Of course there were problems. There were still things I was supposed to remember, but to hell with them. You could always make new memories if you misplaced the old ones… I yawned and stretched and got out of the bed and found the bathroom. I grinned at myself in the mirror. I had a slightly swollen lip where she’d bitten me and she’d done a respectable wildcat job on my hide. I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t been there. My sweet, proper PR lady, for God’s sake! Obviously she wasn’t even feeling very ashamed of herself or she wouldn’t be singing like a bird out in the other room.
There was shaving stuff on the shelf above the washbowl, and a big clean towel by the bathtub. In the bedroom, the contents of my pockets had been piled on the dresser and some fresh clothes that fit me were neatly arranged on one of the chairs. Interesting. Apparently I’d felt enough at home in this apartment before my near-fatal crash to maintain something of a wardrobe here, yet I felt certain that last night was the first time the lady of the house and I… Well, there was no sense in wearing out the mental machinery on a problem the answer to which waited only one room away. When I emerged into the paneled living-dining area, shaved, scrubbed, and respectably attired, Kitty was setting the table for breakfast.
She was wearing slim new blue jeans and a blue-and-white checked gingham shirt with long sleeves. Her long brown hair looked soft and silky. She must have slipped away early from the bed to which we’d finally made our way, and worked hard with shampoo and drier while I slept on. She didn’t look around, she didn’t even seem to know I was there, but she’d stopped singing. I came up behind her, parted the shining hair and, while she stood quite still by the table, kissed the nape of her neck.
“Miss Davidson, I presume.”
“Don’t presume too much this morning, my dear,” she said quietly. “I think we both presumed quite enough last night.”
“Question, ma’am,” I said, speaking to the back of her head. “Apparently we’ve been associated for months on a fairly dangerous mission. A marriage engagement has been mentioned. I even seem to have moved some clothes in here. So how does it happen we never did that before?”
She looked around quickly. “Darling, if I hadn’t got quite smashed on two little drinks I’d never have dreamed of doing it last night, and I certainly have no intention of ever doing it again!” She stopped abruptly. Her face grew quite pink. “Well, not that way… Oh, damn, something’s boiling over.”
I grinned, watching her run out of the room, a boyish figure in the brand-new jeans that, indestructible and impenetrable, made it quite clear that the wearer had no intention of cooperating in any undignified sex-shenanigans this morning, no matter what lewd and disgraceful antics she might have participated in last night.
Waiting, I sat down and looked idly out the window at the sunlit suburban view—well, it was about time for a little more sunshine around here. This was only the second time I’d seen blue sky since I’d awakened in the hospital. I could see the freeway embankment up the street, and the tops of the cars and trucks driving by beyond the white-painted barrier up there. It occurred to me that the big highway must have caused a lot of resentment when it was rammed through this peaceful suburb. Even with the windows closed, the steady rumble of traffic was quite audible.
“Your coffee, Monsieur,” Kitty said, returning. “What didn’t perk all over the stove, that is. You can start on that while I dish up breakfast.”
It was very pleasant to tackle a meal that hadn’t been prepared in a hospital kitchen and wasn’t served by a professional attendant in white. I gave it my full attention for a while, aware that across the table Kitty was also doing justice to her cooking. At last I poured myself another cup of coffee and leaned back comfortably in the chair.
“You didn’t answer my question,” I said at last. “I mean, you did give me, and those Ministry of Transport investigators, the distinct impression that our relationship was sexy as hell—”
“Oh, that!” She didn’t look up from her plate. “I was just following instructions. Mike Ross seemed to think that if I let them, or anybody—there was a microphone in that hospital room, remember—guess that our engagement had been strictly platonic, they’d have realized there was something peculiar going on. Nobody has platonic engagements these days. I guess the man you work for didn’t take Mike into his confidence; we didn’t know he was going to blow your cover deliberately. And maybe I overdid the brazen-modern-hussy act.” She glanced up briefly. “Actually, I wasn’t very good, was I? After all the big talk, I couldn’t make myself forget about that mike when… you came all over amorous that day. Sorry.”
I grinned, and stopped grinning. “That Ross guy. I get the impression I don’t rate among his very favorite people. Is he jealous or something?”
Kitty looked shocked. “Of you and me? Heavens, no! I’m sure he hasn’t the slightest personal interest, at least he’s never given me any indication… It’s something else, I think. He was very displeased when the U.S. agent assigned to help us—they had to have somebody who wasn’t known here in Canada—turned out to be you. Apparently he’d had dealings with you before. Rather unfortunate dealings, I gathered, although he never went into detail.”
“I see. An old professional conflict of some kind? I was wondering why he gave me such a hard time last night.” I grimaced. “And now let’s talk about platonic.”
“What?”
“The platonic engagement of Miss Davidson to Mr. Madden, or vice versa,” I said. “Platonic. It doesn’t sound like me, what little I know about me. And it doesn’t sound like what little I know about you, either, if you’ll forgive my saying so. And still the two of us are supposed to have lived together in this apartment without—”
She said quickly, “Oh, we weren’t really, living together. You’d just spend the night here when you were up this way on a photo-story, or when you arranged for some other plausible excuse to drive up from Seattle because I’d signaled you—we had a code we used over the phone—that I had something to report. We were together just enough to make our relationship look convincing to anybody who might be checking up on me.”
“You mean like your contact with the PPP. Joan Market.”
“Yes. We wanted to lay the groundwork, so to speak, so you could move in permanently to protect me if things started looking dangerous, without arousing her suspicions. But we didn’t want you actually living here until it became necessary—Mike Ross didn’t—because we were hoping she might come to see me and we didn’t want anybody else here to frighten her away. Mike had somebody watching all the time in the hopes of following her and learning where she was hiding, but she never gave him a chance. She’d been sociable enough back east; but once I moved out here she never came near me. It was all tricky messages and complicated telephone routines, that sort of thing.”
“Market. I wonder if that could have been Marquette originally, and what the hell difference it makes.” I shook my head. “But you’re still dodging, Kitty. Do I gather that all those times I spent the night here I got into my pajamas like a good little boy and retired to the living room couch? And you went into the bedroom and locked the door behind you?” I glanced towards the bedroom door. “I must be more of a gentleman than I thought. It doesn’t look like all that much of a lock.”
“Gentleman? You were an obstinate mule!” Kitty laughed ruefully. “Of course we got off on the wrong foot. The trouble was, I was warned about you in advance. It seemed I was going to have to play house with a horrible macho-gunman type who undoubtedly expected every girl he met to fall swooning into his virile arms. If arms can be virile. Anyway, that was what I was braced for, darling. When the time came, when you came, I was determined not to give you the slightest encouragement. It was all going to be strictly business between us. I made that absolutely clear.”
I said, “Obviously, Mr. Ross is never going to be mistaken for John Alden. I’ll have to thank him for the great buildup.”
She smiled. “Well, as your PR
man he does leave something to be desired; but no matter how wonderful you turned out to be, I really wasn’t interested—or didn’t think I was. I’d just had my heart broken, remember?”
“Sure. Your husband.”
“Yes. Roger. Roger Atwell—I kept my maiden name at work after we were married. Actually he broke my heart twice. Once when I learned what he’d got himself mixed up in. I suppose it was selfish, but the fact that he’d let me marry him without telling me, well, it was never quite the same after that. And then, perversely, when he got himself killed it was a terrible wrench just the same. Because he was basically a very nice person in spite…”
“In spite of playing dynamite games with a bunch of fanatics,” I said when she stopped.
She nodded gravely. “But it was being such a nice person, such a sensitive person, that got him involved. He couldn’t stand all the suffering and oppression he saw, or thought he saw, around him. He felt he had to do something about it. He just did the wrong thing, at least by most people’s standards and, as it turned out, by his own. The newspaper stories about the San Francisco explosion upset him terribly. At the time, of course, I didn’t understand; I had no idea he had anything to do with those maniacs. But when they actually came to Toronto, where we were living, and told him that now it was his turn as a loyal member of the PPP…” She was silent for a moment. I didn’t speak. She went on: “That was when he broke down and told me everything. He said he was going to the police as soon as he learned their plans, but he wanted me to know… He said there was plenty of time to stop it, almost a week, but it was that night the railroad station blew up. He’d thought Dan Market was just taking him there so they could look over the ground and make preparations. Roger was going to tell the authorities the following day; he just wanted to have all the information… I know he wasn’t lying to me, I know it. They suspected him, they fooled him by giving him the wrong date, they tricked him there and killed him to keep him from betraying them.”
She was getting pretty intense about it. I said deliberately, “So you swore revenge and took a vow of chastity; no man should touch you until the PPP had paid for its crimes.”
She started to get angry; then she relaxed and made a face at me instead. “It isn’t nice to make fun of the girl when she’s baring her soul. There wasn’t any stupid medieval vow; there was only the simple fact that after going through all that I didn’t think I’d want to get involved with another man, ever. Well, not for a good many years. And then, gradually, as you turned out to be a good deal more human than I’d expected, your gentlemanly restraint began to seem, well, rather unflattering, if you know what I mean.” Her face was pink again. “I knew you were doing it just to be perverse, because I’d hurt your damned little feelings when we’d first met, but just because the girl talks a lot of don’t-touch-me nonsense at the start doesn’t mean the boy has to keep taking her at her idiot word forever!”
I grinned at her resentful tone. Last night’s uninhibited performance began to make more sense. Not only had we both been drinking fairly heavily after a long dry spell, not only had we been feeling strong reactions after our escape from terror and torture, but there had been a lot of old frustrations needing release, even if I couldn’t remember them consciously… Well, to hell with the psychological analysis.
“Did you tell anybody that your husband had confessed to you before he was killed?” I asked. “That he’d been planning to go to the cops?”
She shook her head. “No. Not then. Of course Mike Ross got the whole story later when I asked him for help, but at the time I played innocent and ignorant as hard as I could. I was hoping that sooner or later somebody from the PPP would come around to see if I was actually as blind and stupid as I seemed. Of course they didn’t have to come around. Joan Market was right there. Once somebody in authority realized that two of the casualties weren’t innocent victims like the rest, but had actually been members of the PPP, that put us, the wives, in line for special investigation and questioning, so Joan and I had to spend a lot of time together in a lot of dismal offices and waiting rooms.”
“Had you known the Markets before?”
“Oh, no. And Roger hadn’t, either, until they made contact with him in Toronto. The PPP has—well, they claim to have—members scattered all over the United States and Canada, but these people act more or less as scouts. Like Roger in Toronto. Then, when the council in Vancouver picks a target, a small strike force moves in and does the actual work with the help of the local member. If you want to call it work. Joan and Dan Market were part of the mobile strike force for the Toronto operation. Of course I didn’t learn all that until later.”
“How did you get Joan Market to accept you as a recruit?”
“It was more the other way around; she made the first advances,” Kitty said. “I made it easy for her with a lot of glib anti-establishment talk. I wanted to see what she would do. When the police couldn’t prove anything against either of us and finally let us go, Joan took me out to dinner to celebrate, in a dirty little place where the air was practically solid marijuana smoke. She made the great revelation, watching me closely to see if I showed proper surprise. Naturally, I pretended to be shocked, but not too shocked. It was war, she said, and our husbands had died battling heroically side by side in the front ranks of the fighting underground army, didn’t I want to keep his memory bright by taking his place in the great crusade? Once I got over being terribly, terribly hurt at the way Roger had kept his secret from me—to protect me, Joan said—I told her of course I did.” Kitty grimaced. “The hardest part was keeping her from knowing that I knew they’d blown my hero-husband into little pieces to keep him quiet.”
I frowned. “Did she tell you how her husband came to be killed along with yours?”
“It was apparently an accident. It was a home-made bomb constructed by Dan Market himself, and it exploded prematurely before Dan could leave Roger sitting there on some pretext and sneak off to safety. Of course Joan didn’t tell me that.” Kitty buttered a piece of toast in an absent way. “A few weeks later I got my first instructions from the PPP, meaning Joan. I was to request a transfer to my company’s Vancouver office claiming I couldn’t stand it any longer in Toronto after everything that had happened. Obviously the PPP wanted to get me away from everybody I knew and out near their headquarters where it was easier for them to watch me closely, just in case I was more clever than I looked. I’ll admit I was frightened; I thought there was a good chance they were simply decoying me out here to kill me. That was when I got in touch with Mike Ross, very cautiously. He said for me to do just as Joan said, and he’d find somebody out here to protect me. The rest you know.”
“Well, more or less,” I said. “Just what the hell kind of cop is this Michael Ross, anyway?”
“He seems to be a fairly highpowered investigator of some kind, although he makes rather a point of referring to himself as a simple policeman.” Kitty hesitated. “It’s Michel Ross, actually. He says he had a Scottish father and a French mother; but with a striking face like that I’m sure he’s part Indian. Not that it matters.”
I said, “I thought the Mounties and Indians spent all their time shooting at each other. Well, it’s a crazy, mixed-up world. Is there any more of that coffee?”
She used the last of it to refill my cup, and carried the empty pot out into the kitchen. I watched her go, rather startled to find myself thinking how pleasant it would be to be able to sit like that every morning, watching her. I realized abruptly that I didn’t really want my memory back. To hell with the past. Judging by what I’d learned so far, it contained a lot of fairly ugly stuff. I wasn’t ashamed of it, somebody always has to do the dirty work, why not me? But everything indicated that I’d put in my time and earned my graduation points. And recently, it seemed, I’d made a serious professional error that had almost got me killed, or at least met a man who was too tough for me. Call it a sign, omen, warning, it wasn’t something I could ignore. Quit while you�
��re ahead, I reflected. Quit while you still have a life and somebody to share it with—assuming she’s willing, that is.
I watched her return, liking everything I knew about her and wanting to learn more. I’d misjudged her badly at the start. Lovely as she was, fragile as she looked, she’d shot a woman last night for motives she’d considered adequate. She’d watched me kill a man and helped me hide his body. She’d deliberately led us into some fairly undignified sexual behavior for therapeutic reasons. Obviously she wasn’t the gentle, civilized young lady she seemed—but with my background, what would I do with a gentle, civilized young lady? This was a real person, not a saccharine dream.
She sat down facing me again, and regarded me a moment with an expression I couldn’t read. Abruptly, she said, “I put on fresh coffee for Ross. He ought to be here shortly. When… when he gets here, let’s tell him we’re through, Paul. Finished, fed up, tired of the whole crazy mess.”
I still couldn’t guess her thoughts. “Why?” I asked.
She said deliberately, “I think that is a very foolish question, darling. You’re not a foolish man ordinarily. Or… or was it just a relaxing drunken orgy with a cooperative female playmate, exact identity unimportant?”
I studied her for a moment. There was no mistaking her meaning now. I just hadn’t let myself believe that her thoughts could be so similar to mine.
I said plaintively, “What happened to all those nice, shy Victorian maidens who waited for the man to do the asking?”
Kitty said unsmiling: “They all got to be old maids sipping sherry on the sly and blubbering into their dainty cambric hankies as they remembered the handsome gentlemen who’d got away from them.” She paused, watching me. “Were you going to ask?”
The Terrorizers Page 11