Matt Helm - The Infiltrators E-Book

Donald Hamilton

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

Seitenzahl: 585

Beschreibung

Beautiful, intelligent, fresh out of prison - Madeleine Ellershaw is Matt Helm's latest case. She may have been imprisoned as a spy, but Helm soon realizes that Madeleine's story isn't so simple. He's got to figure out why she took the rap for her husband nine years ago, what secrets are hiding in her past, and, most difficult of all: keep her alive.

Leseprobe

Contents

Cover

Also by Donald Hamilton

Title Page

Copyright

Book One

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

Book Two

11

12

13

14

15

16

17

18

19

20

21

22

23

24

25

26

27

28

29

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 Detonators (June 2016)

The Vanishers (August 2016)

The Demolishers (October 2016)

The InfiltratorsPrint edition ISBN: 9781783299874E-book edition ISBN: 9781783299881

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

First edition: April 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 © 1984, 2015 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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Book One

1

The released female prisoner who emerged through the steel doors into the penitentiary waiting room was of medium height, a rather plain and shapeless woman apparently well into her forties. I found that quite shocking. She’d been neither plain nor shapeless nor middle-aged when I’d last seen her; and it hadn’t been all that many years ago.

Not that she’d been abused in any obvious way, in this grim, secret, maximum-security institution. The prison pallor was there, of course, replacing the smooth outdoors-girl tan I recalled; and her posture had become very bad. I remembered her as a straight, slim, proud young woman; but now she looked slack and dumpy and defeated even on this day of her release. However, she seemed to be healthy enough. There were no visible scars or blemishes aside from the left arm that hung a little awkwardly, the wrist bent inward in a slightly unnatural fashion, a handicap she hadn’t had at our previous meeting twelve years earlier. But I’d gotten a full report of her prison history and I knew the answer to that. It couldn’t really be blamed, at least not directly, on the prison authorities.

She had a painfully well-scrubbed look and wore no makeup at all. Her hair—still thick and brown, I noted—was arbitrarily chopped off well clear of her shoulders; it had been shampooed to a state of lifeless dryness. Her clothes were so new I couldn’t help looking to see if she’d got all the price tags off: an inexpensive brown flannel suit worn with an inexpensive pink sweater. There were rather heavy, dull, businesslike nylons and sensible brown shoes with very moderate heels, also brand new. She carried a brown cloth coat, a brown purse that was supposed to look like leather, and a small, cheap suitcase.

She stopped dead just inside the room, seeing me. I saw her make her face totally without expression, the way they all learn inside, even the ones like this one who’d been brought up in secure and comfortable circumstances, loving and loved, expressing their emotions freely, never dreaming as they grew up in happy luxury that the poker-faced attitudes of the penitentiary could ever concern them. She watched me approach and licked her pale lips before speaking.

“They told me somebody was waiting for me,” she said. “I couldn’t imagine… But I think I remember you.”

“I hoped you would,” I said. “It would save me from having to identify myself all over again.”

“Helm,” she said. “Matthew Helm. You work for the federal government in some mysterious capacity you never really explained. You asked me out…” She stopped, obviously remembering a shining, lost world in which she’d once lived. “You came to the office when I was a… when I was with Baron and Walsh. You took me out to dinner that night. A very good dinner at”—she frowned, then stopped frowning—“at the Cortez Restaurant. You let me pick the wine.” When I nodded, she asked, “Why are you here?”

“We’d like your help on a matter that concerns us, Mrs. Ellershaw. In return we may be in a position to do something for you.”

Her eyes narrowed. “Something?”

I grinned, I hoped disarmingly. “Well, for a start, I have a car outside. I’ll drive you wherever you want to go; save you from having to take the prison bus to town and find transportation from there. But let’s talk as we ride, if you don’t mind.”

She hesitated; then she said bleakly, “I stopped minding anything eight years ago when they put me in here.”

“You’d better put your coat on,” I said. “It’s a bit wintery outside.”

She looked rather startled when I took the garment from her and held it for her, and picked up the suitcase she’d put down. That was a painful thing, as painful as seeing the brutal physical changes prison had wrought in her. The lovely and self-confident girl I’d known very briefly all those years ago had taken for granted that doors would be opened for her, and cigarettes lighted for her, and bags carried for her, and coats held.

I’d met her at the trial of a second-rate professional killer named Willy Chavez. I’d attended hoping for a line on a first-rate professional killer with whom he’d been associated, in whom we were interested at the time. Although very young, not long out of law school, her bar examination just behind her, she’d been assisting with the defense; and I’d realized that she was the one to approach for help, not the rather remote and formidable senior partner with whom she was working, Mr. Waldemar Baron.

Before going up against her, I’d done a little research and learned that she was the kind of youthful female prodigy all firms, including law firms, were looking for in those days—maybe they still are—hungry and handsome and super-bright, the kind who could be groomed for important positions and trotted out when needed to prove that sexual discrimination had never reared its ugly head around that shop, no siree. At the time there had seemed to be no doubt in anybody’s mind that unless something inconceivable happened, Madeleine Rustin, as she was then, would eventually become the first woman partner in that eminent legal firm.

She’d received me in her small office and we’d discussed my problem. This had involved my identifying myself and letting her check the identification with Washington. I’d been impressed by her quick intelligence, her clear grasp of the facts and their implications, her ambition, and of course her striking good looks.

I’d asked her out, as she’d just said, and over dinner we’d argued the obvious things. She’d asked if I enjoyed tracking down human beings as if they were wild animals, and I’d asked if she enjoyed turning wild animals loose on society as if they were human beings. We never came to an agreement there, nobody ever does, but she argued well and I liked the assured and good-humored way she handled herself without being too cocky about her brains and looks. At least she didn’t try to kid herself self-righteously, or me, that the client was necessarily innocent simply because she and a senior member of her firm were working hard on his behalf. Her point was the quite valid one that even a guilty man is entitled, under law, to the best legal defense possible—not that she was admitting the client’s guilt for a minute, of course.

That was all. Afterwards I delivered her to her apartment, shook the firm young hand she offered me outside the door, thanked her for arranging a jail interview for me in the morning, and never saw her again until this moment—but of course I did see her picture in the newspapers a few years later when the inconceivable happened, and the prestigious legal partnership vanished into the rosy mists of might-have-been, and the prison gates closed behind Madeleine Rustin Ellershaw, as she’d become, for an eight-year term, which she’d now served in full. But it was hard to recognize in this colorless ex-convict the bright flame of a girl I remembered, so confident and eager and ambitious, with the world at her feet.

That was the thing I found so shocking: how completely prison had destroyed her. Some change had been inevitable, of course. It was a dozen years since I’d seen her, and personal disgrace and professional ruin would inevitably have marked her, not to mention the daily indignities and degradations of prison life; but I hadn’t anticipated that the disaster would be so total. Confinement had softened and thickened the firm slender body I remembered. The fine bright face had become coarse and dull, like the once shining brown hair. There was nothing but apathy in the stony gray eyes, which had lost the golden glow of youth and anticipation that I recalled very clearly.

Seeing her like that, I found it difficult to recall her true age, although the lack of gray in her hair was a cruel reminder. I suppose I didn’t really want to accept the fact that in the normal course of events Mrs. Madeleine Ellershaw would by now have become a slender, well-groomed, very striking and handsome society lady, as well as a very successful professional woman, probably looking considerably younger than her thirty-four years, instead of this plain, sagging, badly dressed female who looked as if she’d soon be crowding fifty. She’d paid a high price for what she had done, if she had really done it. Actually, according to the record, she’d maintained her innocence to the last, even when a confession, and a little cooperation with the authorities, might have earned her a considerably reduced sentence.

“That’s right, Mr. Helm,” her voice said, totally without expression. “Not much left of Madeleine Rustin, that smart young career girl, hey? Makes you uncomfortable, don’t it? I didn’t want to meet nobody who’d recognize me, at least not right away. That’s why I maybe looked kinda startled when I saw you. But it don’t matter all that much. You might as well all get a good look at what you done to me.”

The slovenly grammar and the flat convict tone she’d used shocked me again. The carefully reared and expensively educated young lady I remembered could never have spoken like that. Then I saw a faint gleam of malice in the slaty eyes, and I realized that she was playing a savage joke on both of us, getting some kind of masochistic satisfaction out of appearing even more coarsened and tarnished by her prison years than she really was. But the bitter amusement she’d found in my reaction was quickly replaced by apprehension.

“You’re not… I mean, you can’t be taking me back to answer new charges! God, they haven’t dreamed up something else to try me for after all these years, have they? I can’t… can’t be locked up again, it would kill me!” She stopped herself and grimaced bitterly. “Not that that would be such a fucking loss! What’s left to lose?”

“Having you get killed is exactly what we’re trying to avoid,” I said. I expected some response to this, some sign of fear or curiosity, but there was none, so I went on: “No, you have nothing further to fear from me or the authorities, Mrs. Ellershaw, I assure you.”

Then we were outside. It didn’t seem to mean much to her. She took no deep breaths of the fresh air of freedom; she gave no sign of appreciating the sunshine unobstructed by prison bars and walls. The shutters had come down again, and her face was expressionless. The car towards which I guided her was a rather flashy little Mazda RX-7 sports job, silver-gray, but she accepted it without comment as a perfectly normal vehicle to find outside the penitentiary gates—but again there was that faint, rather pitiful double take when I opened the door for her, reminding me again how long it had been since she’d last received such small courtesies, or any courtesy at all.

As she entered the low-slung vehicle a bit awkwardly—it takes practice, and her last sports-car ride had to be almost a decade behind her—I couldn’t help noting that there was, after all, something left of the strikingly attractive young woman I remembered. Her ruinous experiences had failed to affect the lovely shape of her legs, unspoiled even by her dull stockings and cheap shoes.

2

“You don’t have to know that,” Mac had said when I asked what the hell it was all about. “We don’t need to know that, so we have not been told.”

His voice was dry. We often get limited instructions like that; and almost invariably it turns out that the information that was withheld was exactly the information the agent involved should have had to keep him from stepping on the wrong toes or digging up the wrong dead bodies or shooting the wrong live bodies and making them dead. Or getting shot himself. But they do keep sending us out blindfolded and with earmuffs on. Security, they call it.

It was a rather shabby second-floor office with a window that looked out on a rather run-down part of Washington, D. C. The light from the window made it difficult to see the face of the man behind the desk, but it didn’t matter. I knew what he looked like, having worked for him—or with him—longer than I cared to remember.

It was always hard for me to realize, seeing him, that I was looking at one of the most dangerous men in the world. With his neat gray hair and striking black eyebrows, in his neat gray suit, he could have been a banker or broker, a little worn by worrying about interest rates or investments or the gross national product. However, I knew that his real worries, now and always, concerned life and death, mostly death. The polite word for our function—well, our primary function—is counter-assassination. When some government agency, any government agency, comes up against a hostile operative too tough for them to handle safely and legally, an expert killer, they send for us to deal with him unsafely and illegally. Sometimes they ask us to handle other kinds of risky problems as well. Sensibly, they prefer to lose one of us rather than one of them.

“Good old need-to-know,” I said. “One day we’ll wake up and find the commissars running the country, and well have no idea how it happened because somebody’d decided that we didn’t need to know.”

Mac said, “It’s interesting to know that you’re thinking along those lines, because the person you’re to pick up at the federal penitentiary for women at Fort Ames, Missouri, was convicted of spying for the Russians—or rather, of helping her husband spy for the Russians. The husband disappeared, along with another female who was involved, a known Communist. The wife got eight years. She’s being released in a few days.”

I frowned. “Fort Ames? What the hell is that? I thought the maximum-security federal ladies’ pen was at Alderson, West Virginia.”

“Officially it is,” Mac said. “Unofficially, there’s an old state prison at Fort Ames that has been rebuilt and restaffed to meet the requirements of certain government organizations like, for instance, the Central Intelligence Agency and the Office of Federal Security for female inmates whose preservation is considered essential to the nation’s safety. The trouble with Alderson is that even though it’s designed for women guilty of the most serious federal crimes, it’s pretty much an open prison. Apparently it has been determined that women are, for some reason, much less likely to escape than men, and even the worst female offenders don’t require the strict security measures necessary in a male institution. I’ve heard Alderson referred to as a ladies’ seminary and a country club. Yet the system seems to work; there are very few escapes.”

“So why wasn’t this particular prisoner sent there? It seems like the logical place for her.” I watched him carefully. “If we’re thinking of the same girl, she didn’t look very dangerous to me the one time I met her. Not in that way. I shouldn’t think she’d require the manacles and leg irons. In fact I’d expect that the big problem with a girl like that, when she found herself behind bars with a lot of common criminals, would be to keep her from dying of shame and humiliation.” I glanced at him. “You do have in mind the young woman I knew as Madeleine Rustin, don’t you, sir?”

He nodded. “Yes. I hoped you’d remember her.”

“I remember her. But regardless of what she did, if she actually did it, I can’t quite see the need for throwing her into an escape-proof dungeon. She was hardly the type to dig her way out of prison with a teaspoon or shoot her way out with a homemade zip gun.”

“Apparently there were other considerations. Her accomplices had got away, and it was claimed that they or the people they worked for had considerable resources. The Office of Federal Security, which handled the case, persuaded the judge that there was considerable danger that they would organize an attempt to free her, or to silence her, not altogether impossible at Alderson. Hence Ames.” He paused, and glanced at some paper on his desk, and looked up again. “As a matter of fact we have reason to believe that somebody still wants to silence her, now that she’s free—well, will shortly be free.”

I sighed. “I see. It’s a bodyguard job, then.”

“In part, yes. We most certainly want her kept alive. But also we want to know why somebody wants her dead, and we want to know the identity of that somebody. We also want to know everything she knows, and hasn’t told, about the disappearance of her husband—Dr. Ellershaw, you’ll remember, was a brilliant young physicist employed at the Center for Advanced Defense Research at Los Alamos.”

I said, “She wasn’t married when I met her, so all I know about the husband is what I read in the papers at the time of her trial. And the facility to which you’re referring is a more or less independent installation, up a side canyon,” I said. “Conejo Canyon. Rabbit Canyon, if you want the translation.”

“The information doesn’t seem particularly significant, Eric, but thank you,” he said, using my code name to emphasize that this was business, and irrelevant linguistic digressions were inappropriate. “But that’s one of the reasons you were selected for this assignment. You’re familiar with the Santa Fe-Los Alamos area, having lived there. And you’re at least slightly acquainted with the female subject.”

I said thoughtfully, “After the time that has passed since Dr. Ellershaw disappeared and his wife was arrested, you’d think any scientific information involved would be pretty damn obsolete. Why this belated interest in an eight-year-old espionage case?”

“Nine-year-old, to be exact. The young woman didn’t go to prison until a year after her husband’s activities were uncovered, what with the trial and the appeals.” He shook his head. “And why she’s still of interest is precisely what we have to find out. Who’s afraid of Mrs. Ellershaw at this late date, afraid enough to still want her silenced? And why are they afraid?”

I frowned. “How about the possibility that she may be innocent, sir? That she may have been framed, and that the people who framed her are scared that, having had eight long years to work on it in her cell, she may. have figured out how it was done to her and who did it?”

He glanced at me sharply. “You keep sounding as if you had some doubts about her guilt, Eric.”

I said, “One year from arrest to prison! Considering the present state of our judicial system, that’s some kind of a record, isn’t it, sir? My God, I know of considerably less important cases that have been in the courts for five years and more. Doesn’t it look as if somebody with a lot of influence worked damned hard to get this girl tucked away behind bars in a great big hurry?”

Mac shrugged. “Maybe. And maybe her guilt was self-evident and her lawyer incompetent so it took less time than usual.”

“I believe she had the top brains of her law firm defending her,” I said. “Anyway, the whole thing’s out of character. Her character. I only saw her that one day, but she had everything going for her. Why would she risk it all like that? She was an ambitious kid eager to get ahead in her profession and not particularly idealistic—hell, when I met her, she was helping to defend a fairly unpleasant murderer even though she knew damn well he’d done the killing. I can’t see anybody selling her the glorious revolution of the proletariat. And she had doting parents wealthy enough to finance a top education for her and, probably, help her out generously if she needed it afterwards. Anyway, she was making a pretty good salary with promises of great things to come. So it seems unlikely she’d do it for money.” I grimaced. “I know, sir, it’s exactly that kind of privileged kids who wind up robbing banks and blowing up things for the Weather Underground or whatever the currently fashionable protest organization may be. But I wouldn’t have expected it of this kid.”

“Hardly a kid now, after eight years in Fort Ames,” Mac said dryly. “If she was convicted wrongly, it’s unfortunate, but I want you to bear in mind that her innocence, or guilt, is of interest only to her, except as it affects whatever problems we face out there in New Mexico. Curb your chivalrous impulses, please. We are not in the business of righting wrongs or correcting injustices. What we are interested in is finding out just what is going on in that Rabbit Canyon of yours. What has been going on there for nine years, or perhaps even longer, that Dr. Roy Ellershaw was mixed up in guiltily or stumbled upon innocently? Who considered him enough of a threat that he helped the young man to disappear voluntarily or caused him to disappear involuntarily? Who arranged for the young wife to be arrested and sent to the penitentiary, justly or unjustly, to get her out of the way also? Who, now that she’s being set free, feels threatened enough by her continued existence to arrange for her murder?” Max shook his head. “At least that’s one series of possibilities; there are others. I think the lady is the key. Well, her husband is the real key, I suspect, and if you can persuade her to lead you to him—assuming that she can—so much the better. Otherwise you’ll have to use Mrs. Ellershaw herself; and in order to employ her usefully you must of course prevent her from getting killed. You can have Jackson to assist you. The two of you worked pretty well together on that recent Chicago operation, didn’t you?”

“Jackson’s fine,” I said. “But he’ll need help if he’s going to cover us with any efficiency.”

“He’ll have help, all he requires,” Mac said.

I looked at him for a moment. Unlike that glamorous outfit that operates out of Virginia, we don’t have unlimited manpower at our disposal; but he seemed to be giving Jackson and me pretty much a free hand with such reserves as we did have.

“So it’s a big deal,” I said.

“It could be very big. But we don’t need to know exactly why. Or so we have been informed.”

“I see.” I made a wry face. “Just give it everything we’ve got and don’t ask questions. The fate of the nation rests upon the shoulders of one lousy lady ex-con. Well, soon-to-be ex-con, and I’ll bet it can’t be soon enough for her.”

* * *

Hardly a kid now, after eight years in Fort Ames. Mac’s rather callous remark returned to me as I guided the little sports car out of the parking lot, with the drab penitentiary graduate I’d once known as a very smart and attractive young professional woman sitting silent beside me, holding her imitation-leather purse on her lap.

It was time for somebody to say something, and I said, “I had a big four-wheel-drive unit for a good many years. Used it for camping and hunting whenever I got the chance; but it started to wear out at last and at eight miles to the gallon I couldn’t afford to feed it any longer, anyway. Brace yourself, you’ll find current gas prices a real shock. So I thought I’d try something different for a change. It’s the rotary Wankel engine, which seems to be a smooth and reliable piece of machinery; and it handles very well. Of course it’s really too damn comfortable for a true sports car. A real sports car is supposed to sound like a boiler factory and ride like a rock and drip water down your neck when it rains.”

She gave no indication of hearing any of this nonsense. She just sat in the bucket seat beside me, unmoving, until at last she turned her head to look behind. I knew what she was watching: the prison was just disappearing from sight back there. When it was gone she settled herself looking forward once more.

“Did you ever catch up with that man?” she asked abruptly.

“What man?”

“The one you were after. When you came to see me that time and I arranged for you to talk with our client, Willy Chavez.” She hesitated, and said with a hint of reminiscent pride, “We got him off, you know.”

“I didn’t know,” I said. “But I thought you would, all that high-powered legal talent.”

She said, rather grimly, “I had exactly the same kind of high-powered talent, Mr. Helm, and you can see how much good it did me. It’s not always a matter of who can bring the biggest legal guns to bear. But you haven’t answered my question.”

I said, “I caught up with him, in a manner of speaking. I got to look at him in the morgue after somebody else had shot him.”

“Was that a satisfactory ending to your mission?”

I shook my head. “Not really. The man’s name, the inoffensive name he was going under, was Horace Bixby. He had others. He got off a shot before he was killed. I was too far behind in spite of what I’d learned from your client, Chavez; a day behind. If Bixby hadn’t thrown his first shot a bit, hurrying, or if his victim’s bodyguard had been slow and let him fire again, my mission would have been a total failure. As it was, I could kid myself that Bixby rushed into the job under unfavorable conditions because he sensed I was closing in on him. However, an important man took a nasty little wound and spent unnecessary time in the hospital, something I was supposed to see didn’t happen, since we knew what was planned even if we didn’t know whom it was planned for.” I turned my head to look at her. “It was exactly the opposite situation to the one you’re in, Mrs. Ellershaw.”

She frowned. “I don’t understand. What…?”

“I told you, we’re trying to avoid having you get killed, remember? In your case we’ve learned the person it’s going to be done to, but we don’t yet know who’s been sent to do it.”

She focused the expressionless gray eyes on me. “Don’t con me, man! Why the fuck are you trying to scare me? I mean, it just don’t make no sense!” She heard herself employing the ugly speech with which she’d lived for the past eight years and winced. “I mean, why in the world would anybody want to kill me now, Mr. Helm, after all the time I’ve been locked up in… in that p-place?”

I said, “Presumably because you could do no harm in there, but you’re out of there now.”

“Are you certain it’s me they’re after? How can you be sure? How can you even know that such a thing is being planned?”

“Look, Mrs. E„” I said, “we deal with all kinds of people, mostly nasty people. In fact it’s been said that we’re pretty nasty ourselves. But there’s a certain amount of give and take. Occasionally somebody gives somebody a break and it’s kind of expected that eventually, if the opportunity arises, something will be done in return. In this case, a certain agent let somebody go free maybe he shouldn’t have—apparently the basic assignment was finished and he was avoiding unnecessary complications—and the guy who was let go was grateful enough to get in touch about a week ago with what he considered a good tip.”

“What tip?”

I watched the road ahead as I drove, reproducing the words from memory. “It went something like this, a voice on the phone saying: Somebody calling himself by a name you’ve been asking about is shopping for talent to hit the dame in the Ellershaw case when she gets out of that federal slammer, and don’t expect any more favors, see, this squares us.”

After a little, Madeleine Ellershaw shivered abruptly. “What did he mean by a name you’d been asking about?”

“Did you ever hear of anybody named Tolliver?”

I hoped I made the question sound casual enough. The security freaks who’d saddled us with this assignment had thought the name important enough to give us. We might kind of listen for it if we had nothing better to do, they’d said; and if we heard it we should report the circumstances immediately with all relevant details. No, we didn’t need to know why.

“Tolliver?” My passenger’s voice indicated no recognition. “No, it’s sometimes spelled Taliaferro, isn’t it?”

I said, “We don’t know the spelling; we’ve only heard it over the phone.”

“I’m sorry. I know it as a name, of course, but I can’t think of anybody… Is it important?”

I shrugged, and dismissed the subject, a little pompously: “Who knows what is or isn’t important these days, Mrs. Ellershaw?”

She turned her head to study me for a moment, and asked, “To what do I really owe your presence, Mr. Helm?”

I liked the elaborately formal question, which she would have phrased quite differently back in the grim building we’d just left. The woman was digging inside herself for grammar and vocabulary that had been unused for years and trying it out on me; it was a hopeful sign.

“I told you—”

“Yes, you’re supposed to protect me.” She glanced at me sharply. “But why you? Why were you selected to be nice to the convicted spy and disbarred female attorney when she stumbled out of the joint in her cheap new clothes?” Her voice was flat and expressionless. “Just because we’d met once in the past and you’d bought me a dinner?”

“That was part of it,” I said. “Also, I know a bit about Santa Fe, where you live.”

“Live!” she murmured. “Where do I really live now, Mr. Helm? Last permanent residence, Fort Ames, Missouri! I had to sell the house and both the cars and my jewelry… Roy and I lived very nicely, but we didn’t have all that much, really. Two young people with good incomes, we’d assumed a lot of debt for the kind of life we wanted together. We could have handled it easily if everything had gone as we expected, but it didn’t go that way. When Roy disappeared and I was indicted it was like a pretty soap bubble, pop! I fought to keep the house, it seemed important to maintain appearances and stay living as I had, but it was more important to keep my freedom—going to jail seemed inconceivably degrading then.” She drew a long ragged breath. “That meant money for the bail. And the legal costs, even though the firm—Mr. Baron—was very generous about conducting my defense. But in the end it all went, the creditors got their share, and my court expenses took care of what was left. I wound up borrowing, too much, from my parents.”

She was silent for a little, watching the blacktop road rushing towards her. I didn’t speak. She drew another long breath and went on.

“They’re dead now, both of them,” she said. “My parents. I was their only child. They’d been very proud of me, of my… my professional success. My happy marriage. This killed them.” After a little, she said, “But I suppose I have to go back there first even though I don’t really want to. I’ll be bound to meet people I know—knew—and I don’t expect to enjoy their reactions when they see what’s become of the clever, clever girl who was going to set the world on fire. I was a bit self-satisfied in those days, I’m afraid. So it’s not something I’m looking forward to, but Dad’s lawyer, old Mr. Birnbaum—I call him Uncle Joe—wrote that he wanted to see me as soon as I got out. Some things still to be done about the estate. There wasn’t much left for me, I understand, just a few thousand, perhaps as much as ten or fifteen, but I guess that won’t go very far these inflated days judging by the little TV I got to watch in there. They gave me everything they could spare while… while it was going on. But it’s better than nothing; it’ll keep me for a little, while I’m figuring out some way of earning a living as… as a rehabilitated criminal who’s paid her debt to society. But God only knows what way.”

I said, “The record shows that while your prison behavior was exemplary in most other respects, you took no advantage of any of the educational or vocational—”

“Educational!” Her voice was suddenly fierce. “After… after all the academic honors, real honors, I’d earned, was I supposed to let a bunch of semi-illiterate stumblebums give me a degree in finger painting? Call it being stuck-up, they did, but I couldn’t bring myself to that. And as for vocational, can’t you see that I couldn’t do that? After all the years and all the effort and all the money that had been spent to make me an educated person and a good lawyer, a real professional woman, how could I? Standing in that ghastly shop learning how to set women’s hair! Or even learning how to work a simple computer like a good little office girl! That would have been admitting that… that there was no hope for me at all. That there was no real life left for me, the kind of life I’d been brought up to and educated for. Nothing but a gray tawdry hand-to-mouth existence stretching endlessly off into the dismal future… Of course I was kidding myself. That is all that’s left now, isn’t there?”

She was a contradictory mixture of elitist arrogance and hopeless despair. But I was glad to see the arrogance; I’d been afraid that all pride had been knocked out of her. I changed the subject deliberately.

“Did your husband have any distinguishing marks or scars in intimate places, Mrs. Ellershaw?”

She frowned at the sudden switch. “Why do you ask?”

“He disappeared and left you holding the bag, didn’t he? And now somebody wants you dead. Maybe Dr. Ellershaw has surfaced somewhere else with a new identity and a new appearance—plastic surgery, contact lenses, dyed hair—only there’s something he can’t change, something only a wife would know about. And he’s still a wanted man. Maybe he’s afraid that now you’re out you’ll come looking for him, one of the few people in the world who really know what to look for. Did he have any sexual peculiarities that might identify him?”

She shook her head. “I don’t quite know what you mean by that. Physically, well, his penis was perfectly normal, judging by my rather limited experience with penises, if that’s what interests you. Circumcised, if it matters, although he wasn’t Jewish. He had two testicles like half the human race. He liked the mouthy stuff sometimes. A blow job really turned him on.” Her voice kept switching disconcertingly between university refinement and prison vulgarity. “At the time we were married I thought it was… well, quite disgusting. I was terribly shocked when he first suggested it. I was sexually rather innocent and fastidious back in those days. I just liked having my husband on top of me doing it the nice old-fashioned way. The missionary position, I believe it’s called. Warm and cozy. But I loved him very much and I forced myself to do it the way he wanted when I realized it meant a lot to him. I enjoyed being able to please him so much, even though I still found the act itself rather revolting.” She glanced at me coolly. “You see, they have me well trained, Mr. Helm. No matter what intimate and personal and prying questions you ask, Ellershaw will speak right up like a good little felon who’s forfeited all rights to privacy.” After a moment, when I didn’t react to this, she went on: “Several million other men like oral sex, so it doesn’t give you much to go on, does it? Anyway, it’s a bum scenario you’re writing there, man. You’re way off the beam. Roy is dead.”

I drove on through the sunny countryside for a while before speaking. “Yes, I know that’s what you said before the trial, but you never offered any proof, any evidence. And no body has ever been found.”

She laughed shortly. “It’s probably just as well. The way they were acting, they would have tried me for his murder, too. In fact, they thought I was confessing to it when I first told them he was dead. They wanted me to take them straight to where I’d hidden the corpus delictus. Then they decided that I was just engaging in a deliberate campaign of misdirection to cover my own guilt. I don’t think they ever really looked for a dead body, just for a live Roy, the principal in the crime to which I was an accomplice.”

“But you think he was murdered?”

She said, “I know it.”

“How?”

“He never came back, did he? He wouldn’t have done that to me, left me ‘holding the bag,’ as you called it, if he were alive. If would have been strictly impossible for him to do it, just as impossible as for him to hire somebody to kill me, as you just suggested.”

I studied her face for a moment, and returned my attention to the road. “You mean,” I said, “he couldn’t have done it because he loved you?”

She gave me her slow flat glance once more. “That’s exactly what I mean. Don’t sneer at it.”

“I wasn’t sneering, but it’s hardly evidence.”

“It’s evidence to me,” she said firmly. “But of course I always knew, after that first night they had me in jail, that he wasn’t coming back. He died some time after two in the morning—I could have told you more exactly, but they’d taken away my watch, along with my purse and jewelry, when they put me into that cell after questioning me. That was about one-thirty in the morning. I’d never been locked up before in my life. I fell on the cot completely drained and exhausted, too tired even to take my shoes off, but I was too outraged by the way I was being treated, too shocked and angry and frightened, to really sleep. I just kind of half dozed; and suddenly I sat up with a gasp knowing that Roy was dead. He screamed before he died. I heard him.” She threw me a contemptuous glance. “You don’t believe any of this, do you? Nobody believes it. They all think it’s some kind of a trick. They’re all puzzled by what that smart Phi Beta Kappa girl with all those university degrees magna cum laude hopes to achieve by telling such a stupid and implausible story.”

I said without expression, “Last year I was down in Latin America, at some ruins in the jungle. They had an old native high priest there. As a matter of fact, his name was Cortez, just like that restaurant we ate in. One night he called to me to come help him. He was way underground in a cave being beaten by some men, never mind the details, and I was sleeping in a hotel almost a mile away, but I awoke knowing that he’d called me and I had to go. And a lady archaeologist who knew the cave, whom I needed to show me the way, was coming up the path fully dressed when I started for her cabin to wake her. She’d got the same message. Somehow. Don’t tell me what I believe or disbelieve, Mrs. Ellershaw.”

She licked her lips. “All right. Sorry. You’re the first one who hasn’t laughed.”

I said, “You woke up on the cot knowing that you’d heard… felt him scream and die. Go on.”

She swallowed. “It wasn’t exactly like that. I might have dismissed it as imagination, something triggered by all the ugly unfamiliar sounds disturbing me in that strange and awful place—at least it was strange to me then. I got to know places like that very well, later.” She gave a sharp, rueful little laugh. “I hadn’t realized how different a jail looks when you’re in there for real, not just as a lawyer visiting a client. But there was something else that made me know what had happened.”

“What?”

“The light had gone out,” she said.

I frowned. “In your cell?”

She shook her head, annoyed at my stupidity. “I thought you’d understand, after what you just said about that high priest calling you. When… when you love somebody, and they love you, there’s kind of a glow in the world, isn’t there? Call it the light of love if you want to be very corny, but it’s there, you must know it’s there, if you’ve ever truly loved anybody and had your love returned. Even when he… when the other person is away from you, it’s like a reassuring little night-light burning steadily in a private chamber in your mind, just knowing that he’s out there somewhere and you’ll have him back soon. Or maybe not so soon, but he’ll surely come back to you. But that night the light went out. There was nothing left in the world—my world—but darkness. So I knew he was dead and it was his scream I’d heard and he was never coming back.” Abruptly she shook her head in an angry way, glaring at me. “Hey, you’re good, aren’t you, you crummy confidence man! How the hell did you get me talking all this mystic bullshit, anyway? Forget it! It’s all a lot of stinking crap and we both know it!”

I looked at her sitting beside me, now staring straight ahead through the windshield; and despite the prison-ravaged flesh of her face I could see the sensitive profile of the girl I’d known for a day so many years ago—years that should have brought her success and happiness and instead had crushed and demolished her. Or had they?

It occurred to me that a woman who, after years of harsh imprisonment, could still speak earnestly of love lighting up the world might not be as badly damaged as she looked.

3

In that open, rolling, midwestern terrain we could see the big interstate ahead a couple of miles before we came to it. I drove through the underpass, made my turn, and accelerated hard up the sweeping on-ramp, liking the smooth thrust of the rotary engine and the way the low little car clung to the curve. We hit the four-lane highway above at a good clip and I took us up to seventy, since I’d learned on my way here from where I’d picked up my car—the R-and-R establishment in Arizona we call the Ranch, which is also our training center—that nobody took the limit too seriously in this part of the world. After a little I became aware of the tenseness of the woman beside me.

“Something wrong?” I asked.

“It’s very silly,” she said, “but the limit is still fifty-five, isn’t it? I do like driving fast after not having been in a car for so long, but…”

I was ashamed of my lack of consideration. “But you’re not in the mood to associate with policemen on your first day of freedom, right? Sorry, I’ll hold it down. I wasn’t thinking.”

“Thank you.” After a little, she asked, “Where are you taking me?”

“Santa Fe, New Mexico,” I said. “You said you wanted to see your folks’ lawyer, didn’t you? And there are other reasons for going there—I told you we needed your help. But we can talk about that later.”

She was startled. “But that’s hundreds of miles!”

“Actually, something over a thousand,” I said. “We should get there the day after tomorrow, even taking it easy.” I glanced at her. “You still don’t really believe me, do you? If you did, you wouldn’t be expecting me to dump you at the nearest bus station and wave goodbye as you ride off into the sunset trailing a cloud of diesel smoke and a covey of hired killers behind you.”

“It’s still rather hard to grasp, although after everything else that’s happened to me I suppose I shouldn’t be too surprised.” She hesitated. “Please tell me the truth, Mr. Helm. You’re being very nice, and I have no complaints about my treatment, but… am I under arrest or aren’t I?”

I looked at her, shocked. “Oh, Jesus, I’m doing this all wrong, aren’t I?”

“Well, you do have a badge of sorts; you showed it to me once, remember? You don’t seem to wave it around as much as some, but it’s there and, well, my experiences with men with badges haven’t been reassuring. Or women with badges, ugh!” She studied my face gravely and seemed to find her answer there. “Then… then I am free, really free?”

“Yes,” I said, “and when we get out of the car I’ll ask you to kick me for not making it absolutely clear. You’ve served your time, all of it, without parole, as your sentence stipulated, and nobody’s got any strings on you—not I, not anybody else. If you want to tell me to go to hell, you can. But I’m offering you a free ride to Santa Fe; and there is a contract out on you, as we hoodlums say. I can’t guarantee you’ll be safe if you stick with me. Nobody can. But at least I can make the guy very nervous while he’s murdering you.”

A little crooked smile, the first real smile I’d seen, touched her lips. “Well, you’re honest, if not reassuring. Are we being followed right now?”

“I haven’t been able to spot anybody, but there’s been quite a bit of traffic.” I was surprised that the lie came so hard; after years in the business you’d think I’d be a fairly accomplished prevaricator, but for some reason I found myself reluctant to be less than honest with the broken woman beside me. I glanced at the rearview mirror, at the little blue sedan that had been our shadow since we’d left Fort Ames, and said smoothly, “Anyway, I don’t think they’ll try any trick accidents. We’ve got too fast and agile a car, and it’s never surefire anyway, unless you can run the victim off a mountain road into a thousand-foot canyon. And this midwestern landscape is kind of short of mountains and canyons.” Well, at least that much was true. I glanced at her. “I await your instructions, ma’am. Santa Fe, New Mexico, or the nearest bus station or airport? Tell me which.”

“Would you really let me go and get killed?”

“I’d let you go. I have no right to stop you. And I’m sure you’ve had enough people telling you what to do for the past eight years without me getting into the act now that you’re free.” I grinned. “Anyway, if I try to get tough with you, you’ll just get mad at me, and as I told you, we need your cooperation. An angry dame is no use to us. Might as well let her go and get shot.”

Her smile was stronger this time. “More honesty. It’s very refreshing, Mr. Helm.” She was making me feel like a louse, and I wished she’d stop. “Would you sneak along behind me and try to protect me in spite of myself?”

I nodded. “At least until I could check with Washington and get new instructions. But they might decide to scrub Operation Ellershaw if the lady simply won’t play.”

This was largely bluff of course; but with a big unfamiliar world staring her in the face she was very vulnerable, and I didn’t think I was taking much of a chance.

“Oh, I’ll play.” Her voice was rueful. “I can’t afford not to, can I? Bus tickets cost money, and it’s a nice little car. And I don’t really know if I’m up to facing a bus or plane ride yet, after all these years, with all those free and cheerful people who’ve never seen the inside of a penitentiary.” Suddenly she was blinking her eyelids and turning away to hide the shiny wetness of her eyes. “Oh, God, there must be so many changes, so much to learn all over again, like Rip van Winkle! I’m a coward, Mr. Helm. If you really want to play nursemaid and… and lead the frightened lady gently back into the strange outside world, she’s happy to accept the offer.”

I nodded again. “The rules are very simple. First of all, here’s a telephone number.” I fished a piece of paper out of my coat pocket and gave it to her. “Memorize. If we should get separated, or I should be put out of action, or you should decide to go off on your own after all, and there’s any hint of trouble, try to get to a phone and call that number. Somebody’ll tell you what to do, and send help, although it may take a little time to get a man to you.”

She studied it; I saw her lips move as she imprinted the number on her mind. “It’s a Washington phone, isn’t it? Unless they’ve changed the area code.”

“Yes. Call collect and use my name. Next, instant obedience in any matter relating to your safety.”

Her voice held sudden bitterness: “For obedience, you’ve come to the right girl, mister. I’ve just spent eight years in obedience school, remember?”

“I won’t take advantage, I hope,” I said. “I won’t boss you around unnecessarily, but if I yell down, you flop, even if it’s in the middle of a mud puddle. If I yell run, you run like hell. If I tell you to scream, you call in all the rows from here to the Rockies. If I tell you to be quiet, you’re a mouse. Okay?”

She said wryly, “Oh, dear. If I’m going to have to take all those orders, I might as well have stayed in… in p-prison, hadn’t I?”

I could see that she’d had to make a big effort to joke about it—I’d already noticed that even the word, prison, was hard for her to speak—but she managed a smile as she said it that was a considerable improvement over her first two smiles of the day. With a little more practice she might learn to be quite good at it.

The mileage markers warned me when we got close; then I saw the signs for the rest area ahead. I slowed the little bomb, already rolling at a fairly sedate pace in deference to my passenger’s wishes, and turned in. There were tables and Johns, and a couple of big eighteen-wheelers parked in the truck area; but at this time of year there were no tourist vehicles in the passenger-car area. I parked and reached into the open luggage space behind the seats for the paper bag I’d prepared earlier.

“Coffee break,” I said, and went around to let her out, taking her hand to help her up from the low seat. “I don’t think you’ll want your coat. The sun’s getting almost hot. There’s the rest room if you need it.”

She gave me a real grin. “I thought you’d never ask.”

“We’ll use that table over by the trees.”

I went over there and got out the thermos and cups and doughnuts. Straightening up, I saw her coming from the john. She’d shed not only her coat but her suit jacket, too, and run a comb through her hair. Watching her walk towards me, I decided that she was not really bad-looking if you thought of her as a woman in her forties who hadn’t taken very good care of herself. It was the memory of what a slender, shining rapier of a girl she’d been that had made her present appearance such a shock when I’d first been exposed to it.

But I was getting used to it now, and realizing that she still had some possibilities. She wasn’t really fat, just a bit heavy and obviously in poor physical condition. A better-tailored and better-fitting skirt and perhaps a girdle, and enough confidence to hold herself erect, would have made a lot of difference, as would some careful makeup and a reasonable hairdo. The short-sleeved pink sweater, although hardly cashmere, was all right; but it did reveal the soft, pasty-white arms and the oddly bent wrist.

When she came up, I asked, “Do you have to do that? May I look?”

She started to protest, shrugged, and let me take her hand and turn it over to see the scars of the hesitation marks and of the final deep desperate cut that had done the real damage. I found it painful to think of her being driven to do this to herself. I had to remind myself firmly that her innocence was just a shaky theory of mine. It was quite possible that, with the help of her missing husband and his subversive female companion in exile, wherever that exile might be, she’d brought all these disasters on herself.

“Dumb,” I said.

Resentment showed in her eyes, as I hoped it would; the woman was coming back to life. Well, that was fine. Traitor or patriot, she was no use to me as a zombie.

“Is it dumb to want to die when there’s nothing left to live for?”

I shook my head. “As far as I’m concerned, copping out is anybody’s privilege. Overpopulation is our big problem. If you want to give up your place on earth to somebody else, be my guest. But that wrist routine is stupid, stupid, stupid, as any doctor will tell you. Oh, people have managed it, but mostly they just make a mess of themselves and keep right on living with crippled arms, which can hardly be considered an improvement over the previous state of affairs, no matter how lousy that may have been.” I bent the hand back and forth. “They did a good repair job on you, but you didn’t do your remedial exercises to stretch the damaged tendons, did you?”

“What was the point?” Her voice was sullen now.

I felt a strong need to shake her out of her defeatist attitude. I reached into my pocket and brought out a small penknife and opened the larger of the two blades.

“If that’s the way you really feel, you’d better have this, it’s good and sharp. But no more wrists.” I pointed the blade at the front of her skirt. “Down there… Here, I’ll show you on my own leg. The inside of the thigh, up here. Ram it in and dig around a bit and you’ll get the prettiest pumping red fountain you ever saw, the femoral artery, no lousy little bloody trickle like you probably managed. It won’t take more than a couple of minutes before you’re all bled out and as dead as you could wish. I’ll put it in your purse in case you get in the mood. There.”

She gave me that flat gray prison stare. “That’s pretty cruel, isn’t it?”

“Cruel?” I asked harshly. “I’ll tell you what would be cruel, or at least damned inconsiderate, and that is for me to work my ass off, and maybe risk my life, to keep you safe, and then have you crawl into a dark corner and start hacking stupid holes in yourself again. If you’re going to do it, please do it now. I’ll take a little walk if you’re shy about having a man see you bleeding all over your panty hose.”

We faced each other for a long moment. Then she did an odd thing. Tentatively, almost shyly, she reached out and touched my arm.

“Tough, aren’t you?” she murmured. “May I have that coffee before I open my veins and arteries, Mr. Helm?” Deliberately dismissing the subject, she turned to the picnic table. After a moment she said, pleased, “How did you know I loved glazed doughnuts, pink glazed doughnuts?”

“Sheer genius,” I said. “They had several kinds in the little bakery and I got two of each. They’re both yours. I’m a cinnamon man myself.”

The awkwardness between us faded gradually as we sat there eating our doughnuts and sipping our coffee. I saw it happening to her now, what I’d expected to see at the penitentiary gate. Relaxing on the wooden bench, she breathed deeply as she looked about the pleasant rest area with its trees, undoubtedly prettier in the summer with green leaves and grass, but obviously beautiful to her as she savored her freedom at last, forgetting for the moment the prison ugliness that lay behind her and the bleak ex-convict existence that probably lay ahead.

I could see the girl I’d known like a blurred image viewed through wavering layers of unclear water, and I was aware of an angry sense of waste. Something valuable had been wantonly destroyed here. The question was whether she’d wrecked her life, and herself, through her own criminal folly, or whether she had been the victim of vicious plotting by others. It was all very well for Mac to say that the problem of her innocence or guilt was academic, but I wouldn’t know how to deal with her until it was solved.

“I want to apologize,” she said abruptly, turning to look at me at last.

“What the hell for?” I asked, surprised.

“A little while ago I said I didn’t believe anybody could be trying to kill me. I as good as called you a liar. But I’d promised myself that when I got out I’d never ever do that to anybody else after the way they treated me.” She drew a long breath. “Maybe it sounds childish, but it was the horrible rudeness