Two of my bullets seemed to have taken effect, one nicking her left ear and the other drilling through her left arm at the lower biceps, presumably missing the bone, since I doubted she was tough enough to be walking around with a shattered humerus, not even properly immobilized yet—she just had the hand tucked into her waistband for support. She was doing well to be upright at all. A gutsy lady.
But a distressingly beatup-looking one, like something off a battlefield. Both wounds had bled copiously, soaking the shoulder and sleeve of her jacket, and the collar and shoulder of her blouse, one sleeve of which had been ripped away to bare her wounded arm, and used to make a crude bandage knotted a few inches above the elbow. She was wearing the stained blazer over her shoulders for warmth; she was undoubtedly feeling chilly and shivery from reaction. The nicked ear had been patched with a Band-Aid, and blood was drying down the side of her neck, and on her exposed arm, as well as on her clothes; even her slacks were badly spattered.
We faced each other for a moment without speaking. I saw her note my damaged scalp and seared chest.
I made myself speak harshly: “Jeez, what lousy marksmanship! One miss. One graze. One flesh wound. The instructors back at the Ranch would have my hide. That must have been very sudden and potent stuff you dropped into my Scotch.”
She studied my face for a moment. She smiled faintly. “What, no remorse or apologies, darling?”
“I don’t see you weeping any big tears of sympathy for me,” I said. “Sure, I always regret fouling up a shooting chore. I’m supposed to be a specialist, remember?” I glanced at Olaf, who was watching us with interest. I said accusingly, “You let me think she was dead. Murdering swine, you called me. Yankee assassin.”
“Well, you are a Yankee assassin and a murdering swine, are you not? Even though you failed to kill in this instance.” Olaf smiled thinly. “The torture scene is always more effective if the torturer establishes a personal reason for hating his subject. It seemed advisable to let you believe that your bullets had been accurate, and that I was terribly distressed by the lady’s demise, relishing every minute of your suffering, and willing to prolong it indefinitely. Actually, I do not like these interrogations very much. But you are not the only professional in the game, Helm.”
I said, “It was a great performance, but all it got you was what I told you in the first place. I don’t have the slightest idea what’s awaiting me in Lysaniemi; I just assume I’m supposed to get up there and find out.”
He shook his head irritably. “You will go nowhere until we have completed our operation!”
I shrugged. “Okay, okay. You hold the cards, no need to get tough about it. I don’t suppose it’s any use asking you what this mysterious operation of yours is.”
“No use whatever… Yes, what is it, Karl?”
The blond boy who’d been sent off with the Mercedes must have entered the apartment while the kitchen door was closed and my attention was distracted by the hot iron. I hadn’t heard him arrive; but now he stood in the doorway. A little behind him I could see a wiry dark girl in jeans, attractive in an intense way, with good cheekbones and a generous mouth. That would be the so-far invisible Greta. She was wearing large glasses, but they did not hide the dedicated look in her otherwise fine brown eyes: another fanatic. No makeup, of course. Would Joan of Arc wear eye shadow to the bonfire?
I still couldn’t really follow what Karl was saying, except that in this case it concerned a doctor. The Swedes often use the same word, but spelled with a k instead of a c; however, Karl employed the equivalent term, “läkare,” meaning healer.
Astrid said to me, “The physician I have been waiting for, one we know who will not talk about bullet wounds, has just telephoned. He has been delayed by an emergency. He cannot come to me for some time. If I require immediate attention, I must go to him.” She straightened up, and winced, and glanced down at the. stained rag of silk around her arm. “It has been neglected too long already, so I will go. Fortunately his office is not too far, I am told. You might show a little concern, my dear. I am hurting rather badly.”
“Join the club,” I said unsympathetically. “Do I get a doctor, too?”
Olaf said, “All you require is a little lard and some aspirin, both available here.” He turned to Astrid. “Greta will drive you in the rental Golf in which you were brought here, Helm’s car… You watch this one, Karl, while I make the arrangements. Mr. Helm is supposed to be very tricky, although he has shown no evidence of it so far.”
“I watch,” said Karl in English, the first time I’d heard him use the language.
Astrid hesitated for a moment, still standing over me. “Good-bye for now, Matthew.”
“I’ll try to be here when you get back. Unless something important comes up.”
“I am sorry it must be this way. I am sorry we must be enemies and hurt each other.”
She hesitated, as if she wanted to say more; then she turned quickly and hurried out of the kitchen. Cousin Olaf turned off the stove and hung up the sharpening steel, discolored by flame and maybe, a little, by me. He gave a keep-your-eyes-open sign to Karl, and followed her, closing the door behind him. Waiting, we could hear sporadic activity and conversation out in the hall: I assumed that Greta was being sent to bring her car around so Astrid would not have so far to walk, not only to conserve her strength but because she wasn’t really presentable enough to appear in public. At last the front door slammed a final time.
There was a lengthy period of silence. I wondered if Olaf was resting, or holding a council of war with Karin Segerby; but I hadn’t got the impression that the girl was as important to this outfit as the family seemed to think. Perhaps it was prideful thinking: if a Stjernhjelm was involved in something wicked, she should at least be playing a starring role, not just a bit part. Or maybe Olaf was simply making love to her; I’d heard that inflicting pain was sexually stimulating to some people, as enduring it was to others. Well, it takes all kinds. I hate to admit it, but that hot iron had done nothing at all for me.
Karl apparently felt no need to talk. Neither did I. We waited in silence. At last the kitchen door opened and Olaf entered briskly, carrying an aspirin bottle and a tube of ointment.
“This is better than lard, I believe,” he said cheerfully, approaching my chair. “Anesthetic and antibiotic, says the label. Hold still now.”
“I’ve got a choice, the way I’m stuck to this chair?” I gritted my teeth as he smeared the stuff on my chest; but I had to give him credit, he was no rougher than he had to be. I said, “The time I got those other scars, I had a pretty girl to administer the first aid.”
He grinned. “Yes, I asked Karin if she would do the honors, guessing that you would prefer it; but she said that pain, hers or anybody else’s, made her sick. So you must endure my ministrations. A terrible hardship case, as I believe you Yankees call it.” He paused to look down at me. “You are a big fraud, my friend.”
“How so?”
“All that talk about screaming your head off; and the best—or worst—I could get out of you was a grunt.” He smiled faintly. “Yes, you are a professional. They always talk about what big cowards they are. It is the amateurs who must make brave sounds to give themselves courage… There, that should make it feel a little better. I will put the tube into your pocket; you can have more applied when the anesthetic effect wears off. Would you rather have your shirt buttoned or left open?”
“TV tells us that bare-chested men are all the rage these days. Let’s not have any unnecessary friction in the critical area.”
“To be sure. Here is the aspirin…”
He stopped as Karin opened the door. Her glance touched me for a moment, and found the burns on my chest. She looked away quickly, swallowing hard. Obviously the girl was in the wrong line of work: she couldn’t pull a trigger, and damaged people made her queasy.
“Yes?” Olaf said impatiently.
“There is another telephone call,” she said in Swedish. “A m
an, I do not know the voice. He must speak with you.”
Olaf said, “Swallow that, Helm… I will be back in a minute.”
“I can hardly wait,” I said.
He followed the small blonde girl out of the room. He was gone considerably longer than a minute. They build well over there, with solid walls and doors. At least they did when that old apartment house was constructed; and we could hear nothing of the phone conversation from the kitchen. At last the door opened again, and Olaf came in. The call he’d received seemed to have caused a drastic transformation in his personality: he was no longer the friendly, chatty jailer who’d treated my burns. His face was grim, and he carried the silenced pistol in his hand. He stood there for a moment, regarding me without expression; then he gestured with the gun.
“Cut him loose, Karl… Just a moment. Button up his shirt and tie his cravat first.”
I said, “We’re going somewhere?”
He stared at me as if he’d never really seen me before. The High Standard was steady in his hand.
“I should have known that where you find one clever Yankee assassin you are likely to find more!”
Well, it was about time. I’d been wondering if Joel could have lost us completely; and if not, what the hell he was waiting for.
I said, “Would I attend a family reunion without having somebody covering me, a professional like me? You know how dangerous families are, particularly this family. What’s the word from my colleague?”
“He has the women.”
Well, it was the obvious move. I said, “The good old hostage gambit.”
Olaf licked his lips, and spoke in a strained voice: “He has tortured Greta. He used her to force Astrid to speak.”
“Greta is hurt?” This was young Karl, who’d been having trouble following the English conversation. “She is badly hurt?”
“I insisted on speaking with Astrid, to confirm the situation,” Olaf said. “She says that Greta…” He hesitated.
“Tell me!”
“They are at Doktor Hasselman’s office,” Olaf said. “There was no emergency. That telephone call was a trick. The man, Helm’s associate, must have followed us all the way from Torsäter here; then he stood watch outside this building. When he saw the doctor with his bag, he guessed that he had come here to attend Astrid. He made the doctor a prisoner, took him back to his office, tied him up, and forced him to make the call. When Astrid and Greta walked in, they were also captured. The man started to question Astrid. When she refused to tell him what he wanted, he took one of the doctor’s scalpels and simply… Greta will live, she is not dangerously injured, but Astrid says there will probably be some disfigurement.”
The boy made a choking sound in his throat. He turned on me sharply and slapped my face hard. “Animals!” he gasped. “Can you wonder that we must change a world that is run by people like you and your brutal accomplices?”
His English was improving by the minute; but I couldn’t help staring at him in wonderment. As I said, they scare hell out of me. Anybody who can complain self-righteously about a little bladework, when he’s just been a willing accomplice to a hot-poker session, is operating according to a logic beyond my comprehension. But I guess the world is full of folks who are serenely convinced that anything they do is right, and anything that’s done to them is wrong.
“That is enough, Karl,” Olaf snapped. “Now free him, please.”
When the duct tape had been cut, I peeled it off my wrists and ankles, sitting there. I said, “I want my guns and my suitcase, please. And Karin Segerby.”
“You want!” Olafs voice was contemptuous. “What you want cuts no ice here, Helm. If I have the proper phrase.”
I said, “Wake up and smell the coffee, friend. If I have the proper phrase. The question now is simply, do Astrid and the girl mean more to you than I do to my pal Joel. I think they do, because Joel isn’t really my pal. He’s just a guy assigned to do a job with me; and the job comes first. He’s a fairly cold-blooded character. If things go sour—if, for instance, you shoot me with that pistol you keep waving at me—Joel will simply put bullets into the two girls and the doctor, because they’ve seen his face and he doesn’t want the Swedish cops, or you, on his trail too soon. He’ll disappear into the night and try to do my job for me. Scratch one Helm; Operation Lysaniemi still running; signed Joel.” I looked hard at Olaf. “If that’s the way you want it, pull the trigger. If you want it any other way, remember that Joel’s training is exactly the same as mine. He doesn’t bluff any more than I do; and he doesn’t have a skinful of dope the way I did when I had Astrid under my gun, so his marksmanship should be considerably better. If he tells you he’s going to shoot if you do something, and you do it, somebody’ll wind up dead, you can count on it.”
“If he does any more harm to the girls I will kill him!” Olaf’s voice has harsh. “I will be waiting up there in vildmarken when he comes. I am very good in the wilderness.”
“Joel’s a pretty good vildmark boy himself. Not having seen you in action, Cousin, except with the other guy taped to a chair, I wouldn’t bet on it either way. But suppose you do kill him; what’s left for you except to blow your own brains out and make a clean sweep, dead bodies all over the lousy place. Just because you got trigger-happy here without thinking it through. Why not deal?”
“What deal do you suggest?”
“Two for two. You want your Astrid. Young Galahad here wants his Greta. I want my me. And I want Karin Segerby. I won’t hurt her. I’ve been imported to keep her from being hurt, among other things, remember?”
“What will you do with her?”
“Hell, I don’t know, yet. But I’m supposed to get her away from the bad company she’s been keeping, for the family’s sake; I might as well start doing my chores…”
Watching him, I couldn’t really believe it was happening. I mean, the man obviously considered himself a tough professional, one of us, yet from his expression I gathered that he was actually beginning to consider the bargain I’d offered him. He was contemplating giving up a dangerous prisoner, a serious threat to his plans, one he’d gone to considerable trouble to capture, for the sake of a pretty blonde lady with big brown eyes. How sentimental could you get? Well, maybe I was being too hard on him; maybe I was too strongly influenced by my own tough indoctrination. We are trained not to play the hostage game under any circumstances unless…
My thoughts stopped right there. I’d forgotten the kicker: unless the hostage is of extreme value to the operation, essential, the very heart of the mission. I looked at Olaf’s long Norse face again, so like my own in many ways, although I hated to admit it. This was not the face of a man who, with a big assignment in the balance, would get mushy about a woman, even a woman who’d meant something to him once and perhaps still did. He’d know the world is full of women, and hearts don’t break so easily, at least not the vulcanized organs that pump life through men like him, and me. If he was willing to make a deal for Astrid under these conditions, it meant that I was going to revise my estimate of her importance drastically. She was more than just a stray dame he’d called on for help because she happened to be on the proper side of the Atlantic and was willing to do him a favor for old times’ sake.
“Very well,” he said. “You have your deal. And you will get your belongings back when the two women are safe.”
“And Karin?”
“I will speak with her. She is free to go with you if she wishes, but I will not force her.”
“Fair enough,” I said. “Let’s put the show on the road. Another Yankeeism for you, Cousin.”
17
Karl drove the Mercedes with Karin sitting up front beside him; Olaf and I occupied the rear seat. It was getting close to midnight, and there wasn’t much traffic. For a big city, Stockholm pulls in its sidewalks early. Olaf’s directions to our young chauffeur, who was apparently imported talent and didn’t know the neighborhood, soon brought us to a newish two-story medical building call
ed Vasakliniken, only half a dozen blocks from the apartment.
The Vasa Clinic—they do love to run two or more words together—was presumably named for Gustav Vasa, the ancient monarch who holds just about the same Father-of-His-Country spot in Sweden that George Washington does in the U.S., having earned it by creating a unified country out of a bunch of squabbling minor kingdoms.
I’d been cleaned up, more or less, and given another big Stjernhjelm overcoat to cover my stained seersucker jacket, so we aroused no interest as we marched through the lobby after parking in the lot outside that was almost empty at this late hour; but I’d noted my red rental VW-Ford standing there. Following orders, I led the way with Olaf close behind, hand in pocket. After him came Karin Segerby, with Karl walking beside her carrying my suitcase. I’d noted when we left the apartment that Astrid’s suitcase had no longer been in the hall; presumably she’d taken it with her so she could change into a less beat-up costume after treatment. An elevator took us to the second floor.
“To the right,” Olaf directed me. “Now, the third door on the right. Open it. Remember, any tricks from you or your friend, and I will make certain of you, no matter who else dies for it.”
I didn’t really believe him. At least I thought that, with Astrid’s important life probably at stake—and I’d better find out fast just what made her so important—he’d hesitate to start the shooting; but I reminded myself that he was no Karin Segerby, unaccustomed to guns and afraid of them. He was my brand of Stjernhjelm, the mean kind, and he might have in him enough of the old, suicidal, charge-to-a-glorious-death berserker blood to set off a massacre if directly challenged in this awkward situation.
In military terms I believe it’s called a disengagement, and it’s always a problem. You’ve met the enemy and fought him to a standstill, or vice versa. Now you don’t want to fight him anymore under these no-win conditions, and he feels the same way; but how do you break contact without giving either side an advantage that can be exploited by a sudden sneak play?
The Vanishers Page 17