself, if the fate of this country really depended on it. But not just for a lousy antenna field on a lousy Caribbean island. Not just to track down one crummy bunch of terrorists when the world is full of them. Not just because we had an argument about a dog.” I drew a long breath, and grinned at him. “Anyway, the last thing Dana said to me was that she was sorry.”

He studied me for a moment, and spoke thoughtfully: “Mrs. Delgado? Dolores? Yes, of course, she had the opportunity; the message came through her.”

“Actually from her, although Modesto didn’t know that,” I said. “She must have been pretty crazy with grief and anger in her quiet way. She wanted to strike back at the people who’d killed her child. Shed been directed to us by a reporter, Spud Meiklejohn, who seems to have an inflated notion of my capabilities. He apparently gave me a big buildup. So she got the idea that invincible Superagent Helm was the only man for her vengeance mission; but suddenly she found out that Id had a fight with you and quit the agency. A stupid fight about a dog, when her baby was dead! At the time she didn’t know me at all, of course. I was just a walking gun, a grim instrument of vengeance that had let her down. So, as she monitored her computer information on the CLL, she saw a way to bring me back to do what she wanted done. Why shouldn’t I learn, as she had, what it was like to lose a child? She instructed Modesto, in your name, what action to take in the Council of Thirteen. When we met in your office afterwards, she behaved as if she hated me. She had to, after what she’d done to me. Of course the one she really hated was herself.”

“And that code business?”

“Just something she threw out in desperation, to sidetrack me, when she sensed I was getting close to the truth. I think she’d have told me everything very soon, but she never got the chance.”

And she’d cried the night we’d made love because she’d known that, after the unforgivable thing she’d done, we could never have more than this together. But I didn’t tell that to Mac. . . .

The helicopter pilot’s voice dispelled the memories that plagued me. “Smoke up ahead. Looks like a beached vessel of some kind, burning.”

It was a curving half-moon of a beach at the head of a sheltered cove. The ancient landing craft had run right up on the sand after first dropping the big stem anchor that was supposed to haul her back into deep water after her cargo had been put ashore; but the old vessel’s life had finally come to an end and she would never float again.

The government jets had found her, smashed her, and set her on fire. It must have happened several hours ago, say about dawn, since there were no longer any visible flames, just the thick, black, greasy smoke.

I noted that the bow ramp was down. Maybe Bultman’s skipper had had time to unload a cargo of tanks before the air strike, although this seemed a long way from the landing site. . . . Then, as we passed over, low, I could see that there had been no tanks. The blasted cargo hold was full of twisted, blackened wire that looked like tortured chainlink fencing, although that didn’t make very good sense.