Matt Helm - The Demolishers E-Book

Donald Hamilton

• Herausgeber: Titan Books
• Kategorie: Abenteuer, Thriller, Horror
• Serie: Matt Helm
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2016

Seitenzahl: 555

Beschreibung

Matt Helm was aware of Bultman – a legendary assassin, the leader of a group of fanatical revolutionaries, an ambitious criminal – but he had no business with taking him down. Until now. Bultman blew up a restaurant on the Florida coast full of innocent people, including Helm's son. Now, it's very personal.

Leseprobe

Contents

Cover

Also by Donald Hamilton

Title Page

Copyright

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About the Author

Also Available from Titan Books

Also by Donald Hamilton and available from Titan Books

Death of a Citizen

The Wrecking Crew

The Removers

The Silencers

Murderers’ Row

The Ambushers

The Shadowers

The Ravagers

The Devastators

The Betrayers

The Menacers

The Interlopers

The Poisoners

The Intriguers

The Intimidators

The Terminators

The Retaliators

The Terrorizers

The Revengers

The Annihilators

The Infiltrators

The Detonators

The Vanishers

The Frighteners (December 2016)

The Threateners (February 2017)

The Damagers (April 2017)

The DemolishersPrint edition ISBN: 9781783299935E-book edition ISBN: 9781783299942

Published by Titan BooksA division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd144 Southwark Street, London SE1 0UP

First edition: October 20161 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

Copyright © 1987, 2016 by Donald Hamilton. All rights reserved.Matt Helm® is the registered trademark of Integute AB.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

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1

Mac was sitting at his desk as usual, with the bright window behind him. This made his expression difficult to read, which was the idea; but I gathered he didn’t feel that the instructions he’d just given me were open to question, although, of course, we were both aware that most instructions given in that office are pretty questionable by ordinary standards.

I said, “No, sir.”

He frowned quickly. “What?”

I said, “No, sir, I won’t go after Herman Heinrich Bultman. If he must be handled, let the CIA handle him; he’s their boy. Or was once; and they still wake up nights sweating, wondering if he’s told anybody who hired him for that Cuba mission that cost him his left foot.” I grimaced. “Bultman was a fool to get sucked into that one; but they do get proud. He’s not the first character in that line of work who’s let himself be conned into trying for The Beard in order to show that he was the best; that he could succeed where everyone else had failed. Of course the money was a consideration, too. But he should have known that, whether he made it or not, and particularly if, as it turned out, he didn’t, those publicity-shy folks down at Langley would figure on silencing him afterwards. Only it turned out they weren’t quite up to the job, so they wished it off on us.”

Mac made an impatient gesture. “That is ancient history, Eric.” In that office, and while engaged in the exercise of my profession, I’m Eric, although I use other names as well. In my normal civilian life, what little there is of it, I’m known as Matthew Helm. Mac went on: “The misguided attempt on Castro’s life is past and forgotten; it has no bearing on our present…”

I shook my head quickly. “The boys and girls down in Virginia don’t forget much, sir. Bultman’s still on their shit list and they want him off, permanently. Well, I went after him once for them down in Costa Verde, and got lucky. I outshuffled him and outnumbered him and got the drop on him. I made him swear that he’d never, ever open his mouth on the subject of Cuba. They’d told me to silence him, hadn’t they?” I grinned. “That wasn’t exactly what they’d had in mind, I guess, but I needed Bultman’s cooperation on another project, as you’ll recall. As a matter of fact, whatever else he may be, the Kraut seems to be a man of his word; his promise has turned out to be as good as a bullet in the brain. Now they’ve come up with another important reason for us to eliminate Herr Bultman. Personally, I think they’ll keep finding new reasons to wipe him out until they get the job done. Correction: until they get somebody else to get it done for them. Like us. But not me, sir. The reason they’ve come up with this time isn’t good enough. I want no part of it, thanks.”

Theoretically, our wants and don’t-wants are quite irrelevant in that office, but I’ve worked for him a long time and have earned a certain amount of latitude.

Mac said, “You are showing great consideration for a man who’s an assassin for sale, a hired gun.”

I said, “I’ve killed upon occasion. You should know; you sent me out to do it. Hell, you’re trying to send me out to do it now. And for doing it, when I do it, I’m paid a pretty good salary by the U.S. government. Not what I’m worth, of course, but pretty good. What does that make me? Let’s not have any loose talk in here about hired guns, sir. Anyway, Bultman has retired from the hitman wars.”

“Had retired.”

“Well, this isn’t really his old line of work. And who turned him active again, if you want to call it that? And how did they do it? If people are going to be that stupidly, arrogantly vicious, they deserve what they get, even if what they get is a professional killer on the prowl.”

Mac spoke without expression: “You are the only one of our people who’s had an opportunity to study the subject in action and at close range. Another agent’s chances of success, even of survival, would be considerably smaller than yours.”

I said, “You don’t have to send anybody, sir. Tell them to take their lousy job and shove it back across the Potomac where it belongs.”

“We are not here to tell people to take their lousy jobs and shove them, Eric. The lousy jobs are exactly what this organization was created to handle. The ones too lousy for anybody else.”

Our business is classified as counterassassination by the people who know what we do, but there aren’t many of those. In other words, when the knifers, snipers, and bombers get too rough for other agencies to handle, they call on us.

I said, “What you said works both ways. I’ve had a chance to study Herman, but he’s also had a chance to study me. It cancels out. The man only has one flesh-and-blood foot, but he was getting along all right with the tin one when I saw him last. I have a hunch he suffered some other injuries on that ill-fated expedition that we don’t know about, or he wouldn’t have gone out of business later the way he did. But regardless, crippled or whole, sick or well, he’s the old lobo from the top of the mountain, as the CIA found out the hard way. And I’m not going to tackle him again for them and a bunch of Caribbean islanders who haven’t got any more sense than to make a deadly enemy of a basically nonpolitical character like Bultman by doing the one thing that would make him blow his stack, stolid Kraut though he is. Those uniformed Latin characters with their casual submachine guns are always a bit trigger-happy, but this time they outdid themselves and really played hell.”

“There were sound medical reasons for the regulations that were enforced in Bultman’s case; although the enforcement may have been a bit arbitrary.” Mac frowned at me across the desk. “So it’s the dog.”

I said, “You’re damned right it’s the dog, sir.”

Mac spoke carefully: “The island of Gobernador—these days the sovereign nation of Gobernador—is an important link in our Caribbean defense system. Whatever your opinion may be, the government of the United States of America considers it more important than one elderly German shepherd dog.” When I didn’t say anything, Mac went on without expression. “Are you aware that the German shepherd is not German and has never been known to herd a sheep? Originally, it came to this country as the Alsatian wolf dog. It found few buyers under that label, so the name was changed quite arbitrarily and inaccurately to make the product sound more attractive. It still, in many specimens, retains its savage propensities.”

I said, “Sure. There’s always a fashionable devil dog. For a while it was the Doberman pinscher. Then the pit bull became the Monster Canine of the Year. Currently, I believe, the Rottweiler is the beast at the head of the eat-you-up list. I’m just waiting for the day they discover the Homicidal Pekingese. Anyway, the temperament of Bultman’s mutt is irrelevant here. It didn’t bite anybody, it was just there, an elderly German shepherd bitch named Marlene for Marlene Dietrich. It throws an interesting light on Tough-Guy Bultman, his naming his pet for a long-ago movie star. And whatever the U.S. government may think, Herman Bultman considers the lousy island strictly expendable and I don’t blame him. Under similar circumstances, I’d be looking for help to sink it into the sea, myself. Apparently, he’s found his help in the anti-government movement; and more power to him.”

“You’re being dangerously sentimental, Eric.” Mac cleared his throat and controlled his irritation. He went on with his briefing remorselessly, as if there had been no objection from me. “Gobernador consists of two islands. Isla del Norte is a fairly barren rock, sparsely settled. It contains important U.S. installations of a fairly secret nature—secret enough that we don’t need to know what they are, or so we’re told, as usual. The government of the newly independent nation has given us long-term leases; but if it should be overthrown, those leases could be, and probably would be, abrogated by those who would come to power next, who’d be at least anti-American if not actively pro-communist.” He paused. When I made no comment, he continued: “Isla del Sur is fertile and quite densely populated. It contains the capital city up in the mountains, Santa Isabella; and down on the coast, the principal harbor, Puerto del Sol, where your friend had his trouble.”

“Hell, he’s no friend of mine,” I said. “Just because I sympathize with his current motives doesn’t mean I like him. That’s one cold, ruthless sonofabitch, and anybody idiot enough to hit him in his one soft spot…”

“I am certain that, if they had known with whom they were dealing, the port officials would have treated him more tenderly, Eric.” Mac’s voice was tart. “Unfortunately the name Bultman is not a household word in the Caribbean.”

“If the rumors I’ve heard are correct, it soon will be,” I said.

Mac winced. “Yes, that is the problem with which we are trying to deal.”

I went on: “Certain people never learn that if they push enough folks around long enough, sooner or later they’ll start shoving somebody who won’t take it. He’ll blow right up in their faces and demolish them and the surrounding landscape; and they—those who are left—will scream about how misunderstood and abused they are, and why didn’t somebody tell them the guy was dangerous so they could be nice to him? It never seems to occur to them that there’s a very simple answer: just be nice to everybody.” I grimaced. “In Bultman they hit a prime specimen of demolisher; and now that they’ve triggered him they want us to abort the explosion? How optimistic can you get?”

Mac ignored this foray into philosophy, if you want to call it that. He went on stiffly: “What I am trying to point out is that we have a vested interest in the current government of Islas Gobernador. We do not want it replaced by a less friendly regime, or a steaming hole in the ocean. Apparently Bultman is now busily whipping into shape a motley collection of terrorists and revolutionaries that could never have accomplished anything on their own except the usual kind of protest assassinations and abductions and random bombings. But the man has considerable military experience, as you know, and he’s being allowed to carry out his recruiting and training on a neighboring island that has an interest in fomenting disturbances on Gobernador. Under this protection, Bultman is forming a disciplined strike force that may become a real threat to the stability of the region.”

“He’s just the boy to do it,” I said. “He’s not a lone-wolf type like me; that time I outmaneuvered him with paramilitary help was strictly an exception. But Bultman always did run his operations like clockwork commando raids, using plenty of manpower, even when his target was a single individual.” I drew a long breath. “Look, sir, it’s no use pulling that anti-commie stuff on me. I’ve had too many missions sold me as the last faint hope of democracy. I think I’ve proved a number of times that I’m as patriotic as the next guy, but you can’t tell me that a few antennas or whatever, on a Caribbean rock, are going to make the difference between our national existence and nonexistence.”

Mac studied me coldly. “I won’t insult you by suggesting that you are afraid of taking on this mission; but I find your reason for refusing quite unconvincing.”

I said, “That’s because you’re not a dog man, sir.”

“I should hope not,” he said. “Nor am I cat man or a ferret man or a monkey man or a parakeet man, or a little-white-mouse man. And I would have thought at your age you’d be cured of that childish pet nonsense.”

“Age has nothing to do with it,” I said. “A dog can mean just as much to an older person as it does to a kid, maybe more. And calling my attitude names doesn’t change anything. I grew up with hunting dogs and you know it; you may even recall a couple of assignments where my familiarity with dogs came in quite handy. As a matter of fact, I picked up a pup on my recent jaunt to Scandinavia. He’s in a training kennel in Texas right now and I hope to take him duck hunting shortly—the season opens in a couple of weeks—and see just what kind of a retriever my Svenska relatives wished off on me. And even though I haven’t had much time to get acquainted with him, I strongly recommend that nobody lift a finger against him, because my reaction would be exactly the same as Bultman’s.” I stared right back across the desk. “You’ll never understand that, sir. You told me once that you were brought up to be afraid of them; and that it gave you a lot of trouble when you had to revise our methods of dealing with attack and guard dogs.”

Mac said dryly, “To be frank, my attitude is that of the late W. C. Fields: Any man who hates dogs can’t be all bad. A slight exaggeration, but close enough.”

“As I recall, Fields included children also.”

Mac disregarded that, frowning at me across the desk. “You can’t be serious about refusing this mission simply because the target is a fellow dog lover.” When I didn’t respond to that, he went on sharply: “Nobody is asking you to hurt any dogs, Eric! All you have been instructed to do is deal with a dangerous man…”

“A dangerous man who, crippled and perhaps not altogether well, had retired from being dangerous,” I said. “Okay, let’s pull it all out and look at it, including the parts you neglected to mention. Bultman was living on board his boat, a thirty-two-foot sloop, and doing no harm to anybody—you never know who you’ll find taking off in a boat these days. He was sailing through the Caribbean by easy stages, alone except for his ancient Alsatian bitch. He got caught by the fringe of a hurricane, his boat sustained some damage, and he limped into the nearest port, which happened to belong to a new island nation that’s free of rabies and hopes to stay that way by keeping all strange canines out. Their privilege; but there’s also an ancient tradition about affording refuge to distressed mariners.”

Mac said, “Just because an arrogant official exceeded his instructions…”

I said, “We don’t know what his instructions were, sir. Now it’s being claimed that he exceeded them, now that the shit has hit the fan; but that’s the way of governments everywhere. Anyway, under similar circumstances more reasonable countries with the same kind of antirabies regulations just quarantine the dog. Not Islas Gobernador. Those clowns didn’t even give Bultman the choice of putting back to sea with his damaged boat and his four-legged companion. They simply hauled the old lady shepherd onto the dock and shot her to death right under her master’s eyes.” I drew a long breath. “And Herman Heinrich Bultman kept his temper and said sí, señor, and por favor, señor. He got out of there without killing anybody, and I know exactly why. He didn’t just want the few he could get by grabbing one of the machine pistols that are always waving in the breeze in a place like that, and cleaning off the dock with a few well-aimed bursts. Suddenly they’d given him a new purpose in life, something interesting to do in his retirement. Now he’s going to use everything he learned in all his years as a soldier of fortune and professional assassin to carry off one final, efficient, Bultman operation: wiping out, not only the trigger-happy officials who did the job, but the lousy government that put them there to do it.”

After a moment, Mac said, “I don’t condone what was done, of course. But to suggest that the death of one animal justifies in any way the kind of bloody revolt this man is planning…”

I sighed. “I knew we’d get to that after-all-it’s-just-an-animal routine eventually, sir. But Bultman isn’t doing what he’s doing for an elderly bitch that would soon have died of natural causes anyway. He’s doing it for his right to keep an elderly bitch and, when her time was up, let her die in peace with her old gray head in his lap.”

“Very touching, Eric, but…”

I said, “I won’t go after him, sir. I won’t say he’s justified in what he’s doing. As you point out, it was only an animal, and a lot of human beings are going to die for it. But I can’t go after him because, as I said before, if it had been my dog, I’d have reacted in exactly the same way; so how can I hunt down the man for that? As a kid out west I learned that if you mess with a man’s horse or his dog you’ve only yourself to blame for what happens next. It’s time these people learned it, too, and I’m not about to stop Bultman from advancing their education. If you want my resignation, it will be on your desk as soon as one of the girls downstairs can type it up…”

2

When I was a boy, a Labrador retriever was always black. I was aware that the yellows and chocolates were permissible variations, but I can’t recall ever seeing one of those offbeat canines. Nowadays, however, every dog breeder is striving for something new and different. The yellow Lab has been rescued from obscurity and is starting to take over from the black.

The pup that had been given me by the Swedish relatives on whose farm I’d stayed the previous spring ranged in color from pale red gold on the back to straw white on the chest. He was the biggest juvenile Labrador I’d seen. At eighteen months he weighed over a hundred pounds, with enormous feet and a head like a bear. His greeting was overwhelming, like being mauled by a grizzly; but I didn’t mind. I mean, it showed that he remembered me and, dammit, love is where you find it. There aren’t that many humans around eager to hug and kiss me.

“Grown a bit, ain’t he?” Bert Hapgood said, grinning. He was a lean dark man in jeans and a denim jacket. “Down, pup, down! I ought to charge you extra, Matt, the grub he puts away. In the morning you can shoot him a duck or two and see what he’s learned about handling them…”

Bert and his handsome, brown-haired wife, Doreen, ran what might be called a combination operation. They had their kennels, and they boarded and trained dogs throughout the year; but they also had boats in which they took people fishing in the appropriate seasons, and they had a considerable amount of local marshland under lease, on which they ran guided hunts in the fall and early winter from their rustic hunting lodge on the shore of the Gulf of Mexico. It was a weathered building raised on stilts like the beach houses I’d passed on my way there, so high storm tides could wash underneath without damage. From my room, spartan but comfortable enough, I could hear the surf until I fell asleep thinking about tomorrow’s hunt.

It was an improvement over some night thoughts I’d been having. I kept telling myself that I’d survived longer in the business than most, and that it had been only sensible to quit before the statistics of my profession caught up with me; but I’d have liked to have it happen in a more friendly fashion. I assured myself that it was ridiculous to entertain any sentimental or regretful thoughts about Mac; might as well start getting mushy about the public executioner. Still, we’d worked together a hell of a lot of years… But that night in Texas I thought only about ducks and dogs and shotguns, and fell asleep in record time.

In the morning, after a hearty breakfast, we loaded the yellow pup into a crate in the back of Bert’s four-wheel-drive pickup and headed east along the highway, with another carload of hunters following along behind. It was a clear morning, with a good breeze and the sky already lightening in the east. The road followed the Gulf. Sizable waves were still breaking on the beach to the right. To the left was an endless expanse of marsh, into which Bert turned after a while, following an old, overgrown levee of some kind. At the end of it was a swampy pond.

On the far side of the pond I could make out, in the growing light, a duck blind with a couple of dozen decoys floating in front of it.

“It’s deeper than it looks; you’ll need the pup to fetch whatever you drop out there,” Bert said, leading me to the edge. “That’s why I gave you this spot, so you can see some water work. Don’t expect him to be steady when the gun fires; we haven’t insisted on that yet. I wanted to get him good and eager first. I’ll be back for you around nine; they generally stop flying about then. Good luck.”

The pup, released when we got out of the pickup, was already swimming happily in the pond, something I was pleased to see. They’re supposed to be water dogs, but they don’t all know it. I called him in, as Bert drove off to take care of his other clients. After the usual ritual of shaking himself all over me, the dripping youngster accompanied me around the pond to the blind, which consisted of several barrels sunk in the mud, concealed by reeds and brush. I climbed into the left-hand barrel, which seemed to be most strategically located. It was reasonably dry and had a comfortable seat. I loaded my shotgun, an old Remington automatic I’d had for years. I whistled in the pup and parked him on a water-level wooden platform beside me that had been built for the purpose.

Oddly enough considering where he’d been born, his name was Happy. The Swedes seemed to like picking their dog names from the English language, judging by the three-generation pedigree I’d been given that was nicely sprinkled with champions of one kind or another—I didn’t know what the European titles signified, but they looked impressive. We sat and watched the marsh come to life as the sun rose; the reedy vista gradually turning from dawn gray to daylight gold. Some shots were fired in the distance; then the pup stiffened, staring off to the left at an incoming single that was obviously seeking the company of the friendly-looking group of decoys.

It was a teal, a small duck, but I wasn’t being particular this morning; I just wanted to see my dog work. I waited for a close and easy shot. When I rose at last the teal, just lowering its flaps for the landing, flared away to the left, low over the decoys. I let it get clear so I wouldn’t blast Bert’s imitation ducks, and fired. Rifle shooting is a deliberate science; shotgun shooting is the instinctive art of sweeping a fast-flying target out of the sky with swinging gunbarrel. This shot felt good, and was good.

At the report, and the resulting splash beyond the decoys, Happy launched himself like a rocket, sending spray flying in all directions. He surged out there, swimming powerfully—no heads-up puppy-paddling here—and came back with the colorful little teal drake cradled in his mouth. He made the delivery in proper fashion. There’s always something special about the first bird brought you by a new young dog; and we admired it together and I scratched his ears and told him what a great retriever he was.

It had been a long time since I’d owned a dog and I hadn’t realized how much I’d missed having one. But as I praised the pup, the instinct developed by years of survival in a non-surviving business was whispering in my ear that it was too soon for me to relax and consider myself a normal, dog-loving, private citizen. I wasn’t through with them yet, the deadly ones, the killers I’d hunted all my life, not because I hated them so much, but because somebody had to hunt them and it took another hunter to do the job. They were still out there, somewhere; and I’d better keep a sharp eye on everything I valued, even a dog, because they could strike anywhere…

I brought my mind back to ducks, but too late: a pair of pintails had dipped low over the blocks and disappeared before I could get to my feet and get the gun to my shoulder. I’d barely sat down again when a larger bunch of assorted ducks pitched in to the decoys. They flared in all directions as I rose; the sky seemed to be full of them. I picked the one that made the best target, and hit it, and saw it fall. Happy was after it instantly, a yellow streak exploding from the blind. I swung on another and missed, but corrected my lead and dropped it into the marsh behind us.

Suddenly the sky was empty again. I reloaded and waited for the pup to bring me the duck that had landed in the water, a shoveler drake with an outsize bill, very gaudy and handsome; but they usually taste a little fishy. However, Happy was proud of it, and that was what counted today. He hadn’t seen the second fall, but he followed me back there and went to work willingly, searching where I indicated. Soon he hit the scent and dug the bird out of the tall reeds, a nice pintail, the best duck of the day so far. Then back into the blind in time to repel the next airborne assault…

By the time Bert’s truck appeared, I was sitting on the levee on the outer side of the pond, where it was more or less dry. I was field-dressing my ducks while Happy kept telling me that there were still birds flying, so why weren’t we shooting them? He didn’t understand about game laws and bag limits.

“Looks like you did all right,” Bert said, coming up. “Any problems?”

“Yeah, this dumb dog doesn’t know when to quit,” I said. I grinned, scratching the pup’s ears and trying to keep him from climbing into my lap. “No, no problems. He did just fine.”

“I was a bit worried when you first brought him here,” Bert said. “We’ve had some yellow Labs that didn’t have a lot of hunt in them, if you know what I mean; not compared to the usual run of blacks. But this one’s turning out pretty good. Give us a little more time to teach him manners and you’ll have yourself a retriever.”

When we drove up to the lodge in the bright morning sunshine, a big car was parked by the stairs that led up to the veranda that ran around three sides of the raised building. Bert glanced at it curiously.

“Rental car from the airport,” he said. “But we’re not expecting any… Doreen?”

His wife was coming down the wooden stairs, looking slender and competent in jeans and a checked shirt. She didn’t respond to her husband’s implied question, but came straight to me.

“You’ve got some visitors, Matt,” she said. “They’re waiting for you in the living room.”

“Visitors?”

Instinctively, I unzipped the shotgun case I was holding and reached into my hunting coat pocket for shells. If people had gone to the trouble of tracking me here, I preferred not to meet them unarmed. A duck load will do as well as buckshot at short ranges.

Doreen laughed in an odd, strained way. “Oh, no, you won’t need a gun, Matt. It’s nothing like that. But… but I’m afraid you’d better brace yourself for bad news. I’m sorry.”

I looked at her for a moment, but she obviously wasn’t going to tell me, so I went past her and up the stairs and around the veranda to the front door. The sea view was great from up here, except for a few oil rigs, but I wasn’t into scenery at the moment. I slid the door back and stepped inside, closing it behind me, a little hampered because I still held the cased shotgun.

Of the two women who sat on the sofa side by side, the smaller was the one who’d have drawn a normal man’s attention first. Basically a pretty girl, and quite young, she was spectacularly beat-up-looking at the moment. In the glance I gave her, I noted a sling, a head bandage, and some ugly facial bruises; but I’d already recognized the woman beside her and couldn’t be bothered with taking the inventory any further. To hell with the battered kid. I wasn’t a normal man. I was an ex-husband facing his former wife. She rose as I crossed the room towards her.

“Hello, Beth,” I said.

“Matt.” She swallowed hard. “I… I can’t say it, Matt. It’s easier if you read it. Here.”

She held out a page torn from a newspaper, folded to put a certain story on top. Tucking the shotgun under my arm, I took it and studied it warily. At first glance it was just another terrorist incident. A bomb had been flung into a small restaurant called La Mariposa, in West Palm Beach, Florida. I read on and came to the kicker: Killed by the blast were… Ernesto Bustamente, West Palm Beach, Fia.; Simon Greenberg and Rosa Greenberg, New York, N.Y.; Matthew Helm, Jr., Old Say brook, Conn…

Mac would have been proud of me. My first thought was that my older boy was dead, murdered by a bunch of terrorist thugs, while my instinct was telling me to keep a careful eye on a damn dog.

3

I looked from the newspaper page to the woman I’d once married. She hadn’t changed very much. She still had that fresh, healthy, almost boyish, New-England-nice-girl look. Just slightly taller than average, she had light brown hair that still showed no hint of gray. Her figure, in blue tweed, was still slim and youthful; and her legs were still fine in sheer nylon. Her blue shoes had moderate heels. The color of her expensive suit, and matching cashmere sweater, emphasized the blueness of her eyes. There was something intent and hypnotic about the way they watched me. I didn’t gather that she was in a very stable mental state at the moment; but, then, who was?

She was no longer my wife, of course. Her name was Logan now and had been for more years than I cared to remember, Mrs. Lawrence Logan, but we still shared something unique that belonged only to us: the memory of a small child in a crib, our first. There had been two after that, and we’d eventually become hardened to parenthood, but the first is the scary one, particularly when you’re as young as we were. You don’t know anything about it, either of you, in spite of the baby books you’ve been reading. You’re afraid of holding it too hard and breaking it, or not hard enough and dropping it. You can’t believe it’s really alive. You expect it to stop breathing any minute…

“Kill them,” Beth said very softly, regarding me with that intent blue-eyed look. “That’s what you do, isn’t it, Matt? That’s why I left you, when I finally learned that about you, all those years ago. I was… a rather gentle person back then. But now I’ve come back asking you to find them and kill them for me. For us. For… for Matthew. Kill all of them!”

Then she buried her face in her hands and began to cry. She swayed dangerously and I thought she was about to collapse. I started forward, but the kid got to her first, and led her back to the sofa, and looked up at me.

“Would you mind putting away that firearm, Mr. Helm?” she asked calmly. “Guns make me very nervous.”

“Yes, ma’am,” I said, and zipped up the case and set the shotgun in the corner. Then I went to the little bar across the room and found three glasses and my private bottle. The Hapgoods didn’t have a license. You provided your own booze; they just supplied what you drank it with and out of. I took two glasses to the sofa, set one on the end table for Beth, and gave the other to the girl, although I wasn’t quite sure about the ethics of that. She was really pretty young. “Scotch is what there is,” I said.

“Thank you,” said the beat-up kid, still with an arm around Beth. “Incidentally, Mr. Helm, I’m your daughter-in-law. We sent you announcements and invitations at the time, if you’ll remember, two years ago.”

“I remember,” I said. “You were both still in college.”

“Is that why you didn’t come, because you disapproved?”

I shook my head. “A man in my line of work does better to stay away from public occasions involving his kids. There were other reasons why I figured the ceremony would proceed better without me. I didn’t think one absentee daddy would be missed.”

“You were wrong,” she said stiffly. “But I believe we thanked you properly for the present and the check.”

“You did,” I said. I looked at her for a moment. “So you’re Cassandra. Cassandra Varek as was, if I remember correctly. Cassie or Sandra?”

“Sandra. I might answer to Sandy if you yelled loudly enough.” We’d both been intent upon the business of getting acquainted; now the kid glanced at Beth, who’d stopped sobbing and was groping in her purse for a handkerchief. Sandra asked me, “Where’s a bathroom?”

“Through those doors and down the hall to the right.” But when she’d helped Beth up and started to lead her that way, I said, “Wait a minute. Why don’t you take her to my room? There’s a small john there, and she can rest on the bed if she wants to. Out the front door and around the veranda to the left. Here’s the key; the number’s on it.”

When the girl returned alone, I was leaning against the bar, sipping the drink I’d made for myself, although I didn’t want it very badly. I’m not a morning drinker. But it seemed like something that should be done, a gesture that should be made. You get a big tragic shock, you take a stiff drink, right? Sandra made a detour to pick up her glass and came over to face me.

“Elizabeth will be all right. She’s just been holding it in, and it was a long plane ride.”

“Sure.”

“She doesn’t mean it, of course. What she said to you. She’s not really a vengeful person.”

I studied her carefully, trying to estimate what she’d look like when she wasn’t a walking disaster area, this girl my son had married. She was shorter than Beth, sturdy and dark, with black hair cut very short. Perhaps, after having a significant part of it shaved away to permit treatment of the head injury, she’d decided to chop it off totally and let it all grow back at once. The area of tape above her right ear was quite extensive.

She had a rather wide dark face, snub-nosed and full-lipped, with thick eyebrows that had never heard of tweezers. It was a good strong face, very attractive in a young and sultry way. I wouldn’t have judged it to be the face of a girl who’d fear guns and forgive her enemies; but on the subject of girls I’ve been wrong before. Her eyes were brown, and there was an ugly discoloration around the right one; she also had a bruise on the side of her chin. The sling I’d noted earlier supported her right arm. There were small dressings on both hands. She was wearing a tailored gray pantsuit with a black blouse, open at the throat. I could see through her trousers a suggestion of a bandage on her right thigh; I’d already noticed that she favored that leg slightly.

She was aware of my scrutiny, of course, and she spoke without expression: “Twenty-seven stitches in the leg. A lot more in the scalp; but I think they take smaller stitches up there for cosmetic reasons. Greenstick fracture of the radius bone; that’s the smaller one in the forearm. My hands got pretty well sliced up as you can see; my knees look like hamburger. Of course I’m black and blue practically all over, turning a beautiful green in spots. My ears only stopped ringing from the blast a couple of days ago. Does that satisfy your curiosity?”

“It’s a wonder they let you out of the hospital,” I said. “The flight from Washington can’t have been much fun for you.”

She shrugged. “I’m tough. I don’t like hospitals. How did you know we came from Washington?”

“It’s the only place you could have learned where to find me. Although I don’t check in there any longer, my former chief has ways of keeping track. But he wouldn’t have given you this address over the phone. I wouldn’t have thought he’d give it to you at all.”

“Elizabeth said she’d met him once before, your boss, many years ago when you were being divorced. He looked her up then and tried to persuade her to change her mind about leaving you.”

I said, “My ex-boss, please. My former chief, I said. I quit two weeks ago.”

“So he told us; but he let Elizabeth come to see him anyway, for old times’ sake, I guess.” Sandra shrugged. “I went with her, because she’s still a bit shaky—and of course I had a personal interest, too. That’s a polite and soft-spoken man, but I wouldn’t want to get him mad at me. I don’t think he’s a very kindly person, really.”

I laughed. “We’re not a kindly outfit. My own humanitarian impulses can hardly be called dominant. What did he say?”

“He wanted to know why Elizabeth was looking for you. When she told him, he was very sympathetic and gave her this address. He said he thought you were probably here, since the waterfowl season was opening today and you had a new hunting dog you wanted to try out.” The kid laughed shortly, watching me. “What is it, some kind of a compulsion, Mr. Helm, that you just can’t stop shooting things?”

It’s never any use arguing with them, young or old, when they get on that kick. “Man gets in a rut, I guess,” I said. “But you’d better call me Matt. All this formality doesn’t go with such high-minded disapproval.”

She said, “Maybe my disapproval isn’t so very high-minded… Matt. Maybe I don’t really care what you shoot. Maybe I’m just trying to give you a hard time for other reasons.”

“Reasons such as?”

She licked her lips. “Maybe I’m remembering a very nice guy, a guy you might even have liked if you’d made an effort to know him. A guy who’d have enjoyed having a father, even an offbeat daddy like you. But you were never there. Oh, there were occasional letters, and presents when presents were indicated, and a check now and then, but never a warm body, not even at his wedding, not even at his graduation.”

I said, “I gave you my reasons. And Larry Logan makes a pretty good substitute papa. I checked him out.”

Sandra shook her head. “Elizabeth’s husband is very much okay, and he did what he could to fill the daddy spot, but a stepfather isn’t the same thing even when he’s adopted his new wife’s kiddies legally and given them his name. If you’d died and Elizabeth had remarried, that would have been bearable. But knowing that you were still around, somewhere, and just couldn’t be bothered with your own son, with any of your children…” She drew a long breath. “Of course, that was what drew us together in college, Matthew and me. We had it in common. My daddy was a lot like you in many ways. My mother died when I was very young, and he couldn’t be bothered with being a papa, either. So he wished me off on nurses and governesses and boarding schools, and never once… Well, to hell with that. Sorry. I didn’t mean to inflict my bleak childhood on you.”

I said, “Did Beth know how Matthew felt?”

Sandra grimaced. “What you want to know is, did she make him feel that way, did she turn her children against their father deliberately, like many divorced wives? No, of course she didn’t, she’s too nice a lady. In fact, Elizabeth has been defending you stoutly all these years, telling your kids how busy you were saving the world for democracy, or something; and how you couldn’t visit them anyway, even when you had time, because you were afraid somebody who didn’t like you, somebody you’d injured in the line of duty, say, might strike at your family if they knew it existed. That routine you just used on me. I don’t think it’s a very plausible excuse for neglecting your kids, Mr. Helm… Matt, and they didn’t think so either. It might have been better if you’d been honest and simply let them know you weren’t interested, the way my daddy did. At least I could console myself, a little, with the fact that I hadn’t been sired by a hypocrite.”

I asked, “Is that why Matthew changed his name back to Helm?”

She said, “Yes, he wanted to show that he was still your son, even though you’d practically disowned him, getting Larry to adopt him and make him a little Logan. I don’t blame him. He wanted you to know, I suppose, that there was another Matthew Helm around whether you liked it or not, and that he’d seen through your ridiculous pretense of trying to protect him by giving him another name and staying away from him, when what you were really doing was washing your hands of him and the rest of your offspring!”

I regarded her for a moment. “Do you believe that, Sandra? Now?”

“Of course I do! What do you mean, now? What’s changed?”

“Look in the mirror,” I said. “I’d say there were some changes, wouldn’t you?”

“I don’t understand what you—”

I said harshly, “Use your brains, little girl! If any. There you are, all stitched up like the bride of Frankenstein, and there is Matthew, dead, and you still call my precautions ridiculous?” She started to speak, but I went on anyway: “You’re blaming me for not seeing my kids often enough. I’m blaming myself for maybe seeing them too often. I did drop in on them once in a great while, you know. Maybe I shouldn’t have allowed myself even those few visits.”

She said, shocked, “You can’t think… But that’s crazy!”

“Well, maybe it wouldn’t have made any difference, under the circumstances,” I said. “That’s something I have to find out.”

“Now you’re talking riddles,” she said angrily. “And you can’t truly believe that… that somebody blew up a whole restaurant and killed five people in addition to your son, and put a dozen more into the hospital including me, just because they were mad at you! That’s… that’s paranoid!”

I said, “I’ve spent most of my life in a paranoid profession; you can’t expect me to change overnight.”

“But we know who’s responsible for that bomb!” she protested. “It’s right there in the clipping you just read. A terrorist gang calling itself the Caribbean Legion of Liberty. The CLL. Why do they all go in for those idiot acronyms? They’re against what they call American imperialist domination of all those little island countries down there. Fuck the Monroe Doctrine, or words to that effect. At the moment they’re particularly concerned with a place called Gobernador that just gained its independence recently—but they claim it’s not really independent. They say we only helped it gain its freedom from its previous imperialist oppressor so we could take it over for our missile bases or tracking stations or whatever we have down there. They want to replace the present regime, which they claim is a puppet government controlled from Washington, with a true People’s Republic of Islas Gobernador… Anyway, the West Palm Beach bombing was clearly a political protest against American foreign policy by a recognized gang of international terrorists; they’ve done the same thing elsewhere. It can’t possibly have been a personal attack on you.”

“Can’t it?” I asked. “Even if the bombing was the work of a genuine gang of terrorists, who aimed them at that particular little restaurant? Who ever heard of a hash joint called La Mariposa, the Butterfly? The Palm Beaches are full of targets that make more sense politically; and why West Palm Beach anyway? Why not stage the blast in Miami, a major city, and really shake up the lousy Americanos? The casualty list shows no important people to explain why that particular food dispensary was chosen for their explosive attentions; no ambassadors or presidential advisers or senators or congressmen, not even any generals or admirals. Just a bunch of ordinary citizens; some locals, some tourists. And Matthew Helm, Jr. What the hell were the two of you doing in Florida, anyway?”

She made a wry face. “We were watching my daddy get married to still another tramp, under the waving palms of the ten-acre backyard of his cozy little twenty-room Palm Beach cottage. It always draws me back, the humble home of my childhood, with its tender memories of surly bodyguards and snarling guard dogs and alarms that I was always setting off in my snoopy childish way. It’s a wonder I didn’t get myself shot.”

“I see. So you’ve got yourself a stepmother.”

She made a wry face. “There’s been a long parade of them. The blushing brides last him two or three years, maybe five, and then he pays them off according to his standard matrimonial contract—he got the lawyers to write up an ironclad one after a bright dame stung him badly back when I was a little girl—and uses temporaries for a while. But I guess he prefers live-in sex; he always finds another one to marry sooner or later. I’m gaining on them. They look younger all the time; or maybe they stay the same age and I just keep getting older. Well, I guess this one’s crowding thirty, although she won’t admit it. She’s very sweet to me. They all are at the start.” The kid shrugged. “Anyway, Matthew and I just had to get away from that madhouse on the ocean, so we decided to sneak away from all the nuptial gaiety and have dinner together in a quiet little place… Quiet!” She moved her shoulders awkwardly. “So much for that brilliant idea.”

“Yes,” I said. “And I’m still wondering just how it happened that these political crazies just happened to select for their political demonstration an obscure eatery where my son just happened to be dining with his wife.”

She said, “And I still think you’ve got paranoia problems. I suggest a visit to the shrink.”

She was an irritating girl, and she looked like hell at the moment, but I was beginning to have considerable respect for her. She had the guts not to sit around feeling sorry for her poor little damaged and widowed self, and I liked the way she spoke her mind in spite of my considerable seniority and the relationship between us, whatever it might be now that Matthew was dead.

“Well, maybe,” I said. “But in any case, do I gather that you’re all for these noble Caribbean patriots, since you seem to be trying to keep me from going after them, telling me how Beth doesn’t really want them all killed no matter what she came a few thousand miles to ask me?” I watched her closely. “Am I to understand that you don’t want anybody to hurt a hair of their cute little heads?”

“I didn’t say that!” She shook her head vigorously and winced as the gesture reminded her of her injuries. She went on fiercely, “I hate them; of course I hate them! I never did a thing to harm their lousy little island, wherever the hell it is, and neither did Matthew; and now he’s dead and I have the rest of my life to remember that awful moment, those dark hating faces outside the restaurant window, and the glass shattering like that, and his weight on top of me as he knocked me out of my chair and covered me with his body. And then that awful noise like the end of the world and everything crashing down on us. And… and afterwards crawling through the broken glass and rubble and spilled food and broken dishes with my clothes in rags and my scalp hanging into my eyes and my arm not working right and blood all over me, my own blood, Matthew’s blood. That’s when I cut my hands and knees like that, but I didn’t even know I was doing it. I was trying to find somebody to help him… Yes, I hate them! Yes, I want to see them caught and punished! But legally by the proper authorities, not by you!”

“Caught is caught. Punished is punished,” I said.

“No, it isn’t, and you know it! The law is one thing and private vengeance, private violence, is something totally different, something the world has too much of already and has to get rid of if we’re ever going to live together in peace.”

When they start talking about living in peace, under present world conditions, they lose me completely. I’m not that good at daydreaming.

“Do you think Matthew would have wanted his murderers to get away with it?” I asked. When she glanced at me sharply, I said, “It’s not a rhetorical question. As you’ve pointed out so diplomatically, I didn’t know my son very well. Was he a turn-the-other-cheek kid?”

She hesitated. “I’m sorry if… I didn’t really mean to hurt you.”

I grinned briefly. “The hell you didn’t.”

“All right, I suppose I did. Yes, Matthew was a nonviolent person; that was another thing we had in common. I guess we were both rebelling against our macho male parents. You with your ugly government work, my daddy with his… Well, never mind that; but even in his private life he was always shooting things, just like you. Pistols and rifles and shotguns everywhere. Even Larry Logan hasn’t always been the peaceful ranching gentleman he seems, as you probably know; and his house isn’t exactly weaponless, although he keeps them pretty much out of sight for Elizabeth’s sake.” Sandra frowned. “I don’t know why she didn’t just go to her current husband when she got this revenge obsession. Larry was very fond of Matthew, and I have a feeling he can still be a pretty tough character when he puts his mind to it. It would have saved her all this trouble tracking you down.”

I said, “You’re not thinking. If she loves the guy, would she want to involve him and get blood on his hands? Although he took his stepfather duties seriously, it’s not really his son who was killed.”

“I guess that makes sense, if anything does in this crazy mess.” Sandra shook her head ruefully. “Anyway, to answer your original question, yes, Matthew would certainly have wanted his murderers to get away with it rather than have his mother spend the rest of her life with a bloody vendetta on her conscience, that she’d set into motion when she wasn’t her normal, gentle self.”

I said, “Never mind Beth’s conscience. Whatever happens, it won’t be her responsibility.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’m not quite the wild man my son seems to have thought me, judging by what he’s apparently told you about me.” I regarded the girl grimly. “I don’t go around killing people just because I’m mad at them, even if I have a very good reason, like my boy’s murder. Nor do I grab a gun and start blasting away merely because I’m asked to by a lady I was once rather fond of. There’s only one person from whom I’ll take that kind of instructions, and I’m not working for him any longer. At least I don’t think I am.”

Sandra drew a long breath. “Then you’re not going to do it?”

“I didn’t say that. The message I’m trying to convey is that, except where ducks and other gamebirds are concerned, I don’t take up weapons for personal reasons.”

“I don’t understand. What other reasons could there be…?”

Mac’s timing was good; it always is. The hall door opened and Doreen Hapgood beckoned to me. “You have a call from Washington. You can take it in my office.”

“Excuse me a moment, Sandra.” I took my time walking in there. Let him wait a little. I picked up the phone and said, “Eric here.”

The voice that answered was the right one. I’d never doubted that it would be. “You will have spoken with the ladies I sent you by this time,” Mac said.

“Yes, sir.”

“Please accept my condolences.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Mrs. Logan informed me where your other two children are living. I have taken the liberty of having them covered, discreetly, just as a precaution.”

I’d had it on my mind. I was glad there was somebody around who thought along the same ugly, paranoid lines as I did. It was nice of him to arrange for the kids’ protection without even being asked. He always scares me most when he’s being nice.

“Thank you, sir,” I said.

“You have certain questions, I suppose.”

“Yes, sir.”

“I thought you might. And I have no answers. They must be found elsewhere. But you will want to make certain of that. If you drive to Houston right away, you can catch a two o’clock flight that will get you into Washington this evening. Reservations have been made for you. A car will be waiting to bring you here; the driver will identify himself in the usual way.”

“Yes, sir,” I said; and the line went dead.

4

The agency car dropped me four blocks from the office, as usual. Unless you’re crippled temporarily, which happens in this business, you don’t pull up in front when you answer the summons; too much vehicular traffic is deemed undesirable. Furthermore, a short hike lets you make a few routine checks, so you can brush off at least the most obvious insects that might have attached themselves to you, or send out the exterminators with the DDT if it seems desirable.

The driver was taking care of my suitcase, so I had nothing to carry. It was a nice fall night, good for walking. I didn’t mind stretching my legs after the plane ride. However, it was a poorly lighted part of town and, as a private citizen, I’d avoided the problems of bringing a gun by air. I therefore took out the little Gerber knife I’d acquired recently and flicked it open, carrying it so the pretty pear-shaped blade would not reflect what light there was. I mean, I don’t run wild rapids without a life preserver; and I don’t walk wild Washington streets unarmed. I’m full of admiration for the brave citizens who do; but I’m still here and some of them aren’t.

There’s an inconspicuous entrance a couple of buildings away that’ll get you inside unseen by way of some tricky cellar passages; but Mac hadn’t indicated we were operating under that kind of security tonight. I used the customary side door. There aren’t any obvious checks or controls on any of the entrances; but an unidentified stranger wouldn’t get very far inside. The place is always better at night, nice and peaceful. There’s only a skeleton crew downstairs; and the upstairs offices are empty except for the one in which he’s waiting for you, no bigger than the others and no more elaborately furnished. But at night you see him against a background of drawn blinds instead of that damn bright window. The building is almost quiet, and even kind of cozy—well, the way I suppose a lion’s den is cozy if you’re a lion—and sometimes he relaxes and has a drink with you if you look as if you need it. Or if he has a reason for wanting to put you at your ease.