The Removers
( Matt Helm - 3 )
Donald Hamilton
The third Matt Helm novel, an American agent colder, tougher and more cynical than Bond. IN this story he gets sucked into the violent world of crime and espionage trying to protect his ex-wife and fend off the neurotic urges of a gangsters daughter.
Donald Hamilton
The Removers
Chapter One
To GET TO Reno, Nevada, from the southeast, in summer, if you don't have an air-conditioned car, you first sleep all day in Las Vegas. Then you eat a leisurely dinner, waiting for the sun to go down. You pack your gear and head off into the desert, which is cooling off now and bearable, if not exactly frigid. You drive all night through great areas of black nothing. The monotony is broken only by occasional neat signs informing you that the mysterious government installations along the way are none of your business, even if your taxes did help build them.
Then the sun comes up again, and a little while later you're in Reno, ready to get your divorce. I already had mine. I was just looking up my ex-wife, remarried now and living on a ranch somewhere nearby, because for some reason she wanted me to.
After a shower, a shave, and a belated breakfast, I reread Beth's letter while resting comfortably on one of the twin beds of an air-conditioned motel unit near the Truckee River. They do have a river in Reno, which is more than you can say for Las Vegas; and in other respects it's a little more of a town and a little less of a gold-plated gambling joint. Not that Reno qualifies as a staid and churchly community, by a long shot. No Nevada town does. I couldn't hear the clank of the slot machines from where I lay, but that could have been just be-cause it was still quite early in the day, or because the wind was wrong.
The letter was addressed to Mr. Matthew Helm, since Beth still clung to the notion that a nickname has no place on an envelope. It was written in blue-black ink on good rag paper bearing a cattle brand and the heading:
Double-L Ranch, Middle Fork, Nevada. It was quite short.
Dear Matt:
When we parted, you said that if I or the children should ever need you, you would come.
I have no right to ask, of course, but we need you now.
Sincerely,
Beth
(Mrs. Lawrence Logan)
She'd gone to one of those strict eastern schools, almost vanished from the educational scene, where they still taught such cruel, old-fashioned disciplines as penmanship, regardless of the frustrations and inhibitions that might thereby be produced in the sensitive minds of their helpless charges. Maybe this educational trauma was at the root of her troubles, if you want to call them that. She wouldn't want to. In her view, as was only natural, there was nothing wrong with her. I was the one with troubles-troubles too terrible for a woman to share. Well, we could both be half right.
Anyway, she had a lovely, neat, precise and well-disciplined handwriting that reminded me of the lovely, neat, precise and well-disciplined person from whom it had come. We'd never quarreled; she wasn't someone you could quarrel with. There's not much satisfaction in yelling at someone who won't yell back. We'd even parted company in a quite civilized manner.
"Beth," I'd said, "can't you simply forget about it?"
"No," she'd whispered, "no, I can't forget! How can
I said, "Well, we might as well call it quits, then. I'll take my old pickup truck and the stuff in the studio. You can have the station wagon and the house and all the rest of it. I won't be needing much furniture where I'm going."
She winced and said, "I'm sorry, Matt. I just can't help… I'm sorry."
She probably was, but the fact remained that she could no longer bear to have me around. We'd had almost fifteen years, perhaps more than I'd had a right to expect. Then, one day, as I should have known would happen, the war, which I'd fought in a kind of specialized way with some kind of specialized characters, had caught up with me.
I'd had to call into play certain skills and attitudes I'd learned under the tutelage of a gentleman known as Mac, with fairly messy results, which Beth had witnessed. She'd seen the good, gentle Dr. Jekyll turn, briefly, into the nasty, violent Mr. Hyde, and the shock had remained with her. Well, there wasn't much point in forcing a woman to live with a man who turned her stomach; besides, it wasn't much fun for the man.
"I guess Reno's your best bet," I said. "Get a good lawyer and tell him I'll sign anything he wants." I'd hesitated then, not wanting to sound too corny and magnanimous, but it had been a pretty good marriage while it lasted, and I had to admit that the cause of the breakup, strictly speaking, lay in my past, not hers. I said, "It seems unlikely, but if the occasion should ever arise that you or the kids need a man of my peculiar talents, don't hesitate to call on me. After all, I'm still their daddy, no matter what a judge says."
I'd meant it all right, but it was essentially just one of those impressive lines you speak as you go out the door. I hadn't really expected her ever to take me up on it. I'd walked out and headed for the nearest phone and called Mac long distance to let him know I was coming back to work-he'd been after me to do it-after fifteen years of making my living peacefully with typewriter and camera. I'd been in Europe on official government business, never mind what, when notice reached me I was no longer a married man. Now, only some six months later, Beth was asking for help.
She must have found it difficult, I reflected. She must have swallowed a lot of pride to write those few lines.
She hadn't swallowed quite all of it, however. There was that little parenthesis under the signature-Mrs. Lawrence Logan-that specified the terms on which I was to come, if I did choose to come, quite clearly. Apparently she wasn't quite desperate enough to summon me as just a woman calling to a man. She wanted to make sure I wouldn't get any wrong ideas. If I helped her, she was saying, I was helping her as another man's wife, take it or leave it.
"Will you go, Eric?" Mac had asked after I'd read the letter the first time, standing by his desk in Washington on my return from Europe. I was always Eric in that office, no matter what names I might use elsewhere.
"Have I a choice?" I asked.
Then I glanced at him sharply. He was a lean, middle-aged man with close-clipped gray hair. He wore a gray flannel suit, and he looked about as much like Madison Avenue as an old gray timber wolf looks like your clipped pet poodle. They have some cold, hard, bright and ruthless men along that street, to be sure, but in one sense they're all thoroughly domesticated. They may talk big about cutting the throats of the opposition, or sticking knives in competitors' backs, but they are speaking quite figuratively, of course. The sight of real blood would send them all screaming for the police.
Blood has never bothered Mac a bit, as far as I know, and he's been responsible for the shedding of a lot of it.
He interpreted my questioning glance correctly. "Yes," he said, "I read the note. As a matter of fact, not knowing where to reach you, Mrs. Logan sent it to me with a covering letter, asking me to look it over and pass it on only if you were not on assignment. There was, she wrote, no point in worrying you if you were not free to come, and she did not wish to interfere with your efficiency, if you were on a dangerous mission. She seems quite a sensible and considerate person in many respects- and quite attractive, too."
"I didn't know you knew my wife-my ex-wife."
He said, "I paid her a visit last fall, while your divorce was still pending. It wasn't good security, of course, but she already knew more about us than she should, after that trouble you had in Santa Fe. Primarily, I wanted to see if she could be trusted to keep quiet, but I did think that perhaps, if I explained the patriotic necessity of your work with us, past and present, she might understand…" He shrugged his shoulders ruefully.
I hadn't known that he'd tried to intercede for me. "It was kind of you to take the trouble, sir."
"A commander must concern himself with whatever affects the morale of his troops," Mac said dryly. "As it turned out, I accomplished nothing in your behalf, quite the contrary. Your wife was very nice, very attentive, and quite horrified. She kept looking me over carefully to see where I kept my horns and tail."
I said, "I've often wondered about that myself, sir." After a moment, I asked, "Did you meet this fellow Logan, the one she later married?"
"Yes, he owns and manages the guest ranch at which she was staying. He seemed pleasant enough; a lean British type with a sandy Air Force moustache. I had a feeling he might be able to take care of himself in a pinch, but it's hard to tell with these understated, expatriate Englishmen. They all make a point of looking as if one could knock them over with a feather, and sometimes one can."
I glanced at the note I was still holding, folded it, and put it in my pocket. "In her covering letter, Beth didn't give you any hint of what kind of difficulty she's in that she expects me to fix up for her?"
"And it's okay if I take a little time off to investigate?" He nodded. "You have a vacation coming, Eric." He looked at me over the desk, studying me as if to see if I'd changed in any way since I'd last been in that office. "When you get to Reno, check in at the Riverside Motel," he said. "There'll be a reservation waiting for you." He wrote something on a piece of paper and held it out.
I looked at him hard. "What's this?"
"A contact number in Reno. Agent Paul. Memorize and destroy."
I said dryly, "A vacation, I think you said, sir."
"Paul is quite young and inexperienced. He may need help."
"Doing what?"
"Don't ask unless you really want to know."
I said, "It's his assignment, I gather. If he needs me, he can brief me."
"Precisely," Mac said. "When you've seen him, if you see him, let me know what you think. I don't feel he's going to work out for us. One can't do much with these infants brought up on peace and togetherness." He hesitated. "You can use him if you like, but only if you need assistance badly. Our people have other things to do than look after independent knights-errant on private missions for their ladies fair."
I said, "She's not my lady fair, she's Logan's. She makes that pretty plain."
"She makes it plain," Mac murmured. "Nevertheless, it's you to 'whom she's turned for help, not Logan. But no doubt that's occurred to you." After a moment, he said, dismissing me: "Don't forget to stop by the recognition room on your way out. There may be some new faces in the files since you left the country."
Chapter Two
THE RECOGNITION ROOM shares the basement of the building with a fancy filing system that was discarded by the FBI or somebody when IBM or somebody sold them a still fancier one. Although technically obsolete, it's good enough for us. We don't have to keep tabs on all the criminals in the world, or even all the spies and secret agents. We just concentrate on the people in our own line of business, and there aren't too many of those. It's an exacting and unrewarding profession, by most standards.
I heard Mac repeat his stock inspirational lecture on the subject last fall before 1 went overseas. At the time, taking a refresher course of training to make up for my fifteen-year layoff, I was a member of a class of seven bright young things, male and female, all terribly eager to see the top man in the flesh for the first time, and three hard-bitten retreads like myself, all trying to keep from yawning. We'd seen him.
"It's a war of sorts, ladies and gentlemen," Mac had said, standing before us, "and you can consider yourselves soldiers of sorts, but I'd rather you wouldn't. Don't make up any pretty mental pictures. If you were working for a criminal organization, you'd be known as enforcers. Since you're working for a sovereign nation, you can call yourselves… well, removers is a very good word. It describes the job with reasonable accuracy…
I went through the current files carefully, refreshing my memory about my fellow-removers in the services of other countries-the ones known to be operating in the United States, particularly. There were people in the service of friendly nations, who were to be treated with consideration if possible. Of course, it wasn't always possible. There were the small fry of the opposing team, who were merely to be reported if seen. Finally, there were tie other side's big guns, as far as we had them spotted. There were Dickman, Holz, Rosloff, Martell, and a deadly female we knew only as Vadya, all with the highest priority. Of these, only one had been reported in the country recently. I frowned and went back through the cards.
"Martell," 1 said. "I thought he'd dropped out of sight after that Berlin business. Give him to me on the projector, please, Smitty."
Smitty limped to the rear of the room and turned on the machine. He limped because he didn't have much in the way of feet. They had been operated on drastically by some gentlemen in search of information. Various other parts of Smitty were also missing, and there were scars that didn't make him very pleasant to look at.
Mac had given him this job upon his discharge from the hospital, since he was obviously no longer fit for field duty. Don't think for a moment it was just a generous gesture towards a disabled employee. We all had to check with the recognition room before we went out on assignment; we all had to see Smitty therefore, before every job. It was an antidote for optimism and overconfidence, since it was well known that Smitty had been as good as any of us, in his time. He'd just been a little careless, once.
The picture came on the screen. Projecting it didn't help much. If a picture is lousy to start with, blowing it up doesn't improve it-something the TV manufacturers don't seem to have discovered yet. This was just a fuzzy telephoto shot of a man getting out of a car, taken at extreme range by a hidden photographer who should have used a heavier tripod to hold his equipment steady. The printing on the card came through nice and clear, however.
Martell, I read, Vladimir. 5' 11", 190 lbs., black hair, wide forehead, heavy eyebrows, brown eyes, straight nose, thick lips, strong chin. Fingerprints as Martell not on record, but see below. Expert pistol, poor rifle, adequate knife and unarmed combat. Not known to drink excessively. Not known to use drugs. No known homosexual tendencies. Officially reprimanded 47 and 50 for attentions to women leading to neglect of duty. Responsible death Agent Francis in Berlin Sep 51. Unreported until Feb 60 when seen in Miami Beach acting as bodyguard for Dominic Rizzi, using name Jack Fenn. Found to have established, under this name, authentic criminal record dating back to 53 (see reverse for details and fingerprints). Purpose of cover unknown. Current mission unknown. Present whereabouts unknown. Priority One.
So they'd found him and lost him; somebody would have caught hell for that. I frowned at the figure on the screen. One of the short-range lads; he didn't like a rifle. A ladies' man; and he must be damn good at his work to still be in business with two counts of that against him. His employers weren't noted for leniency towards agents who goofed off after women.
"Who's Rizzi?" I asked.
"His line was dope, mainly," Smitty said, behind me. "He's in jail now. He was caught in the Appalachian roundup of syndicate big-shots."
"That would put Mr. Martell out of a job," I said. "Well, he shouldn't have much trouble finding himself a new position. He's spent seven or eight years building himself a cover as torpedo for the syndicate, judging by what it says here." I grimaced at the fuzzy image on the screen. "He's well qualified, you've got to hand him that. Those gangsters will never hire a better-trained hatchet man. Let's hope they appreciate him. I just wonder what the hell he's up to, playing hoodlum."
"So does the man upstairs," Smitty said. "He's been wearing out that photo, looking at it for inspiration."
"Anything else?" I asked. "No other pix?"
"No, but there's an unconfirmed report on the master card, here, to the effect that Martell was seen in Reno recently, carrying a gun for a racketeer named Fredericks. The report is being
investigated, it says here."
I made a wry face at the screen. That was why Mac had a green kid in Nevada, then, and was asking me to back him up. It would be one of those annoying deals where you're on standby duty simply because you happen to be around. You haven't got anything specific to do, but you can be damn sure that just about the time you're about to turn out the light and go to bed with the girl, the phone will start ringing.
Not that I had a girl in mind-or if I did, she was married to another man, and if I knew her, she'd be taking her marriage vows very seriously. She'd always been a very serious girl.
Chapter Three
WEST OF RENO, they have some quite respectable mountains, as the early emigrants discovered to their dismay, including some folks named Donner, who couldn't manage to beat the snow across, and spent the winter in camp eating each other. There's a monument to them up towards the pass that bears their name. Well, maybe they earned it, but it does seem a little unfair to the better-organized outfits who made it on a regular diet and so missed the opportunity to get their names carved in stone or cast in bronze-I forget the exact material used.
I'd been up that way years before, but this time I swung down along the foothills after leaving the motel. It was close to three in the afternoon when I reached the metropolis of Middle Fork, which consisted of a general store with a gas pump out front. They supplied me with soda pop and directions, said I couldn't possibly miss it; and I proceeded back into the hills.
The little road wound upwards with the usual assortment of bumps, ruts, and unreliable-looking bridges. It forked here and there. Sometimes there were signs pointing to various places, including the ranch I was looking for, but sometimes I had to toss a coin to make the choice. I didn't mind. Washington was far away, with the gray-haired man behind the desk, and the recognition room full of pictures of unpleasant people it was my duty to do something about if I should happen to bump into them.
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