The Interlopers mh-12

by Donald Hamilton

I grimaced. "Go to hell. I just like my victims tender and willing, that's all."

  "I know I don't have to," she said quietly. "And I don't have any such orders, Matt." She hesitated and looked down and, so help me, actually blushed a little. Her voice was almost inaudible when she spoke again: "I'm acting strictly.. – strictly on my own initiative."

  "Well, in that case…" For some reason, I found it necessary to stop and clear my throat. "In that case, suppose you go stand over by the door for a moment, while I transform this eating-booth into a more useful and comfortable piece of furniture…"

  21

  I AWOKE SUDDENLY WITH THE uneasy knowledge that. there was something I was supposed to be doing instead of lying in a warm bed with an attractive woman in my arms. After a moment, I remembered what it was. I glanced at my watch, holding it up into the shaft of illumination cast by one of the lights of the ship's hold shining through a crack between the window curtains of the camper. I saw with relief that the time was barely midnight. Love or no love, sex or no sex, the mental alarm clock was still on the job.

  "Where are you going?" Libby asked sleepily as I got out of bed.

  "Sorry, I just remembered that I've got a date with a blonde," I said.

  "Well, this is a hell of a time to-!" She stopped, and laughed at her own quick, jealous indignation. She said, "Oh, that blonde. But you told me your meeting in the cocktail lounge went off according to plan."

  "I said I thought I got what I went for. I didn't. The girl slipped me a real, honest-to-God Canadian quarter instead of the trick coin she was supposed to pass. Probably because you spooked her by snooping around."

  Libby sighed in the darkness behind me. "I knew it was all going to turn out to be my fault, somehow."

  I grinned, pulling on my pants. "Well, she was apparently spooked by something, since she didn't complete the transfer. So now I've got to try the alternate drop. And this time, stay out of it. Stay put. I'll tell you all about it when I get back."

  The steady vibration of the ship's machinery seemed more noticeable outside the camper. The poorly illuminated deck was a jungle of tightly packed vehicles. I saw people stirring around the cars up forward near one of the big landing doors. They were presumably getting ready to disembark at our next port of call, a small town called Petersburg. We should have docked there around nine, but we'd started late from Prince Rupert and been slowed down still further by the fog: the official ETA was now one A.M.

  The Communist agent who'd made up Grant Nystrom's itinerary had apparently been aware that the ferry often ran hours behind schedule, because he'd set no fixed time for the contact. Instead, I was to present myself in the snack bar forty-five minutes before the predicted moment of arrival in Petersburg, as chalked on the purser's blackboard, which I'd checked on my way to Libby's stateroom earlier in the evening.

  It was exactly twelve-fifteen when I entered the snack bar, a rather long, narrow, well-lighted room with a newsstand at one end and a hamburger kitchen at the other, both closed for the night. In between was a battery of vending machines, one of which I'd already patronized for coffee, and half a dozen good-sized tables. One table was occupied by a bunch of sleepy-looking, aggressively ragged, grubby, long-haired kids, male and female; the rest were empty.

  I stopped by the beverage dispenser, fished out some change, and, deciding that I'd drunk enough coffee, punched the hot-chocolate button. The machine gave birth to a paper cup which it proceeded to fill.

  "Hit it again for me, please," said a feminine voice behind me. "Here's the money… Oh, it's the man with the nice doggie!"

  She was just as cute and brown-eyed and blond as she had been earlier, and she was still in the short blue linen dress with the trickily pleated modesty-insurance between the legs, but the basic pants-structure of the garment was more obvious now that it had got a bit rumpled from some hours of being slept in, I judged, on a car seat or in one of the ship's chairs. I took the quarter the girl held out, palmed it, and stuck one of my own into the vending machine.

  "Thanks," said my contact when I handed her the cup. She glanced at the small watch on her wrist. "I'm supposed to get off at Petersburg, but I guess I've got time to drink this.. – No, let's sit over here, away from the hippies." She gave the long-haired contingent a disapproving look designed, I figured, to go with her rather prissy appearance. She went on, still in character: "I just don't see how people can bear to show themselves in public like that, all hairy and dirty and disgusting!"

  "They're rebelling," I said.

  "That doesn't really prevent them from getting a bath and a haircut occasionally, does it?"

  "Of course it does," I said. "You just don't understand what they're rebelling against. Pay no attention to the guff they spout. They're not really fighting society, or the establishment, or war, or the draft. Not primarily. Their big fight is with all the television commercials commanding them to be clean and smell sweet and have soft shiny hair and bright white teeth and no sweat under the armpits. They're showing the world that they'll sweat if they damn well want to, and that no damn TV announcer is going to tell them what to do."

  She laughed. "Well, that's a new slant. I hadn't thought of it exactly that way."

  "I hadn't either, until a minute ago," I said, grinning.

  "What's your name?" she asked. "I can't keep calling you The-Man-With-The-Dog."

  "Nystrom," I said. "Grant Nystrom."

  "I'm Ellen Bush," she said, and held out her hand. "It really is Bush. Honest. There is such a name, even though people don't seem to want to believe it. Hi, Grant…

  I didn't pay much attention to what her mouth was saying, because her small fingers were talking a different language. For the second time that night I was having an identification routine thrown at me; this time the old fraternity grip of my own-well, Mac's-peculiar organization. It was a sign that meant somewhat more to me than the one I'd got from Libby, because it's known to relatively few people, all carefully selected and highly trained.

  Perversely, it made me want to burst out laughing. Signs and countersigns are corny enough at any time; this one made me wonder just how many Communists were actually involved in the nebulous Red spy ring with which I was supposed to be dealing. It had apparently been infiltrated by just about everybody, like some of those legendary subversive groups in which the FBI men finally outnumbered the genuine Marxists.

  I made the proper response, searching the pretty little face of Ellen Blish, or whatever her true name might be, for signs of the toughness she'd have to have to be one of ours. But it doesn't always show. I remembered another small, rather delicate-looking blonde of ours-the more common blue-eyed variety-who'd come out of the jungles of southeast Asia and died in my arms beside a back road in southern France…

  But it was no time to be thinking of blondes I'd loved and lost, or brunettes or redheads either. "Hi, Ellen," I said, retrieving my hand.

  "You're Eric," she said. Her rather high-pitched, sweet-young-thing voice had changed to something lower and more businesslike. "You made a telephone call two days ago to a certain number in Washington," she went on and gave the number. "That's in case you don't have any more faith in fancy recognition signals than I do."

  "If I'm Eric," I asked, "who are you?"

  "Just Ellen," she said.

  "And what do you have for me, Justellen?"

  "Information. A warning. It looks as if you may be met at the dock."

  "Any particular dock?"

  "We haven't been able to determine that. It could happen at Haines, where you get off, or at Juneau, Sitka, or maybe right here in Petersburg. Do you know a brown-faced, black-haired gent, stocky, about two hundred pounds."

  "I know him. His name's Pete. What about him?"

  "He was seen making contact with Holz. We don't know what was said, but they left Anchorage by plane, heading south, this way. I was told to alert you."

  I grinned. "We're always alert, we never-sleeping guardians of democracy. You know that
."

  "Never-sleeping, hell," said Ellen Blish crudely. "Just what do you claim to have been doing this evening? Well, I guess it wasn't exactly sleeping, at that."

  "You are a disgusting little snoop," I said severely. "And why is it that a man's going to bed with one girl-it was strictly in the line of duty, of course-invariably gets all other females in the neighborhood all worked up, even if they have no designs on the guy themselves? Or have you?" When she didn't speak, I went on: "Incidentally, you can tell our friend in Washington that I'm kind of allergic to creeping security. He told me quite definitely that if we had any agents up this way who might possibly be of use to me, I would certainly have been informed at the start. What was the point of his lying about it when we were going to meet anyway? That's the kind of compulsive secrecy that makes me want to lose my lunch."

  Ellen said, "It wasn't known when you talked with him that we were going to meet, or that I'd be in a position to be useful to you. I've been working way inland on a problem that seemed to have very little connection with your job, but at the last moment the people I was working with-the group I'd infiltrated, to use the jargon-picked me to make this delivery on the coast. I couldn't very well refuse. It was an honor, I was told, a mark of trust and confidence. Well, maybe. Anyway, I had to scramble like hell to catch this ferry. Do I hear apologies?"

  "Sure," I said, "if you want to hear them. And I do have a question. If there's somebody close enough to Holz to watch him, why doesn't the guy just pull the trigger and get the job done?"

  "Because that's not his job. He's a watcher, not a trigger-puller; he's not up to tackling the Woodman. You're the specialist in triggers, my friend."

  I nodded and studied her for a moment, knowing that we were far enough north now that there was nothing much inland of us but wilderness, clear across the North American continent. It didn't seem like the place for a fragile little blonde in a pale blue linen playsuit.

  "You'd better watch yourself when you go back to whatever it is you're doing," I said. "I figure I'm under suspicion-if nothing else, the fact that Holz is heading this way proves that. If your Communist associates suddenly and unexpectedly picked you to make contact with me, that could mean their top brass has its eye on you, too, and brought us together for some tricky reasons of their own."

  She moved her shoulders briefly. "it's occurred to me, but there isn't much I can do about it."

  "Why didn't you identify yourself when we met in the bar?"

  "Your brunette sexpot was sneaking around. I didn't want her to get any ideas… " Ellen steadied her cup as a series of mild jolts went through the ship; then she drank the last of her chocolate and stood up. "I guess that means we're docking. I'd better get down to the car deck. Good luck, Eric."

  "The same," I said.

  She was laughing gaily as she left the table, as if we'd just shared a final joke. "Tell that pretty black doggie goodnight for me," she called in a high sweet voice and was gone.

  I waited awhile; then I went out on deck. Visibility was poor, so I can't say much about the town of Petersburg, only about the dock, and it looked pretty much like any ferry slip in a fog at night. I stood on deck watching the cars drive ashore without knowing which one was being driven by the girl who'd called herself Blish. Checking up on my Communist contact, even to the extent of identifying her transportation, would have been contrary to my orders. Well, Grant Nystrom's orders.

  Then I watched the cars come on board. It should have been an equally profitless occupation since, from my observation post high above the loading ramp, I couldn't see anything of the drivers. Luck was in my favor, however, if it was luck. Presently a white station wagon nosed its way down to the hole in the ship's side and out of sight; an elderly Plymouth built back in the days when that particular company was conducting some unique experiments with tortured sheet metal. I knew the car. I'd sat in it once with a gun at my head, far to the south in a town on the banks of the Columbia River.

  I drew a long breath and made my way below. I went straight to my truck, resisting the temptation to do a little scouting among the newly loaded cars up forward. We were pulling away from the dock, and barring accidents, murders, or helicopters, whoever had driven the Plymouth aboard would still be on the ship in the morning.

  I checked the camper door. My faithful telltales indicated that my guest had either been very clever or had stayed put as I'd told her to. There was no indication that she'd been away from the truck. I stepped inside and turned on the light. Libby sat up in bed abruptly, as if startled out of a sound sleep. Her short, dark hair was tousled and she was wearing a wristwatch and nothing else. She ran her fingers through the hair and glanced at the watch.

  "My God, I must have fallen asleep again," she said, yawning. "What took you so long?"

  "Blondie said she was leaving the ship here. I wanted to make sure she did."

  "Did she give you the right coin this time?"

  "I hope so. I haven't had a chance to check it out."

  "Are you going to let me see it?" she asked, swinging her legs out of bed.

  "Sure," I said. "We're colleagues, aren't we; fellow soldiers in the secret war against international evil?"

  Libby laughed. "You don't sound as if you trust me very much, darling."

  I grinned and picked up a handful of lacy black stuff that had somehow found its way to the floor and tossed it at her.

  "You'd better put this on, for what it's worth," I said, "so I can keep my mind on numismatics."

  Actually, sexy as she looked sitting there naked, she wasn't distracting me at all. I opened the phony quarter and found the tinfoil disk that was supposed to be there, but my mind wasn't on coins, either, no matter what interesting material they might contain. I was thinking very hard about an Indian called Pete and a car I knew that he knew damn well I knew. Say he'd come this far up the coast on an earlier ferry, which was quite possible. Say he'd left his station wagon in Petersburg, flown north to Anchorage, and returned in time to meet my ship with his rather distinctive old vehicle, the question was why.

  It looked as if I was being presented with something clever in the way of decoys, meant to attract my attention to one man while I was being stalked by another.

  22

  SITKA LOOKED LIKE A CITY STILL under construction, which seemed odd considering that it was supposed to be one of the oldest communities on the coast, dating from the days when this far northwestern territory was claimed and governed by Russians. I decided that the unfinished effect was mostly due to the fact that the city fathers had apparently just discovered sidewalks and, mad about their new and unique invention, were laying concrete all over town.

  It was raining steadily but not very energetically as the taxi carried me toward a display of totem poles that, I'd been told, was one of the main attractions of the place. This was not, however, my primary reason for going there. I was involved in another of the complicated contact routines some deskbound Communist genius had devised for the benefit of a courier named Nystrom.

  After the ship had docked and the first rush of shoregoing passengers had subsided, I'd taken Hank for a walk so that he wouldn't forget what dry land looked like-not that any part of this drizzling region could really be called dry. At least the pup's welfare was the ostensible object of the expedition. Actually, I figured, I was displaying myself on shore with dog and whistle so somebody could get a good look at me for purposes of later recognition.

  Hank had been deliriously happy at encountering grass and rocks and trees again after twenty-four hours of doing his stuff on greasy metal. I'd let him enjoy himself for ten minutes by the clock, after which I'd taken him back on board and stuck him into the camper to wake up Libby, figuring it was about time the girl got out of bed.

  When I strolled off the landing ramp a second time, dogless, a taxi drove up right on schedule. Transporting me through the muddy little town, the cabby gave me a lengthy tourist spiel, telling me all about a pre-Communist Russian gent name
d Baranov who'd once been uncrowned king of the area; about a fine old Russian church that had burned down; and about the great Good Friday earthquake of a few years back that actually hadn't affected Sitka much although it had played hell elsewhere along this coast.

  His chatter made me uneasy at first, but I came to the conclusion that it held no coded messages to which I was supposed to respond in kind. The guy was just talking because he was nervous, and because he always talked this way to tourists off the boat and wanted our relationship to look perfectly normal.

  He let me out by a grove of totem poles standing in front of a neat, park-service-type building, inside which, I was sure, I could learn all about them if I had the time and the desire. The poles themselves were quite impressive: tall, slender timbers, carved and painted, reaching up into the gray sky. The mask-like wooden faces were much less garish than I'd been led to expect by photographs I'd seen, and the muted colors went well with the misty day.

  But I hadn't come here to study primitive art, and I went on into the building and made a pretense of taking in the exhibits before wandering into the little movie theater off the lobby. It was dark inside. On the screen, a copper-faced gent was showing the steps involved in totem-pole construction. He reminded me a little of Pete, although Pete was probably not a member of the totem-carving Tlingit tribe.

  I found an aisle seat near the rear, as instructed, and settled down to watch. Some time passed, which I spent wondering just what the real Pete was up to and what Hans Holz had in mind for me. Well, there wasn't much doubt about his basic intention, but I could speculate on whether he'd had himself smuggled aboard the ship to do the job or was waiting for me further up the line.

  I became aware that someone had entered the theater by the door I had used, letting in a moment of daylight. A small, slight man paused at my row, murmured an excuse, and made his way past me with some difficulty, since theater seats are seldom spaced adequately for legs as long as mine. After the man had settled down somewhere off to my right, I felt under the seat-arm he'd used to steady himself briefly. I found a small container about the size and shape of a bottle cap stuck there with some kind of tough rubbery contact adhesive.