The Corpse Without a Country

by Louis Trimble

  Beside me Jodi gasped. I said softly, “Once people like that are cornered, they lose all compunction. They can’t think of any other way to save themselves except by killing.”

  She said in a low voice, “I guess when they’re desperate, they’ll do anything to protect their good name.”

  I wondered if she included Arne, but I didn’t ask. Jodi had taken enough for one night. I touched her arm and started working my way backward. She followed, both of us keeping well down so that we wouldn’t be silhouetted against the night.

  I said when we could stand up without being seen, “Get in your boat and go like hell for help.”

  “I won’t go alone,” she said fiercely. “Don’t you see, as soon as they finish with the Pride, they’ll start hunting you.”

  I said, “I can dodge them. And someone has to be here to get the evidence.”

  She didn’t argue any more, because we had reached a bench above the water and we were looking down on the little boat she had come in. We were looking down on what there was to see of it. The top of the cabin showed clearly. The rest was under the water.

  Jodi had done more than beach the boat; she had sunk it.

  XXI

  FOR THE FIRST TIME I was glad that Island was small. Grabbing Jodi’s arm, I set off for the eastern bay. I made no effort to be quiet, figuring that all of Reese’s forces were with him. If Ilona was on the Island, she was welcome to try to stop me. I wouldn’t have minded tangling with her right then.

  We reached the bay without seeing or hearing anyone. Ridley’s little fishboat-cruiser still rode at anchor where it had been before. It was dark and silent, with the moon leaving this area. If anyone was aboard, he must be sleeping.

  Jodi stared at the boat in dismay. “It’ll take hours in that tub!” she said.

  “Two and half if you push it,” I told her. “And I can dodge them for that long. Go straight to the island hospital and tell the boss what’s going on. He’ll put more guards around Tom and then get the Coast Guard into action. If they’ll use a helicopter, I won’t have to last over three hours at the most.”

  I brushed my lips across hers. They were cold. I said, “Now get going.”

  Jodi got without further argument. She was wearing jeans and a sweater which she had apparently put on during her stay on Corning, and she peeled them and her shoes, made a bundle, and walked out into the water, holding it over her head. I envied her; she at least had clothes.

  I waited until I saw her go aboard and disappear into the cabin; then the sound of the diesel pulsed across the water and I turned to get back to Reese and company.

  This time I came down to the beach, stopping in the shadow of the timber. I wasn’t twenty yards from the bow of the cruiser now; I had a good worm’s eye view.

  And because I was so busy waiting for something to happen, I forget to protect my flank. It was too late when I heard the sounds: the soft brush of cloth against a tree branch, the faint snap of a bit of deadwood beneath a foot. By the time I got to my feet and turned, I could see someone almost on top of me.

  I didn’t stop to ask myself if there was a gun involved in this. I dove forward in an old-fashioned flying tackle. I wrapped my arms around a pair of smooth, slim legs, and before I hit the ground, I knew that I had an armful of Ilona.

  The crash we made going back into dry underbrush was enough to bring Reese and his marines on the run had they been clear across the Island.

  I landed on top and I stayed that way. I kept my weight across those handsome legs and got my hands on her wrists. I said, “I win this round.”

  “You do make love so roughly, Mr. Durham,” she said. She tried to throw me off by giving a flip of her torso, but I had too much poundage for her.

  I said, “The last time you called me Peter.”

  “There are moments when one feels informal,” she said.

  I decided we had horsed around enough. I said, “Where are your friends?”

  “Please, let me up. I want your help.”

  “For what, to hijack Reese after he finishes his job on the Pride?”

  “You do not understand,” she said in a desperate tone. “We must stop Fuller before the Pride arrives.”

  “And then,” I asked, “Mr. Ghatt and Arne come along and take the kitty.”

  She swore at me in Danish. It was very close to the kind of Norski swearing Arne had subjected me to in the old days. I replied in kind.

  She rolled her head and sank her teeth into my wrist. I let loose, and she got a hand free and raked her claws at my face. I pulled my head back and lost the advantage of my weight pressing her down. She gave a wriggle and was out from under me.

  I thought she’d run away, but she just stayed there until I got to my feet. I said, “You could have run for it.”

  “I told you, I need your assistance. I thought you were with them, but when I overheard your orders to Miss Rasmussen, I realized that I have been mistaken. Now I ask your help.”

  “Jolly,” I said. “And then what do we play?”

  The decision wasn’t ours to make. The white glare of a powerful flashlight slammed through the darkness and lit up both of us. Reese Fuller’s contemptuous voice said, “If it isn’t the lady detective and a friend.”

  • • •

  I sat beside Ilona on a bench in the after cabin of Reese’s cruiser and wondered when I was going to do something right in this case. So far, the only thing I had done well was figure out what was going on. But every time I went into action, I seemed to end on my tail.

  I was growing tired of the position.

  Reese was standing on the aft deck where he could watch us and at the same time keep an eye on his man Les, who was on top of the headland, acting as liaison between the cruiser and Tumbro down on the shore.

  I said in a low voice to Ilona, “What did Reese mean by that crack about a lady detective?”

  She said stiffly, “I am a consultant for an insurance company, Mr. Durham. I specialize in international situations.”

  I said, “You mean you’re an insurance detective, like me?”

  “Up to now I have been more successful.”

  I let that one pass. I said, “And your company insured the Zwahili bank notes being printed in London a couple years ago?”

  “That is correct.”

  She was being as frosty as a homemade birthday cake. I said, “And Ghatt?”

  “Mr. Ghatt represents the interests of the Southeast African Government.”

  Reese was listening to us with one ear stuck out. He saw me watching him and grinned. “Didn’t you know, Durham?” he mocked me.

  I ignored him. I said to her, “Just where does Arne fit into this?”

  “He has been helping us.”

  That one didn’t catch up with me at the moment. I was thinking ahead. I said, “When the Pride gets here …”

  “Then,” she said quickly, “there will be four instead of three against us.”

  “Four? You’ve lost me again.”

  She sounded impatient. “A man who is a stowaway on the Pride will go overboard. He will be carrying many American dollars.”

  I shook my head at her. “You’ve got it backwards.” I told her what my theory was. She and Reese both laughed at me, by God! He was letting me talk because he enjoyed watching me make a fool of myself. I looked at his face and my knuckles itched.

  Ilona said, “It is not so complicated as you suspected, really. The notes are to be disposed of as you thought, but no one would be fool enough to trust men like this Les and that Tumbro with a quantity of money. No, Mr. Fuller, here, put them aboard the fishboats and gave them the task of picking up men waiting at various ports and seeing that those men remained hidden until they could jump ashore here where Mr. Fuller waited for them.”

  “And then?”

  “Then these men are sold Zwahili notes in exchange for the American dollars they are carrying. They take the notes away to ‘put them on the market’ elsewhere, as you said
.”

  “Why all the fuss of getting them into the country this way?”

  “They are men too well known as experts at this sort of work to attempt to come into the United States openly. It is much easier for them to leave without being stopped than it would be for them to enter.”

  I could see that, now that she explained it. I could also see that Reese had played this deal very smartly. He had taken no chances; he was getting his share in advance. It probably meant he would be taking a loss up to fifty per cent, but even three hundred thousand dollars is a fair cut. It was all very neat, and very clever.

  I said, “Who set these men up? Who’s running the selling end?”

  “There are men in England who know how to handle such foreign currency transactions. And if we had been lucky tonight, they would all have been in custody within twenty-four hours.”

  Reese said, “Thanks for that. I’ll have to let them know they’re suspected.”

  Before either of us could do more than sneer at him, Les yelled down from the headland. Reese made a signal with his arm and turned back to us. “The Pride will pass the Rock in less than five minutes,” he said. His voice had that edge again; he was nervous. I still didn’t think he had the temperament for this kind of work.

  The more I thought about it, the more I wondered. Reese was too fond of respectability, it seemed to me, to have ever thought up this kind of deal. But here he was, right in the middle, and planning on carrying the affair to its ultimate—murder.

  I said to Ilona in a tone too low for Reese to hear without coming closer to us, “I still don’t get Arne’s part in this.”

  “When I found that he was not involved, I went to him. He agreed to help us stop Fuller.”

  I said, “Not involved? Hell, if he isn’t involved, then all he’d have to do would be go to the cops and …”

  I stopped, and the realization of my own stupidity hit me in the groin with the force of one of Arne’s fits. I sat there and began to understand the reason for Arne’s odd attitude, the reason for so many strange incidents that had happened to me.

  I began to sweat. I looked at the chronometer on the bulkhead opposite the galley and I thought, Two hours. Two quick little hours.

  My world fell apart right there in the cabin of Reese’s cruiser.

  XXII

  OUR LAST CONVERSATION, too low for Reese to hear, seemed to make him edgy. He took a step toward us, bringing up the gun he was holding.

  “If you have anything to say, make it loud enough for everyone to hear.”

  His voice was sharper than before. I said to Ilona in my fishboat Norwegian, “Talk in Dansk. Say anything. Maybe he’ll get mad enough to come closer.”

  It wouldn’t have worked, normally, with a man as smooth and self-possessed as Reese Fuller. But he was anything but normal. He was under pressure from acting against his nature. I hoped I could take advantage of it.

  She said, “Maybe he can understand me.”

  “Insult him and see.”

  Ilona said judiciously, “I do not think he would be fun to wrestle with, that one.”

  I laughed. “As the Spanish say, ‘He is a man of less than one testicle.’”

  Ilona giggled. Reese glared at us but it was obvious from his expression that he didn’t understand. He was the virile kind; if he had followed the conversation he couldn’t have hid his reaction.

  I said, “What did you expect to gain, coming here?”

  Ilona needed a minute to puzzle out my Norski accent which was pure Puget City. Then she said slowly, “Arne and Mr. Ghatt are supposed to arrive at the same time as the Pride. I am to divert Fuller and his men.”

  I had made that job real easy for her. I said, “Why didn’t you just contact the Pride and warn the skipper?”

  “We tried, but his radio-phone must not be working. We could make no contact.”

  Reese yelled, “Shut up!” I had never seen him lose his poise like this.

  Ilona said, “We thought of sending a plane or boat but that would warn the stowaway, and we want him caught in the act of entering this country illegally.”

  She and Mr. Ghatt were a smart couple of Commonwealth subjects, I thought. This way they could get the sympathy of the Immigration Department.

  I said, “The Pride will be here in a minute or so. Where is Arne?”

  Reese yelled again, “Shut up!” He took another step toward me, the gun held like a club. I thought of Tom Harbin and the mark of a gunsight on his smashed skull.

  I said with an exaggerated Scandinavian lilt to my voice, “Yah. Sure. You betcha. You t’ink maybe ve got a time bomb in de pockets, yah?”

  Reese took another step and everything started happening like it was a chain reaction.

  From up above, Les yelled, “Boat coming in the bay!”

  And the sudden whine of a hard-working motor pushing a boat along at maximum broke the silence of the night. Right on the heels of its crescendo came the shrill of the Pride’s air whistle. The sound announced that she had crossed the international boundary and was once more in home waters.

  Reese made a half turn, obviously undecided whether to take a swipe at me or do something about the boat coming into the bay.

  Someone fired a rifle. The shot came from up on the headland. Reese turned to face us, his face ugly with fear. He lifted the gun again, but not to use as a club this time.

  I went off the bench, diving for him, trying to reach him before his panic let him kill us both. Ilona took off a shoe and threw it at his face. That was just enough. He automatically lifted his gun arm to protect his face. The gun went off and the bullet sailed the length of the aisle and hit something forward with a metallic plug.

  My shoulder caught his knees and he started over backward, clubbing at me with the gun. It went off again. Ilona walked right over my back and jerked the gun from his hand and stepped onto the deck. The rifleman on the headland was shooting steadily—at the boat that had come into the bay, I figured.

  Ilona fired. I caught Reese in the throat with the edge of my hand. He gagged and stopped fighting. From up above a man began to curse shrilly.

  The motor of the incoming boat suddenly cut off. There was a light bump as two hulls came together. I heard the sound of a grapple digging into the rail of the cruiser. Then there was the thud of heavy feet landing on the deck.

  Reese got a knee in my crotch with enough force to lift me off him. He scrambled to his feet. Big Arne suddenly filled the cabin. His face lit up when he saw Reese.

  I started getting up. Arne yelled, “This one is mine!” and he drove a huge fist into Reese’s side. I could hear the crunch of cartilege separating as Reese’s ribs gave way. He fell down and began to lose his last six meals.

  I said, “There are two more on shore, Arne.”

  “Yust one,” he said happily. “The lady, she took care of the other.”

  He started out, climbing onto the rock pier. Ilona was already ahead of him, scrambling up the rocks, holding Reese’s gun in one hand. I glanced to the port side and there was Mr. Ghatt. He sat in the cockpit of one of Arne’s fast launches, holding a rifle. He smiled benignly at me and didn’t say a word.

  I said, “Hi,” and went forward to the radio telephone. I stopped, one hand reaching for the controls. I turned and looked at Reese who was still being sick. I cursed him and his gun. Those two shots he had fired had hit the radio-phone squarely. I would have better luck shouting than trying to use that mess.

  I went on deck and jumped to the pier and started climbing. Ilona and Arne were disappearing over the top of the headland. I nearly fell on Les. He was sitting in the shadow of a rock, holding one bullet-shattered hand between his legs and moaning. He was out of things as far as I could see.

  I reached the top of the headland and stopped. Out to sea, the Pride was steaming merrily on its way, out of hailing distance. And everyone aboard having their “crossing the line” shot of whiskey or aquavit, or whatever they preferred, I thought sourly.r />
  Down below, a man clad in a pair of trunks, a money belt, and a sack on his back, was standing with his hands held over his head. Tumbro was beside him, his hands up too, but his fingers twitching, as though he wanted the rifle standing against a rock not three feet from him.

  Ilona was holding Les’s rifle on the pair and Arne was climbing down to help her. I didn’t move. Arne didn’t need me to help him have fun.

  He reached the rock, hit the man in the trunks a backhand blow that knocked him sprawling and turned on Tumbro. “You’ll never sail in my boats again!” he shouted pointlessly, and smashed Tumbro’s nose flat against his face.

  Arne carried Tumbro to the cruiser, herding the newcomer ahead of him. Finally he had everyone stowed aboard except Ilona. She had disappeared. She finally showed up, a dangerously innocent look on her face.

  I said to Arne, “If you’ll move Mr. Ghatt aboard this cruiser, I’ll borrow your launch. I’m in a hurry.”

  He was looking happily at the slaughter he had committed on Reese and Tumbro. “Yah. Sure,” he said cheerfully.

  I went aboard the launch and helped Mr. Ghatt safely aboard the cruiser. He said, “Thank you, Mr. Durham.”

  Ilona joined me in the launch. I said, “Loquacious chap, that Ghatt.”

  “He spoke two sentences at a time once,” she said. She was looking over the launch. “Just how fast is that fishboat?”

  “Not fast enough, I hope,” I said. I looked at the chronometer on the instrument board. “We’ve got an hour and ten minutes at the most—if this rig holds together.”

  I headed out of the bay, the throttle open wide. If the launch wasn’t going to hold together, we’d find out soon enough.

  XXIII

  THE LAUNCH WAS REALLY A high-powered kind of dory used by Arne’s purse seiners to take the fishnets and spread them at the fishing grounds. As a result, it had no cabin, and the early morning wind blowing straight into our faces had fingers of ice.