The Intriguers mh-14

by Donald Hamilton

  Good old Herbert Leonard, predictable as always. He'd had a small, feverish touch of professionalism back there at Cutlass Key, but he was recovering nicely. Hundreds of overconfident characters have failed in their missions, many have died, from keeping dangerous prisoners alive for questioning instead of shooting them on the spot, but the message never seems to get through. People like our white-haired Herbie are never satisfied with simply winning. They want their victories and information, too.

  You can count on it always, I'd reflected happily; and somebody had hit me over the head with something, probably a gun-barrel. Now I was here, wherever that was. They'd taken my gun and knife, of course, and also my belt-Leonard would know about the trick belts we're issued-but I still had my clothes and shoes on.

  "Matt. Matt, are you awake? Are you all right?"

  I opened my eyes and looked up at the low, white-painted ceiling of a largish cabin, at the end of which a couple of steps led up to a kind of louvered door that presumably opened-when it opened-to the main living spaces of the houseboat, if that's what I was on.

  "Matt, can you hear me?"

  Turning my head was painful, and the view that rewarded me was hardly worth it; although I guess it was mildly interesting to learn what a nicely dressed young lady looks like after wading through swamps, fleeing through jungles, and being pitched off,a boat into muddy shallows. I noticed that, grimy and bedraggled as she was, she was practically dry, indicating that I'd been unconscious for some time.

  She was lying on a bunk across the way, tied hand and foot just as I was. I caught her eye, and shook my head quickly as she started to speak.

  I formed the words with my lips soundlessly: "Come here."

  After a moment, cued by a beckoning finger, she got the idea and heaved herself awkwardly off her bunk and onto mine. Leaning close, she whispered, "Matt, what-"

  "Figure they're listening out there," I breathed, indicating the ventilated door. "Figure they're waiting for me to come to, and for us to hold an interesting conversation about something. When they've heard enough, the fun will begin. So keep acting as if you're still trying to bring me around."

  She nodded. "Matt!" she said aloud. "Oh, Matt, please wake up. I'm so scared!"

  "That's the idea," I whispered. "Now. Inside my left shoe you'll find a gadget looking like a short mechanical pencil, damned uncomfortable to walk on. I think you'll recognize it and know how it works. Twist the heel of my right shoe and you'll find what goes with it. Real secret agent stuff; how about it?" I grinned at her in an encouraging way. I'm not a superstitious man, and I don't believe much in ESP, but under tricky circumstances like that I prefer to avoid calling important items by their right names, even in whispers. I mean, I just don't want those particular vibrations floating around to give the wrong people ideas. Why take chances? I went on, very softly: "Thread one into the other, you know how, and hide it on you somewhere, but remember, I'm giving it to you to use when I give the word, not to wave around and threaten with like in the movies. When the opportunity comes, if it comes, our lives will depend on instant action. If you waste time talking, we're both dead. Okay?"

  She hesitated, studying my face. She was smart enough to realize approximately what I was asking of her, and her face was pale under the streaks of mud. Then she nodded abruptly.

  "Okay, Matt." Hitching herself back along the bunk, she raised her voice: "Matt, you've just got to wake up, they're going to kill us both, I heard them talking! They think I was in on the whole thing with you. They won't believe you and Daddy and Uncle Hank just used me as an innocent, stupid dupe to decoy Mr. Leonard to that place. They just laugh at me when I try to tell them I was quite sincere. Matt, can you hear me? Open your eyes. Say something."

  It took her a while, babbling like this, to get at the concealed equipment with her bound-together hands, twisting painfully to see how the work was progressing behind her.

  "I suppose I ought to hate you all!" she went on breathlessly. "Particularly Daddy and you! Think of it, my own father and a man I… I've slept with taking advantage of my… my principles and using me to set a man up for murder. But you didn't shoot. Why didn't you shoot, Matt? Just because I was in front of him? Why did that stop you? You're supposed to be the ruthless, sentimental, cold-blooded manhunter, aren't you? Was it because… because we'd made love a little, or just because you're Daddy's friend and didn't want to face him after putting a bullet through his idiot daughter? Which was it, Matt? Oh, don't just lie there like a log, damn you! You're awake, I know you're awake! Say something!"

  My shoes had been returned to my feet. She was hiding something under her scanty, dirty, damaged blue dress. She bobbed her head at me to let me know she was ready for the next phase of the operation. There was a little gleam in her eyes that said she hoped her monologue had made me at least slightly uncomfortable, and maybe it had; but it was no time to discuss the question of who had been taking advantage of whom.

  I licked my lips and said thickly, aloud: "Port your helm!"

  "What?"

  "A big girl," I said, forming the words with a difficulty that was only partly feigned, since my throat was pretty dry, "a big girl like you ought to learn right from left. Port your helm, she said, and there went the whole damned ballgame!"

  She played up instantly. "But port is left, and that was the way we were supposed to go-"

  "And helm means tiller, sweetheart; and when you shove the tiller to the left, the boat goes to the right."

  "But you didn't have a tiller!"

  "What difference does that make? You're supposed to figure the way a tiller would go and steer accordingly, even when you're using a wheel. Where did you learn your seamanship, anyway?"

  Martha said, with real indignation, "But you're crazy, Matt! When you port your helm with a wheel, you go left, I'm sure you do! It wouldn't make sense otherwise!"

  I said, "What really wouldn't make sense would be to have a command mean one thing on a boat that steers with a wheel and exactly the opposite on a boat that steers with a stick. Just how confusing do you want to get? What if the wheel breaks down and you rig a jury tiller, do you right away start giving all steering commands the opposite way, on the same damned ship-"

  The door opened, and in they came, figuring, I guess, that they weren't going to learn anything significant from technical argument about seamanship, and we didn't seem to be getting around to any interesting subjects. There were two of them, nice, clean-cut, American-boy types- well, actually they were in their thirties, but they'd never outgrow it. They both had smooth Florida tans. They were both wearing short-sleeved jersey sports shirts, light slacks, and the kind of expensive seagoing sneakers that are designed to get a death-grip on the wet, slanting deck of a hard-driven sailing yacht.

  They were real pretty, all except the guns they kept brandishing in a very self-conscious way. They untied our ankles, set us on our feet, and used their firearms to prod us up the steps and through the low, ventilated doors into the houseboat's galley, a symphony in stainless steel. There we made a full hundred-and-eighty-degree turn and climbed another short stairway-I guess the nautical term is ladder-into a pilot house with lots of windows all around, located directly above our recent prison cell.

  A big steering wheel and a lot of motor controls and instruments dominated the far end of this elevated greenhouse. To one side was a bank of electronic equipment being monitored by a young black man with less hair than most, these Afro days. He had headphones on and was perched on a stool in front of the closed sliding door, half-glass, that gave access to the deck to starboard. The man-groves were right there, just beyond the railing. We were tied up against the bank in a small cove.

  To port was an L-shaped settee and a card table holding a lot of official-looking papers. The settee held my heavy, scope-sighted rifle, and Herbert Leonard. He'd washed off the mud he'd picked up diving off the dock and combed his hair. He was wearing clean light slacks and a flowered sports shirt. He looked up at o
ur entrance, seeming annoyed.

  "No, no, I don't want them up here!" he said irritably. "Take them into the rear cabin. I'll be along in a minute."

  We were poked with the firearms once more, escorted back down the stairs-excuse me, ladder-and aft through the galley into another well-windowed compartment with a dinette to starboard and a kind of built-in sofa or lounge to port. Another sliding door led out to the short stern deck, but this door was also closed, presumably to keep the mosquitoes out and the air conditioning in.

  Off the stern of the houseboat lay my little craft. She seemed to be floating all right, but I doubted there was enough left of her propeller, after hitting bottom at full throttle, to make her very useful for getaway purposes. There was a spare wheel on board, of course, but I'd never changed props on a motor that big, and it would take me some time to figure out the drill. Well, escape was not the immediate problem. If all I'd wanted to do was escape, I could have been safely on board the Frances II this minute.

  The yellow runabout was not in sight, and I had seen nothing of its pilot. There were no other small craft visible, either, or any of the camouflaged pseudo-commando characters who'd participated in the attack on Cutlass Key. Apparently Leonard's amphibious forces had withdrawn, with their casualties.

  "Sit down!"

  That was my guard, shoving me onto the lounge. He seated himself on the end of one of the dinette benches across the way and showed me his gun once more. It was a perfectly ordinary Smith amp; Wesson, in no way unique. He seemed to be quite proud of it, however.

  "If you want to try something," he said, "go right ahead, you dirty professional assassin! After the way you murdered Patterson down in Mexico and March and TolIey in Arizona, not to mention all the good men you shot down in cold blood this morning, all I need is an excuse, just one little excuse!"

  I looked at him more sharply, alerted by his blustering voice, and realized that he was scared. It always surprises me a little. I mean, I never feel particularly scary; and I felt even less so than usual that morning, with my chest aching, the back of my head throbbing, the camouflage mud still coated on my face and hands, and my hands tied behind me. But dirty or clean, healthy or unhealthy, tied or untied, I apparently frightened him. His companion, facing Martha from the end of the other dinette seat, didn't seem very happy, either. It told me what attitude to employ. I fell into the spirit of the occasion and became the deadly, bloodthirsty old pro annoyed by a couple of ineffectual novices.

  "What did you boys do," I asked lightly, "flip a coin or something?"

  "What do you mean?" my guard asked.

  "How did you decide who'd get stuck with the dull chore of shooting me, when the time came, and who'd get all the fun of putting a lot of holes in the pretty lady-"

  "Pretty lady, hell!" said Martha's specimen. "Just because she's put a dress on doesn't make her a lady in my book, even when she isn't all plastered with mud! We saw the greasy specimens she was associating with down in Mexico. This country would be a damn sight better off if all the filthy hippie types, male and female, were lined up against a wall and used for target practice, leaving the country to clean, decent people; real Americans!"

  That scared me, a little. It was the first hint I'd had of the motivation behind Senator Love's secret crusade, as abetted by Herbert Leonard and his handsome young followers. There's nothing more frightening to me than a character who thinks he knows what a real American is- mainly because it generally turns out he's convinced it's somebody just like him. It seems an odd notion to me. I certainly don't want to live in a country populated with people just like me, God forbid! Anyway, I figure there's room for a little variety in a nation as big as ours.

  I said, "You know, that's not half a bad idea. At least a little practice sure wouldn't hurt you boys any, judging by the gent who tried to plug me down in Guaymas-it's too bad he couldn't swim any better than he could shoot. And how many rounds did those characters let off this morning without hurting anybody but a poor old black man; and that was an accident, a ricochet off the water. Yes, I think a little target practice would do wonders for you lads; and you might try a few driving lessons, too, while you're at it. Those two jerks near Tucson were kind of pitiful, really. I just hated to shut the door on them like that and send them out into the rocks to die. 1 mean, it was kind of like going around knocking little kids off their Christmas tricycles-"

  "Shut up!" After a moment, my specimen said sharply; "Talking about target practice, you didn't do so well yourself back there at Cutlass Key this morning. Sure, you managed to shoot a lot of good agents, but you didn't get the man you'd come all that way to-"

  "Man?" I said, thinking fast. "Who says I was there after a man? I came for her." 1 jerked my head towards Martha. "And I got her, didn't I? I was told she'd guide us out of there. It's not my fault the fool bitch doesn't know her right hand from her left. There was not a damn thing wrong with my part of the job, not a thing!"

  xxx.

  I was aware of Martha restraining herself from casting a startled-maybe even reproachful-glance in my direction; but it was the only way to handle it. I could never convince them, any more than she'd been able to, that she'd been perfectly honest and idealistic when she led them to her father's supposed hideout on Cutlass Key. It was better to use what they already believed, and build on that.

  My guard said sharply, "Are you trying to tell us-"

  "Why the hell should I want to hurt your precious Mr. Leonard, if that's who you mean?" I asked.

  The man shook his head. "That won't wash, Helm! Just now in your cabin, when she was trying to bring you around, your female accomplice said in so many words that you'd been planning to shoot-"

  "Eavesdropping?" I said. "Tsk. Tsk. Tell me, in your outfit do you always tell every junior member of every operational team everything about the team's mission. It must be nice to have so much faith. The fact is, Miss Borden was never informed of the exact purpose of her assignment. Maybe she thought she was setting somebody up for a touch. Maybe it made her feel better, more important, to believe she was part of a desperate assassination squad, instead of just getting a man out of the way for a few hours. If she'd known that, she might have started asking herself-maybe even aloud-why this particular man had to be distracted at this particular time; and that's a question we didn't want being asked by anybody, until our business was all taken care of."

  "Then what were you doing up that tree with that big rifle?"

  I glanced sourly at the girl beside me, and grimaced. "Under normal circumstances," I said, "using a trained female agent, we'd have let her make her own way clear, or not, however it worked out. Our operatives are supposed to be able to take care of themselves. If they can't, well, we're sorry about that. But in this case we had to use a girl who wasn't an agent, simply because she was the best bait available, the person most likely to be able to sell your M~. Leonard a bill of goods. But she'd had no training, and she happened to be the boss's daughter. Therefore, I was instructed to take whatever steps necessary to make sure she got out okay." I shrugged. "Nepotism, I guess you'd call it. I'm not really in the bodyguard business, but, hell, orders are orders. And we'd have made it, too, if she hadn't got all loused up on port and starboard. Christ, what a time to get nautical. If she'd just stuck to right and left, we'd be home free!"

  "But if you didn't want to kill Mr. Leonard-" This was Martha's escort, frowning thoughtfully. "If you weren't really setting him up' for murder, why go to all the trouble-"

  "He's here, isn't he?" I said shortly. "He isn't up north tending to business like he should, is he? He's chasing mirages through a lousy Florida swamp, or at least he was all last night. And right now he's wasting time shuffling papers up forward instead of using his brains and trying to find out why somebody wanted him out of circulation early on the morning of June fifteenth. It must be hell working for a stupid man. I feel for you boys, I really do. The gent I take my orders from may not be so photogenic, but at least he's got something
between the ears besides a wad of crumpled newspaper clippings telling him what a wonderful guy he..

  I'd figured Leonard had sent us back here so he could sneak up and listen to us, and I was right. Now he appeared in the cabin entrance, looking stern and accusing.

  "Well!" he snapped. "I hope you gentlemen are having a good time comparing employers."

  Our two guards had jumped to their feet. The nearest one, Martha's man, protested quickly, "Sir, we thought it best to let him talk. He claims he wasn't really assigned to murder you, as we assumed."

  "I heard what he claims." Leonard laughed scornfully. "What else could he say, having failed to carry out his mission? I've met this beanpole agent before. All his mistakes are always on purpose, to hear him tell it." He looked at me. "You'll have to conic up with a better story than that, Helm. I think you're talking just to keep yourself alive!"

  He was perfectly right, but it wasn't really an inspired guess. What else would I be doing under the circumstances? Of course, I was also talking to throw him off guard so I could do the job I'd been sent here for.

  I shrugged in a resigned sort of way. "Suit yourself, Mr. Leonard. I'm a hell of a liar. If fact doesn't suit you, I can cook up some real fancy fiction."

  He hesitated. Then he said carelessly, "Oh, no let's not strain your imagination any further. Let's stick with your current fairy tale, at least for the present. But let's make it slightly more plausible. Give us some motivation, Helm. Tell us just why you're supposed to have gone to a great deal of trouble-you, and your murderous employer, and all his lackeys and accomplices, not to mention that fine little actress, his daughter-to set an elaborate trap for me, if all the time you were intending to magnanimously spare my life?"