The Intimidators (22 page)

“Yes, sir?”

“I’m looking,” I said, “for a martini and a Mr. Manderfield.”

“I’m Manderfield,” said the other customer. “Let’s be comfortable at a table, Mr. Helm. Joe will bring your drink.... And another for me, Joe, please.”

My eyes were getting used to the dusk; and I got a good look at him as we went through the business of offering each other a choice of chairs, as if it mattered. He was a neat, compact, medium-sized, middle-aged man in good shape, with the usual Florida businessman’s tan. He was wearing light slacks and a gaudy sports shirt. His dark hair was streaked with gray, smoothly parted and combed; and he wore dark prescription glasses with strong bifocal-segments that gave him an odd, four-eyed look. It was hard to feel menaced by a gent with bifocals, but I don’t suppose weak eyes are necessarily an indication of good moral character.

Having got the seating problem worked out to everybody’s satisfaction, we waited for the barman to produce our drinks. When they came, I tasted mine without hesitation. Manderfield had deliberately given me plenty of opportunity to have the place covered; there wouldn’t be any monkey business here. In a sense, we were operating under a flag of truce—not that it couldn’t be violated; but the violation, if any, wouldn’t be anything as obvious and stupid as a Mickey Finn.

“You weren’t very nice to our Mr. Morgan this morning,” Manderfield said abruptly.

Good boy. No fancy double-talk or elaborate introductions; and who needed introductions, anyway? He knew me and I knew him. That is, I’d never met him before, or heard his name, but I’d met a dozen like him, all professionals. I could have had the dossier read to me over the phone, but I wouldn’t have learned anything I didn’t already know, aside from a few meaningless details. I could spot a graduate of that particular finishing school across any street in the world.

“Mr. Morgan wasn’t very nice to our Mr. Pendleton last night,” I said.

“We were given to understand, by a certain lady, that you already had Morgan in custody. Imagine our surprise when he called this morning requesting a rendezvous at sea.”

I shrugged. “Sometimes I bend the truth a little. It’s a terrible habit I have,” I said. “Anyway, we’ve got him now.”

“He’s really of very little importance, Mr. Helm. These muscle-men are all expendable, you know that.”

“Thanks a lot,” I said.

“Ah, but you are a little more than just a muscleman, aren’t you, sir?”

“It’s kind of you to say so.” After a moment, I said, “So Morgan is of no value to you. Too bad. After all the trouble we went to to catch him, too.”

Manderfield laughed. “You pin me down, sir. Is one not permitted a bit of bargaining? Actually, we do have a slight interest in Mr. Morgan. Or at least in Mr. Morgan’s silence.”

“I thought you might,” I said. “Of course, the guy went ape about the girl who got killed, the way no good muscleman should. He went hunting on his own to avenge her, interfering with some plans of yours; so there’s also a question of making an example of him for discipline’s sake. I mean, you might have condoned his going after me independently if he’d been successful; but the way he flipped, strangled the wrong man, changed his mind about killing me, and ran off with the corpse....” I shrugged. “A guy like that, you just can’t afford to keep around any longer, can you?”

Manderfield smiled without humor. “How do you explain his erratic behavior, Mr. Helm?”

“It’s the great weakness of your system,” I said. “Your boys and girls are great, operating under detailed orders, but they don’t do too well thinking for themselves. And when one of them tries to buck the machinery that made him, he’s lost and he knows it. Morgan knew he was being a very naughty boy, satisfying his own human thirst for revenge. Lenin, Marx, and Stalin were all breathing down his neck as he stood there waiting to get his big hands around my neck. He knew that he was betraying socialist peoples everywhere for purely bourgeois emotional reasons. When Pendleton blundered in on him, he cracked, committed murder unnecessarily, and then, driven by guilt, decided to atone by cleaning up after himself and surrendering to the great mother machine again to take the punishment he knew he deserved.”

“You seem to fancy yourself as a psychologist, Mr. Helm,” Manderfield said after a moment’s pause. “I think your analysis of our agents as mechanized automatons incapable of independent thought will cause you trouble one day, but that’s no concern of mine. As a self-styled psychologist, can you tell me my motives in asking you to this meeting?”

“Sure,” I said. “You want Morgan, mildly. You want to talk with me to see if you can figure out what I’m up to. The lady’s report probably left you slightly confused. It was meant to.”

Manderfield smiled. I decided that, pro or no pro, he wasn’t a guy I was ever going to like very much. Some people’s smiles are like that.

“Your record is impressive, sir,” he said. “But you can hardly call it a record of self-sacrificing nobility. You can hardly expect us to believe that you’re offering us your life in return for the lives of some people you don’t even know, which is roughly what you seem to be saying.”

I shook my head. “Not at all. What I’m offering you is a crack at my life. There’s a difference.”

“That means you expect to trick us somehow.”

I said irritably, “Hell, that’s what I told Hattie; didn’t she pass it along? Sure I expect to trick you. It’s just a question of who’s got the best tricks.”

“You’re bluffing, Mr. Helm. You’re trying to get something for nothing.”

“Aren’t we all?”

“You want a number of people rather badly. We want Morgan, as you say, just mildly. Since we’ve been assigned you, and failure is not encouraged, we’d like to get you, but it’s hardly an obsession with us. There will be other times. On the whole, it doesn’t put you in a very strong bargaining position, does it, sir?”

I said, “You’re right up to a point. However, there’s also the fact that, now that it’s been called to your attention, you’d like to see this melodramatic foolishness that’s being perpetrated, or at least assisted, by your allies to the south, stopped before it leads to serious trouble, trouble nobody wants around here right now.”

“That’s wishful thinking, Mr. Helm. We don’t tell the Cubans their business, and they don’t tell us ours.” He grimaced. “Well, that’s not entirely true. Unfortunately, like many recent converts, they take their revolutionary principles very seriously and grimly. One gets a little tired of being lectured on points of doctrine by bearded fanatics who seem to feel that Communism is their own private island invention....” Manderfield shook his head quickly, and laughed. “But that is beside the point, isn’t it, sir? The point is that you’re trying to claim a community of interest between us that does not, in fact, exist. Why should we care how many idiot self-styled Caribbean patriots are permitted to indulge in their gaudy antics from bases along the Cuban coast? Why?”

He was angry now, but not at me; and I realized that I’d won. He’d received orders that he didn’t like. He was just taking the opportunity to gripe about them under the guise of bargaining. I didn’t say anything. Manderfield gestured to the bartender, and there was silence at the table, and in the room, while the new drinks were being prepared. The only sound was the steady rumble of traffic on the Overseas Highway outside. The bartender named Joe removed our empty glasses and set full ones in their places.

“Mr. Helm,” said Manderfield.

“Yes?”

“You should be at Little Grass Key, six miles due north of the Two-Mile-Channel Bridge, at exactly six o’clock. Six and six, that should be easy to remember. Make your approach from the west side of the key; there’s water there. Use the open boat you used this morning. Captain Robinson says it will not be necessary to hotwire it again, whatever that may mean. Spare keys are taped under the dashboard.”

“I know,” I said. “I found them when I was changing the wiring back where it belonged.”

“Your escort vessel, if any, must stay at least a mile away. We’ll maintain the same distance. Captain Robinson, and a lady named Phipps, will be awaiting you on the island, which despite its name is little more than a sandspit. You will take them aboard and leave Mr. Morgan in their place.” He hesitated. “I do not approve of this bargain, Mr. Helm, and see no point in it, but as you say, we are not permitted to think for ourselves. We simply follow orders....”

As I eased Harriet’s big outboard out of the harbor again, alone in the boat this time, I made note of the fact that the light breeze was blowing from the general direction of Cuba, but at the moment I wasn’t concerned with the largest island in the Greater Antilles. My immediate concern was a minor sandspit called Little Grass Key; but first, preferably without putting any dents in it, I had to get my borrowed craft a mile or so down the shore to a private dock, where my cargo awaited me.

It was all very complicated; and it had involved lengthy phone consultations to work out the intricate details. God knows how the undercover professions ever managed before the invention of the telephone—maybe that’s why we don’t hear much of master spies antedating Alex G. Bell. The evening’s plan was a masterpiece of tricky timing, and we all had our watches and brains synchronized to the millisecond; and all it would take would be a slight change in weather, or a minor human error or mechanical malfunction, to throw the whole schedule haywire. On the other hand, maybe it would actually work out as planned, this time. I’d never seen it happen, but it might.

I switched on the depthfinder. This was a square box mounted in a bracket to starboard of the motor controls, with a big dial. Behind the dial was some kind of a spinning light that somehow, don’t ask me how, made a red flash at the depth determined by the electronic gremlins inside the box. At the moment, it read five feet, not a hell of a lot of water as oceans go; but then, there generally isn’t much on the Gulf of Mexico side of the Keys, where you can be fishing out of sight of land in water so shallow that you’ve got to push yourself along with the pole because there isn’t depth enough to run the motors. Well, there’s also the consideration that a silent pole doesn’t spook fish the way a noisy motor does....

It was a secluded, dredged harbor protected by a stone breakwater. Coming through the narrow entrance, I recognized the white Ford station wagon from its description, and headed for the dock at which it was parked, below a luxurious residence surrounded by palm trees, with a big swimming pool nearby. I wondered why anybody with that much money would get mixed up with a bunch of disreputable characters like us. Just to see if I could do it—I’d never had a chance to play with a twin-motor rig before—I got the boat turned around by backing the port screw while running the starboard one forward. It worked, making me feel nautical as hell, a real sea dog.

By the time I’d laid the boat alongside the dock, heading out, a man had come down from the car to take my lines. Another man brought Morgan. His right arm and shoulder were pretty well immobilized. He seemed to be fairly heavily doped, which was fine with me.

“Better put this on him so he won’t be so conspicuous,” Morgan’s baby-sitter said.

I took the jacket he handed down. Morgan allowed me to drape it over him without protest. He still was a big, formidable-looking specimen, but the switch had been turned off. I reminded myself not to take for granted that it would stay off indefinitely. I parked him in the starboard chair behind the console, and went back to retrieve my lines—well, Harriet’s lines.

The man who’d brought Morgan said, “I’m Brent.”

He was tall and young, with crisp red hair and sideburns. His voice was familiar. He was the Miami contact with whom I’d already talked a number of times on the phone. Now, according to the evening’s master plan, he was taking a more active part in the operation. Apparently he had some unique qualifications that made him a logical choice.

“Good for you,” I said. “But you’d better get over there fast. Haseltine’s waiting for a navigator, but he’s not the patient type. You can’t miss the boat. If it looks as if it’s breaking the sound barrier tied to the dock, you’ve got the right bucket.”

Brent hesitated, and said: “I’ll get you within a mile of Little Grass Key. Just stick in our wake. You’ll have to make the final approach yourself, of course, according to instructions. Just remember one thing: if you have to blast out of there fast for any reason, get her up on plane and keep her there. You can ride that thing on a heavy dew as long as you keep her skimming along the top; but if you get cautious and slow down, she’ll settle and hit.” He cleared his throat in an embarrassed way. “Sorry, Eric, I don’t mean to be telling you things you already know, but this shallow-water boating’s kind of a specialized deal.”

I grinned. “Where boats are concerned,
amigo,
I’m a hell of a good horseman. Keep telling me. And keep your fingers crossed.”

The station wagon had already disappeared inland by the time I’d eased the outboard past the breakwater. After getting well clear of shore, I swung westwards, taking it slowly. I didn’t have long to wait. Just as I was coming opposite the conspicuous tower of Faro Blanco once more, a shiny red power cruiser emerged, from the marina. She was a rakish job that seemed to be designed for an air speed of several hundred knots, instead of a measly forty. The cabin windshield had a slant like that of a fast sports car, and the flying bridge above continued this racy, sloping, motif. By the time all the streamlining had been taken care of, the whole superstructure had wound up so far aft that there was hardly room for a cockpit in the stern. On the mahogany transom, lettered in gold, was the name
Red Baron.

The cruiser swung away to the west ahead of me and picked up speed. She was close enough, now, that I could hear the impressive rumble of the big twin diesels driving her. The sound was lost as I opened up my two outboards to follow, watching the figures on the flying bridge up ahead. Haseltine had the wheel, and Brent was just standing by, occasionally studying the water ahead through his binoculars, and once in a while indicating a slight change of course.