"Just what the hell do you think you're doing, Helm? You're a fugitive from justice. You must know you can't possibly get away with..."
I sighed wearily. "The last man who told me what I couldn't get away with got a nice, sharp knife inserted into his anatomy, all the way. Don't tempt me. This trigger pulls real easy."
I went on, "After you've worked things out, you'll understand why I'm not about to let myself be arrested. Roger submitted to you, knowing he was innocent and figuring he'd be able to prove it; now he's dead. Anybody who thinks I'm going to forget that little object lesson has got his head screwed on backwards. If you boys want me, you're going to have to take me. Roger cost you three or four men. I'm better than he was, if I do say so myself. I'm older, uglier, smarter, tougher, and meaner..."
Fawcett Gold Medal Books
by Donald Hamilton:
THE AMBUSHERS
THE BETRAYERS
DEATH OF A CITIZEN
THE DEVASTATORS
THE INTERLOPERS
THE INTIMIDATORS
THE INTRIGUERS
THE MENACERS
MURDERER'S ROW
THE POISONERS
THE RAVAGERS
THE REMOVERS
THE SHADOWERS
THE SILENCERS
THE TERMINATORS
THE WRECKING CREW
THE RETALIATORS
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the retaliators
donald hamilton
a fawcett gold medal book
fawcett publications, inc., greenwich, connecticut
THE RETALIATORS
Copyright © 1976 by Donald Hamilton
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form.
All characters in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead is purely coincidental.
Printed in the United States of America
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
the retaliators
one
I was unexpectedly rich and I didn't like it.
I stood in the gleaming, modern lobby of the New Mexico National Bank in my home town of Santa Fe—well, it's as much of a home town as anybody has in my line of work. I used to live there once is what I really meant to say, and I come back occasionally because I happen to like the place.
I looked at the two paper items handed me by the bank teller. One was a draft in my name made out to the Southwest Motor Company, the local Chevrolet agency, in the amount of eight thousand five hundred and seven dollars and forty-two cents. Even these inflated days, it seemed like a lot of money to pay for a vehicle that wasn't a Rolls or Mercedes—a truck, yet!—but what the hell, I could afford it. A single man earning danger pay who spends most of his time traveling on government business and a government expense account finds that the stuff tends to pile up faster than he can get rid of it during his brief periods of leave. In addition to this account in Santa Fe I had another in Washington, D.C., plus some conservative investments running to pleasantly substantial figures.
Up to this morning, the money had been a source of some comfort to me. Its existence had assured me that if I got myself badly shot up or otherwise damaged in the line of duty, I wouldn't have to starve on a government pension. Now I wasn't quite so happy about my financial status. As I said, I was rich. Unexpectedly so.
I looked at the second object handed me by the pretty Spanish-American girl at the window marked SAVINGS: my bankbook. When I'd brought it in, it had showed a balance just large enough to cover the purchase I proposed to make, with a few hundred to spare. However, the girl had spent some time bringing it up to date. She'd added the interest that had accumulated since my last visit over a year ago. She'd also discovered a deposit made last week, unrecorded in the book. When she'd got through adding and subtracting, instead of being practically broke here as I'd expected, I found that I was still, even after my sizable withdrawal, the proud owner of twenty thousand six hundred and thirty-one dollars and some cents.
Very nice. It isn't every government employee who can go around making twenty-grand deposits in his savings account—except that I hadn't made the deposit.
I repeat, I hadn't been in Santa Fe for well over a year; and I hadn't sent anybody to deposit twenty big bills to my account, either.... I stood there for a moment, taking my time about folding the bank draft and putting it away in my wallet. I'd had some reason to expect trouble, but I must confess I hadn't anticipated it would take this form. Somebody had obviously arranged an expensive deadfall for me. The question was, what did he expect me to do with the bait? And what kind of a heavy object would he drop on me when I did it?
Well, the answer to the last question was easy. To switch metaphors, you don't construct a handsome and costly frame without inviting folks to admire it, preferably folks with a certain amount of authority. Sooner or later I could expect to meet a gent with a badge, a self-righteous attitude, and a lot of nosy questions about that large and mysterious deposit, like who'd paid it to me for doing what, and just how did I reconcile taking a sizable bribe—as it appeared to be—with my duty to my employer, the United States of America.
It is, of course, one of the oldest of the standard TV gambits, just about as hoary as the one where the hero is arrested for murder because he picked up the gun lying beside the body, so naturally everybody assumes he did the shooting. Well, I ask you. If you walk in on a fresh corpse, what the hell are you supposed to do if you are packing no firearm of your own? Stand there unarmed, waiting for the lurking murderer to make you victim number two? Or grab the nearest weapon fast and to hell with fingerprints?
And then there's the ancient gag of slipping money into the bank in the name of somebody for whom you want to make a lot of trouble, and arranging it to look as if he took it for crooked or treasonable purposes. They still do it, and they still buy it, although a simple question to your friendly neighborhood banker will elicit the reluctant answer that there's really no serious obstacle to crediting money to another guy's savings as long as you know the account number and can spare the dough.
Well, to hell with that, for the moment. My mind was working very rapidly on one level, while on another I was surveying my surroundings and wondering sourly how anybody managed to get any work done in such a wide-open, goldfish-bowl of a place. Personally, I need peace and privacy when I'm going to perform a demanding intellectual task like counting money. I looked at the dark-haired girl behind the window and she didn't look so attractive any longer. I mean, goddamn it, what the hell kind of a financial institution was it that let the female help slouch around in pants with their shirttails out? All the girl needed was a pail and a scrub brush and she'd be all set to do a job on the floors. It was all part of the picture, I told myself irritably; if the employees were so sloppy about maintaining a businesslike appearance, no wonder they let folks wander in casually and stick large wads of cash into other folks' accounts.
Nobody seemed the least bit interested in me. I didn't take that too seriously. Wi
th twenty thousand dollars invested in me, he'd be interested, all right, whoever he was....
Actually, I was debating with myself the advisability of taking the obvious, innocent route, loudly disclaiming any knowledge of the money right here and now, and demanding that my fouled-up account be straightened out immediately minus what didn't belong to me, since obviously the bank's computer had got the wrong Matthew L. Helm.
The plan had some attractive features. It didn't require much brainwork, for one thing. For another, it might get me an interview with the teller who'd accepted the deposit. However, I knew that after the week that had passed he, or she, would probably remember nothing about the depositor. Probably. There was, of course, a possibility that some odd little incident had occurred, or been made to occur, that had fixed the incident in the teller's memory. In that case, I was fairly certain, it would turn out that the money had been brought in by a skinny character considerably taller than average—a gent, now that the teller came to think of it, who'd looked pretty much like me.
The trouble was, I'd spent the last couple of months at the goddamned ranch in Arizona (we seldom refer to it without the adjective) where we go for retraining and repairs. I'd been having a little trouble with my shoulder, caused by some submachine gun bullets picked up in the line of duty—over in Europe, if it matters. When I'd finally got back to the U.S. that fall, I'd been informed that, strange though it might seem, my country could actually struggle along without my services temporarily. I'd been sentenced to sixty days of clean living and healthful therapy, mitigated by a month's leave afterwards. In a sense, therefore, I had the best alibi in the world. Numbers of professional-type government employees with spotless reputations, who'd supervised my reconditioning, could swear that last week I couldn't possibly have been depositing money in Santa Fe or anywhere else. There was just one catch. Officially, the ranch doesn't exist. We don't exist. Sometimes I think I don't exist. Certainly my job doesn't, officially.
So that was one alibi that would never be used; and I'm not the only guy six feet four in the country. Others can be hired; and there are such things as high-heeled boots and elevator shoes. After a week, your ordinary witness probably wouldn't remember more than one distinguishing feature of a stranger encountered in the day's work. If the body had been tall enough to be memorable, the teller would be unlikely to recall the face clearly enough to testify that it wasn't mine. That would leave me vulnerable. ("Is the defendant really asking this court to believe that he was impersonated, ha-ha? That an unknown individual resembling him closely, his twin brother from Australia, perhaps, generously presented him with twenty thousand unearned dollars—twenty thousand, ladies and gentlemen!—while he was engaged in some mysterious business he is not free to discuss, at a mysterious location he is not at liberty to reveal? The jury will, I am sure, draw its own conclusions....")
The fact I had to keep clearly in mind was: you don't play poker with thousand-dollar chips in large quantities without first dealing yourself a pretty good hand. The direct and honest approach must have been anticipated. If I tried to use it, I'd be playing the other man's game—whoever the other man was, and whatever his game might be.
Furthermore, at the moment my immediate concern wasn't what impression I might make on a hypothetical court of law convened at some unspecified time in the distant future. The essential thing, right now, was to preserve my freedom until I could consult Washington and see how matters stood and what I was supposed to do about them. I could feel the noose tightening around me as I hesitated, but I reminded myself that if I actually did wind up a fugitive, as seemed quite possible, I'd need money in large amounts, and it was only fair to let the opposition foot the bill.
"On second thought, Miss," I said, "I think I'd better get some cash, too. Could I have another withdrawal slip, please?"
A little while later, I stepped out onto the sidewalk in what I hoped was a casual and relaxed manner with ten grand of my unearned wealth—even this close to Texas, it hadn't seemed advisable to attract attention by asking for more mad-money than that—buttoned into the pocket of my shirt, a snug fit. They don't make hunting-shirt pockets the roomy way they used to; and it seems like a hell of a cheapskate way of saving wool. Outside, I checked to see if the Lincoln was still hanging around.
It was there all right, moving slowly around the Plaza as it waited for me, all dark blue and shiny, somebody's private two-door land yacht with the silly little peep-hole quarter windows currently fashionable. I frowned at it thoughtfully. Maybe I owed it, or its occupant, an apology. When I'd first spotted it tailing me a couple of days ago, I'd jumped to conclusions. There are a few people in the world who don't like me, and some of them are wealthy enough for Lincoln Continentals, or their governments are; but most of them are fairly direct fellows with single-track minds. If one of them ever decided I was worth going after, or got instructions to go after me, he'd come to kill, not to play games with my bank account.
Mr. Continental—or Mrs. Continental, or Miss Continental—was apparently a more devious type, assuming that he or she was actually responsible. There was, of course, a remote possibility that the surveillance here in Santa Fe had nothing to do with the financial finagling here in Santa Fe. I didn't really believe that, but I had to keep all possibilities in mind.
As you'll gather, I'd never got a good look at the occupant of the big coupe, not good enough for sex determination. The tinted windows of today's air-conditioned conveyances are great for privacy; men wear their hair just as long as women; there's often not even a hell of a big difference in dress; and I'd made a point of not looking too hard. Instead, after spotting my shadow, I'd gone about the business of outfitting myself for the special winter hunting season that was to open in a few days in a certain rugged area of the state.
I'd got the clothes and the boots and the rifle, and I'd tried to hire a four-wheel-drive vehicle and, failing that, had flipped and arranged to buy one. Actually, I'd already had some kind of winter boondocks excursion in mind when I'd come here from the ranch. Two months of that regimented life had put me in a mood to get off by myself for a while. I hadn't really planned on a hunting trip, however—considering my profession, that would have been kind of like an infantryman taking up backpacking in his spare time.
However, after realizing that I was being shadowed, I'd remembered the special season I'd read about, and made some calls to arrange for a permit. Anybody who wanted to come after me in wilderness terrain I knew pretty well, during a week when I could carry an accurate long-range rifle openly and legally in my hands, was welcome to do so. We'd get the whole thing settled on my terms in my kind of country—but now it seemed that I'd misread the situation completely. Well, nobody's right all the time.
I walked deliberately across the Plaza and went into a drug store and bought a big roll of one-inch adhesive tape and some other stuff. If Mr. Continental had scouts to tell him about it, he could have fun wondering what I was planning to stick to what.
There was a filling station around the corner, I recalled, with an outside phone booth. It was time to touch home base. I strolled down there and called Washington, using the emergency number. On that line, we don't use the fancy secret-agent ID routines prescribed in the manual. There often isn't time. I heard the ringing stop as the phone was picked up a couple of thousand miles away.
"Yes?" The voice was reassuringly familiar.
"Eric here," I said.
"Where are you, Matt?" asked the man we call Mac, for whom I'd worked most of my adult life.
I made a face at the traffic going by. He'd given me a warning signal by countering my code name with my real name—well, nickname. It said we didn't have the wire to ourselves. It was a blow, although one that wasn't entirely unexpected. But if even the emergency line wasn't safe, that meant news of the situation, whatever it was, had reached Washington, and the Internal Security people were already snooping around trying to get something on somebody, preferably me.
&nbs
p; "Never mind the geography, sir," I said, glancing at my watch. "I've run into a little spot of trouble, as our British friends would say."
"I know all about your little trouble." Mac's voice was severe. "About forty thousand dollars' worth, isn't it?"
I whistled softly to myself. So my Washington account had been loaded, also. Somebody was playing rough.
"That's a nice round figure," I said. "Where did you hear it, sir?"
"Did you expect to get away with it forever?" Now the voice over the phone was stern, and at the same time reproachful. "The head of the Bureau of Internal Security has been here, Andrew Euler himself. Following information received, his people have traced two large payments to you. The money has also been traced in the other direction. It originated, I'm told, with a gentleman currently calling himself Groening—our records refer to him as Gerber, or Gulick; he seems to like that initial—who's been under BIS surveillance for some time, Mr. Euler informs me. They've pulled him in and he's talking. Apparently he's been acting as paymaster for a nationwide network of spies and traitors; but of course you know that since you're one of them."
"Am I, sir?"
I watched a gleaming, dark blue coupe move down the street outside in a deliberate and dignified manner. It had Arizona license plates. It vanished around the corner.
"I do hope you're going to be sensible about this, Matt, now that your treasonable activities have been brought to light," Mac was saying. "You are certainly too intelligent to claim that you've been framed, as Roger did when they arrested him in Yuma a few days ago. You know how ridiculous that always sounds; and the description Mr. Euler has of the man who deposited money to both your accounts resembles you too closely for denials to carry much conviction. As for Norma's reaction, slipping across the Mexican border at Tijuana, that's hardly the act of an innocent person. It isn't likely that her investigation of Ernemann would have led her—or Roger either—to that desolate, dried-up sea bottom known as the great Southwest. As you're doubtless aware, Eric, Ernemann has never yet been known to set foot off city pavement in the line of business; dirty work in dark alleys is his specialty, remember?"
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