The Interlopers mh-12

by Donald Hamilton

  I took the dummy from him and tossed it once more and sent him after it. When I glanced toward the stairs again, the girl was gone-but six hours later, when I came into the cocktail lounge right on schedule for phase two, she was sitting at the bar, still in her neat, safe little pale blue romper suit. At close range like this, I noticed the odd thing about her: her hair was very fine and blond, apparently genuine, but her eyes were brown. It was quite a striking effect. You don't meet many brown-eyed blondes who didn't get their hair-color from a bottle.

  When I sat down a couple of stools away, she looked my way and said, "I saw you playing with your dog downstairs. Isn't that a Labrador retriever? He's a beauty. What's his name?"

  19

  I'D ARRANGED TO MEET LIBBY afterwards and take her to dinner. We'd set our date for six, to leave as much time for the contact as the instructions allowed-if nobody'd appeared by six, I had an alternate time and place set for later. As it turned out, my business was concluded shortly after five, but Libby didn't make her entrance until six-twenty. After making sure that I was alone with my martini, she sat down beside me at the bar and asked, "How did you make out with the baby-faced blonde in the chastity-dress?"

  "Well, I think I got what I came for," I said.

  "That's all you'll ever get from that one," Libby said. Then she laughed. "Don't mind me, darling. There's something about prissy little blondes that brings out the feline in me. What routine did she have worked out for slipping you the coin? I didn't stick around to watch the whole show."

  "She asked me to get her some cigarettes from the machine. I offered to pay for them, of course, but she insisted on giving me the change. I palmed the Canadian quarter she gave me and substituted another I had handy, according to instructions. Any more questions, Nosy?"

  She said, a bit defensively, "You wouldn't know anything about Grant's instructions if it wasn't for me! Don't I have the right to ask how they worked out?" When I didn't answer, she sighed. "You really are in a lousy mood, aren't you? I can see it's going to be a wonderful voyage. Well, maybe the scenery will be pretty."

  "Maybe," I said, "but you won't get to see much of it unless the fog lifts."

  "Fog?"

  "When I stepped out on deck for a breath of air a little while back, you could hardly see the water. I hope the captain knows where he's steering this tub. The Canadians put one of theirs on the rocks in a fog not so long ago." I heard a voice in the dining room calling for a Mr. Nystrom, and remembered that was me. I said, "If you want a drink, get it quick and bring it along, before the headwaiter gives our table to somebody else."

  It wasn't much of a dinner. That is, the food and the service were both satisfactory-a pleasant change from the backwoods hash joints I'd been patronizing along the road – but the conversation left a great deal to be desired. We simply didn't seem to have much to say to each other. After we'd eaten, we had a couple of brandies in the bar. Then we took a turn around the deck, but it was cold and damp and windy out there and a little unnerving, the ship charging recklessly, or so it seemed, through fog and darkness. We ducked back inside.

  I said, "To hell with Alaska. I liked working in Hawaii better."

  Libby was patting her windblown hair back into place. She glanced at the watch on her wrist. "It's a little early," she said in an expressionless voice, "but it's been a long day. Give me fifteen minutes. You know the stateroom number by this time, I suppose."

  "I know it."

  "That's the advantage of dealing with a real secret agent. He doesn't have to be told things." She faced me in the passageway. Her voice remained cool and impersonal. "Fifteen minutes. Don't keep me waiting, darling."

  I watched her walk away, a slim, very feminine figure despite the mannish corduroy suit. I checked the time, went down two flights of stairs, squeezed between the cars to the camper, got in and said hello to the pup, and took his collar off, and gave him his dinner. Then I dug the quarter I'd palmed out of the pocket into which I'd dropped it; also my stiff new knife-still so stiff that I had to use the coin to pry it open far enough so my fingers could get a good grip on the blade. It wasn't really what you'd call an instant-defense weapon yet, I reflected wryly. I used the knife to separate the two halves of the coin.

  That is, I tried to use the knife to separate them, but I could find no crack into which to insert the edge. Well, it was a heavy blade. I got a smaller knife with a finer edge from a drawer, and tried again, without success. Then I got a ten-power magnifier and studied the coin carefully. I tossed it on the table and listened to the sound it made.

  I sat there for a while. The pup, who'd finished eating, came up and licked my hand in a worried way, sensing trouble. I scratched his ears, and buckled the collar back around his neck.

  I said, "Hank, old pal, this is getting strictly ridiculous. Three contacts so far, and only one has gone the way it was supposed to-and some guys were waiting for me with guns when I came back from that one. Well, I've got to see a customer about some homicides she ordered and I delivered. Be good."

  I took the stairs to the deck above, and walked forward to where the super-deluxe staterooms were, the ones whose occupants didn't have to go down the hall to use the plumbing. I knocked on the door that had the right number on it. Libby's voice told me to come in. When I entered, she was sitting in front of a mirror, brushing her hair. She didn't turn her head.

  "You're late," she said.

  "Go to hell," I said. "I waited twenty minutes for you this evening; you can wait three minutes for me." I looked around. "The trouble with love on shipboard is those damn berths. You have the choice of falling out of the upper or cracking your head in the lower."

  The cabin wasn't much bigger than the camper I'd just left, but the ceiling was higher and the arrangements were different. The furnishings consisted mainly of the stacked berths and a built-in dresser with a little stool, upon which Libby sat. She was wearing a scrap of ruffled black lace-. a little more than a chemise, a little less than a nightie- just enough to decorate the property without spoiling the view. There was a half-full glass at her elbow. She took a drink from it, and went on brushing her hair, which didn't seem long enough or tangled enough to require so much attention.

  "Well, take off your shoes or something," she said, still without looking at me. "Don't just stand there."

  I said, "You make everything so romantic, sweetheart. There was something said about cash, as an alternative. Under the circumstances, I think the subject is worthy of consideration. What are you offering?"

  The hairbrush stopped moving. Deep in the ship below us, powerful machinery vibrated steadily. After a very long moment of silence Libby said very quietly: "You can't do that to me, darling. Not now."

  "Cut it out," I said. "Let's skip the clichйs. You're not a nymphomaniac. You're not hurting for a man; obviously not for this one. You're not going to go into a frenzy of frustration if nothing happens between us tonight. So let's talk business. I don't know the going rate, but I think three grand a head should be about right. That's nine thousand you owe me. Cash. No checks. You can make the financial arrangements in Anchorage, I'm sure. When we get there. I'll trust you that far."

  She swung around on the stool to look at me. "You bastard," she said softly.

  I shrugged. "That's between mom and pop, and they're not here."

  "What are you trying to prove? Was I rude to you, is that it? Didn't I receive you properly? Did I hurt your damn little feelings? What did you expect, throbbing love and panting passion?" After a moment, she said, "You didn't find me repulsive in Seattle, darling."

  "Maybe that's because you weren't repulsive in Seattle."

  "But I am here?"

  "Let's just say I'm not in the mood, and you don't seem to be, either. Anyway, I don't really like playing dirty games with sex; and the way we've been tonight, it's not worth nine grand of my money. For that I can get a willing woman and have change left over."

  "Your money!"

  "It's mine.
I earned it. And don't you forget it."

  "Get out of here!" she breathed. "Get out of here before I kill you!"

  "Nine grand," I said. "In Anchorage. Cash."

  I got out of there, checked my watch again as a matter of habit, and went upstairs to the snack bar and got two cups of black coffee from the vending machine that dispensed all the requisite beverages: coffee without, coffee with, coffee with double, hot chocolate. I carried my purchases below and managed to avoid the pup's eager greeting long enough to set the cups safely on the dinette table.

  "Sorry, Prince Hannibal," I said. "You're going to have to sleep up forward tonight and leave the camper for us humans."

  I arranged his pad on the floor of the cab and made sure he was curled up on it comfortably before I closed the door. Sixty-odd pounds of Labrador with insomnia, I'd learned, can make a half-ton truck sway on its heavy-duty springs like a small boat on a high sea. I got back into the camper and sat down to wait. It didn't take long. Thirteen and a half minutes from the time I'd left her stateroom, Libby was knocking on the camper door, asking to be let in. I took the.357 Magnum out of my belt and opened the door.

  "What's that for?" she asked, acting shocked by the sight of the weapon.

  "Just a precaution. Come inside and close the door behind you," I said, keeping her covered. I looked at her closely when she'd obeyed. She was wearing a belted trench coat, the kind without which no TV spy, male or female, could stay in business. Her feet were stuck into the same low yellow-brown suede shoes she'd been wearing all day. "Take it off," I said, gesturing toward the coat.

  She hesitated, and shrugged. "Why not?"

  "And pass it over carefully."

  "Yes, Mr. Nystrom, sir."

  Underneath the coat, she was dressed-if you want to take liberties with the word-as I'd seen her last, in a brief cascade of black lace ruffles suspended from two black satin ribbons over the shoulders. I checked the coat and found nothing.

  "Lift it," I said.

  "Yes, sir." She grasped the lacy hem of her garment daintily and raised it a few inches.

  "All the way."

  After a moment, she shrugged and obeyed, revealing nothing-that is, no weapons, in the strictest sense of the term. Letting the black stuff fall once more, she said, "Now what's this all about, darling?"

  I said. "You have a short memory. Your last words upstairs concerned killing me."

  She laughed again. "You weren't supposed to take me seriously!"

  "Killing is something I always take seriously," I said. "If you didn't come to murder me, why are you here?"

  "Silly," she said. "I came to apologize. I acted like a snotty bitch, Matt. I'm sorry. Can we… can we start over and try it again?"

  I grinned and drew a long breath and put the gun away. "All right, sweetheart," I said. "That's what I wanted to hear. Now sit down and drink your coffee before it gets cold and tell me who you really are."

  20

  WE FACED EACH OTHER ACROSS the little formica-covered dinette table. Libby started to raise her paper cup to her lips, checked herself, and looked down at it, frowning. She turned her gaze on me.

  "You knew I'd come?"

  "Two chances out of three; enough to gamble a cup of coffee on." I grinned. "Strictly a grandstand play, of course."

  She didn't smile, but watched me steadily. "How did you figure it, Matt?"

  "Say you were exactly what you'd been claiming to be: Miss Elizabeth Richbitch Meredith, a spoiled, willful society lady who got involved with some nasty commies for kicks, but later saw the light for one reason or another and changed sides to join us good guys. In that case, what would you do if an unappreciative jerk refused to accept your priceless favors as sufficient reward for his services and asked for cold cash instead? Well, there was a chance that you'd just scratch the cad off your social list; but there was also a chance, considering your parting words, that you'd come after him with a gun."

  "That's one chance out of two that I'd come," she said. "What's the third possibility?"

  "That you weren't the thrill-seeking Miss Richbitch at all; that you were a simple working girl with instructions to keep the guy under close-not to say intimate- surveillance for purposes still to be determined. In that case, of course, no personal considerations like wounded pride would apply. You'd realize at once that you'd made a strategic error in letting the bastard walk out on you, regardless of insults, and that the only way you could repair your mistake was to grit your teeth, go straight to the crummy slob, and apologize as humbly and seductively as possible. Which was exactly what you did."

  There was a little silence, broken only by the steady rumble of the ship's powerplant-louder down here on the car deck-echoed by minor rattles and vibrations in the camper. At last Libby laughed shortly.

  "All right," she said. "All right. It's nice to deal with a bright man, I guess, even if it's a little hard on the ego. But if I'm not Miss Richbitch Meredith, darling, who am I?" I said, "That's my question; I asked it first."

  She hesitated and looked down at her coffee cup, frowning again. She spoke without looking up. "Does King's Mountain mean anything to you, darling?"

  I let my breath go out in kind of a sigh. I said, "Well, it's a place where people got killed, like Bull Run."

  She looked up and smiled. "So now you know." But of course I didn't. What had just passed between us was the current identification signal-a Revolutionary War battlefield answered by a Civil War battlefield- applicable to all undercover agencies of the U.S. government. To an old cloak-and-dagger type like me, it didn't mean very much. I've been around too long to trust a password known to that many people, some of whom are bound to let it slip, intentionally or accidentally.

  Still, it was an indication of something I'd already considered as a possibility. I said, "Assuming that you came by that I.D. routine legitimately, how does it happen that a bright girl like you is working for a stupid gent like Smith?"

  "What makes you think I'm working for Mr. Smith?"

  I shrugged. "Well, you're not one of ours or you'd have used a different call sign; besides, my chief has assured me we have nobody else on this job. And I hope to God there are no other U.S. spook shops mixed up in this operation. Two are enough, or one too many."

  She laughed. "Assuming I am working for the man you call Smith, and have been right along, what makes you think he's stupid, Matt? Don't tell me a smart agent like you was fooled by his pompous act and the boyscouts he employs as a cover!"

  "Go on," I said.

  "You ought to know that in this business the cleverest thing you can do is act very dumb and make it stick. Mr. Smith, as you call him, puts on a deliberate show of running something closely related to the YMCA, full of bright, earnest, high-minded young people. However, the real work is done by nasty, immoral characters like me, reporting through totally different channels. That way, nobody worries much about Mr. Smith and his apparently ineffectual activities, which is just the way he likes it. Okay?"

  "It seems complicated, but okay. Do the boyscouts know about you?"

  "As far as they're concerned, I'm a genuine double agent, discovered, recruited, and briefed by them. They're very proud of me; I'm their prize exhibit. The fact that I was planted on the Communists in the first place by the very man who gives them their orders would disillusion them terribly if they found it out."

  "Sure."

  She went on: "Of course, if you ask Mr. Smith, he'll say that he never heard of me except as an ex-commie agent who was persuaded to change her mind, and that what I've just told you about his setup is a figment of my imagination."

  "Naturally," I said.

  She laughed. "But that really makes no difference to our relationship, does it, Matt? Because you have no intention of trusting me, anyway, no matter how many signs or countersigns I produce, or how many important people vouch for me-or don't vouch for me."

  "No intention whatever," I said. "I'm a suspicious bastard, particularly when it comes to lovely la
dies who invade my quarters in black lace lingerie."

  She glanced down at her brief garment. "It is pretty tarty, isn't it?" she murmured. "I ought to be ashamed of myself, oughtn't I?"

  "You most certainly ought," I said. "But I find it all very sad. I don't suppose you really have nine grand to give me. And now that it's been more or less established that we're professional colleagues, our relationship will have to be strictly business, won't it? I mean, except when people are looking, of course."

  She hesitated, then spoke without expression. "As a matter of professional technique, Mr. Helm, I have always felt that when I'm assigned to play a role-like pretending to be madly in love with a man-I can do a much more convincing job if I play it all the way, whether people are looking or not."

  I regarded her across the table. She had, I noticed, very nice shoulders, pleasantly white against the black ribbons and ruffles of her scanty, sex-doll garment. Her face was very nice, too. In fact, she was damn near beautiful, or perhaps it was the intimate circumstances that made her seem so.

  I said, also poker-faced: "We certainly wouldn't want to handicap you in carrying out your assignment, Miss Meredith." I looked at her for a moment longer, and decided we'd been subtle and clever enough for one night. I said, "Look, doll, you don't have to, you know."

  "What do you mean?"

  "I mean we had a good time in Seattle and I'd be happy to repeat it, but if you're just under orders to sleep with me for reasons of strategy or something, hell, I'll move up front with the pup. In the morning, I'll give you a notarized certificate of copulation you can show your boss if he asks. Say the word."

  Something changed in her eyes. She said, "You're really a pretty good guy, aren't you?"