The Demolishers

by Donald Hamilton

  There was a kind of tolerant affection in the way he spoke of his parents; clearly he considered them okay people but not really very bright. Still, the affection was there; pleasant to encounter these days when the battle of the generations is often pretty savage—witness Sandra and her parent. Leonard unlocked the door for us and turned on the light inside; we entered what seemed to be the living room of a small apartment. It looked as if his mother had furnished it with the advice of her interior decorator, all pale wood and light upholstery and beige carpet; but he had it cluttered up with computer readouts and piles of books. Mysterious odds and ends of equipment were parked in various corners. A picture of Linda Anson in living color hung on one wall; as I came closer I realized that it was a magazine page, carefully framed.

  Leonard went over to a small, pale bar on which stood a tapering Pyrex flask of the kind my college chemistry teacher called an Erlenmeyer—and don’t ask me how I remember that after all these years. The flask, plugged with a black rubber stopper, was filled with a pale green liquid that looked like something nasty out of a sci-fi movie that would kill you if it touched you or turn you into a zombie or werewolf.

  “Would either of you care for a drink?” he asked. “I’m a Gatorade man myself; but there’s some stuff Dad brought over. He said the booze I’d been serving my drinking friends was a disgrace and gave the place a bad name. He gave me a funny-looking bottle of Scotch he said was okay. Pinch?”

  Delgado said, “I’ve never been know to turn down Pinch. Yes, I’ll have a little, thanks.”

  “I’ll second that,” I said.

  “You do it while I get the ice, please, Mr. Helm.” He set out the bottle and showed me the glasses. When he came back with the ice bucket, he said, “Are you really a government man?”

  I nodded. “I work out of Washington, yes.”

  “It puts me on kind of a spot,” he said. “I thought when I read that newspaper story that you were here on personal business. I mean, about your son, who was also, I understand, the husband of the girl in the hospital.”

  “Well, personal feelings are certainly involved,” I said. “My chief selected me for the assignment for that reason. Incidentally, the girl in the hospital thanks you for your help under fire. And for the flowers.”

  He turned slightly pink. “It seemed like the right thing to do. I mean, she was so brave. It must have hurt terribly, but she didn’t make a sound even when they were lifting her onto the stretcher. I’m a sissy; I know I’d have screamed my head off. Mr. Helm, if you came across something slightly illegal, would you feel obliged, because of your government position, to report it to the police?”

  I said, “I shouldn’t commit myself without asking a few questions, but I will. The answer is no.”

  “I debated a long time after seeing that you seemed to be authorized to carry a gun, there at the lake. And the way you talked with the police. I almost decided not to approach you. It was different when I thought you were a private citizen; I thought I could give you something you needed for your, well, mission. But if you’re connected with the government, you can get everything you need, can’t you? Guns or… or anything else.”

  “It doesn’t necessarily follow,” I said. “And it seems that you decided to change your mind. Here we are, at your invitation.”

  He nodded. “Yes. I’ve worked hard on this. I can’t see anybody else to offer it to, and it must be used. Maybe, as an employee of the U.S. government, there are some things you can’t bring yourself to do or aren’t allowed to do. There’s absolutely nothing I won’t do, Mr. Helm, to make those fiends pay for their crime.”

  It was very still in the cluttered living room. The big spectacles were aimed at me steadily. I remembered that I’d thought the boy’s eyes kind of muddy and indefinite in color when I first met him, but they were clear and fierce now.

  “That statement covers a lot of territory, Lester,” I said. “It could get you into serious trouble.”

  He said, “You must have some kind of a plan. Can you use a helper who’s dedicated, reasonably intelligent—and expendable?”

  “It means that much to you?” I asked softly.

  He said, “You don’t know what it’s been like. I keep her pictures to remind me… Well, there’s one. They keep reproaching me for not… Well, there was never anything I could do for her while she was alive, but I can do something for her now she’s dead; and I have to do it. Then, maybe, if I survive, I can take down the pictures, all except maybe the best one for remembrance, and start living again.” He drew a long ragged breath. “The project I set myself is finished. I’m pretty good with my hands, I have the material, and I know how to use it. I’m a quick study, I know some chemistry and physics, and it’s really not a very complicated subject. But I don’t know where to start! I haven’t any idea of how to go about finding them. If you can show me, you’ll be doing me the biggest favor in the world, no matter what happens to me as a result.”

  I didn’t speak at once when he’d finished. Now that I’d found exactly what I’d come here to Newport to search for, I didn’t like it. He was a nice boy even if he was a bit far out; and I could very well get him killed. I told myself that he’d just given me absolution, if that should happen. Conscience isn’t a commodity we deal in much in the business, anyway.

  I said. “Okay, it’s a deal. Let’s see what you have to show me.”

  “This way.”

  It was quite an establishment, off the side of the little apartment, one room leading into the next, railroad-car fashion. There was a crowded computer-electronics room with banks of mysterious screens and switches and dials that presumably meant something to Delgado, but were just sci-fi to me. Then there was what looked to be a rather well-equipped little machine shop. Beyond was a chemistry laboratory complete with sinks and stone-topped lab tables. There were ventilating hoods to suck out dangerous fumes, and racks of reagents, and shelves of chemical glassware like the Gatorade flask; there were also several ovens and furnaces set into one of the walls. Beyond that was what Leonard called the assembly room, with a couple of large workbenches, three scales that would weigh anything from a horse to a mosquito, and a large chest of tools.

  Leonard stopped at the final door. “It’s all in here,” he said. “It’s perfectly safe, but you’d better not smoke. I got most of it from the computer. You’d be surprised what sources are available if you know how to access them. And there are books available that would shock some people. You know the kind of people who think certain kinds of knowledge should be hidden from other people.”

  Dana asked, “What kinds of knowledge, Lester?”

  He grinned boyishly. “Well, sex, for instance. And of course they’d want to make a secret of, for instance, the fact that diesel fuel combined with certain kinds of fertilizer makes a very powerful explosive—they’d like that to be kept out of print even though everybody knows the Irish have been using it in their car bombs for years. They don’t want anybody to know that aspirin can be made to yield picric acid, which can be employed in homemade detonators, but it hardly comes as a surprise to anyone who glances at the chemical formula. Anybody who wants to know how to make old-fashioned gunpowder—black powder—only has to reach for a history book; the pioneers manufactured their own and it’s no secret how they did it.” He shrugged. “I robbed Mom’s compost pile for a source of nitrogen and used wood ashes from the fireplace and made my own charcoal; sulfur was a little more of a problem… Well, you’re not interested in the details, and black powder isn’t such a great explosive anyway. I just started with that because it’s a simple process and I wanted to get the feel of working with these materials.” He gave us a rather shy and apologetic grin as he opened the door. “Sorry for the lecture, but it was really a very interesting project and, well, for obvious reasons I haven’t been able to discuss it with anybody else. Go on in.”

  It was a small, windowless room, with a chill like that of a cave, indicating that the temperature was co
ntrolled thermostatically. I heard a ventilating fan whirring somewhere. There were shelves along the walls. He had it all neatly displayed and labeled like a school assignment, and it was all there, from the little ones that would blow off your foot to the big ones that would bring down your condominium—well, the working parts of the latter with the bulky missing ingredients neatly listed. It was the warehouse of a one-man bomb factory.

  He spoke from the door, softly. “I thought… I thought it was time those terrorists learned a little about bombs from the other end,” he said. “I thought it was time a few of them got blown up, for a change. Just tell me who, Mr. Helm. Just tell me where.”

  24

  There were half a dozen big cars parked and double-parked carelessly in front of the hotel doorway. An undoubtedly significant comment on our society, although I don’t know what it signifies, is the way a guy with a cheap Honda or Volksie is generally pretty careful how he parks it, while the gent with the expensive Caddy will just go off and leave it sitting in the middle of the street.

  Leonard squeezed past the pile-up and let us out on the sidewalk a little farther on. We watched the van drive away through the big, lighted parking lot and join the stream of traffic on the four-lane boulevard. Delgado started to speak, perhaps to comment on what we’d been shown; but I silenced her with a warning hand on her arm as two figures came towards us from the bright hotel entrance in a purposeful way.

  I couldn’t identify them against the light. With the .38 ready but hidden, I threw a quick glance around, something I’d learned long ago while duck hunting: You concentrate too hard on a bunch of teal approaching the decoys from across the lake in front of you, and a pair of mallards will slip in from the marsh in back of the blind and almost knock your hunting cap off, and be gone before you can lift your shotgun. But nobody was sneaking up behind us at the moment.

  Delgado said calmly, “If you want me down, just say. ‘down.’ Please don’t hurl me to the pavement as you did… Oh, it’s Trask. I don’t know the man with him.”

  “Benison,” I said. “Drugs.”

  I holstered the gun again, feeling a little foolish. It was the second false alarm of the evening. Maybe I was getting a bit paranoid. Well, better a warm, paranoid body than a cold, well-adjusted corpse.

  Delgado said, “Oh, one of those. I wonder what he wants.”

  “Drugs, what else?” I said. “That’s what they all want these days, and it’s getting to be a pain in the ass for those of us in other lines of endeavor. I’m not saying it isn’t important. I’ll admit it’s a nasty problem; but the way one bad habit’s become a national obsession scares hell out of me. When we’re finally invaded by hostile aliens from outer space, they’ll meet no opposition at all. The army, the navy, and the air force will all have been sent off to chase drug smugglers… Miss Dana Delgado, Mr. Thomas Benison. Hi, Trask.”

  “You were gone awhile,” Trask said. “The man I had watching said you entered the van voluntarily, but we were beginning to wonder.”

  “The kid had something to show me,” I said. “What can I do for you, Mr. Benison?”

  The compact, brown-haired man spoke deliberately: “You’ve been displaying some interest in the late Mr. Pirate Williams. Is he, or his marina, connected with your present mission in any important way?”

  I shook my head. “Not that I’ve been able to determine. I was just being thorough, checking out both victims of the Silver Conch bombing. The man is dead and so, by the looks of it, is his boatyard complex. Why do you ask?”

  Benison said, “Because I’d appreciate it if you’d leave it strictly alone from now on.” I must have shown some kind of adverse reaction because he shook his head quickly. “Don’t get touchy, Helm. I’m not giving orders; I’m asking a favor. That marina and boat yard aren’t as dead as they look. We think they’ll soon be revived with money that comes, in roundabout ways, from a source that interests us—if said source isn’t scared off by signs of official curiosity. We’ve been after him a long time. We thought Williams was going to lead us to him, but Williams had dinner in the wrong place at the wrong time and got killed by terrorists. Now it looks as if Mr. Big may show his hand a little, taking over where Williams left off in order to maintain his pipeline.”

  “You mean that boat of the Pirate’s? It looked like a barnacle farm to me.”

  Benison laughed. “That was just a diversion, the boat and the pointless trips offshore. Williams figured that if we were watching him, we’d sooner or later show some interest in his minivoyages. He’d be stopped and searched and nothing would be found; but it would be an early-warning signal of sorts, letting him know he’d better cool his operations, at least for a while. But as long as the Montauk Maid was left alone, he reasoned, in spite of her curious offshore jaunts, it meant that nobody was suspicious of him and he could safely keep the stuff coming through—cunningly built into private boats that entered his yard for repairs. You can do practically anything with fiberglass, you know; and short of breaking up a hull with a sledgehammer, and that isn’t easy, there’s hardly any way of finding something that’s become an integral part of the structure.”

  “Tricky,” I said.

  “Yes. So we prefer not to have our man worried by people poking around that harbor, particularly government people of any kind. We want him to feel safe in resuming operations. I’d be grateful if you’d just forget the dead Pirate and his dusty lair completely.”

  I studied him for a moment. He was being surprisingly tactful and diplomatic. Tallman would have told me to lay the hell off or else, and I’d probably have jimmied a couple of boathouse locks just to show him that he wasn’t the guy from whom I took my instructions. But this smooth, carefully dressed character—he was wearing another three-piece suit, charcoal gray this time—didn’t throw his weight around unnecessarily, which didn’t mean he didn’t have any to throw.

  I said, “Unless something compelling turns up pointing that way, which I don’t expect, I’m out of your hair. And if something should turn up, I’ll get in touch before I make any moves. Okay?” He nodded and I said, “You’re very polite for a drug agent.”

  “Maybe I’m frightened, Helm,” he said gravely. “It’s quite terrifying, the things that happen to people who try to push you around, even people working for the same government.” He was watching me closely.

  I said, “Don’t look at me, I haven’t blown up anybody lately. Those snoops of Tallman’s just couldn’t keep their feet out of other people’s bear traps. First they sprang one of ours, in Savannah, and now they seem to have stepped into one of the opposition’s, in Old Saybrook. Except it went bang instead of snap.”

  “I know,” Benison said, relaxing a bit. Apparently he hadn’t been quite sure until he heard me say it. He went on: “But does Tallman know? If not, if he blames you for setting him up, directly or indirectly, he could cause you trouble. He’s not a very stable personality, and he took a lot of pride in his little task force. Under his leadership, that quartet of politically appointed amateurs was going to solve the dreadful problem of illicit substances that has baffled hundreds of us pros for years. Only it seems that they broke into one house too many without a warrant; and their high-handed and illegal methods backfired on them, quite literally. Some people in Washington are laughing, but not too loudly. After all, the appointments came from fairly high up.”

  “But you’re not laughing,” I said.

  “No. Any more than a policeman laughs when other cops get killed, even if they weren’t too bright and their commander is an arrogant loudmouth who nobody likes. So I’m glad to hear that you’re not responsible.” The threat implicit in his words wasn’t strong but it was there: He didn’t think I’d been lying to him, but if I had been, I’d regret it. He said, “Good night, Helm. Miss Delgado. Trask.”

  He walked out into the parking lot and unlocked an inconspicuous medium-sized car two rows back. Watching him drive away, I said, “It’s nice to meet a guy who doesn’t have t
o talk tough just because he is.”

  “It’s still a goddamn crusade; and crusaders bug me.” Trask shook his head, dismissing the subject. “I’ve got your plane tickets. Kennedy, American, tomorrow at twelve-thirty P.M. They want you there an hour early. The hotel serves breakfast at six-thirty. Pack ahead of time and eat fast, because there’ll be a car outside at seven. It’s a hundred and fifty miles and something; and with all the highway construction, the driver likes a bit of leeway. Leave your weapons with him; you’ll get others in San Juan. No sense going through all that firearms red tape if you don’t have to. Lunch on the plane; I think it’s a DC-10. You get in at four, but that’s Atlantic time, an hour ahead of us. Check with Avis at the airport for your car. Hotel El Convento downtown. Two rooms adjoining. Couldn’t get you into the Howard Johnson over in Condado on such short notice, or any of the nearby resort hotels, but there’s not much to see in that restaurant anyway, they’ve had most of a year to clean up the bomb mess. Your contact goes by the code name Modesto. Miss Delgado knows the contact procedures; she’s been in touch with our people down there. Modesto will have the information you wanted on the blast victims. He’ll supply arms, and arrange cover for you if you need it.” Trask took three travel-agency folders from his inside coat pocket, glanced into them, and handed me two. “I’ll take care of canceling this,” he said, pocketing the third one.