“Room 29, second floor,” he said.
“Thanks for the ride, Oscar,” I said, to let him know I remembered. Oscar was the name he’d worked under at the time.
He grinned faintly. “We old retired crips didn’t do too badly, while you kept the healthy young squirts chasing you all over Europe.” His grin faded. “You’d better hurry. They said time could be getting kind of short.”
But naturally, having raced across the whole Atlantic Ocean and half the United States of America at barely subsonic speeds, upon reaching my destination, I found myself sitting on a hard bench going nowhere for the best part of an hour. When that grim nurse said no visitors, she meant no visitors.
There were two guards. Fedder was one; and if Fedder was there, Rasmussen would be somewhere around because they hunted together. Fedder had the roving brief, wandering around the corridors casually to see if anything or anybody was moving in on his subject. Standing by the door conspicuously, holding down the decoy spot, was a man with a patch over one eye whose name I didn’t know. We nodded to each other; but we’d shared no missions, and he didn’t look like the talkative type, so I didn’t bother him. I just sat on my bench, reflecting that Mac seemed to have drafted every old agency warrior for the job, including some retired for physical disability—men whose loyalty to him was unquestioned. The bright young recruits who had yet to prove themselves, he’d left to Bennett.
Occasional white coats went in and out of the room, male and female. I saw a wheelchair roll by in the main hall to my left and paid it little attention; after all, this was a hospital. Then I looked again before it went out of sight and got quickly to my feet.
“Hey, Ricardo!” I called. “What the hell are you doing here?”
There were two men with the chair; small, dark-faced men in neat dark suits. They whirled at my call, and their hands went under their coats. I kept my own hands in plain sight. The young man in the chair swung it around and rolled it towards me.
“Matthew, amigo! I did not see you sitting there… It is all right, muchachos, he is a friend.” He grinned at me as I came up. “Although there were times in the past when that was hot a certainty. But you must address me properly.”
“Yes, Mr. President. Certainly, Your Excellency.”
“I joke. To you I am Ricardo, always. Anyway, it is not a state visit; I am here incognito. Mr. Richard James, at your service.” His smile faded, and he glanced towards the door of the room in front of which I had been waiting. “How does it go in there?”
“For God’s sake, this is a hospital, man. Do you expect them to tell you how a patient is doing?” I grimaced. “I gather that you’re a mean sonofabitch these days, Your Excellency. A megalomaniac, reactionary, fascist, dictator-criminal, according to what I read. Who’s the guy you’ve got in pokey that they want out so badly?”
Ricardo Jimenez, president of Costa Verde, smiled thinly. “You are getting soft, Matthew. Unlike them, you refrain from making reference to my handicap.” He patted his useless legs. “And the man I have in prison is the man I have to thank for it. You must remember him.”
When I’d met him, Ricardo Jimenez had been the exiled scion of a political family trying to fight his way back into his country. We’d spent some time in the jungles together, back when another man had occupied the big presidential chair in Santa Rosalia. The nation had been a police state then—Ricardo had changed that, later—and he’d had some painful experiences with its prison system, of which the damaged legs were one reminder. He had others.
“Armando Rael?” I said, surprised. “I thought you finally managed to run him to hell out of there.”
“He ran, yes, when his soldiers would no longer fight for him, but he is back as leader of El Partido de la Liberacion de Costa Verde. PLCV. The Liberation Party of Costa Verde. He had Communist backing up to a point.”
“What are the Communists doing, backing that reactionary bastard?”
“They will support anyone who will forward their program of chaos and disruption. However, when Rael’s clumsy coup failed, the reds washed their hands of the enterprise. Some of his remaining Costa Verde supporters, who dislike my reform policies and hope to get rich, or richer, if he wins, thought up this plan for achieving his freedom. It might have succeeded, since I could not have resisted much pressure from your country, but the man in that room, your superior, spoiled their plans. I do not know the details, no one will talk, but the hostages have been freed and most of the kidnappers are dead. The news will be on your television and in your newspapers this evening; it was withheld while certain principals were being traced. However, we were informed in Santa Rosalia, and I thought it only fitting that I should fly up here and pay my respects to the gentleman who has for the second time contributed so much to the welfare of my country, this time at great cost to himself.”
It was the first time to my knowledge that the head of a state, even the fairly young head of a fairly small state, had seen fit to thank us for our work in person. Looking at him, I realized that he wasn’t so young any longer. The crippling injuries, and the responsibilities of his political office, had matured him.
I asked, “What will you do with Rael now, shoot him?”
Ricardo Jimenez shook his head regretfully. “For any other man, I would call the firing squad immediately. But not for the man who put me into this chair. It would be said I was taking a personal revenge on my predecessor in office, and I cannot afford that. I will hold him until his followers disperse, and then I will banish him, sparing his life in my usual magnanimous fashion. To try again, perhaps, but…”
He stopped, looking towards the door of Room 29. Three people had come out. The two men in white coats and stethoscopes went on down the hall. A tall woman remained; a slender, handsome, middle-aged lady in a gray slacks suit. Her dark hair was pulled back severely from her face; but it was the strong kind of face that could stand such treatment. She seemed to be looking for somebody; then she saw me and started towards me, but stopped abruptly and buried her face in her hands, swaying. The sentry with the eyepatch and Ricardo’s bodyguards all moved towards her, but I beat them to her. After a moment she drew a ragged breath and raised her head to look at me, dry-eyed. She seemed steady again, so I released her. “Sorry,” she said. “You’re Helm, aren’t you?”
“And you’re Beilstein, and that takes care of the formalities.” I hesitated. “How is it in there?”
“It is very good in there.”
I looked at her sharply. “I thought…”
She shook her head quickly. “It just hit me, the reaction to all that waiting. No, they say he will make it now, with luck.” She shook her head almost angrily. “Dammit, Helm, who the hell did he think he was, Sir Galahad or somebody? No woman wants a man to die for her. At least this woman doesn’t!”
I grinned. “But even though you feel obliged to go on record saying you disapprove, you’ll always cherish the fact that he was willing, won’t you?”
She drew a long breath. “Yes, damn you, and it makes me ashamed of myself. Go on in. He wants to hear all about your European adventures.”
“How bad is it?”
“He was shot in the chest; but now that he has… has turned the corner, they think he will be all right.”
There were more questions to be asked. How Mac had managed to tease the kidnappers into taking him in the first place. How he’d set up the communications that had enabled his team of veterans, crippled and whole, to trace him. How the liberation had been accomplished. How he’d got himself shot at the last minute, apparently making some kind of a sacrifice play to save his lady from harm. And in addition, there were things to be done, like making a promised telephone call to Spud Meiklejohn of the Miami Tribune, and sending a wedding present to Amy Barnett—Doug had mentioned in passing that his daughter and the new boyfriend were making it official. But all that could wait.
I went in and made my mission report to the chief of my agency.
29
>
It was a small ship carrying fewer than two hundred passengers. I boarded it in Helsinki, which my parents had called Helsingfors; but that was back in the days when Swedish was in and Finnish was out, in Finland. I found my cabin, a small two-berth cubicle that reminded me painfully of the one on the larger cross-Baltic ferry that I’d shared with Karin Segerby. That had been a couple of weeks ago now, and since then I’d flown the Atlantic twice, so taking a boat from Helsinki to Leningrad, which had been called St. Petersburg when my folks were kids, was really no big deal, except that I always get nervous near Russia, let alone in Russia. But this trip was cleared at both ends, and I was supposed to encounter no difficulties whatever.
When I entered the cabin, there was somebody lying on the bunk to my right; but it wasn’t Karin Segerby… You could say it was a tragic fluke, a wild pistol bullet finding a target at that range; but there are no flukes when you’re dealing with firearms. You’re supposed to know that they can kill at crazy distances. You’re supposed to have more sense than to play idiot gunfight games where uninvolved folks can get hurt—and the fact that I’d told her to stay behind the car and keep her head down didn’t do much for my sense of guilt.
I let the cabin door close behind me. “Good afternoon,” I said to the man with whom I was to share the cabin for the night’s run.
“Good afternoon, sir,” he said, sitting up. He was fully clothed except for his jacket. He was a thin, pale, little man in his forties with thinning brown hair, wearing a vest and a necktie, the knot of which he had pulled down a little. He said, “I hope you don’t mind that I picked this bed. I can move if you wish, sir.”
He was being very polite because he had just been released from a U.S. prison and wanted to stay that way. It had taken considerable work to get him out. Mac had disapproved.
“You are being sentimental, Eric,” he had said, but he hadn’t said it very loudly, for the simple reason that he wasn’t strong enough yet, although he’d been declared out of danger.
I said, “Look who’s talking about sentimental. At least I don’t have a bullet in my ribs.” He smiled faintly. He’d done a job he should have left to younger men, but he’d survived it. Now he was feeling pretty good about it; good enough that he could be kidded about it. I went on: “Sentiment or not, I want some trading material. It shouldn’t take much. What they’ve got can’t be worth much to them now that the phony Astrid Land—Astrid Watrous—is dead.” I wondered what her real name had been; but I’d never know.
“I will see what arrangements can be made,” Mac said. He changed the subject. “Your activities have brought us some mild remonstrances from Stockholm, but we can deal with them. Fortunately your distant relative, Baron Stjernhjelm, seems to be a man of some influence.” He hesitated. “I gather the installation at Laxfors is not really concerned with communications. Do we know its true function?”
I said, “I know what Olaf told me. He said that it was actually a development of the system we use to detect foreign submarines along our own shores. Naturally, the Russians wanted it out of commission so they could continue their underwater activities unhampered. But the true nature of the facility had not been made public for security reasons, and also because anything built with American assistance is met with suspicion over there, these days. We have a reputation as saber-rattlers and warmongers, I’m afraid.”
“Totally unjustified, of course,” Mac said without expression.
“Of course, sir,” I said. “But with eight people dead in a protest demonstration, the whole thing had to become public. Actually, Laxfors came out of it pretty well. The Swedes’ ancient dislike of the Russians is considerably stronger than their more recent fear of America; and the whole country has been very much upset by the Soviet submarine penetrations of their waters. Anything and anybody helping to combat this kind of trespassing will meet with reluctant approval even if it involves Yankee expertise. The fact that Soviet agents were using the peace demonstration for purposes of sabotage, and had in fact helped to incite it, didn’t raise the Muscovite stock any. So Laxfors and everybody concerned with it came out smelling of roses, which is why they’re not very mad at me over there. Just a little mad.”
Mrs. Beilstein rose from her chair in the corner, in the decisive way I’d come to recognize. “That is enough. Now you’d better let him rest.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
She hesitated uncharacteristically. “Oh, Matt. Could I ask you a question before you go?” When I nodded, she said, “That Bennett man, who’d made such a point of fair play. If he won your… your shootout, or whatever you called it, how could he expect to keep his body armor a secret afterwards? I mean, if you hit him, as you probably would. There’d be a hole in his clothes but no wound. They’d all know he’d cheated.”
I grinned. “You must be thinking of the Boy Scouts of America, Mrs. Beilstein. What makes you think Bennett would keep his Kevlar vest a secret from those cynical young characters? He’d boast about it; it would be a great big joke, and they’d all have a good laugh at the tough old pro, me, who let himself be conned into a romantic pistol-to-pistol showdown with a guy wearing bulletproof BVDs.”
She shook her head. “I see that I still have things to learn.”
As I reached for the doorknob, Mac spoke behind me: “Eric.”
“Yes, sir?”
“You were on the ground. You saw the installation. Do you really believe that submarine-detection story?”
“Of course, sir,” I said. “I always believe everything I’m told. When it’s diplomatic to do so.”
“To be sure,” Mac said. “When you come tomorrow I will let you know what I’ve been able to arrange for you.”
He’d got me my trading material, the pale little man now sharing my cabin on the Leningrad ferry. We had dinner served in the cabin, and breakfast, according to instructions. After landing, still following instructions, I left him on board and took the standard guided tour of Leningrad. The Russians just love showing you monuments and memorials. I returned to the ship shortly before sailing time that evening.
There was a certain amount of suspense as I knocked on the door of the same cabin, wondering if our elaborate diplomatic arrangements had worked. A feminine voice said something in Finnish that I didn’t catch, and wouldn’t have understood anyway. I assumed I’d been given permission to enter, and did. The door sighed shut behind me; they use strong closing devices on those ships so there won’t be a lot of slamming in a seaway.
The middle-aged man was gone. His place had been taken by a young woman. The first thing I noticed was the mass of very fair, very fine hair, loosely wound about her head. Then she turned to face me directly, and I saw the striking brown eyes.
“I am sorry, I thought it was the Finnish steward.”
“Miss Land?” I said.
The shocking thing was how close they’d come. Well, I suppose with a population close to three hundred million, you should be able to find a pretty good match for just about anybody; and if the double you chose was bright enough and a good enough actress, and had some opportunity to study the person she was supposed to become and practice the impersonation, you could wind up with a resemblance that was quite breathtaking. Even the voice, with its accent, was very nearly the way I remembered it.
“Yes, I am Astrid Land,” said the real Astrid Land. “And you must be Matthew Helm, the man to whom I owe…”
“Never mind owe,” I said.
She laughed softly. “He rescues me from an endless gray hell, years and years of it, and says never mind. Listen, we are getting under way. It’s really happening. I’ve been trying not to let myself believe it was going to happen, so I would not be too shattered when it turned out to be just another of their cruel tricks.” She looked up at me, and licked her lips. “Nobody else seemed to care; my parents could get no help at all. Why did you do it, go to all that trouble, for a girl you’d never met?”
“It’s a long story,” I said.
“We have time,” she said.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Donald Hamilton was the creator of secret agent Matt Helm, star of 27 novels that have sold more than 20 million copies worldwide.
Born in Sweden, he emigrated to the United States and studied at the University of Chicago. During the Second World War he served in the United States Naval Reserve, and in 1941 he married Kathleen Stick, with whom he had four children.
The first Matt Helm book, Death of a Citizen, was published in 1960 to great acclaim, and four of the subsequent novels were made into motion pictures. Hamilton was also the author of several outstanding standalone thrillers and westerns, including two novels adapted for the big screen as The Big Country and The Violent Men.
Donald Hamilton died in 2006.
ALSO AVAILABLE FROM TITAN BOOKS
The Matt Helm Series
BY DONALD HAMILTON
The long-awaited return of the United States’ toughest special agent.
Death of a Citizen
The Wrecking Crew
The Removers
The Silencers
Murderers’ Row
The Ambushers
The Shadowers
The Ravagers
The Devastators
The Betrayers
The Menacers
The Interlopers
The Poisoners
The Intriguers
The Intimidators
The Terminators
The Retaliators
The Terrorizers
The Revengers
The Annihilators
The Infiltrators
The Detonators
The Demolishers (October 2016)
PRAISE FOR DONALD HAMILTON
“Donald Hamilton has brought to the spy novel the authentic hard realism of Dashiell Hammett; and his stories are as compelling, and probably as close to the sordid truth of espionage, as any now being told.”
The Vanishers Page 29