I was tempted to go hunting; but that was the restlessness of inactivity working in me. Well, relative inactivity. I’d spent too many days recently sitting in cars and planes, clear from Mexico to Norway by way of a large part of the U.S.A. and the Atlantic Ocean. I’d had it with sitting. I cringed at the thought of spending further hours in these prickly damn’ bushes making like an evergreen. Action, action. Track the young bastards to their lairs, smoke them out… But that was not the way to go here.
I had to remember who I was and who I was up against. I was an experienced older agent dealing with, if my guess was correct, a couple of possibly well trained but probably inexperienced young men sent after me by my own agency. Always assuming that Astrid had been telling the truth when she’d disowned them; and that I hadn’t overlooked somebody else with a motive for keeping track of our movements. But whoever they were working for, they hadn’t been around as long as I had. They hadn’t been in the business as long as I had. Impatience might be their problem; I couldn’t let it be mine.
Resignedly I made myself comfortable—well, more or less—where I could watch the steep, dark hillside. There was some illumination from the streetlights and the lights of the motel, but I wished I had one of those fancy image-intensifying gadgets they’ve been passing around lately; or just a pair of good 7 x 50 binoculars. However, when they did relieve the watch, I had no trouble seeing them. By that time I was very damp and cold, and wishing for a heavy coat; but the hint of movement against the vague patches of snow below the small yellow clapboard house on the hillside made me forget my discomfort instantly.
It was the right-hand of the three houses up there. The other two were barn-red with white trim; but the colors were almost indistinguishable in the night. I saw a dim figure disappear into the brush at the foot of the lot to my right. Presently another dim figure appeared, heading back in the direction the first one had come from; it moved in a less-agile fashion. I felt a certain sympathy: he’d be as cold and stiff as I was after his long stakeout. Well, maybe not quite as stiff, since he was younger. Anyway, my hunch had paid off.
Moving cautiously, keeping low, I slipped out of my evergreen nest and through the decorative shrubbery to the fence that bounded the motel property on this side. It was wooden and solidly built in good Scandinavian fashion, painted white, and about five feet high. Still crouching, I followed the fence to the right behind the rear parking lot that seemed to be earmarked for utility and delivery vehicles, along with some cars that probably belonged to the motel and restaurant staff. It was well lighted, a little too well for my liking. The fence ended at a small road that passed along that side of the motel and continued up the slope behind it, serving the houses up there. Some junk was piled inside the end of the fence, empty crates and discarded cartons too big for the trash bins, awaiting pickup. I found shelter among them and waited.
He’d done a good job up on the hill, sitting commendably motionless so I’d been unable to spot his location in four hours of watching. But now he made the mistake the inexperienced ones often make: he relaxed before he was actually home free. Well, he was safely out of the danger zone, wasn’t he? His partner had taken over, and he was off-duty without a care in the world, heading back to his room to catch up on his sleep. When they’re hunting you, particularly if there are more of them than there are of you, it so seldom occurs to them that you might have the temerity to turn around and come hunting them.
Through a crack in the fence I watched him march openly down the small paved road towards me, swinging his arms vigorously to warm himself after his long vigil. Suspecting nothing, he was taken completely by surprise when, as he passed the end of the fence, I rose up and threw the lock on him from behind. He was too big for me to mess with. The other, smaller one I might have tried to take alive; not this husky character. I gave it maximum effort instantly, therefore, and felt certain important items break in certain important places. I held him like that until there were no more kicks or quivers or spasmodic tremors left in him; and even a little longer. Too many good men have died—well, they thought they were good—because they were too sensitive, spelled queasy, to make absolutely certain.
Even now, after midnight, the boulevard made a satisfactory background rumble. There had been a little noise: the scuffle of feet, some heavy breathing—mostly mine, since my grip hadn’t let him have much air—and a small, scraping, splintering sound as our straining bodies lurched against a wooden crate and rammed it back into the trash pile. However, with the covering noise of the traffic, nobody seemed to have noticed.
Releasing him at last, I stood over him for a moment catching my breath. Then I dragged him out of sight behind the sheltering junk and checked his pockets quickly. Wallet. Passport. Room key. And what I had hoped to find, confirmation: the familiar agency assassination piece with its built-in silencer—excuse me; I forgot, we’re supposed to call them sound suppressors these double-talk days. I’ll admit I drew a breath of relief at learning that I hadn’t killed an innocent stranger.
To be sure, he was a stranger to me, but I never know all the new, young ones, and the weapon in my hand made it certain that I’d estimated the situation correctly. Bennett had sent this character after me with takeout orders; and an official takeout weapon with which to execute them. Execute being the operative word. That gun is not issued for defensive purposes.
As I straightened up with my loot, I thought I caught a glimpse of movement at the lighted rear door out of which I’d sneaked several hours earlier. I stood quite still, waiting, but nothing further happened over there, if anything had. I hesitated, and said to hell with it. If somebody was calling the Oslo constabulary, I’d know soon enough. There was an ugly smell from the man at my feet. The sphincters had let go as they often do. Carting dead bodies around isn’t quite the nice clean fun they make it seem in certain jolly murder mysteries, literary and cinematic. However, I was going to have to move this one; but first I had to find out where.
I was fairly sure they hadn’t been using the same rear door that I’d employed. Hiding just around the corner, I’d have heard something. I headed for the street side of the building, therefore. The first opening I found there was locked, and there was a small sign behind the glass that I translated, roughly: Between Hours of 1000 and 0600 Be So Good as to Employ Front Entrance.
But my homicidal young friends would have made provision for re-entering the building without passing the front desk. I made my way to the next side door. It bore the same sign; however, it hadn’t latched properly due to a Norwegian paperback novel—a Scandinavian-Gothic romance by the cover—jammed between the threshold and the bottom of the door. I slipped inside, reflecting that it was no way to treat a good book, or even a bad one. I checked the room key I’d confiscated. Number 137 was just down the corridor, left-hand side, very convenient. I entered the room, hauled the coverlet off one of the beds, and went back out to the dead man and rolled him up in it. Traffic still ran busily on the big main drag, but the side street was empty, and everything was quiet around the motel. I caught no further uneasy hints of movement anywhere.
I drew a long breath and went into my Hercules act, hoisting the long bedspread-wrapped bundle to my shoulder and staggering off with it. By the time I got him to the room, he weighed at least four hundred pounds. Panting, I dumped him onto the bed I’d stripped, and straightened up painfully, rubbing my back. I yearned for a drink, but there seemed to be no liquor on the premises. The idea of being stalked by a pair of earnest, dedicated, young teetotalers was a little frightening. You like to think that, like you, the opposition, whatever it may be at a given time, has a few human weaknesses. I consoled myself with the thought that maybe, being of the younger generation, they took their comfort from drugs instead of booze.
James Aloysius Harley was the name on the passport. Unmarried. Occupation, newspaper reporter—at least for this assignment. Credit cards. Membership cards. Press cards. American money. Norwegian money. Swedish money. So
they had apparently learned from Research about my interest in a certain village up in Swedish Lapland, as I’d anticipated. Preparing to follow me there, they had supplied themselves with suitable currency, which was more than I had done.
I studied the gun. It was the short-barreled High Standard .22 automatic that looks like the Colt Woodsman, although the lines aren’t as graceful; but the old Woodsman, like many fine old things, is no longer in production. Not that the High Standard isn’t a good enough gun; and it has one big advantage. The barrel is removable, meaning that you can pull off and ditch the silenced barrel, highly illegal just about anywhere, and stick on a plain barrel, and have a gun that’s only moderately lawless in most jurisdictions and doesn’t convict you on sight of being a professional hit man. The clip held a full complement of ten rounds, but there was nothing in the chamber; he hadn’t anticipated any emergencies requiring instant artillery. Searching the room more thoroughly, I found no spare pistol barrels; but each man had a box of match grade ammunition in his suitcase, each box with ten cartridges missing out of the fifty.
It looked as if Bennett had been passing out silenced agency automatics to everybody in sight. I knew that the boys were not employing the target stuff for super precision; they were using it simply because it was slower than the .22 ammo you buy off the shelf. The speed of sound is 1,088 feet per second. It was discovered long ago that for maximum accuracy an ordinary .22 bullet must not be driven faster than that. So farm kids shoot rabbits and squirrels with .22 caliber projectiles that scream along at around 1,200 feet per second, but expert smallbore target shooters settle for something like 1,050.
This has another advantage of more importance than championship accuracy to the sinister folk in our line of work. A silencer—to hell with the latter-day jargon—can muffle the noise of the powder exploding inside the gun, but it can’t do anything about the crack of the bullet, outside the gun, passing through the sound barrier. Keeping the bullet velocity subsonic is, therefore, essential to silencing a gun effectively, which was why my pursuers had chosen the relatively slow target ammo to kill me with.
Presumably they’d been waiting to deal with me in a more private place than the capital city of Norway. I had no doubt they had people standing by to dispose of the body or bodies discreetly after the silent execution. In his precarious position as temporary director of the agency, Bennett couldn’t afford to leave corpses around. It might be noticed in Washington that some U.S. agents were busily killing off others at his orders.
I stuck the weapon inside my waistband and approached the figure on the bed reluctantly. By the time I got through, Mr. James Aloysius Harley looked as if he were nicely tucked in and sleeping peacefully; but it hadn’t been the most pleasant task I’d ever performed. I made a bundle of the soiled stuff, hauled it into the bathroom, dumped it into the tub, and closed the door on it. Then I turned out the light and sat down to wait some more. This time I had a warm room and a comfortable chair, so it wasn’t too bad, even if the company left something to be desired.
I figured dawn would be the time. Mr. Harley’s partner wouldn’t be likely to hang around in somebody’s backyard after daylight. Unfortunately, I had no almanac to tell me when the sun was supposed to rise in this part of the world at this time of year. All I could do was peek through the window curtains occasionally. They were the heavy lightproof draperies provided in that part of the world to let you sleep at those times of the year when the day lasts most of the night. We weren’t in that season yet, but some time after four the luminous misty sky out there seemed suddenly to be a little grayer than it had been. Then I heard his footsteps in the carpeted hall outside, and his key in the lock. I slipped into the dressing alcove just before the door opened and the room light went on.
“Jesus Christ, Jim!” said the young man in the doorway angrily, after surveying the peaceful scene. “What the hell do you think you’re doing; you’re supposed to be dressed and ready to go in case they make an early start… Come on, Sleeping Beauty, rise and shine!” He was over by the bed now, shaking the figure under the cover. It rolled over onto its back, displaying the slack gaping mouth and the staring blind eyes. “Oh, my God!”
“Just hold that pose, amigo,” I said.
Standing in the doorway behind him, I held the silenced automatic on him, cartridge in chamber, safety off. There was a tense moment while he thought of various things he’d been taught to do in such a situation. He decided not to do them.
“Helm?”
“It ain’t Santa, Sonny. Okay, you can turn around now, very slowly.”
Holding his hands safely clear of his sides, he swung around to face me. His face was contorted with shock and anger.
“You killed Jim, you damn’ traitor!”
“Unbuckle your belt and drop your pants,” I said. “And I want to hear a good, solid thump when they hit the floor. Like there was something in them, a gun perhaps.” When he didn’t move, I said, “What’s your name? The one on your current passport will do.”
He was watching the automatic in my hand and thinking hard, planning hard perhaps. We were both aware that the .22 is not a manstopper like the .38; even that is marginal. He might make it. He’d have some little holes in him, but he might manage. He might get his own pistol out. He might even put a bullet into me; but it would also be a .22 and the chances of its being instantly fatal weren’t overwhelming. It would be a brave sacrifice play, but it probably wouldn’t bring in the winning run. To hell with it, there’d be better chances later. That’s what we always tell ourselves when we don’t feel like dying today.
“Lindner,” he said. “Marshall Lindner.”
“The pants,” I said. “Strip right down, please… Now the sweater and shirt and undershirt. And the shorts and shoes and socks. Turn around slowly. Nothing taped to the body beautiful, swell. Okay, you can pull the shorts back on if you’re feeling modest. Sit in that chair by the window, please.”
He did as he was told. Sitting there, looking scrawny and vulnerable in his knitted jockey shorts—he was one of the dark, wiry ones; and I judged he’d be fast but not dangerously strong—he regarded me bleakly.
“They said you were very polite and always said excuse me when you shot a man to death. Or a woman.”
“Or a baby, like you?” I grimaced. “What kind of dumb-dumb games were you boys playing on that hillside, anyway? Four-hour watches, for God’s sake! The way you were milling around up there at midnight, it was like watching the changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace. What’s the matter, can’t you little fellows sit still a whole night? You’ve got to go peepee, maybe? They must be slipping, out at the Ranch, to turn loose a couple of incompetent infants like you.” I looked at him, frowning. “What’s this traitor crap, anyway?”
“Are you denying it?”
“I don’t have to deny anything, friend. I’m holding the gun. Are you denying that you and your friend were sent here to kill me with your cute little noiseless peashooters?”
I kicked at the clothes on the floor, felt a solid object, and reached down for it left-handed; but it was the Nordic paperback romance that had been keeping the outside door from latching. I tossed it aside and tried again. This time I got a silenced High Standard just like the one I was holding.
I said, “One for me and one for my female companion, right? Did you flip coins to see which of you comic hitmen would get the great sexy thrill of shooting a woman?” He flushed, and I saw how it was and said, “Or did you feel sentimental and flip to see which of you wouldn’t have to. The ladies will hate you, Lindner. That’s sexual discrimination. What did they ever do to you, that you won’t treat them as equal to men, even with a pistol? Who won me?”
“Won? Oh, well, I did.” He licked his lips and went on quickly: “Big funny talk for a defector!”
“Who am I supposed to be defecting to, the local chapter of Vikings Incorporated? Do I get to ride in a dragon ship, with my own battle-axe and homed helmet, just like a rea
l Norseman?” I grimaced at the young man who’d won the right to kill me, and wondered if I’d been heads or tails. “Incidentally, I read somewhere that they didn’t really wear those horns, that’s movie stuff. Some people take all the romance out of life, dammit.”
Lindner glared at me. “A lot of words saying nothing! We know all about you, Helm. The hotshot secret agent; the chief’s right-hand man. Only the great Mister Mac thought he wasn’t being given the recognition he deserved, so he sulked and sold out; and now you’re on your way to join him. He’s got it all arranged for you, hasn’t he?”
“Tell me about it.”
“Oh, we know where you plan to contact your Russian friends. It’s a little village called Lysaniemi, population one-fifty, up in northern Sweden. You slipped there, Helm, trying to get information about the place out of Research; but of course that was while you thought you’d still have people high up in the organization to cover for you. Like Barnett, who was slated for the top spot, reporting daily to Mac in Moscow no doubt; only he had to duck for cover very fast, didn’t he? And your slippery friend Joel. Well, your fancy little subversion scheme didn’t turn out so well, and we’ll catch your accomplices eventually. In the meantime we’ve done some work on Lysaniemi for you. In case you didn’t know, it’s on a small lake called Porkkajarvi—jarvi means lake in Finnish, and there seem to be a lot of Finnish names in that part of Sweden. It’s still frozen at this time of year, solid enough for a helicopter to land; and the Russian border is only…” He stopped. “What do you find so humorous now, Mr. Helm?”
I stopped laughing and said, “You’ve been smoking that dreamy-stuff again. You ought to watch that.” He started to speak angrily, and checked himself. I went on: “The Swedish space program is centered at Kiruna, about a hundred and twenty miles northwest of Lysaniemi. I think they’re planning a launch soon; it seems unlikely they’d welcome gate-crashers. And the biggest military installation in Sweden, as far as I know—it was the biggest last time I was in the country—is at Boden, a real fortress of a place, only some sixty miles southwest of Lysaniemi. Do you really think a Russky whirlybird is going to try to make it first across a couple of hundred miles of Finland where the radars can see it coming, and then across this sensitive frontier and into this sensitive security zone of northern Sweden? Do you think even the dumbest Russian is stupid enough to think he can make an air pickup there without attracting attention? After the continuing scares about Russian subs down along the Baltic coast, the Swedes are paranoid as hell about anything approaching their country from the east. Anything larger than a Commie mosquito will set the sirens wailing and the red lights flashing. Even if I wanted to go to Russia, there isn’t the remotest chance of my doing it that way. You’re hallucinating, or somebody is.”
The Vanishers Page 9