The Damagers

by Donald Hamilton

  The low shore came gradually closer as Lorelei III plugged along at a steady eight knots. We saw large numbers of tall buildings over there, one collection of which, according to the chart, was Atlantic City. The binoculars showed, in addition to the high-rise stuff, an amusement park complete with roller coaster and Ferris wheel. A little after three o’clock in the afternoon we spotted the sea buoy off the Cape May entrance far ahead; an hour and a half later we were inside and docked in the South Jersey Marina. After the lines had all been secured to Lori’s satisfaction, and fenders placed at all possible points of contact, we made ourselves drinks to celebrate our heroic ocean crossing.

  Sitting beside me on the corner settee, Lori spoke abruptly: “You shouldn’t have any trouble with Delaware Bay, Matt; but the Cohansey River about halfway up is a place you can duck into if you have to. At least you can anchor behind the little island at the mouth, but I think you can get six feet through the entrance at any reasonable tide, and there’s plenty of water inside. Then you have the Chesapeake and Delaware Canal; you’ll stop halfway at Schaefer’s Canal House. Watch the currents there; they can be fierce, either way.”

  I said, “Watch the currents, yes, ma’am.”

  She sipped her drink—another vodka and tonic, I noticed—and went on without looking at me. “On Chesapeake Bay you may have trouble with the loran. Don’t panic, it isn’t the set going bad; it’s just the big navy transmitter in Annapolis blasting away and scrambling everybody else’s electronics. South of Norfolk the water can get pretty thin in spots. But even if you do bottom out occasionally along the waterway, and most people do, if you handle this boat right, you shouldn’t have any trouble getting off. The natural instinct, when you feel the keel hit, is to stop and throw her into reverse and try to back out of there. Wrong! You’ve got eighty horsepower and a three-bladed propeller almost two feet across; so throw the rudder hard over toward deep water and slam the throttle all the way forward. Use everything she’s got. It’s generally soft mud, and with all that power driving that great big prop you can probably blast on through if you don’t let her lose momentum…”

  “Lori,” I said.

  “Another thing,” she said. “Crossing those big North Carolina sounds, don’t hug the channel markers too closely. The channel isn’t really there, it’s well off to the side, usually several boatlengths, you have to kind of feel for it with the depth-sounder. Remember, it’s a dredged channel and those big dredges aren’t going to work right up to the marker posts, they’re going to give themselves plenty of room…”

  “Lori,” I said.

  She looked at me for a long moment. Her eyes were strange and bright—with unshed tears, I thought, but I could have been mistaken.

  She said, “I only promised to navigate you as far as Cape May, Matt; and we’re here. Let’s just leave it at that. As soon as I finish my drink and change my clothes, I’ll haul my seabag ashore and call Mrs. Bell; she said she’d get transportation to me if I decided I wanted to leave the boat here.”

  10

  The woman said, “I’m Mrs. Bell. May I come aboard?”

  I’d been nursing a drink down in Lorelei III’s main saloon; and shame on you if you call it a salon. (The only place you find salons afloat is on cruise liners—beauty salons.) I’d been telling myself it was great to have my boat all to myself once more. No more oddball dames cluttering up the ship, terrific. Right?

  Then somebody rapped on the hull, and I palmed my .38 as I stepped up into the deckhouse to investigate. When I saw an unarmed and very respectable-looking female figure standing on the dock—any woman wearing nylons and high heels in a marina, where the boating ladies all run around bare-legged in tattered Topsiders, can’t help but look respectable as hell—I returned the weapon to its inside-the-waistband holster, dropped my shirt over it, and went out on deck for a better look.

  I can’t say that my first view of Mrs. Teresa Bell surprised me, since I’d made no attempt to visualize the individual to whom I’d spoken on the phone. Trying to picture people from their telephone voices is a waste of time and imagination. What I saw now was a sturdy woman of medium height who could have been any age from a mature thirty to a well-preserved fifty. She had thick and rather coarse black hair carefully sculptured about her head. There was a single streak of gray that she apparently emphasized for drama instead of concealing it for youth. She endured my inspection without showing any signs of impatience, perhaps because she was using the interval to take stock of me, too.

  “Permission granted,” I said at last, in answer to her request.

  She said, “I’ll need a ladder. I’m not dressed for acrobatics.”

  “Just a minute.”

  I stepped up on deck and got the ladder off the deckhouse, where it had been secured, alongside the folded rubber dinghy, for our offshore jaunt; and hung it over the side at the boarding gate. Mrs. Bell was wearing a black suit with a rather short, narrow skirt. The jacket was also short and snug; it buttoned high enough, with small, round, cloth-covered buttons, that no hint of a blouse showed, assuming that one existed. There was some decorative black piping down the front. The nylons were black, as were the dressy pumps. The legs and ankles were very good for a bureaucratic lady who was no sylph; the-feet were quite small. I seemed to be noticing female feet recently, I reflected; maybe I was developing a foot fetish.

  I said nothing about the spike-heeled pumps; I wanted to find out if she knew enough about nautical protocol to spare my teak decks without being asked. She did, pausing at the ladder to slip the shoes off. She passed them up to me, with her purse. Then she worked her tight skirt upward to give herself legroom, quite unself-consciously, and swung herself up the ladder in an effortless manner, indicating that her gray hairs were either artificial or premature, no evidence of senility. She spent a moment adjusting her clothes and patting her hair into place.

  I gestured toward the open door facing her, and she stepped down into the deckhouse. I followed her, slid the door closed behind me, and returned her shoes and purse.

  “Mr. Helm…”

  “Just a minute,” I said. “I think a little privacy is indicated. Sit down and make yourself comfortable. You can be deciding what you want to drink.”

  I closed the other door, pulled the side and rear curtains over the deckhouse windows, and went through some gymnastics to reach over the chart table and snap into place the cloths that covered the windshield, noting as I did so that the sun was almost down. The last sunset I’d seen—or would have seen if the dismal weather at the time hadn’t obscured it—had occurred a few hours before Lori and I were attacked at sea. It seemed a long time ago. I switched on the overhead lights and turned to my guest.

  “Well, what about that drink?” Then I thought of something. “Maybe I’m out of line. I remember now, you’re the Arabia lady; and Muslims aren’t supposed to indulge in alcohol, right?”

  She said, “Bourbon, with a couple of ice cubes if they’re available, please.”

  So much for the ethnic niceties. I was interested to learn that she knew enough about small cruising boats to know that ice couldn’t be taken for granted; but of course Lorelei III was a very high-class yacht, complete with refrigeration. After accomplishing my hostly duty, I sat down on the section of the corner settee she wasn’t occupying, and raised my glass to her.

  “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Mrs. Bell. I was starting to wonder if I’ve been talking to a computerized telephone voice.”

  She said, “You create difficulties for us, Mr. Helm; you really do.”

  I studied her across the corner of the little table. I saw a dark-skinned businesswoman whose expensive clothes made the best of her stocky figure. Her features were bold, with full lips and a rather large, arched nose that gave her a hawklike appearance. Her eyes were brown, large and lustrous and intelligent.

  I said, “Tell me about your difficulties, Mrs. Bell.”

  She tasted her bourbon cautiously, nodded approval, and took
a less careful sip. “You’re hard on your crews. One girl commits suicide, and another runs away from your boat in tears.” When I didn’t respond to that, she went on. “What did you do to the child out there, anyway?”

  I said, “She discovered out there that she’s a very brave and sexy little girl; and she hates it.”

  Mrs. Bell frowned. “Is that supposed to make sense?”

  “Do little girls ever make sense? Or big ones, either?”

  “I’m afraid you’re a male chauvinist, Mr. Helm,” the woman said. I gathered that she didn’t entirely disapprove of male chauvinists. She went on, “Miss Fancher said you were stopped by the U.S. Coast Guard. Why?” My reaction brought another frown. “Why do you laugh?”

  “You keep asking these unanswerable questions. Why don’t little girls make sense? Why does the Coast Guard stop people? Hell, they stop people because they’ve got the power to stop people at will—unlike the poor shore-bound cops who have to show cause and get warrants— and it makes them feel big to throw their weight around. I have a new policy where the U.S. Coast Guard is concerned, ma’am. I call it zero tolerance.”

  Mrs. Bell looked at me sharply and said, “The girl said you displayed some hostility toward the boarding party; it was one of the things that seemed to disturb her. But you will not get involved in a feud with another government agency while you are working for me. I forbid it!”

  I looked at her for a moment and sighed. “Finish your drink, ma’am,” I said, “and get the hell off my boat.”

  “What?”

  I rose and slid open the deckhouse door. “Good-bye, Mrs. Bell.”

  She was on her feet, also. There was something fierce and regal in her face as she confronted me, and her angry brown eyes were quite beautiful; she was a dark Eastern princess about to snap her fingers to summon the eunuch executioner with the big beheading sword. Then she laughed and, surprisingly, patted my cheek.

  “Down, Rover,” she said. “I suppose ‘forbid’ was the unacceptable word. I apologize. Is that satisfactory?”

  I drew a long breath. It was nice, for a change, to meet a lady who knew her way around our world. I nodded.

  She said, “I don’t envy the man you work for, running a kennel of half-tamed wolves like you. Of course, that is what it takes, but doesn’t one ever go for his throat?” When I didn’t speak, she went on. “Well, shall we sit down and get back to business?”

  “I’ll freshen the drinks,” I said, sliding the door shut.

  I felt a little foolish, as if I’d overreacted, but they often try it, and if you don’t stop it at once you’re stuck with it for the duration. “Forbid,” for God’s sake! I poured her another stiff shot of bourbon; she’d drained her glass before handing it to me. Returning, I put the drinks on the table and resumed my place on the settee.

  I asked, “Did you check to see if there had been any reports of an explosion at sea at the latitude and longitude I told you over the phone?” I’d given her a quick report when I called the contact number immediately after Lori had left the boat.

  She nodded. “A commercial fishing vessel had seen and heard it, distantly, and turned to investigate. They picked up a life ring—actually, I believe, one of those horseshoe-shaped buoys—and a dead body in a life jacket. There was a boat’s name on the ring or whatever you call it. Hot Mama. We’re having it traced, but the boat was probably stolen so I don’t expect its registration to tell us much.” She glanced at me. “There was no report of another vessel seen in the area, if that’s what interests you. Or of gunfire. We are also trying to trace the man. There was no identification on him.”

  Well, that figured. The other dead man had packed a wallet, but he’d been an amateurish terrorist type. The hired blow-up man from DAMAG, smart enough to get himself into a life jacket when things started going wrong, had also been smart and professional enough to leave his IDs on shore. I hesitated. The files I’d been shown by Mac had been given a pretty high security rating, but I have a perverse reaction to security; those bastards will make you shit your pants to prove that you have a need to know where the john is. Anyway, the woman beside me undoubtedly had plenty of clearance, and I saw no reason to let her waste a lot of time and manpower finding out something we already knew.

  I said, “His name was Jerome Blum, also known as Boomer, and he was the egg man.”

  “Egg man?”

  “He was the guy who was supposed to lay the eggs… throw the grenades. Actually, he was a quite a high-powered big-bang expert from DAMAG… You know about DAMAG?”

  “Of course. They are the specialists who have been hired by this terrorist organization because it is mainly composed of uneducated fanatics incapable of dealing with technical matters, or even performing routine assassinations beyond what can be accomplished by hosing down a neighborhood with automatic-weapon fire.”

  I nodded. “Well, when they needed somebody handy with grenades, I guess Blum seemed like the logical man for them to use, even though they’d presumably hired him for more serious explosive work.”

  “How do you know this, Mr. Helm?”

  I said, “Golly gee, ma’am, I thought I just heard you ask a foolish question, but I must have been mistaken. You don’t look like a foolish lady.”

  She laughed. “Very well. Jerome Blum, aka Boomer. I’ll pass it along. Thank you.”

  I said, “There was another floater. His wallet is on the window ledge behind your head. A guy named Joseph Abdul Arram. A third man on board the speedboat presumably went down with it; at least we saw no sign of him afterward. Arram, dying, referred to him as Staff.”

  “That would be Mustapha Kiral.” She was studying the contents of the still-damp wallet. “These two we know. They have worked together before. Very dedicated, very dangerous, but like most of them, uneducated and not very intelligent. A man named Roger Hassim supplies the education and intelligence for the gang.”

  I frowned. “Hassim? Mrs. Fancher’s boyfriend?”

  “Oh, Miss Fancher told you about the family troubles?”

  “That her stepmother had a lover, yes. Not that she was working with terrorists.”

  Mrs. Bell spoke severely: “You must not say that, Mr. Helm. Mrs. Fancher is a wealthy woman with a high social position. Lovely young wives of elderly rich men are often foolish about handsome young men; and you should see this one, he is really spectacular. Of course Mrs. Fancher is being terribly deceived and has no idea whatever that her beautiful paramour is involved in wicked plots against the United States of America, Heavens no! You are risking an action for slander if you suggest such a thing.” Mrs. Bell smiled crookedly. “I’m going to get the goods on that sultry bitch, Mr. Helm; but I have to be very careful how I go about it. My position isn’t strong enough to allow me to tackle all that money head-on.”

  I said, “Well, anyway, I’m sorry I couldn’t save you a live one out there, but I didn’t figure I’d be doing you any favor if I hauled the remains ashore and made you bury them.”

  “You were correct,” Mrs. Bell said. “However, it was another thing that distressed the little girl, your callous manner of dealing with the dead.” The woman glanced at me. “Of course she’s in love with you; and she desperately doesn’t want to be, considering what a wicked person you are.” She gave me a chance to comment on that; when I didn’t, she said, “The question is, who can we get to help you now?”

  I said, “How about you helping me a little, Mrs. Bell?”

  She looked startled and gestured toward her smart city costume. “My dear man, I’m hardly dressed for boating, and while I have done a considerable amount of sailing, my schedule is much too full…”

  I laughed. “I didn’t mean help me on the boat, although you’re welcome any time.”

  She wasn’t amused. “Then what kind of help did you mean, Mr. Helm?”

  “Information-type help,” I said. “For one thing: do you have Truman Fancher’s logbook? Or do you know who does? People keep asking about it.”<
br />
  She asked sharply, “What people?”

  “The girl who called herself Siegelinda Kronquist, for one. Greta Larsson. Just a casual question. Very casual. And Lori Fancher had all her daddy’s other logs and wondered if I’d found the last one; she hated to leave the collection incomplete, for sentimental reasons.”

  Mrs. Bell said, “No, we do not have that book. We would very much like to see it. If you find it…”

  “Just what would I be looking for? A dime notebook or something the size of a telephone directory?”

  “Fancher bought fairly expensive hardcover notebooks to record his experiences with his various boats,” Mrs. Bell said. “His daughter showed me some of them. About eight inches by ten inches, and three quarters of an inch thick, trimmed with red leather or something similar.”

  I shook my head, “A pocket notebook I could just possibly have missed, tucked away somewhere. But I’ve done enough work on this boat that I don’t think there’s much chance of my having overlooked a bound eight-by-ten-inch volume. What do you think the book would tell you, besides where Lorelei III was on what date? Or is that what’s important?”

  She said, “You do not need that information, Mr. Helm.”

  I sighed. “Good old need-to-know! Okay. Next, have you been down in the engine room to examine the bilge of this boat? It’s accessible—part of it, anyway—through a couple of hatches next to the engine box; actually, they’re the ones you’d stand on while working on the engine.”

  Mrs. Bell said, “I haven’t examined the area, but one of my people did, the woman operative going by the name of Guild, who was bludgeoned to death a few hours after she reported to me by phone. I’d asked her to search the boat for hiding places. She said that the least accessible space of any size on board was the one you just mentioned.”

  “Good for her,” I said. “It’s roughly twelve inches by twelve inches by four feet. There are, of course, all kinds of lockers in the various cabins under the seats and bunks, and some are even larger; but they’re readily available to anybody who happens to be looking for a sail cover or a piece of twine. As your girl said, this is the most inaccessible storage space on board. Fancher apparently used it for storing extra engine oil, extra antifreeze, that kind of stuff. He presumably kept a little of everything in a more accessible place for day-to-day use. Recovering from a recent coronary, he wouldn’t be likely to wrestle all those heavy hatches and go poking around in the bilge unnecessarily. Somebody could toss out his reserve supplies and use the storage space for something else, and there was a very good chance that the old man wouldn’t discover the substitution.”