“Blossom,” I said. “Concentrate on Blossom, Wong.”
She thought a moment, and shook her head. “I’m sorry. It means absolutely nothing to me.”
“How much time do you figure we’ve got for talking? How often do they check us?”
“There seems to be no set watch schedule,” she said. “I’ve been in here since early last night. They grabbed me when I ran over to the grocery after work—I’m still marking time on that North-Air job, waiting for the final word on Walters. It was well after dark when we got here after about an hour and a half of driving. Every so often during the night somebody would shine a flashlight down, but the timing was completely irregular. I got the impression they consider themselves something of a paramilitary outfit, but the discipline leaves a lot to be desired. Around midnight, I guess it was, they lowered you down to me. They laughed when they told me I was getting company.” She shivered. “At first I thought it was a horrible practical joke; I was sure you were dead. In the dark I couldn’t even see who you were. I could just feel the blood. But the skull seemed to be intact, and then you moved a little and I could hear you breathing, but I had to wait until daylight before I could recognize… I haven’t heard anybody out on deck for a couple of hours.”
I hesitated. “What the hell do they want you for, anyway? Did they tell you?”
“Brace yourself,” she said. “I’m wanted for crimes against the people. Somebody’s apparently figured out that it wasn’t just Herb Walters’ manly charm that kept me at North-Air. I’m charged with luring said antiestablishment hero to his doom, meaning you. We’ll both be brought to trial before a people’s tribunal, properly constituted. Honest. That’s what the woman said, with flourishes.”
I said, wryly, “Looks like they’re gaining confidence, and not just blowing up folks at random any longer. Now it’s summary justice, PPP style; Kitty dead and you and I soon to be punished for our counter-revolutionary crimes. At least I suppose the firing squad comes right after the fair trial. Escape possibilities?”
Sally shook her head. “I don’t think so. Not without a cutting torch or a great big wrench. It’s a steel or iron hull, and there’s a heavy partition back in the dark there. Some kind of an opening I could feel, but it’s closed by a metal cover that’s bolted on, and the bolts are very rusty. It would take a lot of leverage to budge them, if they can be budged. I’ve checked every inch of the place for some kind of a tool—that’s how I got so filthy—but there’s absolutely nothing. A big loading hatch above us, but it clamps from outside, just like the little manhole cover or whatever you call it. Otherwise it’s just a big, empty iron coffin. Sorry.”
I said, “You’re pretty good, Wong. You make nice reports.”
It took her by surprise. Then she said stiffly, “It’s kind of you to concede, at last, that you’re not the only one with adequate training around here, Mr. Helm.”
I grinned. “Don’t bite my head off, doll. But I guess it did sound kind of patronizing. From now on I’ll stick to insults and let the compliments go, okay?”
She laughed quickly. “Tell me about Walters. Do you know that he’s dead?”
“Yes, ma’am,” I said. “He’s dead, but it didn’t work out quite the way we planned it. The original idea, remember, approved by you and your superiors, was for me to get him to land on a fairly distant lake where I’d secretly cached some supplies on one of my previous bird watching expeditions As soon as we were down, I’d dispose of him, sink the plane and body very deep—they’ve got some fairly bottomless ponds up there—and hike out. On the last day, of course, I’d ditch any supplies I had left and come crawling into civilization on hands and knees, a battered, emaciated survivor of a terrible wilderness crash, unable to say just what mountain it was we’d piled up against in the overcast. Very simple. With a bit of cooperation from the authorities, discreetly coached by your drug-busting superiors and their Canadian counterparts, it should have worked. Only Christofferson was wise. He knew I was after him. He didn’t wait for us to land. Actually, I think it was that switch they had me make from one girl to another that had tipped him off about me; that wasn’t really a very bright maneuver.”
“What happened?”
“At least I was smart enough to see that he was getting ready for something,” I said. “When he started easing his hand towards his gun, while we were still in the air, I showed him mine. He laughed at me. He pointed out that I didn’t dare shoot him because I couldn’t fly the plane. If I shot him, I’d crash and die. He was the chatty kind, when he had the upper hand. He wasn’t in any hurry and he felt perfectly safe: he had it all figured out. He let me sit there holding my useless revolver while he told me how smart he was. Actually, not so smart. He had no idea he’d even been suspected of setting up a western drug operation for Brassaro. He assumed we’d been working on the terrorist angle right along. He said he knew what we were after, all right: information about the next blast, coming very soon. He said he’d give me a hint to take to hell with me, and he told me that name, Operation Blossom. Then he started reaching for his gun again, very slowly and deliberately, grinning at me, daring me to shoot him and leave myself high in the sky without a pilot, and with no place to go but down.” I paused.
“The suspense is terrible,” Sally said. “What did you do?”
I said, “Hell, I shot him, of course.”
“But—”
“Mr. Walters hadn’t done his homework. Those guys tend to sell themselves on their own bright ideas. They never make allowances for the possibility that they might be slightly wrong. If he’d done a little research in the right file—granted it isn’t available in the public library, but some folks in Moscow have a reasonable facsimile, I believe, and maybe you could even find it in Peking—anyway, if he’d bothered to look in the right place he’d have learned that a certain U.S. agent, while he holds no license, once managed to put an aircraft down in a Mexican lagoon when the pilot suffered a sudden demise in midair. It didn’t do the plane a damned bit of good, I’ll admit, but the more important passengers, like me, escaped undamaged.” I shrugged. “I figured that if I could do it in Mexico and survive, I could probably do it in Canada. At least it gave me a better chance than if I waited for him to put a slug through me.”
“But you weren’t found on that inland lake. How—”
“I was in too much of a hurry,” I confessed. “Planes scare me. I was thinking too hard about what came next; about how I was going to get that damned bird downstairs in one piece. I didn’t make sure of him first. He waited until I’d unfastened my belt, and then flipped the aircraft and threw me across the cabin, hard. By the time my head stopped spinning, not to mention the plane, he was really dead; but the lake for which we’d been heading wasn’t there any more. There was nothing but clouds below with some nasty-looking mountains sticking up out of them. I tell you, Wong, for kicks just get yourself lost up in the air some time, in a plane with a limited gas supply that you don’t really know how to fly. It’s a real trip, baby; you can keep your damned LSD.”
“Go on, Matt,” she said softly.
“Well, I didn’t dare go down into the soup and hunt for something wet to land on down among all those rocks and trees,” I said. “That Beaver is a big plane when you don’t know what the hell you’re doing; twice as big as the one I’d dunked down south. And those damned clumsy floats don’t make it any easier to handle in close quarters. I just stayed up and headed west by compass looking for clear weather and a nice soft piece of ocean to crash down on before the gas gave out. I don’t remember a hell of a lot about the flight; I don’t suppose I ever will. I’d really taken a wallop, and I kept blacking out and coming back just in time to keep from flying into a cliff. Then I’ve got a picture of some big waves coming at me. The next thing I see clearly is the Prince Rupert Regional Hospital.”
The girl beside me drew a long breath. “Maybe I don’t entirely approve of what you do, even when you’re doing it for us,” she said
after a moment, “but I’ve got to admit you seem to earn your money, whatever they pay you.”
I said plaintively, “I keep telling people I’m a hero but they just won’t listen… Actually, it was a pretty poor performance and I deserved what I got.” I frowned at her thoughtfully. “Hawaii,” I said.
“What?”
“Before they sent me out here, they told me a little about the narcotics agent I’d be working with. You were born and raised in Hawaii, right?”
“Yes, but what in the world—”
“A kanaka by birth if not by blood,” I said. “All Hawaiians swim like fish, isn’t that correct?”
“Well, I’m a pretty good swimmer, Matt, but what—” She stopped and licked her lips. “I think I see what you mean. But do you know what the average survival time is in these waters at this time of year?”
I said, “Do you know what the average survival time is in a spot like this with people like this? If you see a chance, go. Don’t try for the shore. The middle of the river; they won’t be expecting you to head that way. Try to ride along with that current you told me about until you’re clear, then fight your way ashore and find a phone. I’ll do my best to cover for you if the break comes.”
“But what about you—”
“Cut it out. That’s amateur-talk. You were just telling me what a well-trained pro you were. I fight better than you, if only because I’m bigger. You swim better than me. One of us has to get clear to pass the word about this place and you’re the logical candidate. If you see a chance to go, go. And in order to have a better chance of getting that chance, if you follow me, remember that you were, are, and always have been an abject coward. I don’t want to see the slightest vestige of pride or courage or self-respect, Miss Wong. You’re a broken creature. A night in this horrible dirty black hole has cracked you wide open. Some tear-tracks down the face, please, some sniffles of fear, some choking hiccoughs of utter panic. Make it up as you go along, but make it good. Plead for your life if it seems indicated. Betray anything you’re asked to betray including me. Whimper and whine. Maybe somebody will look away in utter disgust at being asked to guard such a piss-poor specimen of female humanity. That’s when you go, okay?”
She didn’t answer. She was listening. “I think they’re coming,” she said.
We heard the steel deck overhead reverberating with the impact of approaching footsteps. They were coming, all right. There wasn’t time to make sure she’d really got what I was trying to tell her, or to confer about the finer details. There was only time for me, as senior officer present, to speak a few brave words of reassurance and encouragement.
“Hey, Wong,” I said. “I—”
She interrupted in a singsong voice. “Me not Hey Wong, me Sally Wong. Hey Wong my uncle.” She gave me a wink and a ghost of a smile. “Corny, huh? What were you going to say, Matt?”
“Never mind.”
I’d never been much good at those going-into-action speeches anyway, and I had a distinct impression the troops here didn’t really need one.
20
The hard part was getting up the ladder. I managed it with Sally pushing from below and a submachinegun beckoning from above. Like she’d said, straight magazine, skeleton stock. Even though I’d seen one once before, and even had my hands on it briefly, I still didn’t recognize the weapon. Everybody’s in the squirt-gun-production business these days, from north of the Finns to south of the Israelis. Well, if you want to be technical, there isn’t much of anything north of the Finns, but you get the idea. You can’t keep track of them all and there’s no incentive. You don’t find the class, workmanship, and individuality of, say, the old .45 Thompsons in these Johnny-come-lately mow-’em-down weapons. To a discriminating firearms fancier they’re simply ingenious mechanical junk cobbled together from old gas pipes, coat hangers, and tin cans, of no esthetic value whatever, so who cares what name is crudely stamped on the receiver? Operationally, they’re pretty much alike. They have to be so as not to confuse their users, the lazy and simple-minded gentry who can’t be bothered with learning how to shoot so there’s got to be something made available for routine homicide that can be sprayed like an aerosol can.
I did recognize the dark, broad face behind the weapon. It belonged to the guard who’d had the inside duty by the door when I arrived at the Inanook Sanitarium: a husky, square-built character. Later I’d seen him again. He’d been making the outside rounds one day as I was wheeled over to Elsie’s Electrical Recreation Room by Tommy Trask (poor Tommy) and I’d heard him called by name: Provost. Considering his security job it had seemed mildly amusing to me in my hazy, half-drugged condition—provost guard; guard Provost—so I remembered it now when I saw his face.
Emerging from the hatch I crouched there a moment, catching my breath. That got me a poke from the gunbarrel, urging me from my knees to my feet. Some men can never get hold of a weapon and somebody to point it at—well, women get the impulse, too, given the opportunity—that they aren’t overcome by an irresistible desire to use it as a cattle prod. It’s been the death of some, but I wasn’t up to trying anything fast and fancy at the moment; and there was a second man watching, similarly armed. Actually, I was happy just to discover, when I stood up, that the equilibrium gyros seemed to be functioning properly even though the main propulsive machinery was way down on power. In other words, I seemed to be steady although weak. I was, of course, in utter agony from the pounding in my head, but we stoical undercover heroes learn to disregard such minor torments.
I was aware of Sally emerging from the hatch behind me, carefully covered by the weapon of the second man. It was the usual gray northwestern day with a moderate breeze. The brisk, damp air was reviving after the stale atmosphere of the hold; but as I stumbled weakly along the broad steel deck under Provost’s urging, I managed to keep forward motion at a feeble minimum, giving myself time to check what I’d been told about our surroundings.
The brown, flooded river was there all right, sweeping past the sheltering little island—islet, rather—at a good clip, loaded with debris and driftwood. If she made it that far, she shouldn’t have much trouble finding something to keep her afloat, as long as she had strength enough to hold onto it in that cold water. On the shoreward side, the pier against which we lay was higher than the barge by several feet. Apparently it had been constructed with even higher water levels in mind. It was L-shaped. We lay against the short outer end while the long stem of the L slanted up to the high granite shore. A gravel road ran down to it. In times past you could have driven out on it—it was plenty wide enough—but I wouldn’t have wanted to try the splintered planks and ancient timbers now with anything much heavier than a bicycle.
The big question in my mind concerned the two boats she’d mentioned. Shuffling along slowly, I spotted them tied up to the rickety, floating small-craft dock beyond the barge. It was reached by the kind of hinged gangway that adjusts itself to the rise and fall of the tide, so apparently we were still in tidal waters.
The boats were as funny-looking as Sally had said: stubby, ugly little vessels. I’d learned enough about this northern lumber country in my photographic incarnation to know that they were designed specifically for capturing floating maverick logs, like the roaming maverick cattle that were the basis of so many trail herds back in the legendary days of the American West. I remembered that while researching the logging article I’d used to make plausible contact with Kitty Davidson, PR girl, I’d been told that the big lumber companies, like the cattle barons of old, frown upon these small independent operations based upon rounding up and selling unclaimed strays. However, the big boys can’t seem to prevent some timber from escaping their endless booms and rafts, they aren’t willing to spend money rounding up every errant log, and the drifting lumber is a serious menace to navigation. Consequently, the prowling independents with their small boats built specially for the purpose claim to be performing a public service, as well as making a living, and the public seems to
agree at least to the extent of refraining from putting them out of business. The local maverick-lumber hunter had, I saw, a considerable gather of logs corralled in the nearby backwater.
As far as the boats were concerned, I was glad to see that one was an aging, motorless hulk, barely afloat. It wasn’t going anywhere. The other had the cover of its big outboard motor removed. Transparent plastic had been taped around the powerhead to protect it while an essential part was being repaired. Okay. If Sally could make it into the water, nobody’d be chasing her under power. All they could do was shoot at her if they felt secure enough in this quiet cove to make that much noise; and a duck on the water is a poor target and a human in the water is worse. At least it was nice to think so.
Provost gave me another poke to hurry me along. It didn’t bother me greatly. I felt no strong resentment. I realized that I was actually in a rather strange mental condition. Remote, I guess is the word. Whether it was caused by the return of my memory or by the bullet bouncing off my skull, I didn’t quite seem to be there. I could chatter brightly about the past, and present, I could make notes about my surroundings in endless detail—maybe too endless detail—but it all seemed to concern somebody else, not me. It was a little like the deliberate withdrawal I’d employed at Inanook when things got rough.
I heard Sally whimper convincingly with pain and fear as her escort, whom I didn’t recognize, also used his gun muzzle for stimulation purposes. Out here in full daylight, she was a pitiful sight indeed, with her frightened, streaked little face and her rust-smeared clothes. I was a fairly pitiful sight myself, I realized as I approached the deckhouse with its reflecting glass: my face, shirt, and jacket were heavily caked with dried blood from the crease in my scalp. The reddish muck from the barge interior improved the effect. I looked as if I’d been exhumed from a damp grave. Great. The worse we looked, the better chance we had of being usefully underestimated.
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