Authors: Donald Hamilton
I’d had a lot of time to think about it, lying there, and I had it all worked out, but I could see he wasn’t greatly interested in my philosophical conclusions. I looked at the big, healthy-looking, brown-faced guy parked beside the bed, who hadn’t even got shot once. I was way ahead of him on projectile count. He could play Mountie for a lifetime, and never catch up, and it gave me a strong sense of superiority which I tried to conceal out of regard for his feelings. I guess I was still in a kind of friendly demerol haze. Otherwise I wouldn’t have worried about making Mr. Michel Ross feel bad. He’d never been one of my favorite people.
“Did you ever find that bomb?” I asked.
“Yes, we found it,” Ross said. “Well, the girl told us. The plump girl.”
“Ruthie?” My voice still sounded weak and far away, but it was improving. “So Ruthie made it?”
I felt a little bad about having used the girl for a shield. I guess I hadn’t quite dismissed all terrorists from the human race, regardless of my stern philosophic principles.
Ross nodded. “They say she’ll walk all right eventually, with proper therapy. Of course she won’t have much opportunity for hiking where she’ll be going for a number of years. She’s hardly built for it, anyway.”
“Anybody else?”
“If you’re worrying about your attractive Chinese partner, you asked about her when we found you, remember? Miss Wong is perfectly all right. She was suffering a bit from exposure, of course, but after one night here she was pronounced fit to go home.” He hesitated. “As far as the other people on that barge were concerned, the ones who were down below got out through a hatch aft. Apparently they didn’t like what they saw in the cabin. They didn’t pause to sort the living from the dead. They simply ran. We’ve rounded up most of them. I don’t blame them for running. It wasn’t pretty.”
I said, “No, but just think of all the pretty things you’d have got to see if that bomb had gone off.”
“I wasn’t criticizing,” he said mildly.
“Well, that’s a refreshing change,” I said. “Where did those two kookie females plant that damned firecracker, anyway?”
“At the airport,” Ross said. “Timed right, it would have wiped out most of the incoming passengers from an international flight, origin New York, plus the people waiting to greet them. But of course it wasn’t just a question of setting a timer, was it?”
“No,” I said. “They were going to set it off on signal, they said. Brassaro was sending somebody to let them know when.”
“Yes, we have a description from Ruthie. We’re looking for him,” Ross said. “We also have… somebody else. Are you up to seeing some visitors? These people have asked to be allowed to speak to you.”
I shrugged. That was a mistake. After I’d caught my breath, I whispered, “Hell, send them in, whoever they are.”
He went to the door and pulled it open. A man and a woman entered. I knew the man. He was Dr. Albert Caine of the Inanook Sanitarium, as well-dressed and distinguished-looking as ever, holding his pearly-gray hat in his hand to reveal the smoothly brushed, handsomely frosted, dark hair. The woman, I’d never seen before. She was tall and blonde, and quite attractive if you like ladies dressed in natty men’s suits complete with zip-up-the-front pants, sharply tailored jackets, neady buttoned vests, soft white shirts, and loosely knotted four-in-hand neckties. It’s a very fashionable female costume now, I understand, but it still looks musical comedy to me, like an old movie with Marlene Dietrich singing up a storm in white tie and tails.
The woman was carrying a raincoat. There was something a bit off-key about her face. As her expression changed to register conventional sympathy for the bandaged gent in the hospital bed, I realized that not all the facial nerves and muscles were operating properly. It wasn’t quite a mask, but it wasn’t a real, home-grown, organic human face, either. It was the face of a handsome woman whose features had been rebuilt after a terrible accident, or a brutal beating. That placed her, of course, but it didn’t seem diplomatic to say so.
“Mrs. Emilio Brassaro, Mr. Matthew Helm. And you remember Dr. Caine, of course, Helm.” Ross glanced towards the woman. “Mrs. Brassaro would like to tell you about Operation Blossom.”
The woman said, “I’m Blossom.” A little color came into her face and she threw an odd, shy look at the man beside her. “Well, really I’m Grace, but Blossom is what… certain people call me under certain circumstances, if you know what I mean. Unfortunately, my husband got hold of a letter, a love letter in which… Well, anyway, I’m Blossom, and it was me he wanted to kill. And Albert, too, of course. And I, we, just want to thank you for saving our lives, Mr. Helm. I should have known, when Emilio finally let me go like that, with noble resignation, that he had something terrible in mind for us both… Thank the nice man, Albert, and we’ll get out of here and stop tiring him.”
He said obediently, “We’re very grateful, Mr. Helm.”
I didn’t gather that the doctor’s gratitude was a very high-quality emotion, but maybe he didn’t have any of those to spare; his better emotions all seemed to be engaged elsewhere. They weren’t people I really liked, either of them, but it was nice to see them together. You had to hand it to both of them, I reflected. At least they’d known what they wanted, each other, and even Emilio Brassaro hadn’t been able to stop them in the end, although he’d come close. I watched the door shut itself behind them.
“We’ve really got nothing serious against Caine,” Ross said. “With all the ramifications and complications of the case, it seems simpler just to let him proceed to Mexico according to plan, with the grieving widow.”
“Widow?”
“Yes, Brassaro was shot down in New York two days ago. A professional hit, as you Yankees call it. Your narcotics people are disappointed. After learning how her husband had planned to murder her, Mrs. Brassaro had just supplied them with sufficient information to justify an arrest.”
I grimaced. “All this just so a gangster could silence his wife, or get final revenge for being cuckolded? It seems like overkill, if you’ll pardon the expression.”
“I don’t think you quite understand,” Ross said. “The machinery was there. I believe Brassaro was beginning to think it had outlived its usefulness; he was feeling the syndicate pressure. He simply decided to employ it once more, for a private purpose, before shutting it down altogether. But it was originally set up, not for revenge, but for profit. We have reason to believe he made a good half million U.S. dollars off McNair, for instance.”
“McNair?” Then I remembered that I’d read the name in a newspaper in another hospital, a long, long time ago.
“Andrew McNair. One of our Canadian politicians with controversial policies and very wealthy enemies. He was killed in the Tsawwassen ferry explosion. And in San Francisco, in the bus station that blew up, a crusading district attorney died who was embarrassing some powerful underworld figures in another city. In St. Louis I believe the airport blast removed a certain stubborn businessman who stood in the way of a multimillion-dollar international merger… I could go on, but you get the general idea. I gather the price was a half million a head. Discreet human eradication, our specialty. Perfect safety guaranteed. No embarrassing murders, no suspicious accidents. Well, of course it
was
murder, but nothing that would cause any awkward questions to be asked of the victim’s enemies, just the random, vicious, obvious handiwork of a bunch of known crackpot revolutionaries. Who’d think anybody would arrange for a whole airport terminal or bus to be blown up just to get rid of one man, or woman?”
I whistled softly. “I can see why the corporation decided to put a stop to the enterprise. They don’t like anything that gets people too stirred up about organized crime. If the connection between Brassaro and the PPP had ever been made public… How did he gain control of that protest group, anyway?”
“It was rather a coincidence, I believe,” Ross said. “As we heard it, Brassaro’s man Christofferson, whom we knew as Walters up here, was following a certain individual whom Brassaro wanted removed. The trail led into Canada. The quarry ducked into a railroad station, which promptly exploded, taking him with it. Very convenient for Christofferson. That was the Toronto blast in which the bomber, Daniel Market, was also killed in company with Miss Davidson’s husband. Apparently Christofferson, who’d been far enough away to escape injury, saw a woman nearby acting suspiciously. It was Mrs. Market, who’d just seen, or at least heard, her husband die. Christofferson sensed that she’d had something to do with the explosion and, since the man he was after was dead, he tailed her to where her associates were waiting. We have all this from Ruthie, not a totally reliable source, but I believe it’s fairly accurate.”
I said, “So Brassaro moved in and took over control. It’s still hard for me to believe that a bunch of dedicated idealists, even violent idealists, would allow themselves to be used like that.”
Ross said, “Today’s idealists make a point of being cynical idealists. It was either do it Brassaro’s way or give up their crusade and go to jail; and their only explosives expert, self-styled, had just blown himself to Kingdom Come. Apparently that older man, Frechette, prided himself on being a practical chap and talked the rest into it. From then on, the PPP set off its bombs where and when Brassaro ordered, in return for supplies, arms, and protection as required. Christofferson, acting as a liaison officer of sorts, both helped them and kept them in line. Finally, as Walters, he disappeared in that plane with you; and Brassaro was forced to recruit another tough chaperone for the PPP—a chaperone who, it turned out, was actually working for people higher up in the syndicate who feared that the bloody stink of Brassaro’s murderous enterprise would stick to them, too.” Ross looked at me hard. “I won’t ask if you’ve recovered from your amnesia as far as Walters’ disappearance is concerned. Miss Wong let something slip that makes me think that, as a conscientious officer of the law, I don’t really want to know any more about the incident than I already do.”
I said, “Thanks, I can’t remember a thing about Walters since you say so.” I studied him for a moment. “You’re not raising as much hell as I expected,
amigo.
Last time I fought my way out of a trap up here in Canada, you really laid into me for picking on those poor little helpless asylum guards and attendants. What’s so different about shooting my way off a barge? Well, almost off a barge.”
He was silent for a little, then he said rather stiffly, “Whatever your methods, you did prevent a terrible tragedy at the airport, Helm.” When I didn’t speak, he made a sharp little gesture and went on: “Damn it, man, how can I criticize your methods when mine almost got you killed? This time I’d promised you protection, remember? You and… and Miss Davidson.”
The thought had occurred to me, but I hadn’t really expected it to occur to him. Maybe there was more to the guy than I’d judged.
I said, “You lost two men trying, didn’t you? At least I figured they must have been taken out, both the one you had guarding Kitty, and the one watching over me.” Ross nodded minutely. I said, “Hell, you could hardly expect them to have to cope with a full-scale guerilla raid.”
I didn’t know why I was trying to defend him, except that he didn’t seem interested in defending himself. He shook his head impatiently, dismissing my arguments. He was looking at me without seeing me.
“She looked… very helpless lying there in her pretty dress, didn’t she, Helm? So small and helpless. And I was the one to whom she’d come for protection in the first place, when she realized she’d tackled a bigger and more dangerous job than she could handle.” His eyes focused on me. “I let her die,” he said bitterly. “I was angry. I thought she’d made a poor choice in you; to be frank I still do. So I took the first two men who happened to be handy and put them on the job regardless of qualifications and said to hell with her and marched away…” He stopped, looking at me hard. “I’ll tell you something, Helm. Bomb or no bomb, I’m
glad
you wiped out those homicidal lunatics, you and that little St. Louis gunman. God help me, I wish I’d been there with you. When we rounded up the rest, I found myself looking for an excuse to finish the job. If one of them had raised a finger to resist, I’d have mowed down the bloody lot. What kind of a law-enforcement officer does that make me?”
I said, “A human one, I guess. Is there any other kind?” After a little, I said, “She was a sweet kid.”
It sounded corny and inadequate, but I saw that he understood what I was trying to say. We were silent for a little. I realized there was no longer any question of race between us. We were just two men who’d loved the same girl, now dead. After a few seconds, he gave me an abrupt nod, and left. In the morning, Sally Wong came to see me. I called her my favorite narc, and she thought I was criticizing her occupation again—maybe I was—and said that now that we’d saved each others’ lives there was really no need for us to keep fighting like that, was there?
We didn’t.
Donald Hamilton was the creator of secret agent Matt Helm, star of 27 novels that have sold more than 20 million copies worldwide.
Born in Sweden, he emigrated to the United States and studied at the University of Chicago. During the Second World War he served in the United States Naval Reserve, and in 1941 he married Kathleen Stick, with whom he had four children.
The first Matt Helm book,
Death of a Citizen
, was published in 1960 to great acclaim, and four of the subsequent novels were made into motion pictures. Hamilton was also the author of several outstanding standalone thrillers and westerns, including two novels adapted for the big screen as
The Big Country
and
The Violent Men
.
Donald Hamilton died in 2006.
The long-awaited return of the United States’ toughest special agent.
Death of a Citizen
The Wrecking Crew