Hamilton, Donald - Matt Helm 14

by The Intriguers (v1. 1)

  We lay there a while, watching the vacant, light streak of road in the empty, dark wasteland below. At last Martha Borden stirred and glanced my way.

  "It doesn't look as if they're coming. Or maybe they've already gone."

  I realized this was the first thing she'd said since we sneaked up to the fence together, a good many miles back. Apparently the presence of another woman had an inhibiting effect on her.

  "We'll wait a little longer," I said.

  "I don't want to seem inquisitive." This was Lorna's voice from the other side of me. "I don't want to pry, but just who is she?"

  I said, "I'm sorry. I've been neglecting my social duties. Lorna, meet Nicki, and vice versa. I'm Eric, in case you didn't know."

  "Even if I hadn't been told to expect you, there aren't all that many agents six-and-a-third feet tall. But what's she doing here, if I may ask?"

  "She's a messenger girl," I said. "She carries the word from Washington, and doles out pieces of it as the spirit moves her."

  "How far do you trust her?"

  "Almost as far as I trust you," I told Lorna, "which isn't saying a great deal. But not quite as far. A little less."

  I was aware of Martha giving me a quick, startled glance, but it was Lorna who spoke:

  "Why more doubts in her case?"

  "Because I know you, by reputation at least. I don't know her, and she does some very peculiar things. For instance, this afternoon, two men came after us in a car. One had a gun. He'd have started shooting if I'd let him get into position. He'd have shot at me, to be sure, but he could easily have hit our girl friend here. She was sitting right beside me. And if he had succeeded in hitting me, I'd undoubtedly have wrecked the station wagon, and she'd probably have been hurt or killed. However, I managed to run the would-be murderers off the road so they piled up fatally. What did our girl do? Did she throw her arms around me and kiss me for saving her life? No, she gave me hell for being a callous assassin. How far would you trust a girl with reactions like that, Lorna?"

  "Not very far. Particularly not if she was supposed to have been selected and trained for our line of work." Lorna had got the point, all right. Her voice was cold. "But we'd better discuss it later. Get your binoculars ready. Here comes the caravan now."

  We saw the loom of the lights back in the hills; then the cars appeared at the head of the open valley, raising clouds of dust that caught the headlight beams. There were two sedans, followed by a jeep.

  "Check the lead car," Lorna's voice said. "The lady senator's homey image won't let her ride in a brand-new Cadillac, but she seems to figure she can get away with one five years old."

  Watching the car through the seven-power glasses with the big lenses, I said, "You don't like her much, do you, Lorna?"

  "I don't like suckers and I don't like phonies. She's either one or the other. Either she's putting one over on the American people or somebody's putting one over on her-somebody like, for instance, Herbert Leonard. Isn't that his slick white hair in the rear of the old Cadillac? Who's beside him?"

  "I can't tell yet."

  The first car stopped at the gate. A man opened the front door and hurried forward to deal with the padlock. Then the rear door of the big old sedan opened. Herbert Leonard stepped out.

  The headlights of the car behind him illuminated him clearly. He'd gained a little weight in the years since I'd seen him last, but he'd never been exactly slender: a chunky, solid man with a rather handsome red face and that dramatic, carefully combed white hair.

  He turned to speak to someone remaining in the car, who leaned forward to answer. The interior lights showed me the face of a woman in her sixties, round and a little wrinkled like an autumn apple, framed by carefully waved blue-gray hair. I got an impression of sharp bright eyes behind the round, metal-rimmed glasses, but my binoculars weren't powerful enough to tell me the color. The body seemed plump and matronly, wrapped in a dark coat against the chill of the air.

  "Do you see her, Eric? Do you recognize her?"

  I said, "I recognize her."

  "Then let's get the hell out of here. I need a bath and ten hours' sleep."

  "Wait till they're gone."

  Herbert Leonard bowed over the distant woman's outstretched hand. He turned away and walked to the next car, a newer Cadillac, and got in. The car began to turn around. Obviously, he was returning to the ranch, having done his duty as host by escorting his eminent female guest off the premises. The older sedan started up and drove through the gate and on down the valley out of sight. A lone man, after locking the gate, ran to the waiting jeep and was taken aboard. The two remaining vehicles headed back into the hills, and the valley was empty once more...

  Some three hours later, towards dawn, we pulled into a motel with an all-night office, on the outskirts of Phoenix, a hundred and twenty-odd miles to the north. I registered as Mr. and Mrs. Matthew Helm and daughter, took the key, and drove to the unit that had been assigned to us.

  "Go on in," I said, passing the key to Lorna. "I'll bring the luggage after I've parked the boat."

  There was no space large enough for both car and trailer, so I backed the boat into a stall, disconnected it, and put the station wagon into the space beside it. Then I got my suitcase and Martha's rucksack and locked up. The door of the room had been left ajar for me. I nudged it open with my foot, since my hands were full, and stepped inside and stopped, looking at the tableau presented by the two women: the younger backed against one of the big beds, the older holding a short-barreled revolver.

  "Take it easy, Lorna," I said.

  "I had to make sure she wasn't armed. Anyway, I don't work with people I can't trust."

  "You must lead a hell of a lonely life," I said. "Anyway, nobody's asking you to work with her. That's my chore. Now put that damn gun away before it goes off and lands us all in trouble."

  "My gun doesn't go off until I want it to go off. And nobody, particularly no man, tells me-"

  "Oh, shut up and have a drink," I said, bending over my suitcase to open it. "Leave the kid alone. If you'd just use your eyes instead of waving that pistol around, all your questions would be answered." I straightened up with a bottle in my hand, and winked encouragingly at Martha, who'd sunk down onto the bed, sitting very still, watching the revolver. I set the bottle on the dresser, started stripping some glasses of their paper nighties, and said, "For Christ's sake, Lorna, take a look at the girl before you blow your stack. Obviously she's no trained agent, ours or anybody else's. I had to let you know that out there, in my oblique fashion, so you wouldn't be counting on her if we got into a bind."

  "Then who is she and what's she doing here?"

  I said, "She's playing with code names and passwords, but she can't control her high-principled indignation when reality doesn't match the pretty dream she's conned herself into believing: of a world in which everything lives and nothing dies. Yet, naïve though she is, the old gray fox in Washington trusts her enough to send her to me with vital information. Why? Can't you figure it out, Lorna? Where have you seen those bushy dark eyebrows before? Of course, they show up better against gray hair." I drew a long breath. "In case you need another clue, she says her real name is Martha Borden. Does that mean anything to you, or aren't you as nosy as I am?"

  Lorna stared at me for a long moment, and threw a sharp glance towards the girl. Then the snub-nosed weapon disappeared inside the khaki shirt.

  "Borden! You mean he sent his daughter?”

  Chapter X

  At this hour of the morning, there wasn't much traffic to be heard outside, and no one inside the room broke the silence for several seconds. It was the first opportunity I'd had to examine in good light the female agent I'd just rescued. I was a little disappointed. Martha had described her as handsome, but while striking in an intense, hawk-like way, she didn't attract me much: a lean and leathery lady with a rather thin and bony face turned reddish brown by recent sunburn.

  Her khaki pants were grimy and torn at one kne
e, and her khaki shirt was grimy and lacked a button-not the strategic top button that seductive movie females always manage to misplace in times of stress, but one lower down.

  I reminded myself that after hiding out two days and nights on the Arizona desert, she could hardly be expected to be a flower of fashion, and in fairness I should reserve judgment.

  However, my initial reaction wasn't favorable. Of course, I may have been prejudiced by her domineering manner.

  "Mr. Helm? Matt?" It was the girl sitting on the bed. Lorna and I turned to look at her sharply. She flushed, disconcerted by our sudden attention. "I... . I don't understand."

  "What don't you understand?"

  "Daddy said that you didn't know . . . that nobody knew...”

  It seemed odd to hear Mac referred to in that casually familiar way. I said, "Your dad isn't that stupid. What he probably told you was that nobody was supposed to know his real name.

  But I doubt that a man smart enough to manage a menagerie of snoops like us would ever kid himself that he could prevent them from doing a little snooping on their own time, As a matter of fact, I learned his name kind of by accident. One day, several years ago, I saw a car I had reason to believe was his personal transportation, parked in downtown Washington. He'd used it a few months earlier to send me help when I needed it in a hurry. it was a Jaguar sedan with a radiotelephone installation, a little too expensive and conspicuous a vehicle to be kept around for the use of ordinary agents, but fast, which 1 guess was why he'd risked lending it out in this particular emergency. Anyway, I couldn't resist waiting around to see if I'd guessed right. After a while, Mac walked up, got into the Jag, and drove off. I tailed him to a house in Chevy Chase.

  The rest was just a matter of basic research: Arthur M. Borden, respectable civil servant, exact field of employment unspecified, with a wife and one child, female."

  There was a little silence, then Martha said, "My mother died two years ago."

  "I'm sorry."

  Lorna ended another awkward pause by saying briskly, "Well, I was checking old civil service records on another matter entirely when I came across a handwriting that looked familiar. The signature was A. McGillivray Borden, and there were papers on file-interoffice memoranda and such-signed McGillivray Borden, or simply Mac Borden. Apparently he disliked the name Arthur in his younger days. That was long before he got into this particular line of government work, before World War II."

  Martha Borden licked her lips. "It would seem . . . it would seem that grown men and women would have better things to do than sneak around prying in matters that are none of their business!"

  I said, "Hell, we work for the guy. We put our lives on the line when he says 'put.' Anything about him is our business. If he wants to be anonymous around the office, fine, none of us is going to blab what he's found out, but if a time ever comes when a little additional information is needed, we've got it. And I think he knows we've got it."

  "Why would you expect to need information like that?"

  I said, "I already have needed it, and so have you. if I hadn't recognized the name, and looked at you a little harder, and realized who you really were, you'd have been in a tough spot once I came to the conclusion that, with your attitude, you couldn't possibly be any kind of fledgling agent working for Mac in any capacity. And I'm willing to bet he was counting on that when he told you to use your real name."

  After a moment, Lorna spoke abruptly. "That bottle does not have to be brought up to body temperature, Mr. Helm. It's not as if it were rare old brandy."

  I'd forgotten the whiskey bottle I'd picked up once more but had not used. "Sorry," I said, pouring a drink and handing it to her.

  She said, as if there had been no irrelevant interruption, "There is also the consideration that your father is not supernatural, Miss Borden. We respect him, but we do not attribute unearthly powers to him. Specifically, we do not consider him murder-proof or kidnap-proof."

  "What do you mean?"

  "There are people all over the world who have reason not to like him very much," Lorna said. "He could be shot down in the street today or turn up missing tomorrow. In either case, there would be decisions for us to make. If he were killed, we might want to avenge him. If he were to disappear, we'd certainly want to find him. In either eventuality, we'd need a better starting point than a three-letter nickname."

  "Well, Daddy hasn't died or vanished yet, thank God," Martha said. "He was still answering his phone this afternoon-I guess that's yesterday afternoon now. Matt talked with him. But, as a matter of fact, he does seem to be expecting trouble, serious trouble."

  "What kind of trouble?" Lorna asked.

  "I don't really know. He didn't say. But if worse comes to worst, he's planning to do just as you say: disappear, for a while at least."

  "That figures," I said. "He's a sitting duck as long as he stays in Washington. If Herbie Leonard feels secure enough to take over the ranch by force and send the extermination squads after individual agents like me, he's not going to hesitate to try for the head man when he figures the time is right. "Whiskey?"

  Martha frowned. "What?"

  "Do you want a drink?"

  "Oh. Oh, no, thanks.. . . Well, all right, just a little one. Matt, what's happening? What's it all about?"

  I handed her a glass, lightly loaded. "I was hoping you could tell me."

  She shook her head. "No, Daddy kept saying that the less I knew the better, except for the names I had to memorize for you. He said he was giving you enough information so you could figure it out, as long as I was sure to tell you the code was double negative."

  I saw Lorna check a slight start and glance my way. I nodded minutely and spoke to the younger woman:

  "Okay, you've told me. Let's try to work it out from what we know. There's obviously a lot of political power involved. Somebody wants something big and is going to great lengths to get it. Well, we know what Senator Love wants: she wants her mail delivered to a certain address on Pennsylvania Avenue. In a Latin-American country, she'd be setting the stage for a coup d'etat by making sure of the army. Here in the US where we don't change governments that way, she seems to be going about it a little differently. She's apparently making sure of the nation's intelligence services well before election time. How she plans to use Herbie Leonard and his newly conquered undercover empire remains to be seen, but obviously her first concern, and his, is to make certain he's actually in solid control. That means eliminating any oddball organizations that might not go along with the big takeover, like Mac's Murderous Mavericks and their notoriously independent chief."

  Lorna frowned, sipping her drink. "I'm rather surprised they haven't struck at Mac already."

  "Maybe they have," I said.

  "That's, silly!" Martha protested quickly. "He sounded perfectly all right when we . . . when you talked with him, Matt. A little tired, but otherwise all right."

  "Maybe that's what got him tired, ducking knives and bombs and bullets," I said, and went on before the girl could speak again: "Look, Mac's been taking care of himself for a long time. I suppose he can be hit-anybody can-but it'll take more than a white-haired Washington glamour boy to do it. Leonard is ambitious and he may even be smart in his own way, but his genius, if any, is political, not homicidal. Hell, he's tried for me twice, or his boys have, and I'm still here. I suspect Mr. Leonard is discovering the hard way that good men in this particular line of endeavor are hard to find. Where's he going to recruit the necessary talent? He can't afford to deal with the syndicate, that would be political suicide, and there's only one government agency that really specializes in this type of work-and that's the one he's trying to eliminate."

  Martha said sharply, "This type of dirty work, you mean!"

  I grinned. "That's our girl. Keep after us. Maybe someday we'll straighten up and fly right."

  "But it's . . . it's horrible! These times, when civilization has at last turned the corner away from war and violence, to think that a governm
ent organization run by my own father. She ran out of breath and stopped.

  I looked at Lorna. "What times do you think the kid is talking about? Have you seen us turning any corners lately, Miss Holt?" I used the cover name I'd been told about.

  "Mrs. Holt, if you please, but you may call me Helen," Lorna said graciously. "Well, the body count in Vietnam was down just a little in the last newspaper I read at the ranch. And those people in the Middle East weren't killing each other much on that particular day. And the police hadn't shot or beat up any blacks or students within the previous few hours; and only one policeman had got killed that I noticed. Maybe things did seem just a little better, but I wouldn't say we'd actually turned a sharp and decisive corner, no."

  Something she'd said screamed for attention. I frowned, realized what it was, and asked,

  "The cop you said got shot. Where did it happen?"

  "He wasn't really a cop, just a sheriff's deputy. And I didn't say he was shot. Actually, he was garroted, strangled to death. In Fort Adams, Oklahoma. That's where they had those student riots recently, I believe. Apparently somebody's been giving extracurricular courses in how to use the old piano-wire noose. Why?"

  I hesitated, and shook my head. "Never mind."

  Martha, who'd been trying to speak, broke in hotly:

  "You're so terribly, terribly amusing, both of you! It's very easy to make fun of the little girl, isn't it? The little girl who has the naïve and romantic notion that human life is something valuable and . . . and kind of sacred. . .”

  I started to say something and checked myself. Lorna made an odd little sound in her throat and turned to the dresser and splashed more whiskey into her glass. She stood there for a moment regarding her sunburned features in the mirror, without affection. She spoke without turning her head.

  "Do they all live in a dream world, Helm?" she asked softly. "Don't any of them ever wake up?"

  I didn't say anything. Martha stirred angrily and blurted, "I don't want to wake up! Not if being awake will make me like you!"