The Devastators
Page 19
I held it for her, as she stepped out of the tub. She wrapped it around her, and used another, smaller towel to dry her dripping hair.
“They turned you loose?” I said.
“She turned me loose,” Winnie said, rubbing hard. “Do you make a habit of shooting holes in your girl friends? If so, remember I’m no friend of yours. I’m just your wife, and it’s strictly a temporary arrangement, at that.”
I cleared my throat and said, “What about Vadya?”
“She’ll live. She sent you a message.”
“Give.”
“She says she bears no hard feelings for the interrogation you put her through, since you owed her something for a similar scene in the past. She says you once let a girl go whom you should probably have killed, and now she’s doing the same. She says that makes the two of you even except for a bullet in the guts. She says she’ll be looking forward to paying off that score, some day.”
Well, that sounded like Vadya. How she’d got out of the place before it blew, in her condition, and made her way back south, I’d probably never know. How, after being in the place for hours, she’d escaped getting infected with McRow’s plague, nobody’d ever know. She was a durable girl. I drew a long breath. Suddenly I felt much better, even though I was going to have to change part of my report to read failure instead of success. After all, I’d been more or less instructed to kill her.
Winnie was watching me with a wise look on her small face. “You’re not in love with the bitch, I hope,” she said.
“Love, schmove,” I said. “Vadya and I are just good… enemies. I’d miss her if anything really happened to her.”
Winnie grinned. “Well, with enemies like you’ve got, you don’t need friends. Now dry my back, please, and then you can order me a drink and bring me up to date. I feel like Rip Van Winkle… Damn, there’s the phone. Get it, will you, Matt?”
I got it and heard Mac’s voice on the line. “Eric?”
“Here.”
“I expected a call from you earlier. I was informed that you’d left Glasgow this morning. Did you have a pleasant drive?”
“Yes, sir.”
“You will be glad to know that the northern situation seems to be under full control. Did you, er, happen to pick up anything you didn’t give the British?”
“No, sir,” I said. “I had my hands on it, but it sank.”
“Ah, well, perhaps it is just as well. They seem to have solved their problem without it, and we have enough fantastic weapons to worry about. Well, I will be looking forward to receiving your full report. In the meantime, the British authorities inform me that you are not a very nice man, Eric. Not really the kind of brave and forthright chap we like to work with, don’t you know? Under the circumstances, I think it might be best if you were to continue your honeymoon elsewhere. I am told the Riviera is very pleasant at this time of year…”
Winnie, still wrapped in the big towel, was trying to comb the snarls out of her hair when I came back into the bathroom. I looked at her for a moment. She was an attractive girl, but the nicest thing about her, I reflected, was the fact that she was in the business from choice. She knew the score; she was supposed to be able to take care of herself. I didn’t have to feel responsible for her; in fact, she’d hate me if I did.
She glanced at me over her shoulder. “Orders?”
I nodded. “It’s rough, baby. A real hardship case. We’ve got to head for the Riviera and check into the best hotel in St. Tropez.”
She turned slowly. A funny, almost shy look had come to her face. “Still as… as bridegroom and bride?” she asked.
“Sure,” I said. “We haven’t got much mileage out of this honeymoon cover so far, and you know him, he wouldn’t waste it.” I grinned at her. “Hi, Bridie,” I said.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
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.
ALSO AVAILABLE FROM TITAN BOOKS
The Matt Helm Series
BY DONALD HAMILTON
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 Betrayers (June 2014)
The Menacers (August 2014)
The Interlopers (October 2014)
The Poisoners (December 2014)
The Intriguers (February 2015)
The Intimidators (April 2015)
The Terminators (June 2015)
TITANBOOKS.COM
PRAISE FOR DONALD HAMILTON
“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
TITANBOOKS.COM
Helen MacInnes
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
Ride a Pale Horse
The Hidden Target
TITANBOOKS.COM
PRAISE FOR HELEN MACINNES
“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
TITANBOOKS.COM
The Harry Houdini Mysteries
BY DANIEL STASHOWER
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—solv
ing 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…
TITANBOOKS.COM
PRAISE FOR DANIEL STASHOWER
“A romp that cleverly combines history and legend, taking a few liberties with each. Mr. Stashower has done his homework… This is charming… it might have amused Conan Doyle.” The New York Times
“In his first mystery, Stashower paired Harry Houdini and Sherlock Holmes to marvelous effect.” Chicago Tribune
“Stashower’s clever adaptation of the Conan Doyle conventions—Holmes’s uncanny powers of observation and of disguise, the scenes and customs of Victorian life—makes it fun to read. Descriptions and explanations of some of Houdini’s astonishing magic routines add an extra dimension to this pleasant adventure.” Publishers Weekly
TITANBOOKS.COM
Lady, Go Die!
BY MICKEY SPILLANE & MAX ALLAN COLLINS
THE LOST MIKE HAMMER NOVEL
Hammer and Velda go on vacation to a small beach town on Long Island after wrapping up the Williams case (I, the Jury). Walking romantically along the boardwalk, they witness a brutal beating at the hands of some vicious local cops—Hammer wades in to defend the victim.
When a woman turns up naked—and dead—astride the statue of a horse in the small-town city park, how she wound up this unlikely Lady Godiva is just one of the mysteries Hammer feels compelled to solve…
TITANBOOKS.COM
Complex 90
BY MICKEY SPILLANE & MAX ALLAN COLLINS
THE MIKE HAMMER COLD WAR THRILLER
Hammer accompanies a conservative politician to Moscow on a fact-finding mission. While there, he is arrested by the KGB on a bogus charge, and imprisoned; but he quickly escapes, creating an international incident by getting into a firefight with Russian agents.
On his stateside return, the government is none too happy with Mr. Hammer. Russia is insisting upon his return to stand charges, and various government agencies are following him. A question dogs our hero: why him? Why does Russia want him back, and why (as evidence increasingly indicates) was he singled out to accompany the senator to Russia in the first place?
TITANBOOKS.COM
King of the Weeds
BY MICKEY SPILLANE & MAX ALLAN COLLINS
THE PENULTIMATE MIKE HAMMER NOVEL
As his old friend Captain Pat Chambers of Homicide approaches retirement, Hammer finds himself up against a clever serial killer targeting only cops.
A killer Chambers had put away many years ago is suddenly freed on new, apparently indisputable evidence, and Hammer wonders if, somehow, this seemingly placid, very odd old man might be engineering cop killings that all seem to be either accidental or by natural causes.
At the same time Hammer and Velda are dealing with the fallout—some of it mob, some of it federal government—over the $89 billion cache the detective is (rightly) suspected of finding not long ago…
TITANBOOKS.COM