Matt Helm--The Interlopers (31 page)

But then she’d found a better substitute—me—in Seattle, and decided that she could gain my confidence and get the stuff from me when delivered. That had canceled the usefulness of Nystrom Three and Pat Bellman and their friends, who’d loused up their first rendezvous anyway. Libby, claiming revenge as a motive, had sent me out to get rid of them so they couldn’t talk; and Mr. Soo had helped by giving them instructions that made it easy for me to wipe them out.

Davis stirred beside me as Libby and Mr. Soo walked back to their car.

“But aren’t you going to…?”

“Stop them?” I whispered. “What the hell for?”

“She’s a murderess!”

“She’ll be taken care of,” I said. “You know what’s in the collar; you helped prepare it. Do you want it to go to waste? If we can’t get it into Russian hands, what’s wrong with letting the Chinese have it? And what do you think is going to happen to the lady when her superiors discover, belatedly, that they’ve been misled by a lot of phony information supplied by her?”

Davis was silent. We watched the big car drive away. I remembered a woman in a Seattle motel room early one morning, reminding me how Moscow deals with failures. Peking’s reaction would be no less violent, I hoped. Or did I?

* * *

The city of Anchorage was surprisingly large and civilized considering the amount of wilderness through which I’d had to pass to reach it. From my comfortable room high up in a very plush hotel named after the same Captain Cook I’d heard a lot about in Hawaii—that sailor really got around—I could look out upon miles of metropolis, as well as upon several empty blocks, destroyed in the earthquake of some years back, now mostly converted into parking lots.

I said into the phone, “Very well, sir. I’ll get right over there.” I hesitated. “One question?”

“Yes, Eric.”

“Now that we’re through with this lousy friendship job of yours, sir, what the hell is NCS, anyway?”

Mac’s voice was expressionless. “Do you have a need to know, Eric?”

I grimaced. It was the old security catch phrase, the idea being that even a fancy title and an astronomical security rating do not in themselves entitle a government employee to any classified information he does not actually require in the line of business. In some of those Washington buildings, they won’t even tell you the way to the cafeteria if you can’t demonstrate that you haven’t eaten for six hours and really need a meal.

I said, “Go to hell, sir. I should have pried those damn disks open and used a magnifying glass.”

Mac’s dry laugh reached me across thousands of miles of wire. “I am merely giving you the answer that was given to me when I asked the question. I should also inform you that our late associates, while they approved of your results, felt obliged to inform me that they considered your methods deplorable. Somehow I got the impression that they will not require your services again.”

“Golly,” I said, “that makes me feel just terrible, sir.”

“I thought it would. Well, take it easy. And if you, like the late Holz, ever start brooding about the lonely, desperate life of a secret agent, please let me know at once. You cut this one quite fine enough without that handicap.”

“Yes, sir.”

I made a face at the phone as I put it down. Then I told Hank to be good and took my hat and topcoat, feeling kind of strange and sawed-off in my civilized clothes and low-heeled shoes. Those cowboy boots are habit-forming. I had a taxi run me to the hospital on the edge of town—the camper rig had been returned intact, but it was being serviced after the long journey.

The nurse at the desk directed me to the room. Heading that way, I met Mr. Smith, Senior—I mean Mr. Ryerson. He was accompanied by Lester Davis.

Ryerson gave me a bleak, unhappy nod and kept on going. At the moment, he looked like a man who might have trouble handling one set of agents, let alone two at the same time. Davis stopped and said, “I’m sorry, Ronnie can’t have any more visitors today, but he’ll appreciate your coming.”

I said, “I’m not here to see Ronnie, and I doubt that he’d appreciate a visit from me. Tell me, how was the old man, stern and understanding or stem and unforgiving?”

Davis said angrily, “Damn you—”

I said, “So Ronnie spilled his guts under pressure; why make a federal case of it? Everybody talks, given adequate persuasion. Some people can take a little more than others, that’s all. There’s only one way to deal with the problem: if the guy is carrying information that’s truly important, you give him a death pill to take if captured. And if the information isn’t all that valuable—and this wasn’t—you just damn well leave him free to sing like a bird. This business of requiring everybody to be great close-mouthed heroes all the time is pure TV, and you can tell Ronnie so from me. Tell his pop, too, if you like, but he won’t thank you for it.” I hesitated. “Davis.”

“Yes, sir.”

“If you ever get tired of playing Rover Boy with these cliché-bound jokers, there’s a number in Washington you might call.” I gave it to him.

He looked at me for a moment. “I suppose I should be flattered,” he said slowly, “but I’m not. If this world is to be saved, Mr. Helm, it’s going to be saved by people who still retain a few illusions, not by people like you. I’ll stay a Rover Boy and a boyscout, if you don’t mind.”

Well, I’d asked for it. I grinned. “Sure. Your choice,
amigo.
But watch those illusions. The last one you had killed a girl very dead, remember?”

It was unfair and I shouldn’t have said it. I walked away quickly from the stricken look on his face. The room I wanted was down the corridor. I knocked on the door. A feminine voice answered. I went in. It wasn’t as bad as I’d expected. Mac had said she’d had a real rough time.

“Hi, Justellen,” I said. “A guy in Washington asked me to bring you some flowers, but I forgot them. What the hell happened to you after you left the ferry at Petersburg, anyway?”

The small, brown-eyed, blonde girl whom I’d known briefly as Ellen Blish sat up painfully in her bed as if to prove she could. She said, “We were right. They did suspect me; that’s why they sent me to make contact with you on the ship. Apparently something we did there proved something to them about me. Afterwards, they damn near killed me.”

“So I see.”

She had a tremendous black eye, puffed almost shut. The whole side of her small face was swollen and discolored. One arm and shoulder was covered with bulky bandages. If there was other damage, it was under the covers where I couldn’t see it.

We faced each other for a moment in silence, sorting out the questions that could be asked and answered from the ones that couldn’t. There was, of course, no eager comparing of professional notes on the job just past. I didn’t inquire as to precisely what her mission had been, or even whether or not it had been successfully completed. My hunch was that, in spite of having her cover blown, she must have managed to pull it off somehow, whatever it was, or Mac wouldn’t have sent me here to cheer her up. He wasn’t much fonder of failures than Moscow or Peking.

Ellen gave me a lopsided grin. “It’s all right. I’ll get over it, they tell me.”

I said, “In about two weeks, I hope.”

“Why two weeks?”

“I’m going hunting,” I said. “But I’ll be back.”

“Hunting!” She sounded shocked and at the same time amused. “Talk about your busman’s holiday! Or do you mean you’ve got another job—”

I said firmly, “Hunting, like with a shotgun. I have a friend, a black, four-legged friend, who’s earned a reward for services rendered. I—” I stopped and cleared my throat. “I’m going to have to give him back pretty soon. I’m hardly in a position to keep a pet. But in the meantime… well, he’s a damn nice pup, and he’s had a long, dull trip. And while you may turn on with beautiful music, or LSD, he turns on with ducks. I’ve got nothing against birds, these days, but if ducks are what he wants, ducks are what he gets. Okay?”

She gave me her crooked smile again. “Okay. Two weeks. I’ll try to be presentable by that time… Oh, Matt.”

“Yes.”

“I shouldn’t ask, but I did work on it, and I feel I deserve… I mean, after all, it almost got me killed. Just what is the Northwest Coastal System, anyway?”

I put a stern look on my face. “Do you have a need to know, Miss Blish?” I asked and grinned as she stuck out her tongue at me.

Then I stopped grinning and her face grew serious and we studied each other for a long moment, knowing exactly why we’d been brought together like this: two agents, male and female, after a tough assignment. It was Mac’s idea of safe rest and rehabilitation for both of us—simpler, cheaper, and less obvious than turning the wig-pickers loose on us; and more effective if it worked.

It worked.

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
The Removers
The Silencers
Murderers’ Row
The Ambushers
The Shadowers
The Ravagers
The Devastators
The Betrayers
The Menacers
The Poisoners
(December 2014)
The Intriguers
(February 2015)
The Intimidators
(April 2015)
The Terminators
(June 2015)

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“Donald Hamilton has brought to the spy novel the authentic hard realism of Dashiell Hammett; and his stories are as compelling, and probably as close to the sordid truth of espionage, as any now being told.”
Anthony Boucher,
The New York Times

“This series by Donald Hamilton is the top-ranking American secret agent fare, with its intelligent protagonist and an author who consistently writes in high style. Good writing, slick plotting and stimulating characters, all tartly flavored with wit.”
Book Week

“Matt Helm is as credible a man of violence as has ever figured in the fiction of intrigue.”
The New York Sunday Times

“Fast, tightly written, brutal, and very good…”
Milwaukee Journal

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A series of slick espionage thrillers from the New York Times bestselling “Queen of Spy Writers.”

Pray for a Brave Heart
Above Suspicion
Assignment in Brittany
North From Rome
Decision at Delphi
The Venetian Affair
The Salzburg Connection
Message from Málaga
While Still We Live
The Double Image
Neither Five Nor Three
Horizon
Snare of the Hunter
Agent in Place

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“The queen of spy writers.”
Sunday Express

“Definitely in the top class.”
Daily Mail

“The hallmarks of a MacInnes novel of suspense are as individual and as clearly stamped as a Hitchcock thriller.”
The New York Times

“She can hang her cloak and dagger right up there with Eric Ambler and Graham Greene.”
Newsweek

“More class than most adventure writers accumulate in a lifetime.”
Chicago Daily News

“A sophisticated thriller. The story builds up to an exciting climax.”
Times Literary Supplement

“An atmosphere that is ready to explode with tension… a wonderfully readable book.”
The New Yorker

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The Dime Museum Murders
The Floating Lady Murder
The Houdini Specter

In turn-of-the-century New York, the Great Houdini’s confidence in his own abilities is matched only by the indifference of the paying public. Now the young performer has the opportunity to make a name for himself by attempting the most amazing feats of his fledgling career—solving what seem to be impenetrable crimes. With the reluctant help of his brother Dash, Houdini must unravel murders, debunk frauds and escape from danger that is no illusion…

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