Matt Helm - The Detonators E-Book

Donald Hamilton

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

Seitenzahl: 521

Beschreibung

A prim young lady needs a favor: help her father beat a bum drug rap. But when Dad's boat detonates outside Miami Harbor, Matt discovers that young Amy isn't as innocent as she looks. Lured to the Bahamas, he will discover an unlikely pack of fanatics hatching an explosive plan, and that daddy's little girl is surprisingly deadly.

Leseprobe

Contents

Cover

Also by Donald Hamilton

Title Page

Copyright

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

16

17

18

19

20

21

22

23

24

25

26

27

28

29

30

About the Author

Also Available from Titan Books

Also by Donald Hamilton and available from Titan Books

Death of a CitizenThe Wrecking CrewThe RemoversThe SilencersMurderers’ RowThe AmbushersThe ShadowersThe RavagersThe DevastatorsThe BetrayersThe MenacersThe InterlopersThe PoisonersThe IntriguersThe IntimidatorsThe TerminatorsThe RetaliatorsThe TerrorizersThe RevengersThe AnnihilatorsThe InfiltratorsThe Vanishers (August 2016)The Demolishers (October 2016)

The DetonatorsPrint edition ISBN: 9781783299898E-book edition ISBN: 9781783299904

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

First edition: June 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 © 1985, 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.

Did you enjoy this book? We love to hear from our readers.Please email us at [email protected] or write to us at Reader Feedback at the above address.

To receive advance information, news, competitions, and exclusive offers online, please sign up for the Titan newsletter on our website:www.titanbooks.com

1

The girl Mac had sent to me, presumably because he didn’t know what else to do with her, was a very proper young woman in a severely tailored gray flannel business suit and a severe white silk blouse with a neat little ascot thing at the throat. Nicely constructed, of slightly less than medium height, she had a grave oval face dominated by very serious gray-blue eyes. The mouth, although adequate in size, didn’t look as if she’d ever taken advantage of its potential for laughter. A shy, pinched, reluctant little smile was the best she’d managed for me so far. Well, it wasn’t exactly a laughing situation.

She had a lot of fine light-brown hair pinned up about her head in a ladylike Victorian manner, displaying a graceful neck. The hair was light enough that she could have become a striking little blonde without a great deal of effort—a simple rinse would have done the job. The fact that she hadn’t made the effort said a lot about her. She wore very little makeup, just a touch of lipstick; and her face was pale, but that could have been the result of the awkward and distressing circumstances that had brought her to me. I noticed that her hands were quite attractive. Locked in her lap as she sat facing me stiffly, on a small straight chair she’d chosen in preference to the mate of the comfortable number in which I was sprawled, they were slender, shapely hands, but not too small to be useful. The nails were well cared for but trimmed fairly short, with clear, colorless polish, very discreet. No blood-red talons here.

However, she’d yielded to conventional femininity in a couple of respects. Her neat black pumps, which matched the purse in her lap, had fairly high slim heels that did nice things for her pretty ankles; and her smoky stockings were very sheer, emphasizing the pleasant shape of her legs. But unlike most modern young ladies, who’re happy to display their erogenous zones to anyone who cares to look, Miss Amy Barnett still hadn’t let me determine whether she was wearing panty hose or sustained the smoothness of her nylons with more elaborate feminine engineering. So far she’d managed her narrow skirt with faultless modesty. But I would have bet a considerable amount of money on the tights. She didn’t look like a girl who’d go in for frivolous lacy garter belts and cute little bikini panties; and she certainly didn’t need the support of a girdle.

“Well, after all, he is in jail and he is my father,” she said a bit defiantly. “Even if I haven’t seen him since I was a child.”

It was a mass-produced hotel room in a mass-produced hotel near the Miami waterfront. The Marina Towers, if it matters. Never mind what I was doing there. Actually, it was done, and I’d been making arrangements to return to Washington when the phone had rung and Mac had instructed me to sit tight and expect a visitor. He’d also given me the background of the situation and apologized for dumping the job on me because I was handy, since there were personal reasons why I might find it distasteful—but personal doesn’t count for much with us. If it did, there were also personal reasons, which Mac seemed to have forgotten, why I didn’t mind as much as I might have.

“But I gather you don’t approve of him,” I said to the girl facing me. “Even though he is your pop.”

“How can I? The work he does… used to do! If you can call it work! I was terribly shocked when Mother explained it to me all those years ago—I was seven at the time—explained why I no longer had a daddy, why she’d had to leave him. But I understood perfectly. I mean, what else could she do when she finally learned what he’d been hiding all those years, what kind of a man he really was.” Amy Barnett hesitated. “But now that Mother’s dead he’s my only living relative, Mr. Helm, and I felt obliged to come when I learned he was in trouble.” She shook her head quickly. “No, that’s not quite accurate. I was already trying to locate him when I heard about that.”

“You’ve had no contact with him since your mother walked out on him and took you with her?”

She didn’t like the way I’d expressed that, but she decided hot to make an issue of it. “Well… well, afterward he tried to write me from time to time, like on my birthdays, but Mother made me send his letters back unopened, so after a while he gave up. Except for the last letter that came quite recently, right after her death, that let me know how to get in touch with the government agency he worked for, if I ever needed any kind of help. Your agency. He wrote that now that he was retired he’d be traveling outside the country for a while, where he’d be hard to reach. He wanted to be sure I was taken care of, now that Mother was gone.” She gave me that pinched little smile again. “Of course, I have a very good job managing an office for a group of doctors; I also have some nurse’s training and plan to get my cap eventually. In other words, Mr. Helm, I’ve been taking care of myself perfectly well for several years; but he seemed really concerned about me. I was feeling very much alone in the world, so I called the number he’d written right away. I did feel that I was betraying Mother in a small way; but it really wouldn’t hurt just to see him and talk to him a little, get to know him a little, if I could catch him before he left the country. Would it?” She shook her head abruptly. “Only, when I called I learned what… what he’d done now, where he is now.”

“But you still flew down here to see him,” I said. “All the way from Cincinnati, Ohio.”

She shrugged resignedly. “I’m just stubborn, I guess. I started this and I had to finish it, even though I don’t know how I’ll pay for the ticket I charged to Visa yesterday, not to mention the hotel bill here. But I guess I’ve had a few doubts—I mean, Mother was a little unreasonable at times. However, it seems that in this case she was perfectly right.” Miss Barnett’s lips tightened primly. “Apparently, my father, a retired professional man of violence, now smuggles drugs and resists savagely when arrested, putting several police officers into the hospital! Not exactly a parent to be proud of, would you say? But I do feel I should face him once, myself, so I’ll know… know Mother made the right decision all those years ago.”

“Sure. Anybody else you want to lock up or execute without a trial while we’re at it?”

There was a brief silence, while the big gray-blue eyes—mostly gray at the moment, I noticed—studied me carefully. Amy Barnett nodded slowly.

“I see. You feel I’m condemning him without a hearing?” When I didn’t speak, she went on quickly: “But that’s exactly what I’m here for, to hear what he has to say!”

“But you’ve already made up your mind about him, haven’t you? Or let your mom make it up for you?”

She frowned. “You don’t like me very much, do you, Mr. Helm?”

I said, “You seem to have made a fine recovery, Miss Barnett.”

“What do you mean?”

I said, deadpan, “Oh, the way he used to kick you around the room after beating up on your poor mother. Battered child, battered wife. But it’s all healed now, I see. But the memories remain even after all these years, of course. The way he strangled the cat with his bare hands and chopped up the dog with a carving knife, blood and guts all over the place, horrible. Naturally your mother had to snatch you away before the disgusting, degenerate brute crippled you for life, or even murdered both of you in your beds. Right?”

She looked bewildered. “I don’t know what you’re talking about! Actually, Daddy was very fond of old Buttons, our springer spaniel. And he certainly never laid a hand on… Oh, you’re being sarcastic!” She licked her lips. “I’m sorry. I’m a little slow today, Mr. Helm.”

I said, “Yes, ma’am. Sarcastic.” I got up and walked across the room to the dresser. “Would you care for a drink?”

“Thank you, I don’t drink.”

Picking up the bottle, I glanced at her over my shoulder. “And I don’t suppose you smoke, either.”

She shook her head minutely. “Anybody’d be a fool to do that to themselves in view of the scientific evidence.”

I said, “And I’ve noticed that you don’t swear. No vices at all, Miss Barnett? Do you fuck?”

She wasn’t going to let me shock her into silence. Her voice was very stiff when it came, but it came: “I’m not a virgin, if that’s what you mean. But I… I wasn’t impressed with it as a form of casual entertainment the… the few times…”

She stopped. When I turned and walked over there and looked down at her, I saw that her ears were quite pink. I took a deep swallow of the drink I’d made myself.

“Miss Barnett.”

She looked up warily. “Yes?”

“Will you accept my humble apology?”

Her eyes widened. “I don’t understand.”

“I’m sorry for giving you a hard time,” I said. “But then you’ve been giving me a pretty hard time, too. There’s no way you could know it, but a considerable number of years ago my wife left me, taking our three children with her, just the way your mother left your dad; and for exactly the same reason. So when I hear of a man who’s done his best, within his limitations, to be a good husband and father, being deserted by his family for beautiful moral reasons relating to the type of work he’s chosen for himself, I find it hard to be sympathetic with the family that left him; I’m on the other side. But at least my wife—ex-wife—didn’t brainwash my kids into thinking that their daddy was a monster or prevent me from communicating with them occasionally, although in our business it’s usually best to stay pretty much away from people you love so nobody gets the bright idea of using them against you. So I have.” I raised my glass to her. “Anyway, I apologize for getting personal. Your vices, or lack of them, are really no concern of mine, right? But you did go pretty heavy on that professional-man-of-violence stuff. We’re very sensitive fellows, we professional men of violence.”

“I’m sorry. It was pretty tactless of me, wasn’t it?” But her heart wasn’t in the apology; she had more important things to worry about than my sensitive feelings. She drew a long breath and glanced at her watch. “Well, judging by what I saw from the taxi that brought me from the airport, Miami traffic is pretty awful. If we’re going to get there during visiting hours, we’d better start driving, hadn’t we?” Her voice turned disapproving. “As soon as you’ve finished your drink, of course.”

I said, “Don’t worry, ma’am. I hold my liquor pretty good. But if I do feel a drunken stupor coming on, I promise to turn the wheel over to you.”

2

Driving the rental car across town with the girl beside me, I reviewed what I’d been told about the situation. I’d already known, of course, that Doug had long been a victim of the Slocum syndrome. Old Joshua Slocum was the first man to sail alone around the world. Men, and a few women, have been dreaming of following in the wake of his clumsy Spray for almost a century now, and even doing it. Well, there’s nothing like a good dream to sustain you during the long dull day stakeouts and night vigils involved in our profession. Some men make the time pass by dreaming of climbing high mountains, or catching big fish, or shooting deer or elk that have enormous antlers. Some dream of food or liquor or women, or various combinations of the above. I don’t suppose there’s anything wrong in dreaming about boats.

Retired for medical reasons—he was getting on toward that age anyway—Doug set about turning his dream into reality. He bought a husky thirty-two-foot fiberglass sailboat hull, double-ended. The ones that are sharp at both ends are supposed to be more seaworthy, according to some authorities. According to others, not. But Doug had been sold on the virtues of that pointy stern that would part the raging seas gently as he ran before the howling gales in the great Southern Ocean.

I knew, because I’d done a job with him during which we’d had time for some idle talk before things got very busy and he’d had to save my life a bit, that he’d originally planned to do the whole construction job himself. However, now that retirement was a reality, he had a number of old aches and twinges, and some new ones, to remind him that nobody lives forever. He decided that if he wanted to carry out his sailing plans, he didn’t have time to waste on building from scratch. So he acquired a ready-made hull—apparently they were available in all stages of completion—and finished and rigged it to his own specifications in a little less than two years.

He was a midwestern boy who’d never seen an ocean until World War II sent him overseas; but since the dream hit him he’d spent his free time—the little we get—in learning seamanship and navigation. Now he took a few more months to get acquainted with his new ship, with progressively longer cruises from his home in St. Petersburg, on the west coast of Florida. Feeling himself ready at last, with some knowledge of compass and sextant, and a little practical experience in handling his boat under a variety of conditions, he embarked upon his epic voyage, first heading south to Key West, at the tip of the Florida Keys.

From there he planned to head up the east coast of Florida to Miami, where he’d take care of any deficiencies in boat or supplies that had come to his attention. Later, as the seasons permitted, he’d proceed to Bermuda, the Azores, and the Mediterranean and make his way through the Suez Canal and the Red Sea and across the Indian Ocean to Australia. After that, the palmy islands of the South Seas beckoned.

Well, that was the master plan. Remember, this was no crazy kid with wild hair and a yen for publicity, but a sober and very tough and competent gent of mature years, who’d spent a lot of his life working out, in his spare time, the details of his voyage and accumulating the charts and other publications required. With no family responsibilities except for the daughter he’d never been allowed to know since her childhood, whose welfare he’d nevertheless provided for—there was money waiting in Washington if she should need it—he felt free to indulge his romantic vision. If other people thought him nuts, too bad about them. Let them buy retirement homes in Florida or Arizona if they chose. His choice was the boat.

However, when he reached Key West he wasn’t feeling very well. Ironically, considering his medical history, he wasn’t hit by a flare-up of one of his old injuries, but by a simple touch of stomach flu. He saw a doctor and got himself fixed up with antibiotics, but he was too impatient to get on with his voyage to rest a few days, as recommended. Instead he took along a young man he met on the dock to help him sail the boat as far as Miami, about a hundred and fifty miles. He figured that by the time they got there he’d be well enough to manage alone once more. But as they rode the Gulf Stream north along the Florida Straits, the kid slipped down into the cabin to smoke a cigarette that wasn’t tobacco.

There was an instant showdown when Doug, in the cockpit, got a whiff of the smoke drifting out the main hatch. He wasn’t about to jeopardize his boat and his dream by having on board any illicit substances, as they’re known in the jargon. There may even have been a bit of a struggle, which was a laugh. Although no longer young and not altogether well, a trained man like Doug would have had no trouble tying an untrained, spaced-out kid into fairly painful knots. He searched the shabby pack and threw overboard the illegal stuff he found there. After docking in the big marina in Miami, he tossed the punk ashore with his belongings and told him to get lost, fast.

The following day, as Doug was preparing to tackle the next leg of his long-planned voyage, feeling pretty good again, the Coast Guard descended on him, guided by an anonymous telephone tip. They found a small cache of marijuana hidden on the boat where they’d been told to look—apparently the punk hadn’t kept all his smoking materials in his pack. Although Doug identified himself politely and asked them to call Washington, they’d heard that I’m-an-important-guy-and-anyway-I-wuz-framed routine before. They impounded the boat and called the police to take Doug away and charge him, or whatever the legal procedure is in such cases. Mac wasn’t specific about the details.

Anyway, the cops got into the act somehow. When Doug protested, they apparently got a little rude and physical. Public servants ourselves in a sense, we don’t react at all well to being manhandled by our fellow workers in the governmental vineyard, city, state, or federal. We’ve had to take too much shit from the real enemy, whoever he may be at any given time. One thing led to another and somebody made the mistake of bouncing a nightstick off Doug’s head…

Well, that was the Doug Barnett story as I’d pieced it together from what I already knew and what I’d been told over the phone. Fortunately, one of the Coastguardsmen who remained intact had a sharp pocketknife and knew how to perform an emergency tracheotomy on a crushed larynx, so the baton-happy cop survived. The three fracture cases were hauled off to the nearest hospital for splints and casts. The walking wounded were patched up so they wouldn’t bleed all over everything while they waited for proper dressings to be applied in the emergency room.

Douglas Barnett, subdued at last, was dragged off to jail. Eventually he got to make the phone call to which he was legally entitled; and Mac passed the word to me, as well as, I had no doubt, to various influential personages at various levels of government. We take care of our own. Maybe Doug shouldn’t have blown his stack like that; but Mac knows perfectly well that the work he wants done would never get done by a bunch of docile characters who, falsely accused, would hold out their wrists for the handcuffs without argument. He also knows it’s money in the bank. I mean, the word gets around. Next time one of our people asks politely to be put through to Washington to clear up a misunderstanding, maybe he, or she, will be shown a phone instead of a bunch of overbearing cops.

“It’s all so stupid!” said the girl riding beside me in the rental car. “I mean, even if he was innocent, why did he have to fight them like that?”

I said, “When a man has spent his life fighting, he finds it pretty hard to stop, Miss Barnett. And you don’t really believe he was innocent, do you?”

“Well… well, they did find that horrible stuff on his boat, didn’t they? Drugs, ugh! How could he? And people always do say they were framed, don’t they?”

I said, “Maybe it’s just as well I’ve had very little contact with my own kids. This way I can keep my illusions. If they have so little faith in the veracity of the man from whom they’ve inherited half the genes they carry, I don’t want to know it.”

She glanced at me quickly and started to speak, then checked herself. When we reached it, we found the jail to be located in a massive building that looked reasonably modern and handsome on the outside. Inside, although the interior decoration was pretty sharp, if a little worn, it was basically just another king-sized cop-house. There’s something about a bunch of big men swaggering around in uniform with guns and clubs that arouses in me an atavistic hostility. I guess I just want to tell them I’m pretty tough myself, so don’t give me that hard cop look unless you’re ready to back it up, Buster. Childish.

We went through the usual visitors’ red tape and were put into a waiting room. I gestured toward a chair. “Rest your feet,” I said to the girl. “You said you wanted to see him alone and it’s all arranged; but I’ll see him first, if you don’t mind. Business. After that he’s all yours, lucky man.”

When an escort arrived for me, I left her sitting there primly, knees together, skirt modestly in place, underwear still a mystery even though I’d watched her entering and leaving a car, an operation that usually reveals everything revealable. But it was a mystery that no longer interested me greatly. I mean, the very proper and modest ones are usually a challenge—you like to see if you can’t at least win a relaxed and friendly smile from the inhibited lady—but the masculine curiosity Miss Barnett had aroused in me originally, because she was really a rather pretty girl, was fading fast. Her mother had done too good a job on her.

I was shown into a small visiting room and heard the door shut solidly behind me. It wasn’t too bad a room. It was clean and had a table and some reasonably comfortable-looking chairs. It also had illumination enough to shoot a movie by, even with fairly slow film; and they should have no trouble with the sound, I figured, since the place was undoubtedly already miked and wired. There were no windows. Doug Barnett was sitting in one of the chairs when I came in. He nodded at me but he didn’t get to his feet and hurry forward to shake my hand; we don’t go in much for effusive greetings. Or partings, for that matter. And maybe rising wasn’t all that easy for him at the moment. I started to sit down in the nearest chair, on his left.

“The other one, if you don’t mind, Matt,” he said, gesturing to the identical chair on the other side of him.

“Sure,” I said. When I was seated, I said, “I’m supposed to ask if you want us to cart this joint away brick by brick and sow the foundations with salt like the Romans did with Carthage so nothing would grow there again, ever. Or is it all right if we just blow it up and leave the debris where it falls?”

He didn’t answer that. He knew it was just a fancy way of telling him the old team was behind him. We’re not a buddy-buddy outfit, but there is a certain esprit de corps that surfaces at times like that. We spent a moment taking stock, since we hadn’t seen each other for a while. Although I was senior in the organization, having been in it practically from the start, Doug was considerably older. He’d come to us from some other nasty outfit, like maybe the old OSS after they’d sanded it smooth and painted it pretty and called it CIA and he couldn’t stand it any longer. He was a husky man with shoulders broad enough to make him look shorter than he really was. Actually he stood, when standing, only an inch or so under six feet. He looked better than I’d expected. I guess they’d cleaned him up fast when the pressure came on from Washington. He was neatly shaved and wearing a clean white shirt and clean dark trousers that looked a little too dressy for his well-worn brown moccasin-type boat shoes, the kind with the patent no-slip white soles.

He was watching me steadily with his head cocked a little to the side. His tanned, smooth face, which didn’t betray his age, was unmarked. He still had most of his hair. Where it wasn’t gray, it was considerably darker than his daughter’s; apparently her fairness had come from her mother’s side of the family. A spot had been shaved on Doug’s head to make room for a lump of white tape, presumably where the police club had split the scalp. That was the only visible injury; but they’re very good at demonstrating their disapproval of obstreperous prisoners without leaving marks that’ll show in court. I’m not criticizing, really. They have their methods, and we have ours.

“Tell Mac thanks,” Doug said. “I had no right to drag him into it:”

“To hell with that,” I replied. “Nobody really retires from this crazy outfit. You know that. It works both ways. If you’re ever needed again, really needed, you’ll be called.”

“Well, I thought a long time before I dialed that emergency number; but it looked as if they were going to bury me so deep nobody’d ever find me. And I…” He stopped and drew a long breath. “I’d heard the girl was looking for me. I wanted to see her again, Matt. My little girl. Just once before… Is she here?”

Well, people do get mushy about their kids, even fairly tough people. “She’s outside,” I said.

“So she came!”

I said quickly, “Don’t get your hopes up, amigo. She’s been brainwashed most of her life. You’re an evil, violent man. Brutally beating up half a dozen helpless little cops and coastguardsmen and smuggling nasty marijuana are exactly what she expects of you. She’s just surprised it wasn’t coke or heroin.”

He grinned at me crookedly. “You don’t pull any punches, do you?”

I shrugged. “You’ll see her in a minute. What would be the point in letting you entertain any fond expectations, even briefly? To be blunt, your daughter is a fairly impossible, stuffy, little female prick. But she did come.”

“Yes,” he said. “And if anything happens to me, you’ll look after that impossible, stuffy, little female prick for me, won’t you? Because you owe me one and I’m asking.”

I nodded. That was the second personal matter involved here, the fact that he’d once saved my life. “You didn’t have to say it.”

“Sorry. I had to know. She’s got nobody else, now that that self-righteous bitch I married is dead.”

“Consider it signed and sealed. But Mac has pulled the right strings, and you’ll be out of here in a few hours. Maybe you can make your peace with her and do your own looking-after.”

He shook his head. “It’s a nice thought, but I doubt that what’s between us can be changed in an afternoon, after all the years her witch-mother had to work on her. And I may not have too much time, if you know what I mean; so let me give you a quick rundown on the arrangements I’ve made for her, just in case.” After he’d finished, he said, “Well, that takes care of that. Now, what about the boat?”

I said, “That’s the tough part. The Coast Guard is apparently being sticky. Pressure is being brought to bear, and we’re looking for that creep you were dumb enough to invite on board, to get a confession out of him. But it’ll be another few days, at least.”

He grimaced. “Bunch of uniformed pirates! What do they do with all the vessels they steal? Oh, excuse me! Impound. Confiscate. For a bit of grass worth a few hundred on the street—even assuming it was my grass, which it wasn’t—they grab themselves a boat worth fifty grand easy. What the hell kind of justice would that be, even if I were guilty? Legal larceny!”

I said, “Take it easy. Don’t flip all over again. And incidentally, you didn’t do so well the first time, did you?” I stared at him hard. “Granted, that seems to’ve been a good enough blow to the throat, judging by all reports, and you couldn’t know that Coast Guard guy would be so handy at doing emergency surgery with his little knife. But as for the rest, just a bunch of piddling little fractures and lacerations. Very bad for the team’s reputation. We’re supposed to be the guys who leave them dead, Mr. Barnett.”

He stared right back at me with his head held at that odd angle. “You know the answer, Matt. That billy club didn’t do me a damn bit of good in the vision department. I haven’t recovered from it yet and probably won’t. Cop bastard.”

I nodded. “I just wanted to be sure. Anything I can do?”

“There’s nothing anybody can do. That was checked out by the medical experts a long time ago. They told me at the time not to let people bounce things off my skull, ha-ha; that’s why I was retired, although we didn’t publicize it. But thanks anyway. Now let me talk with my daughter, please.”

“One self-righteous young lady coming up.”

“Matt…”

“Yes?”

“Don’t tell her about my eyes, damn you. Not before I’ve seen her, at least.”

“Is that fair to the girl?” When he didn’t speak, I said, “If that’s the way you want it. Be good.”

“I tried that, and they took my boat away and locked me up in here.”

“Well, be careful,” I said.

3

Amy Barnett was gone less than half an hour. When she returned I saw from her pale, resentful face that the family reunion hadn’t turned out well. She said a polite good-bye to her police escort, and we made our way out the door, down the elevator, and out into the Florida spring sunshine. She didn’t say anything until we were driving away. Then she opened the neatly buttoned jacket of her flannel suit and turned one of the car’s air-conditioning vents her way.

“If I were staying in Florida I’d have to get some lighter clothes, I guess.”

“But you aren’t staying?”

“No. When I get back to the hotel, I’ll see about getting a flight back to Cincinnati tomorrow. It’s too late today.” She glanced at me a little defiantly. “There’s nothing to stay for. I found that out in there.”

“He was just as you expected?” I said. “No surprises? Exactly the same wicked man your mother always told you, right?”

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

I spoke deliberately: “Pretty well preserved for his advanced years, though, wouldn’t you say? Nice and tanned and healthy after all that sailing. Or were you so busy reciting all your mother’s old grievances that you didn’t really look at him at all?”

She studied me for a moment. “What are you trying to tell me, Mr. Helm?”

I said, “Hell, you spent twenty minutes in there. Why should I have to tell you anything? You’re a smart girl; you can see things for yourself. If you bother to look.” When she didn’t speak, I asked, “Where did you sit?”

She frowned. “Well, I started to sit down in the nearest chair, of course, but he said he’d rather have me on the other side of him.” She looked at me, puzzled. “Does that have some kind of mystic significance?”

I said, “No peculiar mannerisms that caught your attention?”

“Well, he did hold his head to the side and kind of peer at me, but I thought that was just a nervous habit he’d acquired since I last saw him all those years ago… Mr. Helm, will you stop this, please! Tell me what you’re driving at!”

“There’s something else,” I said. “You’re shocked at the amount of damage he did in the fight. We’re shocked at the amount of damage he didn’t do. I mean, we never fight for fun, just for keeps. That’s the way he was trained; yet there wasn’t a single lousy dead man on that dock when he got through. A very poor performance, even for an agent who’s been retired for a while and hammering on a boat instead of practicing his lethal skills.”

She shivered. “What a horrible attitude, to criticize a man for not killing!”

I said, “Jesus, that knee-jerk humanitarianism! From a dame who doesn’t even bother to find out why her own father had to be retired. Why don’t you practice a little of that bleeding-heart stuff at home, Miss Barnett?” Driving one-handed, I worked a paper out of my inside jacket pocket and passed it to her. “One of our people, the one who’s negotiating for Doug’s release, stopped by and gave me this while I was waiting for you. Read it.”

There was a little silence. At last she turned to me, aghast. “But this medical report says…”

I said, “Apparently there was a light plane that crashed; I gather Doug made it crash. It was the only way he could accomplish his mission, his last mission. I don’t know what it was; as a matter of fact, I didn’t know any of the details before, only that he’d been retired with a disability a year or two back. But it seems he was knocked unconscious by the crash. He was in a coma for a while; later they had to go in and relieve the pressure or something. Dig out bone splinters. Whatever. As a would-be nurse, you can probably decipher the jargon of that report better than I can. They put the lid back on and sent him to a place we have out west to recuperate. They were just about to turn him loose, put him back on active duty, when the trouble started.”

Amy started to speak but checked herself. She stared at the official-looking paper in her hand.

I went on as I drove: “It’s all in there. Blurred vision in the left eye. Violent headaches. Brief dizzy spells that were almost momentary blackouts. They ran their fancy tests and scans on him. The consensus was that something was going bad in there and would get worse. While they could go in again and try to fix it, the operation might leave him a vegetable; and what was in there probably wasn’t fixable, anyway. Recommendation: immediate retirement. Advice: take it easy, live right, and avoid any more blows on the head. Prognosis: maybe two years, maybe five, you want fortune-tellers, yet?”

Amy Barnett whispered. “Oh, my God!” So she wasn’t totally incapable of blasphemy.

I said, “Apparently he decided to carry out the plans he’d been developing for years, get the boat, fix it up, and sail it as far as he could. Why sit around waiting for the dark?” I shook my head irritably. “And I’m guessing that the reason he didn’t kill anybody in that marina hassle was that he just wasn’t seeing very well after being cracked by that police club. I think he felt something go very wrong inside his head when he was hit and knew he didn’t have left even the few years of vision he’d been promised. Half-dazed, he instinctively used his best shot on the guy who’d hit him, who was right there within easy range. After that, I guess, he was hurting pretty badly and just fighting shadows as they came at him.”

“But he didn’t act as if… I mean, I’m sure he could see me, just now.”

I nodded. “After a fashion, sure, but he obviously has to work at it. My guess is that both eyes are affected now, but the left is worse than the right, which is why he doesn’t like to have people sitting on that side of him.” There was a little silence. Amy Barnett glanced back over her shoulder and started to speak impulsively; but I cut her off: “No, I won’t take you back there. What do you want to do now, offer to hang around and tie his shoelaces and hand him his white cane because you’re so sorry for him?”

“Why didn’t you tell me?” she whispered.

“He asked me not to. He was running a little test, I guess, to determine just what kind of a brat he’d begotten—was she going to accept her remaining parent at last even though he was behind bars, or was she just going to tell him how much she disapproved of him? He didn’t want the exam complicated by a lot of cheap sympathy. And you flunked, so you can get your damn airplane ticket and go home to Cincinnati. As you said yourself, there’s nothing to keep you here.”

There was a little silence. At last Amy Barnett drew a long, ragged breath. “You really hate me, don’t you!” she whispered.

I was shocked. “Don’t be ridiculous! I’ve only known you a couple of hours; why in the world would I—”

“You do!” she breathed. “And isn’t it wonderful for you, to have somebody to hate at last! After all these years of forcing yourself to be generous and understanding about the way your own family left you. So kindly, so tolerant, gritting your teeth all the time to keep from letting anybody know the way you really felt. But now you can take it out on me, all the hurt and anger you’ve been keeping bottled up inside yourself all these years. Telling yourself all the time that you’re just doing it because of your sympathy for my poor daddy, who was betrayed by my mother and me in exactly the same way!”

Mechanically guiding the car through the dense Miami traffic, I told myself that she was executing a typically feminine maneuver, defending herself by attacking me—quite unreasonably, of course. The only trouble was, I realized, that she wasn’t being all that unreasonable. In fact she was perfectly right: I was using her to unload some old private anger and frustration. Which, I suppose, said something unpleasant about me, but that was no great surprise. However, the fact that she was capable of reading me so accurately indicated that there was more girl there than I’d seen. Or wanted to see?

I said rather stiffly, “Very shrewd analysis, Dr. Barnett.”

She licked her lips. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that. But you hurt me. Not that I didn’t deserve it.”

I said, “All right. I surrender. Don’t hit me again; I’ll be good, ma’am.” I glanced at my watch. “But I can’t take you back there now; according to the man who gave me that medical report, they should be getting ready to release him, and we don’t want to confuse things by trying to get to see him. You know the red-tape circuit. But if you want to put off your flight home and talk with him in the morning, I’ll let you know where he’s staying. Well, I was told it’ll be the Coral Shores hotel, but I’ll get the room number for you. Of course, he won’t make it easy for you. He’s a proud man, and he’ll know you’ve changed your mind about him simply because you’ve learned of his condition.”

“Everybody’s been too proud, including me.” She swallowed hard. “I wanted to tell him how lonely it was nowadays and how much I needed somebody, him, and the words wouldn’t come. And then, somehow, we started talking about Mother, and he was so sneering and contemptuous that I got mad and…” She shook her head quickly. “I shouldn’t have reacted so defensively. I should have remembered all the years he’s had to brood about it. I really meant to be very reasonable and understanding. I’d like to try again.”

“I’ll see what I can do,” I said. “In the meantime, may I make amends for my prejudiced behavior by buying you dinner?”

She shook her head and gave me that meager little smile of hers. I thought I’d like to be around some time when she cut loose with a real grin.

But her words were reasonably friendly: “Reparations aren’t necessary, Mr. Helm. But I’m pretty tired. It’s been a long day. When we get back to the hotel, I think I’ll just retire to the room you were kind enough to arrange for me, have room service send up a hamburger, and go to bed early.”

Around nine o’clock that evening I got a call from the local man who’d slipped me the copy of Doug’s medical report, earlier. We don’t have agents all over the world like some outfits, but we do have part-time people in various strategic places including Miami. They aren’t used for heavy work; they just serve as eyes and legs. This one’s code name was Jerome. He reported that Doug, upon his release, had allowed himself to be escorted to the hotel room arranged for him; then he’d disappeared. Jerome was annoyed. He hadn’t been warned that the man whose welfare he was supposed to be looking after might try to give him the slip. But the room had been empty when he’d stopped by to see if there was anything further he could do, and there was no note to indicate where Doug might have gone.

“Did you check the marina?” I asked. “His boat’s still there, isn’t it?”

“Yes, they’ve confiscated so many vessels hauling drugs they don’t know where to put them all; their official dock, wherever it is, is full up,” said the voice on the phone. “No, I haven’t had a chance to get over there; I just called immediately to let you know he was gone. I’ll head right down there.”

“Hold everything.” I thought for a moment, then said, “To hell with it. The way he’s feeling, if he’s going for the boat, you’ll have to shoot him to stop him. Let him run. Let the Hooligan Navy worry about the damn boat; they’re the ones who grabbed it. We’ll stay clear.”

“Okay, but I still think somebody could have told me he might sneak off…”

I made a note to warn Mac, in Washington, that our current man in Miami would bear watching. We’d had a very good part-timer there named Brent, but he’d quit and married the boss’s daughter; and Mac was now a grandpa. A six-pound girl, if it matters. But Jerome was obviously not of Brent’s caliber; and any agent in an escort situation who thinks more about his own feelings than about the person he’s been assigned to help and protect has to be used with caution. It occurred to me it was something I could well bear in mind myself.

I went to bed. It seemed that the phone rang again almost immediately; but my watch said it was four-thirty in the morning.

“Mr. Helm?” It was Amy Barnett’s voice. “Mr. Helm, I just got a telephone call from the coast guard. My father’s gone absolutely crazy; he’s stolen back his boat and put to sea!”

“Isn’t that a contradiction in terms, Miss Barnett? If it’s his boat, how can he steal it?”

“Oh, stop it! You know what I mean. They’re going out after him, and they want me to come along; I can’t imagine why.”

“I can,” I said. “They want you to witness the fact that this time they picked him up very gently and legally.”

“They want you, too. Representing your agency, I suppose.”

“I’ll be with you in a minute. Bring a heavy sweater, if you’ve got one. The Gulf Stream is supposed to be a warm current; but I understand it can still get pretty chilly out there in the Florida Straits.”

The moment I put the phone down it rang again. That was the U.S.C.G. with my official invitation to the hanging.

4

The Coast Guard vessel was a sizable boat as boats go, but it was not one of the long, lean, junior-grade destroyers you sometimes see wearing that slanting orange stripe up forward on their wicked-looking white hulls. Our transportation, although it carried the same stripe, was less naval in appearance: a husky, beamy, planing-type vessel in the forty-foot bracket. It bristled with antennas and searchlights, and the deckhouse was crammed full of interesting electronics gear. At least I suppose it was interesting to somebody.

I recognized a radar set; also a Loran, since I’d once had to master one in order to find my way home on a boat with a very dead crew I’d helped make that way—well, most of the way home; we ran into a little more trouble eventually. Fortunately, there had been an instruction book handy, and I hadn’t found the apparatus all that difficult to figure out. However, there were other black boxes here that I couldn’t identify, also with touch-type keyboards and luminous windows displaying magic numbers that undoubtedly meant something to somebody. There were also radios of various persuasions: SSB, VHF, and even a little CB stuck into a corner like an afterthought. There really wasn’t much room left for people, but I helped Amy brace herself in a neutral corner.

She’d lost some of her prim and proper look; it’s hard for a girl to look prim in jeans. The round collar of a neat white cotton blouse showed above a light-blue sweater that emphasized the blue of her eyes and played down the gray. Her soft light-brown hair was still, or again, neatly pinned up about her head. I reminded myself that I must not be prejudiced against her because of an ancient hurt of my own, for which she had not been responsible. It shouldn’t be hard to treat her fairly, I told myself; she wasn’t bad-looking, even in pants. Then the cabin lights went out. On deck they went through the routine of casting off the lines, and finally we were off.

“I don’t think it would be advisable to sit down, even if there were someplace to sit,” I said above the muted rumble of the engines. “I don’t know how fast this thing travels, but some of them can break your back when they really start to go, if you aren’t prepared to absorb the jolting with your knees.”

They’d given us a mystery man for company, wearing khaki uniform pants like the rest; but his navy-blue watch cap and turtleneck sweater carried no insignia of rank. He was a compact man of medium height with regular WASP features and a dark Mediterranean skin—it had to be more than just a deep tan—but his eyes were gray and the shape of his face was strictly Anglo-Saxon. Well, we’re all kind of scrambled genetically these days, but I had a hunch the Swedes and Scots in my own ancestry got along a little better than the widely diverse racial types, whatever they were, that had produced him. Thick black hair and strong white teeth. Age fifty, give or take five. Now he showed the fine teeth in a tolerant smile at my assumption of nautical knowledge.

“It shouldn’t be that uncomfortable, Miss Barnett,” he said. “There’s not much sea running out in the Straits this morning, and we won’t be making that much speed. We won’t need to. He can’t have got very far. We should have his location by radio by the time we get out the channel.”

Gray daylight was sneaking up on us now; and the lights of Miami—or was it Miami Beach here?—were going out along the heavily built-up shoreline as we threaded our way between the buoys of a pass leading seaward that was unfamiliar to me. But then, while I’ve had to learn how to handle boats after a fashion in the line of duty, it’s not my sport. I’ll take a horse or a four-wheel-drive vehicle and some nice desert of mountain scenery any time I’m offered a choice; to hell with a lot of salty water that leaves you sticky when you swim in it and can’t even be used to mix a drink with.

I said, “His location is no problem. Why should it be? Didn’t anybody bother to look at his maps? Excuse me, charts, sir.”

He didn’t look like the kind of man who’d be impressed by a lot of greasy sirs; but when you’re dealing with the uniformed services it’s always best to play safe. There was no telling what rank he held, but there was no mistaking the fact that he had some. Respect is cheap and doesn’t hurt a bit. At least I’ve never found it very painful, although I’ve worked with some younger agents who’d much rather be tortured than polite.

“Belay the sirs,” he said. “The name is Sanderson. What do you mean, Helm?”

I said, “If I know Doug Barnett, he’ll have it all worked out on paper, where he’s going from here. He’s a very systematic guy with a very systematic master plan. He told me about it once. As I recall, after Miami his next stop was to be Bermuda, about a thousand miles away, out in the open Atlantic.”

Sanderson was watching me closely by the dim glow of the instruments around us. “We figured he’d head straight across to the Bahamas,” he said. “Less than fifty miles. We do have certain arrangements with the authorities over there, but we’ve got to be diplomatic about taking advantage of them. Once he’s in Bahamian waters, it’ll take a certain amount of red tape to get him back.”

“Bullshit,” I said. “You talk as if you’re dealing with some kind of criminal in flight. As far as Doug Barnett’s concerned, he’s an innocent man who was attacked by pirates masquerading as law-enforcement officers. They stole his boat and beat him up and kidnapped him… Don’t argue with me, sir. I’m not the guy you’re chasing. I’m just telling you the way his mind is working. Remember he’s carried a badge of his own for a good many years; your pretty uniforms and fancy collar decorations don’t mean a damn thing to him. I don’t mean he’s nuts or anything. He simply refuses to accept your authority anymore; and he’s just taking back his boat going right on with the cruise you interrupted so rudely. If you leave him alone, everything will be fine. If you don’t, well, he’s ready for that, too.”

“He broke the law—”

“What law says you can beat a sick man over the head for unknowingly having a couple of ounces of pot on his boat?”

“The captain or owner of a vessel is responsible for whatever is found on board.”

I stared at him unbelievingly. “You must be kidding? You mean that if I invite three friendly couples for a sail on the big yacht I don’t have, the pretty wife I don’t have will have to take the women into one cabin while I take the men into another. And then we’ll strip our guests and examine all their bodily orifices for contraband—my nonexistent wife will have the harder job there, since she’ll have an extra orifice to deal with in each case. And then I’ll slice open the shoulder pads of the men’s jackets while she breaks off the heels of the women’s shoes and does some jacket work herself, not to mention some dress work, to make sure nothing’s hidden there. We’ll rip open any suspicious seams of all their garments. She’ll hack apart the women’s purses and I’ll chop apart the luggage. You never can tell what’s hidden inside a purse or suitcase lining, can you? And then at last I’ll tell our happy, naked guests to haul their ruined belongings to their cabins. Sorry about that, folks; the law says we’re responsible, so we had to make sure. Now, if you can find yourself some clothes that aren’t in rags, you can get dressed and we’ll have a nice drink to the lovely cruise we’re going to have.” I grimaced. “Jesus, Sanderson! I thought drugs were your job. Are you going to issue a badge to every boat owner so he can enforce your laws for you while you play golf or go fishing? Talk about passing the buck!”

Sanderson’s dark face was impassive. “If you’re quite finished with your lecture, Mr. Helm, perhaps you’ll condescend to tell me where you think your colleague really is.”

I glanced at my watch. “It’s five-thirty in the morning. Doug apparently disappeared around nine last night. Say it took him an hour to reach the boat and get it under way, and another hour to get clear of the harbor, that’s eleven o’clock, right? So we can figure he’s been on course for six and a half hours. What speed does his boat make? There’s not a hell of a lot of wind and he doesn’t have much power, does he? Most sailboats don’t, as I recall.”

“A two-cylinder Volvo-Penta diesel. A little over twenty horsepower.”

“Well, you know more about this stuff than I do, but even if he’s really pushing, six knots is about as much as he’s going to get out of that heavy boat even using both power and sail, isn’t it? Six knots times six and a half hours comes out to thirty-nine nautical miles. Oh, I forgot, there’s the Gulf Stream. Two knots of favorable current? Three? Say two and a half, average; I heard somebody use that figure once. Times six and a half, is what?”

There was a little pause; then Amy Barnett said softly, “Sixteen and a quarter miles. But—”

I said to Sanderson, “Okay, tell them to look about fifty-five miles up the line.”

“What line, Mr. Helm?”

I shook my head irritably. “What’s the big problem? Hell, he made no secret of his plans; he’s been telling everybody about them for years. I told you, he’s heading for Bermuda, only he can’t sail a direct course there because the Bahama Islands are in the way, right? He’s got to get out of the Florida Straits and into the Atlantic before he can settle on his final course. So he’ll figure to pass the northern end of the Bahamas reef by a safe margin before he swings northeast toward Bermuda.”

“You make it sound very simple, Mr. Helm. However, the fact is that Barnett is a fugitive from justice; he’d hardly adopt such an obvious—”

I sighed. “Goddamn it, why won’t you listen? He doesn’t give a good goddamn about your justice, Mister. This is a government agent just like you, except for being slightly retired, who asked for a little consideration from his fellow government agents and didn’t get it. Now he’s making his own rules and to hell with yours. To put it another way, he’s giving you one more chance to be reasonable; and speaking for myself, why can’t you do it? We have a fairly efficient and useful organization, Captain Sanderson or whatever your rank is. One day you may need a little help from us. So leave it now; let him go. Forget those two ounces of pot or however much it was, or go find the man to whom it really belonged; and we’ll forget the way you pushed our man around and beat him up when all he did was ask for a little break as a colleague recently retired from government service. Just one little phone call, but he wasn’t allowed to make it!”

After a moment, Sanderson spoke without expression: “So you think Barnett is heading for Matanilla Shoal, at the upper end of the Bahamas. But that’s well over a hundred miles, closer to a hundred and twenty, if I remember the chart correctly.”

I looked at him bleakly and shrugged. “Very well, sir. If that’s the way you want it. You’ll find your quarry somewhere on a line between here and Matanilla Shoal, wherever the hell that is. Probably about halfway there.”

“Why are you telling me this?”

I said, “Hell, finding him is no problem. You’d eventually have spread your search wide enough to manage it without my help. But just what do you plan to do when you find him?”

His gray eyes studied me thoughtfully. “An unarmed man in a slow boat shouldn’t present a tremendous problem, Mr. Helm.”

I laughed in his face. “You’re dreaming, Sanderson. What makes you think he’s unarmed?”

“We confiscated a rather fancy stainless-steel pump shotgun hidden behind the backrest of the main cabin settee.”

“So now you’re guilty of robbing him of his boat, his liberty, his eyesight, his future, and his gun. Haven’t you done enough to him?” The brown-faced man watched me without speaking. I said, “Don’t count on dealing with an unarmed man, amigo. That shiny, obvious pumpgun was just something to keep you happy if you looked. Or any other official interested in firearms. There’ll be other weapons on board—you can bet on it—hidden away well enough that even your hotshot searchers couldn’t find them. We make enemies in our line of work. Doug would be prepared to deal with a vengeful character settling an old grudge. And I understand there are real pirates around these days in certain waters, not just the ones in fancy seacop uniforms hijacking people’s boats under a pretense of legality. No, don’t think for a moment he’ll be an easy, unarmed mark a second time. One way or another he’ll be ready for you. So I ask you again, how do you plan to deal with him?”

“Just a minute.”