Authors: Donald Hamilton
Ross looked at us for a moment. “I see. My congratulations, Mr. Helm, and my best wishes to both of you.”
He threw a final glance at Kitty as he went out. It was obvious that he was having a hard time maintaining a diplomatic silence. We listened to his footsteps going down the outside stairs. We heard the car drive away. I looked at Kitty at last, standing beside me. It gave me a funny feeling in my throat to look at her. There was no reason to cry about it, of course, but she was really a hell of a pretty girl. I guess you’d call it love. She was watching me gravely, with a faint question in her eyes.
I said, “He thinks you’re making a terrible mistake. He thinks you’re much too good for a dreadful fellow like me. Of course he’s perfectly right.”
The question went away. She laughed softly and came into my arms.
It was a public phone in a busy department store in West Vancouver called Eaton’s; a branch, I gathered, of a larger store downtown. What with the inevitable rain that had replaced the morning’s sunshine, it was already getting dark outside. The place was full of last-minute shoppers picking up last-minute items on their way home from work. Preparing for what I hoped would be my final report on this mission—I wanted to wrap it up neatly as much for my benefit as that of the man in Washington—I’d spent most of the day trying to figure things out logically since I couldn’t remember them, while Kitty stayed carefully out of my way, smart girl. Perhaps I’d also been delaying my long-distance confrontation with Mac because I didn’t expect it to be easy. My impression was that, working for certain types of organizations, you didn’t just pick up your marbles and go home when you happened to feel like it…
Finally, I’d borrowed Kitty’s car, a sporty little Toyota with a flashy stripe down the side, and gone for a long drive up the coast by myself. I’d been curious about whether or not I’d have a bodyguard watching over me—I did—but I suppose I’d also hoped that the sight of a lot of Canadian salt water and rocks and pine trees might trigger something in my obstinate memory. It hadn’t worked. Now I listened to the ringing of the phone on the other side of the continent. The ringing stopped. I heard Mac’s voice.
“Yes?”
“Eric here.” I found myself using the code name he’d mentioned at the start of our previous phone conversation.
“I hope you’re happy in your retirement, Eric.”
Well, at least I wouldn’t have to break that news myself. I said sourly, “Quick-dial Ross, the fastest phone in the West. Incidentally, he’s got a tail on me for protection until I get out of here, but I don’t suppose the guy’s above picking up any information that comes his way. However, this pay phone ought to be safe, if it matters. Did you actually tell Ross, earlier, to ship me back to Washington if he didn’t want me here? He says you did.”
“His statement is correct.”
I said without expression, “I thought this was supposed to be an international operation. How come you’re letting those crummy Canucks shove us around like that, sir?” When he didn’t speak, I went on: “Or could it be that you’re just as happy to have me booted out of here because, although I got drafted for some extra bodyguard duty because I was handy, my real mission here is actually finished?”
The phone was silent for several seconds longer. At last the calm voice three thousand miles away said, “Perhaps. But we have no confirmation, have we?”
“You mean that Walter Christofferson, alias Herbert Walters, may come strolling out of the bush any day with his parachute on his shoulder?”
Mac said softly, “Amnesia, Eric?”
I said, “I’ve lost my memory, sir. I haven’t lost my cottonpicking mind. The fact that you’re willing to have me come home now, I figure, indicates that I’ve actually accomplished more or less what I was sent up here to do. Well, what
have
I accomplished here besides a cracked head? It’s pretty obvious, isn’t it? My only other accomplishment of record, at least up to last night when I kind of shook things loose out at Inanook with Kitty’s help, is that I took a certain bush pilot with a very peculiar background out into the boondocks and lost him, whether temporarily or permanently remains to be seen.” I paused. When no response came through the telephone, I said, “And the motive behind the removal, sir, at least initially, had nothing whatever to do with terrorism or the PPP.”
That got a reaction. “I’d like to hear the reasoning that led you to this conclusion.”
I said, “Well, you told me last night that the agent with whom I was originally working, Sally Wong, took orders from elsewhere, and I got a distinct impression you didn’t mean Mr. Ross and his Canadian associates. And then, of course, there was that very elaborate photographic cover I’d been given.”
Mac said quickly, “There was nothing wrong with your cover until I decided to break it for strategic reasons. Nothing at all.”
I’d touched his professional pride. I grinned at the wall of the phone cubicle. It was nice to catch him acting slightly human for a change.
“Absolutely nothing,” I agreed. “My cover was airtight, watertight, bulletproof, and non-magnetic. It was totally impermeable and impenetrable. That’s just the point.” Well, a couple of doctors had seen through it, at least part way, but I decided not to mention that.
“Please explain,” Mac said.
“It was too damned good, sir,” I said. “It was much better than it had to be. You’d made absolutely certain I wouldn’t be revealed as a government agent no matter what happened. You’d even reprogrammed the official computers to spit out Madden data in response to Helm stimuli. All this for the benefit of a bunch of dynamite-freaks who probably wouldn’t know how to get any information out of Washington that wasn’t in the phone book? It didn’t make sense, sir. It was overkill in spades.”
“What conclusion did you draw?”
I said, “The only possible answer, sir, was that you or someone from whom you were getting your instructions had a project going we were all a bit ashamed of. Ironclad precautions were being taken to make certain there’d be no kickback under any conceivable or inconceivable circumstances. Well, what could we possibly do to a gang of murdering bomb-maniacs that we’d have to be ashamed of if the story got out? I mean, short of gratuitous torture and mutilation? I understand the Israelis practically went to war to deal with one bunch, and most of the uninvolved world just cheered. If that had been my original mission here, to get very tough with the PPP, my fancy background would have been a complete waste of time. As long as the bombings get stopped, the general public won’t give a damn what methods are used.”
Mac said carefully, “As you say, memory apart, there seems to be nothing much wrong with your cottonpicking mind. Go on.”
“Terrorists scare people,” I said. “For terrorism, they’re willing to make exceptions. They’ll condone official acts they’d never sanction if perpetrated in the line of ordinary intelligence-gathering or law-enforcement operations, these post-Watergate days. But suppose they learned that a certain law-enforcement branch of the U.S. government had borrowed a trained weapons specialist from an agency more closely related to intelligence to brutally remove in cold blood an individual who was simply frustrating their efforts to get the legal goods on said individual’s boss… You did say Brassaro was in the import business, meaning drugs, didn’t you?”
“I did.”
“What happened?” I asked. “Did somebody jump to conclusions when Emilio sent his top soldier out here to play bush pilot? Did they figure that, not satisfied with his usual Caribbean delivery routes, he was setting up a new, roundabout pipeline by way of the Pacific Coast and Canada? And did they then decide that the best way of putting a stop to the new project was to put a stop to Christofferson himself, which had the added advantage of getting the guy out of the way for good? And if so, what the hell are we doing, running homicidal errands for a bunch of pot-cops? Is that our regular line of work, sir?”
“Not pot, Eric,” Mac said mildly. “The syndicate, to use the popular name, has never been greatly interested in marijuana; the amateur competition is too great and the product is too bulky.” He paused as if for comment, but I let the silence ride. He went on: “Where drugs are concerned, some people seem to lose all perspective. One cannot argue with these crusaders against chemical evil; and there is nothing more dangerous than a frustrated crusader. They had been getting nowhere trying to build a case against Brassaro. Any time an investigator or informer would seem to promise real evidence, he would either disappear, or be found dead, or he would decide that he’d been mistaken and had no useful information after all. But then Christofferson was sent west, and they started making some progress. The protective organization did not function nearly so well without him; obviously he was the key man. Add the threat of a flood of narcotics from a new direction… As you have guessed, they came to us.”
I said sourly, “I don’t mean to be critical, sir, but I was kidding myself that this dirty-tricks outfit of ours—that’s what we are, isn’t it?—had something to do with the national security. I don’t feel too damned happy about getting concussion, almost dying of exposure, and losing my memory, just to make life easy for a bunch of narcs, even pretty little ones like Miss Wong—”
I stopped. He was laughing. Although I couldn’t remember anything about him, I had a feeling this was not a common occurrence.
“What’s so funny, sir?” I asked.
“That is the second time I’ve heard that speech, Eric,” he said. “You used practically the same words when I first described the mission to you.”
“What did you say to change my mind?”
“I mentioned a code name. Norma.”
“Who’s Norma?”
“You have the tense wrong. Norma was one of our people. You knew her quite well. But of course this organization does not countenance personal vendettas, so when Norma died in South America because a triggerhappy drug buyer thought her mission there might conflict with his profits—the supplier had other interests that had brought him to our attention—we did nothing but enter the man’s name in a certain file, let’s call it the opportunity file. You understand, we do not normally indulge in retribution of any kind. If somebody is killed in the line of duty by a legitimate opponent, that is all in the day’s work. However, as a matter of self-preservation, we do try to discourage stray thugs from interfering with our people in a fatal way. We still do not go after them on our own initiative except in very flagrant cases, but if the opportunity should be offered to us we may, for instance, accept a mission we would otherwise have refused. That is why it’s called the opportunity file.”
“Norma,” I said thoughtfully. “Nothing comes. How well did I know her?”
“You worked with her on two different Mexican assignments,” Mac said. “You spent some leave with her down there after the last one. Her real name was Virginia Dominguez, if that helps.”
I shook my head, and remembered he couldn’t see me, a continent away. “It doesn’t,” I said. I wanted to ask more questions about Virginia Dominguez alias Norma. It seemed inconsiderate of me not to remember her, particularly since she was dead. However, other matters had priority. “What you’re saying is that Christofferson killed Norma to clear the way for one of his narcotics runs for Brassaro. That’s why we agreed to help Sally Wong’s people by taking him out. To let the syndicate boys know that when they see our people using the sidewalk it’s real smart of them to step off into the gutter where they belong, right?”
“Or, as I said on another occasion, Eric, they have to learn not to monkey with the buzzsaw when it’s busy cutting wood.”
“Sure. But after all that soul-searching, we eventually learned that Christofferson, or Walters, wasn’t out here for narcotics purposes after all. Wong spotted him with the wicked widow, Joan Market, thus tying him to the terrorist PPP. In the meantime I’d been ordered to transfer my romantic attentions from one girl to another; but finally, I suppose, I got the green light on Walters—somebody figured we knew all we needed about the guy and it was time for him to go. Kitty was back in the East on business and I could take care of Walters before she got back. Only he was a little better than we’d expected or I was a little worse. I wound up in a hospital. However, he still hasn’t shown, so maybe I managed to muddle through to a measure of success, anyway.” I hesitated. “Under the circumstances, this is mere curiosity, but did you manage to dig up anything on the names I gave you? Gavin Lewis, I’ve already heard about; Ross told me about finding him dead. What about Ovid?”
I’d thought he might get stuffy about discussing such information with an agent who’d declared his intention of resigning, but he answered readily enough: “John Ovid we have traced. He is an expert who has been lent to Emilio Brassaro by a St. Louis business associate named Renfeld, Otto Renfeld. Your little round man is named Heinrich Glock, known as Heinie the Clock, perhaps for his regular and reliable ways with firearms.” Mac hesitated. “Incidentally, Mr. Ross reports that all the security guards at the Inanook Sanitarium seem to have gone underground. He tried to round them up for questioning but not a single one, regular or substitute, could be found.”
I said, “My error, sir. The one who escaped, Frechette, must have given the scramble signal the minute he found a phone. What about Mrs. Market? Any signs of her?”
“None whatever. She seems to be a very elusive lady. And I should tell you that Dr. Albert Caine is also missing. He eluded surveillance only a few hours ago, however, so it may not be part of the general exodus.”
“I didn’t gather there was a great deal of trust going between him and the PPP,” I said. “It seems unlikely that he’d go to them for shelter, or that they’d give it to him if he did. Most likely he’s just bailed out to save his own skin. Do we have any idea where the rest are likely to have holed up?”
“Not yet.”
“How many guards are we talking about, anyway? I could never get a clear picture in that place. They came and went.”
“The total roster is about fifteen. We’re not certain about the current status of some of the listed substitutes.”