The Damagers

by Donald Hamilton

  The Mafia calls it a hit. One of our fellow agencies likes to call it termination with extreme prejudice; well, they’ve always been wordy bastards over in Langley. We call it a touch.

  I said, “Her idea is that she’ll make contact with DAMAG again and point out that she and her associates have made a sizeable down payment on a boat-sinking— DAMAG asks for 50 percent of the fee up front—and Lorelei III is still floating like a cork. She’ll say, either refund our deposit, Mr. Caselius, or get on your horse and earn the balance of your dough—and you’d better give it your personal attention this time, buddy, we’ve had enough of your incompetent underlings! And just to make sure it gets done, she’ll say, she’ll be right there to blindside that Helm clown if he turns out to be too much for him and his DAMAG dimwits again.”

  “She intends to remain on board?”

  “Of course. She tells me she’ll be there to help me against dangerous Mr. Caselius, just as she’s undoubtedly told him she’ll be there to help him against dangerous Mr. Helm. Obviously she’s going to double-cross one of us. I’ll be very much surprised if it turns out to be young Roland.”

  The lady under discussion was examining her fingernails in the light of an overhead lamp, as if to demonstrate that she was taking no interest whatever in the conversation.

  Mac changed the subject. “Exactly what have you agreed to do in return for the lady’s assistance?”

  “Nothing,” I said. “Like I said, I’ve simply promised non-intervention. I’ve agreed to attend to my own affairs and not interfere in hers. Of course I’m expected to ignore the fact that she more or less murdered her husband— well, that’s cop business anyway and no concern of ours. Mostly I’m supposed to forget the gadget that was unloaded from Lorelei III, and give Mrs. Bell no help in finding it.”

  Mac said, “Does she really think you’ll look the other way while she and her terrorist friends perform an act of nuclear terrorism, just because she offers you assistance in carrying out your own mission?”

  I said, “Well, there’s something else in favor of our cooperation. She feels that we are kindred spirits in a way—an ethnic way.”

  He said irritably, “That makes no sense at all. If I remember correctly, your parents were Scandinavian. Hers were Arabic—well, there have been many political rearrangements in that area and the Middle Eastern country they came from no longer exists. I’d have to check the dossier to give you the current name. But the two of you are about as far apart ethnically as it’s possible to get.”

  I said, “You’re looking at it from the wrong end, sir. You’re looking at what we are, ethnically; she’s looking at what we aren’t, ethnically. And neither of us is a mongrel bastard of a melting-pot American like you, sir. We’re the first generation of our families to be born here, and we haven’t forgotten where our parents came from. We know our ancestors across the sea, we remember our proud ethnic heritage, we have worshipped at the old shrines, and our blood is pure, not the racially mixed-up mess of hemoglobin that pumps through your lousy Yankee veins, sir.”

  He started to make some kind of a protest, but checked himself. “Does the woman really believe this?”

  I said, “She believes it fanatically, and so do the people she’s with; and there’s no worse fanatic than an ethnic fanatic. Even the religious fanatics can’t compete; and of course these people have that, too. The question is whether she believes I believe it. I doubt that she really does. However, for her purposes I don’t have to be sincere in my belief; if I’m pretending, it will do just as well. Just so I play along with her and give her, and her associates, time to carry out their preparations. At the proper moment, of course, she’ll snap her fingers and somebody’ll split my skull with a nice ethnic scimitar—I’m sure they wouldn’t dirty their hands with a lousy infidel-type Bowie.”

  “What kind of preparations?”

  I said, “I don’t know, sir. I don’t know what they’re waiting for, what’s holding up the fireworks. But she’s obviously come aboard to keep me feeling that I’m accomplishing great things by deceiving her and therefore will keep Mrs. Bell from lowering the boom… And these fanatics do tend to judge others by themselves. She may really think that I’m a possible convert; that nobody whose family hasn’t been corrupted by many soft generations here in America could possibly admire this country. Since she hates the fact that she was born here, and can’t conceive that anybody wouldn’t rather be an Arab than an American, she figures that I, in more or less the same ethnic situation, although from a different part of the world, must go in for the same kind of ancestor worship. I confess that I’ve encouraged her. Upon coaxing, I did admit unpatriotically that I wasn’t too proud of my parents’ adopted country and actually thought Norman Schwarzkopf was kind of a jerk.”

  I heard him make a surprised sound at the other end of the line. “What in the world has General Schwarzkopf got to do with this?”

  “Everything,” I said.

  Actually, it had turned into a weird dinner conversation at the end. I suppose I should have known, considering her origins, that the Gulf War would enter into it somehow. That was rather awkward for me because, unlike most of my countrymen—judging by the press and TV—I found it at the time a rather boring exercise in the deployment of military machinery and didn’t follow it very carefully. Now that it had joined a lot of other U.S. military excursions as ancient history, I’d forgotten most of what little I’d seen and read about it. I’m a low-tech assassin, or counterassassin; that kind of elaborate hi-tech homicide doesn’t interest me much.

  After claiming me as a fellow refugee from Americanism, Dorothy had asked, “Are you really proud of ‘our’ country’s glorious triumph in the gulf? Proud of slaughtering a quarter of a million ‘gooks,’ or whatever the soldiers called them, at the cost of a few dozen men? Is that a brave victory to boast about?”

  I thought her figures were a bit off, but it didn’t seem advisable to correct her. I said, “Well, I thought it was kind of like watching Mike Tyson knock a high school welterweight out of the ring. No, I can’t say it made me particularly proud.”

  “That is because you are not one of them, not one of the millions of soft fools who, safe in their living rooms, with those idiotic yellow ribbons tied to their front doors, licked their lips eagerly as they watched the bombs and missiles explode on TV, and drooled happily at the sight of the charred bodies—not really human, of course, just a bunch of yapping Islamic dogs who’d had the effrontery to do in Kuwait exactly what America had done in Grenada and Panama—but such behavior is not permitted to us lesser, subhuman breeds!”

  I said mildly, “Well, I don’t know about all that, but I didn’t think friend Saddam was much of a prize.”

  “He was deceived, tricked into believing that America would not interfere if he corrected the unjust boundaries imposed upon his country… If America did not want Saddam Hussein to have the Kuwaiti oil fields, and if she had the courage to take them away from him and keep them for herself, well, that is how international politics work, and the strongest wins. So it has always been. But instead of being honestly ruthless—a thing that could at least be respected—she had to hide behind the pretense of defending democracy in Kuwait… Democracy in Kuwait? That reactionary sheikdom? How can anyone respect such hypocrisy? We cannot fight this great flabby country and hope to win, but that does not mean we cannot fight and do as much damage as we can so they will remember those broken buildings and blackened bodies that they found so entertaining on their little screens. We will see just how entertaining they find them in real life…!”

  When I had finished reporting the conversation, Mac was silent for a while. I watched another freighter glide past beyond the dock and the tied-up boats, which looked very small by comparison.

  Mac spoke at last, tentatively. “It seems that Mrs. Bell still, after several months, has no knowledge of the target date. What clues are there to the target area?”

  I said, “As you’ll recall, the b
oat was put aground in the North River near Coinjock, North Carolina; that’s where Dorothy sent out her Mayday and put on her tearful-widow act for the rescue services. It’s only a couple of days’ run south of Norfolk, Virginia, the start or finish— anyway, the northern end—of the Intracoastal Waterway. But knowing where Fancher’s heart finally gave out for good is not much help. Dorothy was very cagy about how many days it had taken them to get there from the spot farther south where she first assisted him into the bunk he never got out of.”

  Mac said, “I believe the Intracoastal Waterway is over a thousand miles long, although the extreme southern part runs along the coast of Florida and probably doesn’t concern us.”

  I said, “Great. And Coinjock is in North Carolina, so we can forget Virginia. That’s two ICW states eliminated, leaving us only three to worry about, and between six and seven hundred miles of canals and rivers. Dorothy seems to be figuring on having us at least start to retrace the route while she’s setting up Caselius for me, or vice versa. I suppose she’s heading us southward because it keeps us in landlocked waters where we’ll be an easier target; I guess the boys and girls don’t want another sea battle offshore. They didn’t do so well in the last one.”

  Mac said, “The problem is, even if you get clear back down to the place where Truman Fancher had his first heart attack—well, actually his second; his first on the boat—how will you know it when you see it?”

  I said, “Barring some other kind of a break, I can only hope Dorothy will betray herself, as she did once before.”

  “Does she know you are calling me?”

  “Sure, she’s sitting twenty yards away, watching me talk with you. I told her I had to phone my boss and sell him on our deal.” After a moment, I went on. “She happens to be a very arrogant woman who is sure she can fool me. Just as I happen to be a very arrogant man who is sure he can fool her. It makes for some great double-talk, sir.”

  “To be sure,” Mac said. “I will report your situation to Mrs. Bell.”

  “Tell her that, although I’ve finally managed to come up with a live specimen, I’m not delivering Mrs. Fancher for interrogation because I think she’s got too many lawyers on tap for us to deal with, with no more evidence than we’ve got. I can get more out of her by kidding her along while she’s happily kidding me along. Besides, this is a real tough female, and I doubt that she could be made to talk even with heavy pressure.”

  “I will pass the word. Be careful, Eric.”

  “When am I not?”

  I heard him snort, unimpressed, as he hung up. I stood there a moment trying to read the time on my fancy digital watch, which had the advantage that, unlike some old-fashioned timepieces, it didn’t glow in the dark unasked and make a target of me; however, I had to remember which little button to press to illuminate the display when I wanted it lit. Time: twenty-two hours, fourteen minutes, and fifty-seven seconds—ten-fifteen p.m. to you.

  Something was wrong.

  Schaefer’s Canal House was almost quiet. I heard the car of some late diners driving away from the front door. The back of my neck itched. I knew suddenly that I’d misread the situation, kidding myself that the lady would make her move eventually.

  Eventually, hell. She’d insisted on going out to dinner tonight in spite of a dented skull. She’d kept me listening to her revelations until the restaurant was closing and the parking lot was empty…

  Something was very wrong right now.

  17

  I’ve been in the business too long to disregard that lookout-buddy-they’re-closing-in-on-you feeling. Playing with my trick watch, I stalled, standing more or less sheltered by the island of pay phones in the center of the parking lot.

  Question: What the hell is haywire here, anyway?

  Answer: Dorothy.

  She was still sitting on her piling, apparently fascinated by her fingernails. So why was she pretending she hadn’t seen me hang up the phone? She wasn’t the patient type; you’d think that, after being kept waiting while I made my call, she’d be on her feet ready to go.

  Nothing moved in the wide, lighted, empty parking lot designed for busier times of the year, or around the restaurant behind me, or in the grove of trees with its picnic tables ahead of me on the bank of the canal. I reminded myself that I couldn’t safely assume that, just because the opposition hadn’t gone the sniper route before, they’d renounced it forever. Of course I could be simply suffering from a case of secret-agent midnight paranoia. We’re always seeing snipers in the dark. The trouble is, of course, that quite often they’re actually there.

  I said, “Okay, Dorothy, let’s get aboard.”

  “Well, it’s about time!” she said.

  She rose, brushed off the seat of her linen slacks fastidiously, tucked in her silk shirt neatly—and turned and dove into the canal. It was rather shocking. You don’t expect a handsome, neatly dressed lady, who’s just taken you to a fancy restaurant and treated you to a fine duck dinner complete with cocktails and wine and polite conversation, to end the evening by jumping into the water with all her clothes on.

  On the other hand, it made some kind of sense: if there was to be shooting she’d want to get the hell out of the line of fire, anybody’s fire. Clearly she’d weighed her choices and decided that the C. and D. Canal was the safest place around, and to hell with her clothes and hairdo.

  I sprinted after her. I mean, my fastidious dinner companion wouldn’t have deliberately got herself all wet putting distance between us unless something very dangerous was about to happen in my vicinity. Training and instinct told me to hit the dirt because a rifle bullet was about to come from somewhere, looking for me. Dropping flat was the textbook response; but the fact was that I’d make almost as easy a mark prone under the lights in the bare parking lot as I did upright. So I ran; at least I could give the guy a moving target instead of a standing one.

  I also yelled, “Okay, Ziggy, take him!”

  I had no real hope that the girl, if she was even within hearing, was in a position to help me, but the idea that I had reinforcements at hand might make the marksman a bit nervous… Then the gun in the trees went off, sounding like a salvo from a battleship’s main battery. It threw a flame you wouldn’t believe, looking like a great round ball of fire since it was aimed directly at me, which was a damn good thing. It should have been aimed a little ahead of me to allow for my forward motion. As it was, fired with insufficient lead, the massive load of buckshot ripped up the graveled parking lot behind me as I sprinted toward the water.

  I’d been thinking in terms of a rifle, perhaps with a fancy modern night sight of some kind, or perhaps a submachine gun, although it was long range for the kind of pistol cartridges those weapons employ. Instead, what I had to deal with was just a plain old-fashioned shotgun, but judging by the booming report, it was a shotgun even heavier than the substantial twelve-gauge I had on Lorelei III. Say a long-range ten-gauge Magnum, just the medicine for sky-high ducks and geese, and stupid government agents.

  Running hard, I heard a feminine voice I recognized raised in a warning cry, and some weak plopping sounds: so Ziggy was actually present and had joined the fray. The roaring boom of the shotgun was repeated, but no pellets came near me. I had a disturbing vision of the crippled girl, with her lousy little silenced .22, going up against that monstrous cannon in response to my shout, disregarding my previous orders to back off if things got dangerous. Perhaps she was trying to demonstrate that, although she’d once cracked under interrogation, she wasn’t a total coward.

  It seemed to take me forever to get across the open space, but I couldn’t actually have spent much time at it because Dorothy hadn’t got very far out from the seawall when I made my own dive. I hit the water hard and came up fairly close behind her. Oddly, in this age of windmilling crawl-stroke swimmers, she was a tidy breaststroker, moving herself along competently but not very fast, with her soaked white clothing swirling around her, and her long black hair, loosened, streaming behin
d her. I could probably have caught her, although my swimming abilities aren’t much better than my sailing abilities; however, away from the shore my head would make a perfect shotgun target, and grabbing the lady and holding her in front of me for protection didn’t appeal to me. It wasn’t a matter of chivalry; it was just that I don’t like betting my life on somebody’s sentimentality. Maybe there was a hard guy behind the shotgun, ready to pay the price in dead dames for dead Helms. We never play that hostage game; I wasn’t going to count on anybody else doing it.

  I turned away, therefore, and paddled clumsily back to the seawall—I don’t recommend swimming with shoes on—where I found the water only waist deep. Standing up, I pulled out the .38, shook the water out of it, and prepared to blow away anybody who shoved a ten-gauge over the edge above me. I saw the sleek, seal-like head of the swimming woman disappear among the slimy, weed-grown pilings of the offshore dock.

  “Matt!” It was a girl’s voice, sounding rather distant from down where I stood. “Matt, are you okay? Matt?”

  “Yo!” I called back.

  “It’s all clear, but please get up here.”

  “Coming.”

  I threw a final glance at the dock, but the darkness underneath it was impenetrable and I could hear no splashing. To hell with Dorothy Ayesha Fancher. I guess I was rather relieved to be rid of her; she wasn’t a safe or comfortable houseguest—well, boat guest—and we were probably better off having her stirring up her mischief elsewhere.

  I waded a short way along the seawall. I had to crouch to remain covered as the bulkhead became lower to my right. Then came the moment of truth when I had to straighten up and show myself, remembering that it could easily be a trap. After all, the girl who called herself Ziggy had broken once and revealed an ID code that might have got me killed; she could now be calling me to my death with a shotgun muzzle against her spine.

  I reared up, hauled myself over the low wall, rolled several yards inland, and wound up prone, gun ready, facing the trees ahead. The light in among them wasn’t as good as out where I was, but I could see the girl by one of the picnic tables aiming her silenced pistol at a man lying on the ground. I started to pick myself up to join her, but something moved among the trees…