Death of a Citizen mh-1

by Donald Hamilton

  It was time for me to remember the standing orders. Look her in the eye and lie, Mac had said that day in Washington, lie and keep on lying… Never mind exactly what I told her. It was the kind of stuff I put on paper and sell for money. It seemed that, like many other Americans overseas, I'd become involved with a black-market ring while I was stationed in London. Now some of the members had suddenly reappeared in my life with a crooked proposition which I'd nobly refused even to consider, only apparently they needed my help badly, enough to resort to extreme measures..

  Beth was silent for a while after I'd finished. I could tell she was deeply shocked by this glimpse into my fictitious, criminal past. She hadn't thought I was that kind of a guy.

  "Of course," she said slowly, "I always knew there was something… You were never quite frank about

  I thought it was just that you'd seen some terrible things over there and didn't want to talk about them."

  She might look like an innocent college girl, but there were times when she was practically clairvoyant. It was very hard to keep up the act in the face of her steady regard. I forced myself to make a clumsy, embarrassed gesture, like a man who's got everything off his chest.

  "Well," I said, "that's the story, Beth."

  "And this woman," she said, "this woman who called you Eric…

  I said, "We had code names for each other. But that's not what you're asking. The answer is yes."

  After a moment, she asked, "What are you… What will you do?"

  "Get Betsy back," I said. "Don't ask me how. You wouldn't want to know."

  CHAPTER 29

  IT was a dreary-looking place, mostly a great dusty parking lot with big trucks standing around- tankers, vans, and refrigerator jobs with compressors going, setting up a constant racket, like outboard motors. There was a big sign saying: TRUCKERS DISCOUNTS. The restaurant-cafe, we usually call it in this part of the world-wasn't as bad as it might have been, and there were some surprisingly shiny and expensivelooking cars with out-of-state license plates parked alongside. Somebody once told somebody that the place where the truckers stop is the place to eat, and tourists have been acting on that advice ever since. There may even be something to it.

  In back, like poor relations, stood a bunch of little red-and-white clapboard shacks, relics of the days when a tourist cabin was a cabin, not a disembodied hotel room with TV, air-conditioning, and wall-to-wall carpeting. I stuck the Plymouth between an Arizona Chrysler and a California Volkswagen with a little sign on the back: DON'T SQUASH ME-I EAT HARMFUL INSECTS. It reminded me, for some reason, of the little blue Morris I'd encountered in Texas, also with a sign on the back; and I wondered what Mac had Shorty doing these days. I hoped it was something easy, after the rough time I'd given her in San Antonio.

  But it was no time to be thinking of the women I'd known except one, and I took the paper-wrapped parcel from the seat beside me, got out of the car, walked along the line of cabins and, reaching the last one, knocked on the door.

  Tina opened it. We looked at each other for a moment. She was wearing something that looked like a feminized bull-fighting costume, with a ruffled white shirt and tight, white, embroidered pants ending approximately at the calves of her legs. I was glad she wasn't wearing a pretty dress. As I've mentioned before,, my trousers-resistance is very high. She was making it easy for me;

  "Come in, chйri," she said. "You are right on time. Your wife said you might be late."

  I went past her into the gloom of the cabin. "I pushed right along," I said, turning to face her as she closed the door behind me. "Kind of a dump," I said, indicating the room.

  She moved her shoulders. "One lives where one must. I have spent more time in worse places." She looked up at me and smiled. "What, Eric, no recriminations? Will you not tell me I'm an evil woman?"

  "You're a bitch," I said, "but I knew that fifteen years ago. I just made the mistake of forgetting it temporarily."

  "I hated to deceive you," she said. "Really I did, Liebchen. I hated to trick you."

  "Cut it out," I said. "You loved it. Every bit of it, playing me like a fish on a light leader, getting me to bury your dead and help your getaway, pretending to call up Mac for further instructions, heading me off with a lot of talk about security whenever I started getting nosy… Oh, it was a beautiful snow job, querIda, and you enjoyed every minute of it. And you're enjoying this, too, aren't you? Bringing my family into the act-y~u resent them like hell, don't you, Tina?- and wondering just how I'm explaining all this to my wife."

  She smiled. "You make me sound like a terrible person. But it is quite true, of course. I hate them. I hate her. She took you away from me. If it hadn't been for her, you would have come back to find me after the war. We would have been together, and maybe I would never… never have become what I am today."

  I said, "A man who questioned me in San Antonio thought the card you showed me was your own."

  "He was right," she said. "It is my card, and I am proud of it. There are very few of us who have earned that card. But it does not mean that I would not rather have done something else with my life. But you did not come. And I had to do something."

  I asked, "Why did you change sides, Tina?"

  "You ask that? Can you think of no reason why I should turn against America and everything American?" She laughed quickly. "No, chйri, I am not a silly, sentimental fool. I do not make the whole world pay for my broken heart. The fact is, I had certain talents, and when there was no longer a war to fight, I sold those talents to the highest bidder, as did many others of your wartime comrades. Ask Mac, he will tell you." She smiled. "I am very good, Eric. I command a very high price these days."

  I nodded. "I got that impression." I patted the package under my arm. "This would be part of your price, no doubt."

  "What is it?"

  "Something you left behind in San Antonio. Nobody seemed to want it, so I brought it along."

  "My furs?" She looked pleased. "That was sweet of you. I missed them very much. Put them on the bed… But we are wasting time. You are prepared to cooperate?"

  "How?"

  She raised her eyebrows. "Is it important? Did you ever ask Mac that question?"

  "The circumstances were slightly different."

  "Yes," she said. "Then it was only your life that was at stake."

  I looked at her for a moment, and said, "Okay. You've made your point. Shoot."

  She said, "You yield a little too easily, Eric. Could it be that you hope to be clever in spite of the warning I left at your house?" She waited. I didn't say anything. She said, "You have been followed ever since you left home. We are being watched right now, from a discreet distance. If anything at all should go wrong here, or if I should give a certain signal, the person watching us will go directly to where your little girl is being kept. He has his instructions, and he is not at all sentimental about children. Do you understand?"

  I said, "It's clear. Who do I kill?"

  She glanced at me quickly. "Do not say that as a joke, my dear. Would I require you for anything else but to kill?" After a moment, she said, "You know the target. I told you his name days ago. Everything I said then was the truth. I merely rearranged the cast of characters slightly." When I didn't speak, she went on: "It was always my intention to use you here in Santa Fe- under the pretense of working for Mac, of course. I was going to be very clever, so that you did not suspect our real purpose until too late. But that girl intervened and delayed the execution of our plan. In a way this is much nicer. Now I can be frank. We want Amos Darrel. dead. You will kill him for us."

  There was silence in the little cabin, except for the chattering noise of a compressor unit on a truck parked outside. I looked at Tina thoughtfully, considering her proposition. You'll say it was a ridiculous idea. You'll say no sane person would expect another sane person to go out and kill somebody in cold blood, not even to save a child's life. But then, you didn't fight the war as we did. She was asking nothing really unreasonable, s
ince she was asking it of me. We knew each other very well. I knew she'd do anything to Betsy she considered necessary. And she knew I'd do anything for Betsy I considered necessary-and if I had to do it to Amos, it was just tough on Amos. He wasn't that good a friend of mine.

  I asked, "Why me, Tina? You've got experts in your outfit, I'm sure. You're pretty damn expert yourself, as I recall. Why complicate it by dragging strangers off the street to do your dirty work?"

  She smiled. "My outfit, as you call it, must not be known to exist. Because of the political repercussions. That is why we prefer to work through local people, when suitable ones are available. Besides, usually they know the ground better. That is particularly true in your case, since you're well acquainted with Dr. Darrel."

  I said, deliberately naive, "But I have my home here! You can't just ask me to go out and commit murder!"

  She laughed. "Chйri, don't be childish. What is your home to me? Nothing. Less than nothing. It is your problem. If you can do it without being suspected, that will be quite satisfactory to us. If you can't, you will stand trial and go to prison. And you will tell a story of jealousy or hatred or greed, or blind irresistible anger, anything to satisfy the stupid authorities. Because you will know that your wife and children are still vulnerable, and that if your breathe a word of the truth, there will be a knife in the night, or a bullet, a club, or a runaway car… You should not have married, Eric. It puts you at the mercy of ruthless people, people like me."

  I said, "That's what you're really after, isn't it, Tina?"

  "What do you mean?"

  "You're getting your revenge, aren't you? After all these years. It's quite a production. First you take me from my wife, to show you still have the power to do it; and then you turn around and use my children to ruin me. You don't really care whether Amos Darrel lives or dies, not you! After the way this job's gone sour, the people you work for would probably prefer to have you pass it up now, rather than call further attention to their murderous activities. But you can't give it up, because you can't bear to think of me going back to my family and forgetting about you for the second thne. I stood you up once, after the war, and I've got to pay for it."

  She was silent for a little; then she sighed. "There is a lot of truth in what you say, but I do not think you're being quite fair."

  I said, "Perhaps not. It doesn't really matter, does it?"

  "No," she said. "Not now… You know Dr. Darrd quite well, of course, but I have here some data on his habits that may be useful to you. It's up to you, of course, but I'd like to point out that he drives the Los Alamos road every morning and evening. We could supply you with a heavy, fast car. It is a steep and winding road…

  I laughed. "Yes, sweetheart, and just how the hell am I going to catch Amos' souped-up Porsche on a steep and winding road in a heavy car? He could outrun a Jag on that hill. And even if I could run him off into the canyon, that little heap is built like a bank vault and he wears a safety belt; he'd bounce like a rubber ball and come up grinning… That's no good."

  She said, "You see? That's why I picked you, because you know these things, not just for revenge. Well, choose your own method. I was just hoping you could make it look like an accident, for your sake… Eric?"

  "Yes?''

  "I asked you once not to hateme. Don't you see? We all do what we have to do. There is no choice."

  "No," I said. "No choice at all."

  Then I hit her.

  CHAPTER 30

  MAC used to have a little lecture he gave when he was putting the final polish on us.

  "Dignity," he'd say. "Remember that dignity is the key to any man's resistance, or any woman's~ As long as your subject is allowed to feel that he's still a human being with rights and privileges and self-respect, he can usually hold out indefinitely. Take, for instance, a soldier in a clean uniform, lead him politely to a desk, seat him decorously on a chair, request him to place his hands before him, stick splinters under his fingernails, and set fire to them… and you'll be surprised how often he'll watch his fingertips cooking and laugh in your face. But if you take the same man, first, and work him over to show that you don't mind bruising your knuckles and don't have a bit of respect for his integrity as a man-you don't have to hurt him much, just mess him up until he can no longer cling to a romanticized picture of himself as a noble and handsome embodiment of stubborn courage…"

  I'd caught her completely by surprise. She went back against the wall with a crash that shook the cabin; then she slid to the floor, her legs gracelessly apart, her eyes wide and stunned. Slowly, looking up at me in shocked wonder, she put her hand to her mouth, took it away, and looked at the blood on the palm. Outside, the compressor kept up its outboard-motor clatter.

  Tina shook her head to clear it, and pushed her hand along her thigh to wipe it clean, leaving an ugly smear on the white trousers. She started to push herself to her feet. I reached down and hauled her up by the front of her fancy shirt, feeling buttons, cloth, and stitching give way under the strain. Holding her by the bunched material, I slapped her repeatedly until her short, dark hair was whipping across her face and her nose was bleeding. Then I shoved her away from me hard. She stumbled backwards, turned, tried to catch herself, and went heavily to hands and knees. It was too good an opportunity to miss. I put my foot in her rear and pushed, so that she pitched forward and slid a couple of feet across the dusty wooden floor on her face and stomach. Since we were evening old scores, I might as well collect for the time I'd got the short end of that horseplay on~the desert.

  I waited for her to pick herself up and pull herself together. I had shut off my mind completely. There was nothing to think about-except what I had to do.

  Waiting, I said, "If you come up with a' weapon, darling, I'll kick your face in."

  It was a different Tina who climbed slowly to her feet and turned to face me: a torn, dirty, and bloody creature-oddly sexless, thank God-that wiped its mouth and nose on the rags of its shirt and cleaned its hands on the seat of its pants without a downward glance at the damage that had been inflicted upon it. Not a pretty woman who'd been hurt, with some instinctive concern for her appearance, but a wary, wounded animal at bay, with eyes only for the hunter.

  "You fool!" she breathed. "What do you think to gain?" She had taken a step sideways; suddenly she was at the window. The blind flew up with a clatter. She wheeled to face me again. Her expression was savage. "There! Loris will go now! I warned you. Now it is too late. No matter what you do to me, it is too late!"

  I grinned at her, and picked up the paper-wrapped package from the bed, and tossed it at her. She wasn't prepared for the weight of it. She caught it all right, but it pushed her back a step.

  "Open it," I said.

  She glanced at me. I saw her eyes widen slightly with speculation, perhaps with a hint of fear. She came forward to the bed, set the package down, and ripped off the paper, revealing nothing but mink and satin lining. She glanced at me again, and started to unfold the stole carefully, and stopped, staring at what it contained. I heard her breath catch at the sight of Loris's big revolver lying there. Around it, the glossy fur was matted with the half-dried blood that had been on the weapon. It looked like something ugly and dangerous that had fouled its nest.

  "You would send warnings to my wife," I murmured. "Tina, you're a fool. I didn't get to be Mac's best boy by trembling at dead cats."

  She recognized the gun of course. After a moment, she reached out and touched it, quite gently. "He is dead?"

  "Probably, by this time," I said. "He'd have needed a new heart and lungs to keep on living. You're through, Tina."

  She swung about to look at me. She hadn't really heard me. She was still thinking about Loris. I don't suppose she'd loved the man, and certainly, from what

  I'd seen this morning, he'd felt no need to be faithful to her. I think it must have been for her something like losing an arm-a strong and useful appendage, unable to think for itself of course, but how much do you
expect of an arm, anyway? They'd made a good team, I suspected, better than she and I; we'd had too many brains and ambitions between us.

  She said softly, "He was a better man than you, Eric."

  "Probably," I said. "In the strict sense of the word. But I wasn't competing with him in the matter of masculinity. He may have been a better man, but he wasn't much of a killer."

  "If he'd got his hands on you..

  "If that bed had wings we could fly it," I said. "When did I ever let a big hunk of beef like that get its hands on me? Well, once, granted, when I wasn't expecting trouble. But I'm back in the old groove now,' darling. You've put me right back into it. And I never saw a muscle boy yet who worried me, certainly not this one, with ivory between the ears." I looked at her standing before me in her wrecked shirt and her silly white pants, soiled and split at the knees. She looked very much like a kid that had got into a scrap and got its nose bloodied… I put the thought aside. It was no time for drawing sentimental valentines. She was no kid. She was a dangerous woman, responsible for many deaths and at least one kidnaping. I said it again: "Tina you're through. Mac sends his greetings."

  She gave me again that little speculative, half-fearful widening of the eyes. "He sent you?"

  I said, "You can have it hard or easy. Don't kid yourself for a moment, Tina. Look in the mirror. I didn't muss you up for fun; I just wanted to show you I'm quite prepared to get my hands dirty. We can save both of us a lot of trouble if you'll just take my word that I can be just as tough as I have to."

  She said quickly, "Your child. Your little girl. If I don't send word by a certain time..

  "What time?" I said. "This won't take very long."

  "You're bluffing!" she cried. "You don't dare."

  "With Loris loose I wouldn't," I said. "Which is why I removed him. Don't talk dare to me, Tina. I don't know what instructions you left with the people who are holding Betsy, but hurting a baby, a baby who can't even talk, who can't be a witness against you, takes a strong stomach. Maybe they can do it and maybe they can't, but it'll take them a while to work up to it without direct orders. And who's going to give those orders? Not Loris. Not you."