The Silencers
( Matt Helm - 5 )
Donald Hamilton
Donald Hamilton
The Silencers
I
I beat the first real blizzard of the season across the mountains east of Albuquerque, New Mexico. On the high plains beyond, with scattered snowflakes melting on the truck's windshield, I turned south and stopped for lunch in the small town of Carrizozo. The great gray wall of clouds was still chasing me, but here at a lower altitude it could produce nothing but rain.
It was still raining when I had my afternoon coffee and pie in Alamogordo in a joint called the Atomic Cafe. Everything is either nuclear or atomic in Alamogordo; they seem to be very proud of the fact that the first bomb was exploded in their neighborhood. Well, I suppose it's a distinction of sorts, but the bomb I want to see and survive, is the last one.
I asked the man at the cash register what he thought about the underground burst soon to be set off in the Manzanita Mountains, not too far away, now that the Russians had resumed testing. He said it was all right with him. At least he liked it better than an open-air test, with its danger of fall-out if the winds shifted, but he said the folks over in Carlsbad were still worrying about what the shock might do to the great caverns that were their main tourist attraction. He said pretty soon, of course, we wouldn't have these problems. All tests would be conducted in outer space, bothering only the Martians and Venusians. I hadn't heard of that possibility, but then, it's not exactly my field.
"That stuff doesn't bother me," he said. "It's those damn missiles over at White Sands that give me the willies. Did you know that in the early days they'd often go haywire for no reason anybody could figure out and have to be destroyed in the air? They finally realized that local radio transmissions, perfectly legitimate, were taking over control of the guidance systems in some way. Well, suppose the Russkies figured out a way to take over one of the birds and drop it right here in Alamogordo?"
I said, "I thought those things were all rigged so they could be blown up by the range officer pushing a button."
"It doesn't always work, Mister," he said. "The Air Force had to shoot one down only last year when it took off on its own and the destruct package failed to function. It was just luck they happened to have a jet in the air with its guns armed when the damn thing came by, or they'd never have caught it…
It was an interesting conversation, but I didn't have time to continue it. Besides, if I had kept asking questions, he might have thought I was a spy, or that I thought he was. I got back in the truck and kept going.
South of Alamogordo, the highway to El Paso, Texas traverses eighty-four barren miles of sand, mesquite and cactus. It's country that's good for nothing but shooting at, which is just what the government uses it for. It runs from White Sands in the north clear to Fort Bliss in the south, with all kinds of artillery and missile ranges around and between.
All you see from the road are occasional warning signs:
DANGER-PELIGRO
KEEP OUT-NO ENTRE
The Spanish translations remind you that you're nearing the Mexican Border.
The sun was shining but low on the horizon, when I reached El Paso. I stopped, according to instructions, at the Hotel Paso del Norte, a magnificent relic of the old, bold days when hotels were hotels instead of investments and cattlemen were cattlemen instead of oil magnates. The lobby was at least three stories high and boasted a great blue stained-glass dome supported by pink marble columns. The gentleman who preceded me at the desk wore a big white hat and yellow cowboy boots. His silver belt buckle was the size of a TV screen. I was in Texas.
Waiting, I had the doorman run my old pickup into the parking garage across the street. Then I registered as Mr. and Mrs. Matthew L. Helm, of Santa Rosa, California and explained that my wife would join me later, which was a lie. I'd actually had one, once, but she'd divorced me because she didn't like the kind of work I was doing these days. I couldn't really blame her. Sometimes I didn't like it much myself.
In any event, it seemed unlikely that the management would insist upon proof of matrimony. The instructions I'd received in Albuquerque, while driving east across the country after a job in the high Sierras, had been for me to get down to El Paso right away and register as man and wife, using my own name and giving Santa Rosa as my home town, since there wasn't time to construct a fancy cover for me, and since I'd just been through that redwood country and still had California plates on the truck.
"Do you remember a girl called Sarah?" Mac had asked over the long-distance phone.
"Sure," I'd said. "You mean the one who was working for one of the intelligence outfits in Sweden? Sara Lounger? A gent on the other team gunned her down in a park in Stockholm."
"Not that one," Mac said. "Sarah with an h'. One of our own people. You encountered her in San Antonio, Texas a couple of years ago. There was a misunderstanding about identity, and you got the drop on her and searched her for weapons-quite thoroughly." He cleared his throat. "Very thoroughly indeed, she informed me afterwards, with some heat. I should think you'd recall the incident. She certainly does."
I nodded, forgetting that he could hardly see the gesture
– way off in Washington, D.C. "Yes, sir," I said. "I remember now. A tall girl, not bad looking, in a tailored sort of way. She was going under the name of Mary Jane Chatham at the time, I think. Mrs. Roger Chatham. Her code name didn't figure much in the proceedings, which is why I didn't place her at once."
"Do you remember her well enough to recognize her?"
"I think so," I said. "Brown hair, gray eyes, a good figure, if you like them long and lean, and a trained walk. Said she'd been a model once, and I believed her. Nice long legs. Shy, like a lot of tall girls." I laughed. "Sure, I remember Sarah, the big kid who could blush all over."
"You seem to have the right person in mind," Mac said, "but that last information is not part of her record."
"Make a note of it, then," I said. "She had a thing about taking off her clothes; the only female operative I ever met who'd managed to get through training with her modesty intact. Potentially good stuff, I thought, but a little on the amateur side. What's the matter, has she got herself into something she can't handle?"
"Well, you might say that," Mac said. "She seems to have run into an awkward situation in Juarez, Mexico, just across the river from El Paso. We want to extricate her before any more harm is done. You will therefore…" He told me what I would do.
"Yes, sir," I said when he'd finished. "Question, sir."
"Yes, Eric?" he said, using my code name formally, almost reprovingly. He likes to think his presentations are complete and no questions are necessary.
"What if she doesn't want to come?" I asked.
He hesitated, and I could hear the singing of miles of wire running across mountains and plains and mountains again clear to the east coast. When he spoke, his voice sounded reluctant.
"There's no reason to think she'll be difficult. I'm sure, when she sees you, she'll cooperate fully."
"Yes, sir," I said. "But not fully enough, apparently, that I can count on her giving me a recognition signal voluntarily. I have to be able to recognize her, you said. I can't just walk by with a carnation in my buttonhole and wait for her to fall upon me, her rescuer, with delight. It seems odd."
He said coldly, "Don't be too clever, Eric. I have told you all you really need to know."
"I'm sure you're the best judge of that, sir. But you haven't answered my question."
He said, "Very well. I want her back in this country. Get her out."
"How far do I go?" I persisted. He tends to be hard to pin down, when it's a question of giving explicit, unpleasant instructions concerning one of o
ur own people. I wanted the record perfectly clear. "Do you want her badly enough to take her dead or alive?" I asked.
He hesitated again. Then he said, "Let's hope it won't come to that."
"But if it should?"
I heard him draw a long breath, two thousand miles away. "Get her out," he said. "Goodbye, Eric."
II
My room in El Paso had the kind of spontaneity you get in an old hotel where the bathrooms were added, in any available space, long after the building itself was constructed. I tipped the bellboy, locked the door and sat down to open an envelope with my name on it that had been handed to me at the desk downstairs.
It turned out to contain an official-looking report, ostensibly the fourth and last on this particular job, from an outfit calling itself Private Investigations, Inc. It dealt with the daily activities of a subject calling herself Lila Martinez, now definitely established to be the same person as a certain Mary Jane Helm (Mrs. Matthew L. Helm), born Mary Jane Springer, whom I had asked them to locate. The subject was, it seemed, currently residing in Juarez and working in a place called the Club Chihuahua.
The document ended with the notation that this written report would summarize for my benefit information already submitted by phone. There was also a note to the effect that Private Investigations, Inc. appreciated my patronage and my check, just received. They hoped I had found their work satisfactory, and that I would call upon them again if necessary and recommend them to any of my friends who might be in need of similar discreet assistance. They reminded me that their services were not limited to tracing missing persons, but also included industrial investigations and divorce work. Signed, P. LeBaron, Manager.
I frowned at the report, stuck it back in its envelope and dropped it into my suitcase, making no effort to hide it. In addition to giving me some new background material, it was a prop to establish my character here, if anybody came snooping.
I cleaned up a little, went downstairs, and, rather than get the pickup out of hock, paid sixty cents to have a taxi take me to the international bridge. Two cents let me walk across the Rio Grande into Mexico. The river bed was almost dry. The usual skinny dark kids were playing their usual incomprehensible games around the pools below the bridge.
Stepping off the south end of the span, I was in a foreign country. Mexicans will tell you defensively that Juarez isn't Mexico-that no border town is-but it certainly isn't the United States of America, even though Avenida Juarez, the street just south of the bridge, does bear a certain resemblance to Coney Island.
I brushed off a purveyor of dirty pictures and shills for a couple of dirty movie houses. I side-stepped half a dozen taxi drivers ready to take me anywhere, but preferably to the house of a lady named Maria who had lots of girls, it seemed, one of whom, at least, was the girl I'd been looking for since birth. If I didn't like girls, there were interesting alternatives. I was surprised to learn how many.
But the Matthew L. Helm who'd gone to the trouble and expense of hiring a detective agency to find his missing wife would, I figured, be keeping himself pure for the encounter. I stopped at a bar and had a Margarita cocktail, which is an iced, shaken and strained concoction of tequila, Cointreau and lime juice, served in a glass with a salted rim. You still get a cactus taste from the tequila, which some people can't stand, but I've lived in the south-west long enough, off and on, not to mind a little cactus.
I asked the bartender about places to eat. He said La Cucaracha and La Fiesta nightclubs both served excellent food, with good floor shows, too, but it was too early to go there yet. Nine o'clock-eight o'clock Texas time- was about when the first show came on.
"What about the other places?" I asked. "The ones with real entertainment."
He looked at me reproachfully. "I thought you were asking about food, Senor."
I said, "Somebody was telling me about a place called the Club Chihuahua."
"There is such a place," he said. "But you will get no food there. Only liquor and girls. Very bad liquor."
"What about the girls?"
He shrugged. "I will tell you, Mister. My advice, if you want real entertainment-" He glanced around guiltily. "-My advice is, you go to a cat house, if you know what I mean. There, at least, you get real drinks for your money, and you can go to bed with the girls. These other places, they are a big waste of time. They get you all excited, and then what do you do? You still have to find a girl to do it with."
I finally got out of him the fact that the place in which I was interested was up the street from La Fiesta night club, just a block off the street I was on. I walked over that way. With the exception of the nightclub itself, which had a gaudy and impressive front, it was a street of cheap dives, with small knots of shabby, idly talking men blocking the narrow sidewalk here and there. I took a look at the outside of the Club Chihuahua, as dingy as the rest, and got out of there before I succumbed to the temptation of accidentally bumping into a worthy Juarez citizen- hard enough to send him sprawling.
On my way back to the bridge, I stopped to buy my quota of duty-free liquor, one gallon, which I took half in tequila and half in gin. They sell good rum, too, but it's a taste I never acquired. The border whiskey isn't fit to drink. With my armload of bottles, I crossed the river again-it costs one cent going north-and told the man at immigration that I was a U.S. citizen, showed my liquid loot to customs and paid tax on it to the state of Texas, although why Texas should have the right to tax the private liquor of residents of other states has always been a mystery to me.
I came out of the building fairly certain that my activities were a matter of interest to no one-which was what I'd started out to determine in the first place. When I got back to my hotel room, the phone was ringing.
I closed the door, parked my load and went over to pick up the jangling instrument.
"Mr. Helm?" a hearty male voice asked. "This is Pat LeBaron, of Private Investigations, Incorporated. I just wanted to welcome you to our city and make sure you got our last report all right."
"Thank you, Mr. LeBaron," I said. "The report was waiting for me when I arrived."
"You're lucky to have made El Paso today," he said. "It looks as if they're in for some weather up in New Mexico and Colorado. We may even get a taste of it here." He paused. "I saw a dove flying south," he said.
"It will return north soon enough," I said, completing the password I'd been given by Mac. That kind of silly, secret-agent stuff always makes me feel self-conscious, and apparently it affected LeBaron the same way, because he was silent for a moment.
Then he said quickly, "Yes, that's very true, isn't it, Mr. Helm? Spring always comes, if you're around to see it. Is there anything we can do for you while you're in town? I don't want to sound as if I were trying to drum up business, but I thought you might be planning to visit a certain place in Juarez, maybe tonight, and… well, it's not a town you want to wander about alone after dark, if you know what I mean. I feel kind of responsible for bringing you here-"
"How responsible?" I asked.
He laughed. "Well, I'll tell you, we have a set fee for escort work, of course, by the day or hour, but you've been a good client. If you'll just buy me a steak at La Fiesta, I'll go up the street with you afterwards and make sure everything goes okay."
"Well-" I made a show of hesitating.
LeBaron said, quickly and understandingly, "Not that I don't think you're perfectly capable of taking care of yourself, haha, Mr. Helm, but I probably know Juarez a little better than you do. I'll pick you up at eight."
At eight on the dot, he called me on the house phone. I took the elevator down to the lobby. A short, sturdy, dark young man got off a sofa and came up to me. For all the width of his shoulders, he had a sleek, patent-leather gigolo look. He had dead-white skin and brown eyes. I'm a transplanted Scandinavian myself, and I have an instinctive mistrust of brown-eyed people, which I admit is perfectly ridiculous.
"Mr. Helm?" he said, holding out his hand. "I'm Pat LeBaron. I'm re
al pleased to meet you in person, after all the dealings we've had by mail and phone."
I murmured something appropriate, took his hand and gave him the little-finger signal we have, the one that confirms recognition and, at the same time, tells the other guy who's running the show. His eyes narrowed slightly at my immediate assertion of authority, but he gave me the proper response. We stood like that for a moment, taking stock.
No brotherly love flowed between us in that moment. It never does. It's only in the movies that people in the business are partners unto death, linked by iron bonds of friendship and loyalty. In real life, even if your assigned assistant is someone you might like a lot, you damn well don't let yourself. Why bother to get fond of a guy, when you may have to sacrifice him ruthlessly within the hour?
There seems to be a theory among modem business organizations that a man has got to love all his fellow workers in order to cooperate with them. Mac, thank God, has never made this mistake of confusing affection with efficiency. He knows he'd never get a bunch of happy, friendly guys to do the kind of work that we're doing, the way it's got to be done.
He pointed out to me once, in this regard, that the Three Musketeers and their pal D'Artagnan were no doubt a swell bunch of fellows, and that the relationship between them was a beautiful thing, but that when you studied the record you came to the sad conclusion that Louis the thirteenth would have got a lot more for his money, militarily speaking, by hiring four surly swordsmen who wouldn't give each other the time of day.
So I didn't worry when LeBaron and I didn't take to each other on sight. He was a trained man; I was a trained man, and we had a job to do. I could always find some other guy to get drunk with, afterwards.
"The car's out front," he said, releasing my hand. "If you don't mind, we'll walk from the bridge. Things sometimes happen to American cars parked in Juarez at night. It's bad enough leaving it on this side."
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