The Vanishers (34 page)

Porkkala reporting: reconnaissance of gunfire area reveals no obvious hostile activity; however, questionable vehicle present, apparently in difficulties, driver female. Is further investigation authorized?

Well, something like that would have passed over the air. After an interval—actually only eight minutes by the clock, but it felt longer—I heard the Golf returning. Authorization had apparently been granted immediately. Okay. My next move was obvious: cut Bennett off and leave him guessing, up there in Lysaniemi. No more communications from the southern front. No more information. Nothing coming up the road. Nothing coming over the air. No word from the man he’d sent to investigate. If I knew my Bennett, he couldn’t take too much of that kind of silence, following a breathless report of mysterious and unexplained shooting. He’d start seeing the bleak woods full of hostile, armed forces sneaking up on him. His imagination would turn the trap he’d set for me into a trap closing in on him. Sooner or later, probably sooner, he’d scrap his fancy ambush and come charging down here in force to find his missing operative and learn what the hell was going on.

At that point, if I figured it right and put myself in the right place with the right weapon—by now I had a large collection to choose from—I could do the job I’d been sent here for, if I’d deciphered my murky orders correctly.

As I read it, Mac had been fully aware of Bennett’s bureaucratic maneuvers to replace him as head of our outfit, in retaliation for humiliations suffered at our hands. Mac had known that the other man was just waiting for an opening that would let him move in—a serious professional slip on Mac’s part, say, or an illness, or an accident that might not even be accidental. Then the multiple kidnapping case had come up, and one of the missing people was somebody who meant something to Mac. I was guessing now, but I still didn’t think he’d chosen to describe Mrs. Beilstein’s case by accident; he does very little by accident. He was letting me know his motive for acting foolishly. He was, by God, going to pick up the warped old lance he’d set aside years ago, and the battered shield, and the rusty sword, and ride out to rescue his ladylove personally—and at the same time, of course, solve the case of the vanishing citizens. And if he failed and met disaster, he wanted me to know about his lady and do something for her if there was still something that could be done.

But in the meantime I had a more important task. Mac had presumably been quite aware that when he deserted his office to handle the kidnapping case personally—which involved letting himself be kidnapped as bait—Bennett would make a flying leap into his vacated chair. Then Bennett would obviously work as fast as he could to consolidate his position, using violence as necessary, since he was now acting head of an organization that dealt in violence. It was easy to predict that he’d do his best to make certain that neither Mac nor the loyal operatives who’d disappeared with him ever returned.

It was highly possible, I reflected, that Mac had hoped and planned for all this to happen. Tired of waiting for Bennett’s move, Mac had deliberately teased the man into action. Mac had also, anticipating Bennett’s campaign of extermination, laid a broad trail for the other man to follow in the wrong direction, using Dr. Watrous and his girlfriend and me as bait. If I wanted to kid myself, I could say that Mac had chosen me because I was the best he had, or simply because Bennett was unlikely to use good judgment where I was concerned, since he hated me. But I knew it was really a punishment of sorts: I’d been left off the important kidnapping case and sent chasing across the ocean on this unrelated mission because I was the naive jerk who’d turned Bennett loose once, thinking him harmless; and it was up to me to rectify my error personally…

The blue Golf was coming into sight now where the road appeared at the end of the neglected fields; and it was time to stop daydreaming. From my place of concealment, I watched the vehicle come to a stop at the point where Karin had turned off the graveled road onto the muddy farm track. The driver got out and took a couple of steps towards the stalled Audi.

“Are you stuck, ma’am?” he called; and then with a Swedish accent even worse than mine: “
Har fröken svårigheter
? Do you have difficulties, miss?”

Karin called back, “No, it is all right. I am all right.” After a moment’s hesitation, she went on: “Did I not see you driving northwards a few minutes ago? Did you come back just to see if I was in trouble? That was kind of you. Can I give you a beer, perhaps, by way of thanks? I have some extra.”

I saw the young man fighting it out with himself. On the one hand it was a fairly obvious sucker trap: a pretty girl handing out drinks in the middle of the wilderness. Yet, on the other hand, he was supposed to investigate, wasn’t he? After a moment, his decision made, he walked up the track to the maroon sedan and took the opened bottle Karin offered him. He was nobody I knew. Well, there are a lot of those in the outfit; we do not have cozy get-acquainted office parties, quite the contrary. Mac operates on the principle that the fewer of your colleagues you’ve met, the fewer you can betray if somebody starts asking the tough way. This one was fairly young, still in his early twenties, with his indoctrination course at the Ranch not too far behind him. He was dark, moderately tall, clean-shaven, hatless, in jeans and a heavy black wool jacket, like a pea jacket, that came almost to his knees.

He was not a bad-looking young fellow. I felt a bit sorry for him. I mean, you don’t wander into an outfit like ours by accident. He’d wanted it, and he’d worked hard for it—the Ranch training course is no picnic—and when he’d got it at last, suddenly he’d found the agency he’d struggled so hard to join falling apart around him and himself forced to choose between the former administration, run by a character who’d gone missing—an older gentleman who was, they’d probably told him, getting a bit senile anyway—and the new regime, represented by a handsome and confidence-inspiring administrator in the prime of life with a profile that belonged on a Roman coin, obviously a man who’d make undercover work as glamorous as our youthful postulant had always hoped it would be.

They were talking by the car now. “Perhaps I am happy that you did come back,” I heard Karin saying. “I did not realize how muddy this road was. My auto does have the four-wheel driving, if that is what you call it, but perhaps if you will stay until I have extricated myself, to be absolutely certain…?”

“I’ll be happy to, ma’am. But if I may ask, what are you doing here, anyway?”

“I was driving up to the old house when I realized that I had better not proceed any farther. It seemed like a good place for… well, for a picnic…”

She did it very well: the guilty attempt to conceal the little paper bag on the hood of the Audi, not the one that had held the beer and sandwiches, the other one. In her effort to hide it from view behind her without, of course, ever looking that way, she managed to hit it with her elbow instead, and knock it to the ground. There was a heavy thump when it hit. The young man beat her to it, straightened up with it, and hefted it appraisingly. He drew out the small black pistol, sniffed the muzzle, and looked sharply at Karin.

“Some picnic!” he said. “So it was you I heard shooting.”

She nodded, showing embarrassment. “Yes,” she said. “Yes, that is why I drove to this desolate place. It makes me feel very… very melodramatic, but I really must learn how to use it. It is very important.”

“Why would a lady like you need a gun, ma’am?”

“You do not recognize me?” she asked. “You have not read the newspapers and seen the photographs?”

“I don’t know enough Swedish to read the papers over here. Just enough to find the beer and the bathroom.”

Karin said, “Well, I am Baroness Karin Segerby, and my lover’s wife tried to kill me; it was a big excitement… Now I have shocked you. Is it because I am a baroness, or because I was involved in a notorious love affair? But you can see why I obtained the little pistol to protect myself, since the woman is quite mad and the stupid police will do nothing. However, I do not know how to use it very well; I even had great trouble putting the bullets into it.”

She had him now. I hated to think that the title had impressed him that much; whatever happened to the good old Yankee proposition that all men—and women—are created equal? But of course we all love to teach pretty girls how to shoot; I’m not immune to the impulse myself. Whatever the reason, he was clearly captivated by this nicely dressed young woman with a glamorous title and intriguing past who obviously needed the expert help of a trained, knowledgeable young man like… well, just like him.

“You don’t call them bullets, ma’am; they’re cartridges, unless you’re using a shotgun, when you call them shells. But let me show you…” He demonstrated the mechanism for her. “Just break the piece and stick two rounds into the chambers, like this. Then close it again, like this. Why don’t you try a couple more shots, and maybe I can give you some pointers? I know a bit about guns. Here, see how close you can come to hitting that white rock.”

He gave the pistol back to her. There was a pause while she got her hands wrapped around the small curved butt and started to take aim. Then he cleared his throat, rather loudly. She glanced aside, annoyed by the distraction.

“Yes?”

He was a little embarrassed. “You always check a gun after it’s handed to you, ma’am, even if you think you know it’s loaded. Or unloaded.” He held out his hand, palm up. “Here. Better use these; it’ll shoot better.”

She studied his face for a moment, and laughed shortly, and took the two cartridges he was holding out to her.

“You slipped them out of the gun when I wasn’t looking? Anybody would think you mistrusted me, Mr…”

“Crown, ma’am. Hank Crown. It used to be something like Kronfeld, but my granddad made it simple when he got to America… It’s a standard trick of range instructors, ma’am, to teach the beginner never to assume that he knows what’s in a gun until he’s looked for himself.”

“Well, I’m glad you educate me properly, Mr. Crown.”

She busied herself loading the derringer. She spoke casually. “I believe there is another rule: One must never point a firearm at anything one does not intend to shoot, am I correct? But then…” Suddenly the pistol came up and steadied. “But then, it is perfectly okay, because I have every intention of shooting you if you move a muscle… Matt!”

I spoke quickly, from the brush behind him, “Don’t try anything, Crown. You’re covered two ways.”

There was a little pause while, like the one I’d dealt with in Oslo, he thought over all the pretty tricks they’d taught him at the Ranch, and decided not to use them.

“Helm?”

“That’s who.”

“Take it easy, Helm. I’m peaceful.”

“Sure you are. But even so, hows about taking out your gun and laying it on top of the car and backing away from it… Okay.”

I crossed over and got the weapon, a short-barreled .38 like my own and the one I’d got from Joel, not the silent midnight killer the boys in Oslo had been carrying. I had him put his hands on top of the car for the frisk. He laughed shortly.

“Who do you think I am, Two-Gun Hank, the Terror of the North?”

I found no more firearms; but there was a throwing knife in a neat little sheath at the nape of his neck. “Nice try,” I said, confiscating it. I studied him for a moment. “What, no recriminations? Aren’t you going to tell the lady what a treacherous bitch she is?”

He laughed again, without bitterness. “She sure did a good job on me. That scared-baroness routine was a dilly.”

I said, “The wronged and murderous wife was a figment of her imagination, I’m afraid, but Mrs. Segerby was born a perfectly genuine baroness, although I believe that here in Sweden a lady baron actually calls herself a
friherrinna
, meaning ‘free lady.’ I guess she just didn’t want to complicate the situation with aristocratic technicalities.”

He glanced at the girl, ruefully. “I suppose I knew I was being suckered, which is why I tried her with an empty gun… How did you know I’d slipped the loads out, ma’am?”

Karin smiled. “You looked so very guilty when you gave me the pistol that I knew there had to be a trick.”

I frowned at him thoughtfully. Although it hadn’t worked, he’d been smart enough to try it; he wasn’t quite the impressionable patsy I’d thought him. He was doing okay under the gun, too. No threats or accusations. No loud-mouthed
I’ll-get-you-for-this
routines. Maybe I’d hit a good one for a change.

I said, “Aren’t you going to give me that dirty-traitor line I heard from one of your pals in Oslo?” When he didn’t answer but just watched me warily, I went on: “For the record, Crown, there’s no treason involved here, on either side. I could tell you some stuff about Bennett’s previous history, but it’s irrelevant at the moment. All we have here, to be perfectly objective about it, is a power struggle between two high-ranking bureaucrats which has got to the shooting stage because that’s the kind of bureaucracy that’s involved. I happen to be Old Guard; you happen to be New Guard. I’d like you to consider making a switch. I’d like you on my side in the showdown that’s coming up very shortly. Or at least right after the showdown. This outfit has spent time and money training you and your contemporaries. I’d hate to see it wasted.”

He licked his lips. “What are you offering?”

I grinned. “You’re hoping I’ll try to buy you for a million dollars so you can spit in my eye. To hell with you, Crown. The man I’m working for has just put his life on the line to solve a problem that may threaten the welfare of our entire country.” It was the truth; and I saw no need to complicate it by mentioning that a private motive might also be involved. “Meanwhile, what’s your man doing? He’s deserted his desk and his duty and he’s wasting the resources of the agency chasing around the world after a guy he happens to be afraid of; in other words, to save his own lousy skin.”

Crown said quickly, “Mr. Bennett isn’t scared of…”

I held up my hand. “Never mind it. There’s no point arguing about it. All I’m really trying to say is that there’s going to be a confrontation here. Maybe I’ll lose out, in which case you have no problem until Mac sends another man to take my place and he puts the choice to you again. But if I win, I’m hoping you’ll reconsider your loyalties and pull your friends off my back so we can all stop fucking around like this and get on with the real work we’re supposed to be paid for. There will be no recriminations, no reprisals. We need trained people who can take orders, and you boys took them. From the wrong man, but he’s a very persuasive character, and he was sitting in the right chair, so how could you know? I’m not expecting you to make up your mind immediately—I wouldn’t believe you if you did—so I’ll tie you up for a while and give you time to think things over while you watch the show. Now let’s see how long it takes your hero-leader to come to your rescue.”