The Interlopers mh-12

by Donald Hamilton

I glanced at my watch. "At nine this evening you're supposed to take some important material off my hands at a place called Beaver Creek. You'll never make it if you drive clear back to Haines, particularly if you get tangled up with doctors and cops."

  "I know. That's why we stopped, sir. To ask you to hold things up until tomorrow morning. There's nobody to cover you now and see who slips you the stuff, and we need that lead to the commie cell operating up here. You'd better pass up the evening rendezvous altogether, on one excuse or another, and use the alternate contact at breakfast instead."

  "And where do I make contact with you afterward?"

  "We'll set up an emergency drop down the road. Stop for coffee at The Antlers Lodge, east of Tok, Alaska. That's where you check back in through U.S. customs and immigration. The road divides, one branch going to Fairbanks and one to Anchorage. Turn left toward Anchorage like you're supposed to anyway. It's fifteen or twenty miles to the lodge. Try to make it as soon after nine as you can. We'll be waiting. Run the dog as usual before you go into the cafe. I'm told there's good cover east of the main building. Give us fifteen minutes and turn him loose again for a bit before you take off. After that, we'll handle the Anchorage part as originally planned, and tie it all up with pink ribbons. Okay?" The horn of the Ford blared impatiently. Davis glanced that way and called, "I'm coming, Ronnie."

  I said, "Okay, but there's one thing you'd better keep in mind."

  "What's that, sir?"

  "Pete wouldn't have burned down just any two Good Samaritans who wandered down there. Since he shot your boys, that means he knew who they were. Maybe, not realizing their warm and friendly intentions, he thought they'd come to finish him off. Or maybe he was just doing the best he could to strike a final blow at me. But the important thing is that he knew them; and that therefore the two of you could be known, too. So watch your steps, every damn one of them. Now you'd better go before your friend blows a gasket."

  I watched them drive away; then I got back into the truck and headed toward Haines Junction, where the ferry cutoff from Haines joins the Alaska Highway. As I drove, I tried to dream up a plausible way of killing a few hours so I'd be late for tonight's contact without being obvious about it. I needn't have bothered. The excuse I needed was ready and waiting for me.

  A good fifteen miles before the junction, I came upon a muddy Cadillac convertible stopped in the road. It was kind of slumped toward the left rear, like a bogged-down horse, and that wheel-not only the wheel and tire, but the brake drum and part of the axle-lay in the road nearby.

  As I approached, a slender figure in yellow-brown corduroy jumped out of the crippled car and waved me to a halt.

  26

  THE TIMING WORKED OUT AS well as if I'd planned it that way. It took a couple of hours to get Libby's car towed into the town ahead: a handful of buildings bunched around the bleak and lonely highway junction. Then we had to arrange to have replacement parts sent out from Anchorage. By the time all the necessary phone calls had been made, it was plenty late enough in the afternoon that I could start driving again without any fear of arriving at my destination on time.

  We reached Beaver Creek well after dark. The Canadian officials checked us out of their country, leaving us in a kind of international limbo, since we wouldn't be officially admitted to Alaska until the corresponding U.S. authorities had looked us over in Tok, over a hundred miles ahead.

  The border community we'd just entered was no bigger than Haines Junction, if as big: just a few businesses scattered along the road to keep the customs shack from getting lonely during the long winter nights. We had no trouble at all in finding the motel, since it seemed to be the only one around. Like many of them up there, it looked as if it had been concocted by a house-trailer manufacturer and trucked here in sections, and maybe it had. In other words, it was a long narrow, railroad-car kind of building, of typical mobile-home construction, covered with ribbed, white-painted metal.

  The room to which we were shown had two beds, a heater, a chair, and a tiny dresser, all crowded into a space barely adequate for a clothes closet. However, it was clean and warm and we were happy to have it. It had been a rough day, and we hadn't really slept much the night before. When the proprietor had left us, Libby tossed her trench coat on the chair and started to unbutton her jacket. I went to the door.

  "Where are you going?" she asked.

  "I've got to feed the pup, give him some air, and lock up the truck. Which bag do you want?"

  "The same little one… Oh, hell, if it's any trouble, never mind. I can sleep in my undies, and I hope to God you're not feeling masculine and virile, because I'm not feeling a bit feminine and seductive. God, what a drive! If you insist on eating dinner or something, be quiet when you come in, because I'll be asleep."

  It was almost like being married again. I grinned and went out, stirred up a bowl of food for the pup and, while he was eating, took her suitcase and mine and shoved them inside the motel-room door. When he was through, I turned Hank loose briefly, then locked him up and walked slowly toward the part of the building that served as a cafй. There were cars parked in front of the units of the long motel, and suddenly I found my glance drawn to a mud-covered, beat-up-looking little two-door job that seemed vaguely familiar.

  At least, the sloping rear deck reminded me of a car I'd seen before and so did the fancy wheel-covers simulating wire wheels, although one of these was now missing and the rest were so dirty that no hint of chrome was visible any more than the original color of the car could be determined in the dark, through the coating of mud. There was a star-shaped crack in the windshield and a broken headlight; the kind of mementos one tends to pick up during, say, a fast thousand-mile dash along a wilderness road full of loose stone and gravel.

  I stood there only a moment; then I moved on into the cafй and ordered a hamburger, and a beer since they served nothing stronger. The damn little fool, I thought. I told her to go home; what the hell does she think she's doing up here?

  But that was a silly question. Obviously, Pat Bellman had trailed me clear to Alaska to take revenge for the friends I had killed; or she still had her eye on the dog collar that, properly filled, was worth fifty grand to a Chinese gent called Soo.

  27

  I WAS AWAKENED BY SOMETHING wet and cold applied to my face. I sat up in bed, wondering how the hell the pup had got into the motel room. Then I remembered that I'd brought him in last night. It had been one of the times when there were obviously a million precautions that should have been taken, but that had been the only one I could think of.

  As I sat there, yawning in the half-darkness, Hank put his forepaws on the bed and tried to give me another slobbery lick. I pushed him away halfheartedly.

  "Down!" I whispered, glancing toward the other bed where Libby was sleeping soundly. "I get the message: you want out. Just hold your goddamn little black horses."

  I glanced at my watch and found that it was later than it felt: six thirty-five to be exact. My alarm clock was set for seven-I reached over to switch it off-and I had an appointment outside the cafe at seven-fifteen sharp.

  I got up and went into the bathroom. Threats to the contrary notwithstanding, Libby hadn't slept in her undies: she'd washed them and hung them on the shower rod to dry. It was another homelike, wifely touch. Fighting the early-morning battle of the nylons-well, just brassiere and panties in this case-reminded me again, nostalgically, of the comfortable state of matrimony from which I had resigned, or been fired, a long time ago.

  When I got outside, there was enough light to see by, but yesterday's fine weather was gone and rain was falling: a slow misty drizzle. Hank thought it was great. He was a water dog; he liked rain. He took off happily through the puddles to transact his morning business while I zipped up Grant Nystrom's ski jacket against the cold and pulled down Grant Nystrom's Stetson to shield my face from the dripping moisture. Waiting, I checked the truck, and nobody'd been at it. I checked the parked cars, and the hard-driven little Must
ang with the stone-cracked windshield was missing from its slot.

  "Excuse me," said a male voice in my ear, "excuse me, but isn't that a Labrador retriever? He's a beauty. What's his name?"

  I turned to look at a plump man in his early thirties. His rather citified hat and plastic raincoat proclaimed him a tourist, as did the rubbers he was wearing over his city shoes. Behind him stood a similarly plump woman almost totally wrapped in waterproof, semi-transparent plastic, except for her lower legs, which displayed very tight green pants ending just below the calves. Her bare ankles looked unbearably cold, and her low shoes were too flimsy to serve adequately as anything but bedroom slippers, which was exactly what they looked like.

  I spoke to the man. "Yes, he's a Lab," I said. "His name is Hank."

  "No, I mean his full name. He's pedigreed, isn't he?"

  I said, "His registered name is Avon's Prince Hannibal of Holgate."

  "Thanks," said the man and turned to the woman, "See, I told you that was a pedigreed Labrador, dear."

  She said, "I'm getting wet. Let's grab a cup of coffee and get going before this whole miserable country melts and runs away. Whose bright idea was it, coming to Alaska, anyway?"

  They went into the cafй. I checked the time surreptitiously. Ten minutes later, I whistled in the pup and locked him up in the camper, since he was pretty wet and Libby had made it abundantly clear that she didn't even like dry dogs very much. Exactly fifteen minutes from the time the plump dog expert and his unhappy wife, if that's what she was, had gone through the door, I went in after them.

  Inside, the tiny cafй looked pretty much like a railroad dining car, with booths on either side and an aisle down the middle. My people had the middle booth on the right-hand side. They'd finished their hasty coffee and were just leaving. There was no competition; I had no trouble establishing myself in the same booth, after first letting them go by.

  I ordered coffee, orange juice, eggs, and bacon, and went to work on the canned juice and the coffee while waiting for the main event. Only after the plate was put in front of me did I reach for the salt cellar. Seasoning my eggs carefully, I palmed the wafer of tinfoil stuck to the bottom of the cheap glass container, and contact number five was completed-but it still seemed like a silly game for grown-up men and women to be playing.

  When I returned to the room, Libby emerged from the bathroom, fully dressed, to greet me. She retreated hastily as Hank romped forward to say hello.

  "Damn that mutt!" she snapped, brushing at herself. "Why does he always have to put his great big dirty feet on… ah, hell! Come here, you black monster. I didn't mean to hurt your damn little feelings."

  She held out the back of her hand to let Hank sniff it and give it a couple of licks; then she scratched his ears forgivingly and laughed.

  "What are a few paw prints between friends?" she said ruefully. "After yesterday, I look like I'd been sweeping out the stables anyway; but I didn't see any sense in putting on something clean until we get out of this mud and dust. If we ever do." She glanced at me quickly, as if only now remembering what I was supposed to have been doing this morning. "My God, I forgot! How did the contact go? Did you get it?"

  "I got it," I said. "I thought, as my self-appointed partner in this caper, you'd like to see it stashed away; that's why I brought the pup inside. Hank, sit!"

  Obediently, he plunked his fanny on the floor, and I bent down to remove his collar, then stopped. There was a long silence as I looked thoughtfully at the black, metal-studded strap around his neck. It was the right color, and it had the right number of decorations of roughly the right shapes in roughly the right places. It even had the right, slightly faded, well-worn look. But it wasn't the dog collar I'd come to know and love.

  I stood there for a long moment, thinking back; but I already knew the answer. The collar had been right yesterday. This morning it was wrong…

  "Is this what you're looking for?" Libby's voice said softly behind me. I turned, and there it was, in her hand. She smiled. "As your self-appointed partner, darling, I thought you were being just a little careless, letting him run around with all that priceless NCS information around his neck. So last night, after you were asleep, I just switched them to show you how easily it could be done."

  I drew a long, slow breath. "Where'd you get the duplicate?"

  "I've had it right along. It was an obvious thing to bring, just in case. Here. Take this one." I didn't move at once, and she looked at my face hard. "Matt!"

  I said, "Damn it, the name is Grant."

  "To hell with you, Matt! You really thought…! Don't you ever trust anyone?"

  "Sure. And I can show you a scar for every damn time."

  "After… after everything, you really thought I… you really thought I'd stolen…!" Her voice was choked. "Oh, damn you, Matt Helm! Damn you, damn you, damn you! Here, take your precious strap!"

  I ducked as it came flying at me. She grabbed her coat and suitcase and marched out the door. It was a great performance.

  All her performances had been great, I reflected grimly. She was a real trooper, a real pro, and I was full of admiration for her. I mean that. There wasn't any resentment in me, any indignation, any feeling of wounded pride for the way she'd fooled me. I respected and admired her, and I was sorry she'd been given such a lousy script to play, because she deserved better. Holz and his associates should have been ashamed of themselves, to give such a fine actress such crummy material.

  I mean the richbitch routine with which she'd started out had been unconvincing enough, but the U.S. secret-agent line she'd had to fall back on had been a real turkey. Yet she'd put it over, selling me the farfetched notion that not only was she working for Mr. Smith, but that that gentleman operated his respectable government agency in a peculiarly complicated and two-faced manner. I must have been in an impressionable state when I bought that one, but bought it I had, at least provisionally.

  She'd been good all the way. As a pro, I thought with real pleasure of the casual way she'd treated security, to make me believe she was really pretty amateur after all. As a man who'd had a lot of approaches tried on him with sinister motives, I couldn't help recalling fondly the infinite variety of her treatments of the sex theme.

  Of course, she'd made some mistakes; we all do. Her worst ones had been with the pup. Well, she'd had a difficult problem to solve. To forestall suspicion, she'd wanted to give me the idea that she hated and feared animals and wanted nothing to do with them, while at the same time she'd had to gain Hank's trust so his collar would be available to her when the right time came.

  I should have spotted the inconsistency at once, when he started putting his paws on her. A trained hunting dog does not jump on people unless actively encouraged-you don't want sixty-odd pounds of retriever hitting you in the chest while you're holding a loaded shotgun. Hank might lick my face when it was within his reach, in bed or in the camper doorway, but he'd never dream of expressing his joy at seeing me in the undisciplined way he'd suddenly started greeting Libby. She must have taken advantage of the morning they'd been alone in the camper, on shipboard, to get across to him what she wanted, so that later she'd have an excuse to put on her I-hate-dogs act for me.

  On the whole, however, her performance had been very, very good. She'd overcome the handicaps of a poor script beautifully. In the end what had betrayed her was a faulty intelligence system. She'd gambled and lost because nobody had informed her of the one thing she was bound to know if she was the trusted agent of Mr. Smith she claimed to be. She hadn't known about the lab truck; she hadn't known that we U.S. troops had, right along, been playing tricks with the stolen NCS data as we intercepted it. She hadn't known that the stuff in the pup's collar not only wasn't priceless any longer, but was stuff we'd be happy to get into enemy hands. No matter how secretive Mr. Smith might be, he would have confided such essential knowledge to a trusted operative working for him on the sly. But Libby hadn't been aware of it.

  I drew another long bre
ath. My next move was obvious. Now that I had her spotted, now that I could guess how, or at least through whom, Holz planned to move against me, it was clearly up to me to act totally stupid, trusting, and fondly bemused, until I could see what kind of deadfall she was supposed to lead me into. That meant reassuring her by letting her have what she wanted-the real collar-regardless of how this would louse up the careful plans of Messrs. Davis and Smith.

  I picked it up where she'd thrown it, filled the last stud, gathered my belongings, and followed Hank outside. Libby was standing in the slow rain with the hood of her superspy trench coat pulled up to cover her hair. I guess she was realizing that the trouble with dramatic exits is that you've got to have somewhere to go afterward. I walked around to the rear of the truck and opened it. Hank jumped in without being told.

  I said, "Throw your bag in here if you're coming."

  Libby approached stiffly and set her suitcase inside the camper without looking at me or speaking to me. I closed the door and went forward, unlocked the left-hand cab door, got in, and pulled the latch across the way so she could join me. When we'd driven a little way, she tossed back her hood and unbuttoned her damp coat. She fastened the seat belt across her lap.

  "Here," I said. She looked at me and at the metal-studded strap I was holding out. I said, "It's the genuine article. Check it if you like."

  "What am I supposed to do with it?" Her voice was cold.

  "You don't like it on the dog. Where do you like it?" I tossed it into her lap. I hoped my voice sounded convincingly petulant as I went on. "There it is, all deliveries complete. You don't approve of the way I take care of it, so hide it yourself." I grimaced. "What I mean is, if you're so smart, partner, you take charge of the lure until we've used it to hook the last little fish in Anchorage and can put it back in the tackle box where it belongs."

  She hesitated before she picked up the collar and looked at it. There was a brief silence; then she said in a changed tone of voice, rather uncertainly: "Matt, you don't have to… I didn't really mean…"