Authors: Donald Hamilton
“I’ll cover them, Manny,” said Provost. “You get down there and yell when you’re ready for them.”
We stood quite still under Provost’s gun while Manny, a small, wiry individual with a weak, whiskery chin, stepped to the edge of the hatch. He laid his machine pistol carefully on the steel decking, lowered himself into the hole, took the weapon and passed it to somebody below, and disappeared from sight. In a moment his voice reached us.
“Ready here. Jake says send the man down first.”
Provost gestured with his chopper. I moved forward, turned my back to the hatch as Manny had done, got to my knees, and groped with one foot for the first rung of the ladder below me. I didn’t look at Sally. She’d seemed bright and alert enough not to need any betraying signals. It would have to be a semi-sacrifice play, of course. Once down there, we didn’t stand a chance of escape, either of us. From up here, one of us might get clear to carry the message to Garcia, the sad word from Thermopylae, the good news from Ghent to Aix, wherever they might be—I’d read the poem as a kid but I’d never checked out the geography.
I kept feeling around clumsily with my foot, clinging to the edge of the hole in the floor, hoping that Provost, impatient, would take just one step closer so I could dump him on his can and give the girl her break. I hoped she’d have sense enough to blast off without looking back. There’d be nothing for her to see except Heroic Helm getting pleasantly massacred by automatic firearms below and above—that is, unless he managed to roll clear of the one and grab the other, not really a very promising undertaking. Provost’s foot moved…
“Please be careful, Mr. Helm.”
It was a new voice—well, new for today. I’d heard it before, however. I looked towards the bunkroom door, and there he was, the little round man who, gowned and masked and capped like a surgeon, had watched all the fun and games in Elsie’s back room: Heinrich Glock, alias Heinie the Clock, alias John Ovid. He had a pump-action shotgun resting in the crook of his arm and I hadn’t really expected him to use anything else, except when he was on rifle duty of course. The doublebarreled jobs give you only two shots. The autoloaders tend to be temperamental. A pump will shoot as fast as an auto in expert hands—some say faster—and it practically never jams. Twelve gauge. Number One Buck. Within, say, forty yards, certain death. You can go up against a chopper with some faint hope, but there’s no real hope against a scattergun, sixteen pellets to the load.
I studied him for a moment. He was a dapper figure in a dark overcoat and a narrow-brimmed hat that made his white moon face look even rounder than it was, an effect emphasized by the round, gold-rimmed glasses. Just an owly-looking little fellow in neat city clothes and polished city shoes holding a great big shotgun—ridiculous. Well, ridiculous if you didn’t look too closely at the sharp, cold eyes behind the book-keeper glasses. Of course I wasn’t really seeing him clearly. Instead I was seeing a girl lying dead in a fragile pink gown stained with dark red blood.
I told myself that was entirely beside the point; I was allowing myself to be distracted by purely personal considerations of no significance here. Hatred didn’t count, I informed myself firmly; revenge was irrelevant. He was just another man with a gun who had to be put out of business with the rest of this blast-happy crew, preferably before they could indulge in any more fatal fireworks. It wasn’t the job for which I’d been sent to this part of the continent, that was all taken care of, but if these terrorist creeps had the poor judgement to interfere with my plans for living I’d damned well show them some great plans for dying… Cut it out, Agent Eric. Snap out of it! What the hell do you think you are, anyway, some kind of avenging angel with a shining sword?
But it had broken through the remoteness: a sudden, white-hot blast of rage like the one that had set me to playing Horatius at the Bridge with kitchen knives back in Kitty’s apartment. Stupid. Forget the pretty lady in pink. Mourn her on your own time. Right now, just pull your scrambled brains together and figure a way to get your Hawaiian fish-girl of Chinese descent past that twelve-bore blunderbuss… But there was no way. I knew she’d never make it now, even if I did manage to escape Manny’s gun, below, and disarm Provost, above. I’d never make it, either. The little man with the pumpgun would make a neat double, bang-clackety-bang, like dropping a pair of crossing ducks, and that would be the end of that.
I looked at him and saw that, relaxed as he looked, he was ready. He didn’t even have to shoulder the weapon at this range although, being a careful workman, he probably would. He turned his head slightly and the window-reflections off his glasses turned his face into a blind round mask. His prim little mouth spoke.
“I regret that the death of the Davidson woman was considered necessary, Mr. Helm,” he said calmly. “But we are both professionals,
hein?
We know what it is to follow orders. Now please go below. You can see that resistance is foolish.”
Sally Wong glanced at him, a little puzzled by his attitude. I was a little puzzled myself, but there was no time to figure out exactly what had puzzled me. Provost had sensed something wrong and stepped back out of reach.
He said harshly, “Stop stalling, you, and get the hell down there before I kick you down.”
I found the rung in the right place that I’d been searching for in the wrong place. With both feet supported, I looked down. Manny’s ratty little figure awaited me below. What I could see of the chamber in which he stood reminded me of hunting cabins I’d known a long time ago, crowded with men and firearms, dim with tobacco smoke—although, from the aroma, these combustion products did not all originate as tobacco.
“What the shit is going on here?” Still another new voice for today, this one feminine. My head and shoulders were still above the galley floor. I looked up and saw a woman in a long skirt standing in the doorway, silhouetted against the outside light. “What the fuck are the prisoners doing out, Provost?” she demanded. “I said to keep them locked up until we had time to deal with them properly. Jeez, a girl can’t step out of the fucking house to plant a little dynamite without a bunch of jerks getting crappy ideas while she’s gone!”
It had taken a long time, but I had a hunch I was finally making the acquaintance of the mysterious Mrs. Market.
It took them a while to sort it out. I remained carefully motionless on the ladder until I got clearance from all parties concerned, above and below. I didn’t want either my head or my tail shot off by somebody with a machine pistol who felt I was moving the wrong way. Then I eased myself cautiously back up into the barge’s cabin and got to my feet.
The remote feeling had come back. I knew I was missing something, and it concerned Ovid, but I couldn’t dredge it up. In the meantime I wasn’t really listening to the woman who now knelt by the hatch I’d just vacated, yelling obscenities downward, or to the man who was answering from the interior of the barge with equally violent but somewhat less colorful language. I recognized his voice. He was the one who wanted to finish me off in Kitty’s apartment but a woman, this woman, had stopped him. As before I knew I’d heard his voice elsewhere but I couldn’t make the connection. I made note of the fact that there seemed to be a policy difference involved that went beyond the mere disposition of a couple of prisoners. However, the squabble didn’t seem important enough to justify a major effort of concentration.
The important fact was that they were squabbling and the dissension might yield an opening sooner or later. In the meantime there was nothing much to be accomplished with Ovid on guard and Provost alerted. After a little, I caught the ex-security-man’s eye and gestured towards the galley sink, making cautious face-washing motions. He started to shake his head, but Ovid said something I couldn’t hear for the yelling. Provost hesitated, shrugged, and made a small motion with the submachinegun to indicate that it was okay for me to proceed in the desired direction, but I’d hardly started to move when he stopped me again. He sidled past and reached for something in the shadows at the end of the counter, a long, plastic guncase that I hadn’t spotted, leaning there. It had the bulky look of a case designed for a rifle with a telescopic sight, so I knew what gun it was and what it had been used for. He made his cautious way past me once more and handed the cased rifle to Ovid, who set it in a corner out of reach with a tolerant smile, knowing, as did I, that the idea of my being able to get the gun free and load it in time to tackle two armed men with ready weapons was faintly ridiculous.
Provost gave me the okay signal with his expressive gunbarrel. I stepped over there and found a big black rubber plug that looked as if it had been used as a teething ring by a carnivorous baby. I stuck it into the drain. There was only one faucet. It spat cold water reluctantly when I turned it on. I speculated about where the wet stuff was coming from since this wasn’t a fancy marina with hose connections, but I guess that’s one of the things I’ll never know.
They were still arguing hotly. You could call it good news and bad news. I mean, a well organized, united, disciplined enemy is certainly harder to defeat in theory; but in practice you never know when some hothead in a bunch of quarreling, disorganized screwballs is going to blow you away by mistake. I peeled a paper towel from a tattered roll, dampened it, and started to mop at my face.
“Here, let me.” Sally Wong took the wad of paper, now pink with watery blood, from my fingers. Then she stopped, as if overcome by her fears. “M-Matt, what are they going to do to us?” she wailed. “What’s going to happen to us?”
“Keep your chin up, sweetheart,” I said.
“You damned fool,” she said in a lower voice.
“What did I do?”
“They’d have got you for sure if you’d tried it. Even without that little man and his shotgun.”
I said, “So I die at the top of a ladder instead of the bottom. Big deal.” More loudly, I snapped, “For Christ’s sake stop wetting your pants like a baby, you’re a big girl now. How the hell did a washout like you ever get into this racket in the first place?”
“I d-didn’t know it would be like this! I thought it was going to be exciting and glamorous… glamorous! Look at me, I’ve never been so dirty in my life!”
Provost stirred irritably. “Shut up! No talking!”
Sally sniffed loudly, gulped, and turned to the job at hand. I stood still while she removed the worst of the clotted gore. I saw that another woman was standing silent in the doorway, a short, stout girl in enormous, grimy, baggy jeans and a man’s wool shirt, worn with the tails out. She had a man’s felt hat on her stringy brown hair. She leaned against the doorjamb totally without expression. I had the feeling she’d stand there forever, looking blank, until somebody told her to stand somewhere else. It was really a hell of a grubby operation, I reflected wryly. No class at all. Next time I’d ask to be assigned to the Casino at Monte Carlo, in full evening dress under crystal chandeliers, accompanied by a gorgeous creature in shimmering satin carrying a pearl-handled pistol in her diamond-studded evening bag. Next time.
Sally was working around the bullet-cut in my scalp, cautiously, when the screaming match stopped. Joan Market rose, settled her coarse wool serape about her shoulders, and came over. She shoved Sally aside.
“Never mind that, we don’t care how fucking pretty he looks,” she snapped. She turned her attention to me, studied me for a moment, and said, “So this is the great assassinator, sudden death on wheels. How many fucking people have you killed, really?”
I took a chance. I didn’t want to go too far in antagonizing her since she seemed to be, for the moment, on our side in some peculiar way—at least she wasn’t howling for an instant kill. On the other hand, I was supposed to be the brave, strong prisoner here, facing death courageously to draw attention from my frightened, insignificant little oriental colleague.
I said, “If I’m supposed to take that question literally, the answer is none.”
Her eyes narrowed. “What’s the point of lying about it? Hell, I myself know of four, maybe five, and one more who probably won’t survive that goddamned butcher knife you flipped into his chest…” She stopped and let out a sharp bray of laughter. “Oh. I see. Literally, huh? You mean when you killed them they weren’t… Funny!”
She was a moderately tall young woman who was heavier than she needed to be. She gave the impression that, just as her foul language was undoubtedly a reaction against the way she’d been brought up—I would have bet on a college degree—so the sloppy extra weight was a deliberate response to all the sexist advertising instructing the female of the human species to be slim and clean and attractive to the male. She was also, of course, rebelling against the old reactionary cult of cleanliness. They all do that, all the real blue-denim kids. Well, hell, I’m not totally sold on mouthwashes and anti-perspirants myself. I’ve spent considerable time with unwashed gentlemen in situations involving limited sanitation facilities and heavy stress; an unwashed lady doesn’t shock me tremendously, or at least no more than one who makes a religion of being totally immaculate, dry, deodorized and untouchable. I mean, there’s got to be a happy medium somewhere.
Actually, she wasn’t a bad-looking girl. My first thought was that she had some black ancestors; then I decided that, although it was a full-lipped, blunt-nosed face, the Negroid effect was largely due to the wild, fuzzy, phony-African hairdo. Her eyes scared me because, in contrast with the crazy hair, they weren’t crazy at all. They were brown eyes, calm and intelligent. They reminded me a little of the brown eyes of Dr. Elsie Somerset that, aside from a faint glow of pleasure, had never displayed any real madness even when the woman was cranking up her rheostat to the higher numbers on the dial.
Joan Market stared at me searchingly a moment longer, then turned her head and said, “Ruthie, go get the little monsters, ready, no, tell somebody to do it, huh? And then come into the council room, you’re a member and we’ve got to hold a meeting, a fucking
meeting
, for God’s sake! Today, for God’s sake! Everybody’s losing their idiot marbles around here. Well, go
on
!”