Murderer's Row E-Book

Donald Hamilton

• Herausgeber: Titan Books
• Kategorie: Abenteuer, Thriller, Horror
• Serie: Matt Helm
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2013

Seitenzahl: 277

Beschreibung

The department is concerned about Matt Helm. Having been given a distasteful assignment—assaulting a fellow agent in order to establish her cover in a top-secret operation—the woman is now dead. Alone in Chesapeake Bay, and pursued by his own government, Helm must complete the dead agent's assignment and assassinate an enemy operative. Unless his employers get to him first...

Leseprobe

Available from Donald Hamilton and Titan Books

Death of a Citizen

The Wrecking Crew

The Removers

The Silencers

The Ambushers (October 2013)

The Shadowers (December 2013)

The Ravagers (February 2014)

DONALD HAMILTON

A MATT HELM NOVEL

MURDERERS’ ROW

TITAN BOOKS

Murderers’ Row

Print edition ISBN: 9780857683403

E-book edition ISBN: 9781781162347

Published by Titan Books

A division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd

144 Southwark Street, London SE1 0UP

First edition: August 2013

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 © 1962, 2013 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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MURDERERS’ ROW

Contents

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

16

17

18

19

20

21

22

23

About the Author

1

The motel was on the left side of the highway leading from Washington, D.C., to the eastern shore of Maryland by way of the Chesapeake Bay Bridge. So said the map; I’d never been there and wasn’t about to go. At least I didn’t think I was. In my line of business, you can’t ever be absolutely sure where you’ll wind up tomorrow.

As I made the turn and headed into the driveway, my watch said I was arriving precisely on schedule at a quarter-past-ten in the evening. I parked the little car that had been assigned to me among others displaying an assortment of license plates. Mine read Illinois, and I had a complete and phony identity to go with it, in case of trouble.

My real name is Helm—Matthew Helm—and certain government records have me cross-filed under the code name Eric, but for the evening I was James A. Peters, employed by Atlas Enterprises, Inc., a Chicago firm. The nature of the company, and my exact position with them, remained carefully unspecified on the identification I carried. Anyone who became really interested, however— interested enough, say, to send a set of fingerprints to the Chicago police—would be informed that I was known locally as Jimmy (the Lash) Petroni, a man with influential friends and an unsavory reputation.

In other words, I wasn’t, for the record, a very nice guy. It was just as well. The job wasn’t a very nice job. In fact, one agent had already turned it down.

“Sentimentality!” Mac had snorted, in his Washington office on the second floor of a rather ancient building, never mind where. “These delicate buds we get nowadays, nurtured on beautiful thoughts of peace, security, and social adjustment! They may be brave and patriotic enough in the right situations, but the thought of violence turns them inside out. Not one of them would kill a fly, I sometimes think, to save an entire nation from dying of yellow fever.”

“Yes, sir,” I said. “Yellow fever isn’t carried by flies, sir. It’s transmitted by mosquitoes.”

“Indeed?” he said. “That’s very interesting. I could have made it an order, but the young fool probably would have botched the job, feeling the way he did. It’s a damn nuisance. Being on the spot, he was the logical person. However, I remembered that you were on your way in from Cuba; and I thought you might like to spend a little time by the seashore—the bay shore, to be exact. Not that you’ll have much time for swimming, if everything goes according to plan.”

“I’m a lousy swimmer, anyway,” I said. “I lack buoyancy, or something. Besides, it’s getting a little late in the season.”

“You know the area. You took two weeks of small boat training at Annapolis during the war, according to the files.”

“Yes, sir, but there wasn’t much time for sight-seeing. I wouldn’t say I’d learned much about the area. Besides, it will have changed considerably since those days.” Subtlety wasn’t getting me anywhere, so I said bluntly, “Besides, there was some talk of a month’s leave, sir.”

“I’m sorry about that,” he said smoothly. “However, we are setting a trap. We can’t risk failure because a sentimental boy hasn’t got the stomach to prepare the bait properly.”

“No, sir.”

“I hope I’m not interfering with any plans of long standing.”

“No, sir,” I said dryly. “It was only arranged some six months ago—subject, of course, to the call of duty. I was only on my way to Texas to see a lady.”

“I see.” His voice was cool. “That one.”

“You don’t approve, sir? She helped us out once.”

“Against her will,” he said. “Very much against her will, as I recall. She is rich, irresponsible, jealous, impulsive, and totally unreliable, Eric.”

The indictment gave him away. The whole thing was beginning to make sense. I was being recalled from leave to keep me from getting further involved with a woman he considered unsuitable, as a rich college boy might be sent on a sea voyage to forget a pretty waitress. I tried not to show anger. It would be easy enough to blurt out that my private life was none of his damn business, but it wouldn’t be true. In our line of work, there’s no such thing as a private life.

I said carefully, “Gail Hendricks is all right, sir. She’s seen us at work and she knows the score. I don’t have to pretend to be a respectable car salesman, or something, when I’m with her. And she doesn’t have to pretend to be a fragile and sensitive southern beauty, either. I happen to know—and she knows I know—that she’s just about as fragile and sensitive as a female lynx. It makes for a beautiful relationship, sir. I hope you aren’t going to ask me to give it up.”

It was obviously what he’d had in mind, but the direct question, and the implied submissiveness, put him off balance, as I’d hoped it would.

“No,” he said quickly, “no, of course not, but I will have to ask you to postpone your trip West until you’ve attended to this matter. It is quite important, and it shouldn’t delay you more than a few days.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Now go see Dr. Perry. I don’t want to waste time briefing you further until you know exactly what’s involved.”

I had seen Dr. Perry, a cheerfully callous young medical man in a starched white coat. I’d been briefed, and now I got out of the car and walked past the motel swimming pool, which was empty. A breeze carrying a hint of autumn dipped over the windbreak on the far side and ruffled the surface. The submerged lights made the water look blue-green, luminous, and very cold, like the pool at the foot of a mountain glacier. I didn’t have the slightest desire to try it out.

Some tourists drove up to the office, at the other end of the motel, where there was also a cocktail lounge, coffee shop, and dining room. You can still tell them from hotels, however. Hotels have elevators. The newcomers paid no attention to me, as I let myself into the unit with the right number, using the key Mac had given me.

“Jean has been one of our best female operatives,” he’d said, pushing the key across the desk to me. “Very good appearance, attractive without being conspicuous, the pleasant young suburban-matron type. It’s most unfortunate. We do encounter such breakdowns now and then, you know; and alcoholism is almost always one of the symptoms. Have you noticed how these slightly plump, pretty, smooth-faced women seem to crack up more readily than any other kind?”

“No, sir,” I said. “I hadn’t noticed.”

“It’s a fact,” he said. “That, of course, is why she was selected for the assignment originally. She could make it believable, if anyone could. When the matter suddenly became urgent...” He paused, and let that line of thought go. “As I said, she is good. In addition to drinking too much, she has been showing convincing signs of disaffection, not to say, you understand, of active disloyalty. Overtures have been made. It is very distressing. We are very much disturbed.” He looked at me across the big desk. The window behind him made his expression difficult to read. “At least that is the impression we are trying to convey— trying very hard to convey. Do I make myself clear?”

“Yes, sir,” I said. “It’s clear.”

It was still clear as I entered the room and closed the door behind me. I didn’t have to worry about fingerprints, since I was wearing gloves. They made me feel like a hardened criminal. All the lights in the place were on. There was the usual blond motel-modern furniture. There was also as much of a mess as one female lush could make without really straining herself, in a room that had presumably been cleaned by the management earlier in the day.

There was a full fifth of whisky on the dresser, and a half-empty one standing beside a soiled glass on the telephone stand by the big double bed, which was rumpled as if she’d taken an afternoon nap—or just passed out temporarily—on top of the covers. A stocking with a run in it had been discarded on the floor by the wastebasket, a near miss, I guess.

Other garments of an intimate nature, some flimsy, some surprisingly sturdy, were distributed about the premises, again mostly on the floor, along with some wads of Kleenex, the afternoon paper, a pair of thong sandals, a fuzzy pink sweater, and a pair of pink corduroy pants, the narrow, tapered style all women seem to have adopted lately, whether it suits their rear ends or not. Female rears being what they are, mostly it doesn’t.

I’m strictly an anti-pants man myself, where women are concerned, but with all the mad trousers you see on the street nowadays, it’s getting so even jeans look good, while a well-cut pair of Bermuda shorts is a real treat.

I sat down to wait in the big chair facing the TV set, which was turned off. I didn’t bother to look around for mikes or wires. Mac had said there’d be some, and that the phone was probably tapped as well, which figured. If the opposition was interested in our supposedly drunk and disloyal operative at all, they’d be checking up to see if she were the real thing or a plant.

I hadn’t the slightest intention of interfering with any of their electronic equipment. In fact, I hoped it was all in first-class condition and working well, since it was my job to make Jean’s act more plausible, and I wanted an audience.

2

“Plausible,” I’d said in Washington. “Yes, sir. Just how plausible can you get? Does this lady know what she’s let herself in for?”

“She knows,” Mac said. “That is, she doesn’t know the details; she preferred not to hear them, which was only natural. But she knows that it will hurt, and that she won’t be pretty to look at for a couple of weeks. Certainly she has been consulted. She has agreed.” He frowned at me across the desk. “There are two things for you to keep in mind. She has to survive, of course. She even has to be able to function after a fashion within a reasonable time, say three or four days. On the other hand, it must be convincing. Just a dramatic black eye and some spectacularly damaged clothing won’t buy her a thing except a ticket to the bottom of the Bay.”

“I see,” I said. “Do I get to know what it’s all about, sir, or would you prefer to keep me ignorant.”

“A man slipped through our fingers down there, last year,” Mac said. “We’d been after him for a long time; he was high on the removal list. He was finally spotted right here in Washington. There was no real error made, but as you know, for diplomatic reasons we do not operate within certain zones, of which metropolitan Washington is one. It is preferred that we take no action within twenty-five miles of the city.” He grimaced. “It is a reasonable requirement, I suppose, but the people who set these limits often have no idea what their regulations mean to the people who have to do the work.”

“No, sir.”

“When the subject finally departed from Washington, he made for Annapolis. From there, he soon disappeared, leaving behind our agent, dead.”

I raised my eyebrows. “No error, you say, sir? Getting killed is a serious mistake, in my book.”

Mac shrugged. “I’ll grant that, but Ames was a good operative, and he had reason to believe he was dealing with one man only. Apparently he ran into something bigger down near Chesapeake Bay.”

“Ames?” I said. “I worked with him in California, a couple of jobs back.”

“I know.” Mac did not look up. “That is another reason I thought you might like to help out with this business, even if it means postponing your date in Texas.”

I laughed shortly. “You’re an optimist, sir. Some things don’t postpone very well. Gail is not the patient type. As for Ames, he was one of those portable-radio jerks. I came close to making him eat the thing, one transistor at a time. Goddamn a man who’ll climb an eight-thousand-foot mountain just to turn on that kind of noise. On the other hand, I’ll hand it to him, he did fry a mean flapjack, and he had a way with fresh-caught trout—” I stopped. After a moment, I said, “They got him from behind, didn’t they?”

“Yes. He was found on a beach with a broken neck. Apparently somebody slipped up on him while he was stalking the subject. How did you know?”

“He would get excited and forget to watch his back. It never seemed to occur to him that somebody might be stalking him. I warned him. Ah, hell. Scratch Ames, a good man with a skillet.”

“Yes,” Mac said. “As I was saying, after the killing, the subject disappeared completely. Some months later, he was reported in Europe, although he had not been seen leaving the country by any of the usual channels.”

“Who was it?”

“His name doesn’t matter,” Mac said. “One of our people took care of him over there. I checked with other departments, and found that this wasn’t the first mysterious disappearance from that neighborhood. They suspect the existence of a cell or organization with a way station, a cooling-off place, somewhere along the Bay, where fugitives can be hidden indefinitely until transportation is ready for them. Ships move up and down the Bay all the time, remember: big, ocean-going ships. In theory, they can be stopped and searched until they pass the Chesapeake Capes, at the mouth of the Bay, and get three miles out to sea. In practice, searching a ship of any size, under way, is an awkward proposition.”

I said, “According to what I recall from my brief association with the U.S. Navy, Chesapeake Bay is some two hundred miles long and up to twenty miles wide. The map shows rivers, swamps, bays, inlets, islands—”

“The nautical term is chart.”

“Excuse me, sir. Chart.”

“Your point is well taken, however,” Mac said. “With our limited facilities, it would be fruitless to try to search such an area for a camouflaged waterfront hideout. And we don’t even know that it’s on the water, although everything indicates that the pickups are made by boat, and it seems likely that the deliveries are made the same way. But in any case, it’s a job well beyond our resources, which is why we approached the problem from a slightly different angle.”

“I thought we were supposed to be specialists of a sort, sir. What’s the matter with all the bright government boys with college degrees and button-down collars—the clean-cut lads who can teach judo to the Japanese and shoot a silhouette target to shreds in three-fifths of a second, starting with their hands tied behind them? Can’t they manage to find this subversives’ bus stop by themselves?”

Mac looked up. “You’re forgetting Ames,” he said.

“You said the man he was after had been taken care of.”

“To be sure.” Mac’s voice was cold. “There are, however, some people in the neighborhood of Annapolis, not forty miles from here, who share in the responsibility. An organization like ours cannot afford to overlook interference, particularly when it results in the death of one of our people. That is why I asked that the job be assigned to us.” He made a little face. “The others were glad to let us have it. Apparently there are some local political considerations that make it awkward to handle. You might keep that in mind.”

“Yes, sir,” I said. “So our objective is really teaching these outsiders to be careful who they bump off.”

“Let us say,” Mac said carefully, “they must learn not to monkey with the buzz saw when it is busy cutting wood.”

There was a silence. I looked past him, out the bright window and could see one of the shining white buildings in which earnest men conduct the nation’s business openly, with reporters in attendance. I thought about how nice it would be if it could all be handled like that.

I said, “Yes, sir. So we are throwing this agent of ours, Jean, down the rathole to see where she comes out. If she comes out. What makes you think they’ll fall for her alcoholic act, sir?”

“That is your job, to make them fall for it,” he said. “Don’t forget, they will want to fall for it. They do not normally get any of our senior people alive and willing to talk. They’d like to know more about us. There’s still a body of official opinion over there to the effect that no decadent democratic society could possibly support a tough agency like ours; that we’re a fiction invented by our opposite numbers over there to excuse their failures. There are people over there who would be very glad to have an agent of ours put on exhibit. I think they will take the bait if it is properly presented.”

I nodded. “And suppose they do accept Jean for what she claims to be, a potential deserter, what then?”

“Her original orders were to identify the route and the lay-over station, as well as the people involved, as far as possible. Then she was to extricate herself by any available means, and report. No other action was required of her.”

“I’d say it was plenty, sir.”

“Yes. Unfortunately, I have had to modify those orders in the light of new information.” He hesitated, then he drew a piece of paper towards him, took the ball-point desk pen out of its holder and printed a single word. He replaced the pen and pushed the paper across the desk towards me, turning it so that I could read what he had written. “Do you know what that word means, Eric?”

I looked at the paper. The word, printed in capital letters, was AUDAP. It meant nothing to me. “No, sir. They play so many games with the alphabet around here, I’ve given up trying to figure them out.”

Mac took back the piece of paper and drew an ash-stand closer. He burned the paper carefully, powdered the ashes, and tripped the trap to let them fall into the base of the stand.

“That word,” he said, “represents one of the most highly classified secrets in Washington, and you’ve never seen it, of course.”

“Of course.”

“It’s very, very secret,” he said. “Only we and the Russians know about it, nobody else.”

“I see.”

“They do not, however, know as much as they would like. Do you know anything about submarines, Eric?”

“Yes, sir. They travel under water.”

“Until recently this was not strictly true,” Mac said. “Until recently, a submarine was a surface vessel capable of submerging for short periods of time. Even so, it was a potent naval weapon. Why?”

“I suppose, because when it’s submerged, you can’t see it.”

“Precisely. And with the advent of, first the snorkel, and then nuclear power, enabling the boats to go under water and stay there,his advantage has increased tremendously. Radar doesn’t work under water. Sonar is relatively short range and unreliable; besides, the instrument has to be in the water to be effective. This makes it impractical for use from fast search airplanes; the only way large sea areas can be efficiently patrolled.” He looked at me across the desk, like a teacher in a classroom. “Do you know which weapon of ours the Russians fear most?”

I shrugged. “The big bombers, I suppose, sir. Or the Atlas missiles with nuclear warheads.”

“If they haven’t found some kind of an answer to bombers yet, after all the time they’ve had to work at it, they’re not as smart as I think. And the big intercontinental ballistic missiles still have to be fired from fixed sites which can be located by intelligence work—we don’t make it very difficult—and more or less neutralized by other missiles or by sabotage. No, the weapon they really fear is the weapon they can’t neutralize because they can’t find it. It is the weapon we operate out of Holy Loch, Scotland: the Polaris submarine.” Mac got up and walked to the window and spoke without looking around. “Of course, what I have told you is the Navy version. An Army or Air Force man might give a different picture. Still, the admiral who explained the situation to me was most persuasive.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Each Polaris submarine carries sixteen Polaris missiles,” Mac said, regarding the sunny view outside. “At present the range is about a thousand miles, but it is being extended. We have—the exact number is confidential—say, half-a-dozen of these submarines operational, but more are being built. Even the halfdozen already on patrol in northern waters give the man in the Kremlin a great deal to think about at night, I should imagine. Six times sixteen is ninety-six nuclear missiles, waiting invisibly under the ocean within range of his major cities. The submarines don’t even have to surface to shoot. There’s nothing he can do about them—unless he can locate them first.” He paused. “The word I wrote down for you, AUDAP, stands for a little gadget just invented known as an Airborne Underwater Detection Apparatus.”

There was a short silence. Mac swung from the window and returned to his chair and sat down facing me. He put the tips of his fingers together delicately, and looked at them.

“We don’t know,” he said, “the mind of the opposition. We don’t know how close they are to taking the big gamble. We do know that, even discounting Navy enthusiasm, the Polaris submarine must be a powerful deterrent. But if they should get their hands on a device that gave them some hope of neutralizing that deterrent—” He shrugged expressively.

“Have they?”

“No,” Mac said. “The device is safe. The plans are safe. However, the man who invented the device and drew up the plans has disappeared, a gentleman named Dr. Norman Michaelis.”

“I see.” I frowned thoughtfully. “Was he kidnaped or did he go under his own power?”

“He was on vacation, resting up from his labors on AUDAP. He disappeared while sailing alone on the Bay in a small boat. The wind dropped towards evening, as it does. Some people in a power boat offered him a tow, but he refused it, saying he’d work his way in under sail. Well after dark, the friends with whom he was staying went out in a motor cruiser to see how he was making out. They found the boat sailing merrily along on the evening breeze with no one on board.”

“The fact that he refused a tow might indicate something.”

“If you don’t know sailors,” Mac said, “it might. However, a real sailboat man—as Michaelis seems to be—would rather spend all night trying to get home on a whisper of breeze, rather than be snatched into port at the end of a towline.”

“I’ll take your word for it,” I said. “This nautical kick is out of my line.”

“The details don’t matter, and the question of whether or not Michaelis absconded voluntarily is also quite irrelevant. Whatever he knows, he can be made to tell, you know that. If they once get him over there, and their experts get to work on him with the latest drugs and interrogation techniques, he will talk freely whether he wants to or not. They all do. It must not be allowed to happen. That is why we—you—have to take such drastic means to bring matters to a head where Jean is concerned. We have to sell them on her, very quickly. If we have luck, and Michaelis and she are held for the same shipment— apparently they don’t ship very often, which improves our chances. But they have to be persuaded to take her soon, while he is still within reach.”

“This is getting to be quite an order our girl is being handed. Now, not only does she have to fool these people, learn all about them and their organization, whatever it is, and make her getaway, she’s got to escape with a helpless Ph.D. on her back.”

“Dr. Michaelis isn’t quite helpless. As a matter of fact, he’s well under fifty, athletic, and considered handsome in some quarters.”

“Sure. They’re all personality kids, these days, and in a tough spot I’d trade them all for one ugly old-timer with store teeth or no teeth at all.”

Mac said, as if there had been no interruption, “And I am not ordering Jean to escape with Dr. Michaelis, even if she does have the good fortune to reach him.”

I looked at him. “I’m kind of slow, sir. You have to bring me along by easy stages.”

“If she can rescue him, that will be fine,” Mac said quietly, “but as you point out, it could well turn out to be an impossible task.”

“So?”

“Jean’s orders are quite simple and specific,” Mac said. “You may as well know what they are; they apply to you if by some remote chance you should find yourself in a position to carry them out.” He looked at me over the desk. “Our instructions specify only that the knowledge in Dr. Michaelis’ head must not leave the country,” he said deliberately. “How to achieve this result is left entirely to the discretion of the agent on the spot. No questions will be asked. Do you understand?”

I drew a long breath. “Yes, sir,” I said. “I understand.”

3

Waiting in the motel room, I did not think about this. It wasn’t something you’d pick to while away the lonely minutes, and it was Jean’s problem, anyway.

Instead, I glanced at the wrinkled paper to pass the time, and learned that a hurricane named Eloise was giving Florida a tough time; it had been expected when I came through from Cuba. The paper didn’t say how far north it might be felt. Well, bad weather is usually an advantage, if anything, in our line of work; besides, I hoped to be through with the job long before the storm had time to work its way up the coast—through, and on my way to Texas.

I tossed the paper aside and thought about Gail Hendricks. To be sure, our date had been very tentative— as tentative as the leave that had been promised me after the last assignment—but I’d made the mistake of wiring that things looked promising when I first hit Washington, and now I’d had to wire again. She wasn’t any Penelope to wait years for her Ulysses.

I heard my people coming well before they reached the door. There were two of them, as I’d been told there would be. The man was delivering Jean right on the dot of ten-thirty, as he was supposed to. She was giving him a loud, drunken argument, as she was supposed to. They paused outside long enough to let me rise and take shelter in the bathroom. Then the door opened.

“I’m all right, I tell you!” Jean was protesting. Her voice was slurred. “Won’t you please, please, please leave me the hell alone? The way you hang around watching me, anybody’d think I was sick or something—or that somebody didn’t trust me!”

The man sounded reasonably sober. He had a young, embarrassed voice. “It’s not that, Jean. It’s just, well, I’m supposed to stick around and, well, help you through this phase.”

“Just because some snoop saw me taking a little drinkie, I’ve got to have a guardian!” she complained. “What’s the matter, is somebody afraid I’m going to talk too much, or something? What I do to my liver is my own damn business!”

“Please, Jean. Not so loud. Here, let me—”

“Keep your cotton-picking hands off me!” Her footsteps came across the room unsteadily. I heard the bottle rattle against the glass as she poured herself a drink. “Not so loud!” she mimicked. “You’re always telling me not so loud! Don’t drink so much, don’t talk so loud. Like a nice little boy saying please Mama don’t make another scene. How old are you, anyway, honey? I swear you make me feel like Mrs. Methuselah!”

The young male voice was stiffly self-conscious. “I don’t really think my age is pertinent to the discussion.”

“Pertinent!” She laughed. “Well, I’ll talk as loud as I damn please, hear? And I’ll talk about what I please! I’ll even talk about—Do you know what folks in the know call that house in Washington we operate out of? They call it Murderers’ Row, that’s what they call it, and a damn good name, too! But we’re not supposed to talk about that, are we? Not even in whispers, heavens no! We’re not supposed to talk about the house, and if we go there, we can’t drive straight to the door even if it’s raining. Oh, no, we’ve got to get out blocks away and make sure nobody’s following—”

“Please, Jean! This room hasn’t been checked. It may be wired for all we know!”

She paid him no attention. “—and we mustn’t ever, ever tell anybody what we really do, not on your life! And of course we mustn’t say a word about the horrible gray man who sits in that upstairs office in front of that bright window and sends us out to—no, I won’t shut up! If people only knew the dreadful things that are done in the name of peace and democracy! Horrible things!”

I heard her gulp at her drink. The man said hastily, “All right, Jean. All right. We’ll talk about it when you’re not—when you’re feeling better. I’ll be going now, but I’ll be right next door as soon as I’ve had a cup of coffee. Call me if you need me. Remember, we’re all trying to help you. Just don’t make it too hard for us.”

“If thatsh a threat,” she said thickly, “if that’s a threat, to hell with you, honey! You don’t scare me a bit. You don’t scare me one little bitty bit, hear?”

“I didn’t mean—good night, Jean.” He seemed to hesitate. “I—er, good night.”

He moved away. The door opened and closed behind him. I glanced at my watch. It read ten-forty. His timing was good and he’d delivered his lines pretty well. But Mac had been right. This was, of course, the kid with the weak stomach—code name Alan—who’d refused to do the job; and I was ready to agree that he’d have botched it. It wasn’t a job for a sentimental kid; particularly not a sentimental kid who, by his voice, was desperately in love with the somewhat older agent he’d been assigned to watch.

I now had twenty minutes while he drank his coffee, before witnesses. I pushed the bathroom door aside and went in there. She was standing by the big bed, swaying slightly. From the information I’d been given, the appearance of her room, and the sound of her voice, I’d expected a sodden female bum, but she looked surprisingly good, considering.