The Terminators Read online

  I'd wiped off the knife, folded it, and put it away. "Shut up, Madeleine," I snapped when Diana started to speak quickly, obviously to protest this further slur on her dead associate's name. I reached for the first aid kit and got out some sterile gauze pads and a roll of bandage for Elfenbein's hand. ''Go on," I said to Greta.

  "Mr. Wetherill confirmed the existence of the invention. I wasn't in on those discussions but Papa made sure I was there when Wetherill described how you people were going to pick up all the information up the coast. The railway-station restaurant near the docks in Trondheim and the little rocky hill above the parking space behind the Svolvaer airport. The courier would be a woman. Wetherill didn't know who, but he told us the ship and cabin number so we could identify her when she came aboard. She would carry a pair of special binoculars for identification: Leitz Trinovid 6x24s. It's a very expensive little glass, and it has been discontinued. The smallest currently listed is the seven-power, Mr. Helm, and that now costs close to five hundred of your American dollars. We had a terrible time locating a dealer who still had a specimen of the smaller model in stock."

  "I see. You were going to be the courier." Her presence suddenly made sense.

  "Of course. Mr. Wetherill supplied me with all the information I'd need. In addition to the binoculars there's a kind of password. The other person offers to buy the glasses, apologetically, saying he couldn't help noticing them and he'd been looking for a pair for a long time. Then I—well, the courier—will say: 'Oh, I wouldn't part with them for all the oil in Arabia!' " The smaller girl glanced towards Diana triumphantly, but spoke to me: "Ask her! If you haven't been told all the details yet, Mr. Helm, ask her if I haven't got it right! And if I do, how could I have got it except from her precious Mr. Wetherill?"

  There was a little silence then Diana said reluctantly, "Well, that's pretty close, but it doesn't mean—"

  "Never mind," I said. "Miss Elfenbein, we stop at Molde, up the coast, in a few hours. For your sake, I hope we see you there. On the dock. With your luggage, your daddy, and your tame P.R. man. Persuade them, doll. Cry, scream, kick, and yell but get them to hell off this boat. Okay, let's wake up Papa. .. ."

  Then I saw that Papa was already awake, watching me steadily, unblinkingly, like a snake. There was a cold, vicious hatred in his eyes. Again, I got the impression he wasn't really a very pleasant person, but then, who is?

  XII.

  THE ship's captain apparently used the same undocking technique everywhere, going ahead against the wire-cable spring line, as I think it's called, and then backing free as soon as the stem had swung out far enough to give him maneuvering room. At least he used it in Molde just as he had in Alesund.

  As we drew away stem first, I waved a friendly hand at the little group standing beside the cluster of suitcases on the dock: the dark-haired girl in the gaily checked slacks, the white-haired man with the bandaged hand, and the tousle-haired young executive type in the sharp sport coat. I didn't really expect to get a response, and, except for a glowering look from Dr. Elfenbein, I didn't. The wind turned sharper and colder as, moving forward now, the ship picked up speed out of the small harbor.

  I said, "Let's go have a beer in the lounge. I guess it's still inhabitable; they don't seem to turn on the terrible telly until six."

  Shortly, Diana and I were installed in a couple of the comfortable, shackled-down chairs in the first-class lounge. The TV was, happily, blank and silent and a waitress from the dining room was plying us with the best the ship could legally offer in the way of booze, pretty feeble stuff. I took a taste of the Norwegian brew and decided that it tasted no worse than any other beer. You'll gather I’m not really an aficionado.

  I said, "Okay, now that we're out of the wind, tell me. Am I correct in deducing, from the way you kept trying to stand up for him, that you had a thing going with Mr. Robert Wetherill?"

  Diana hesitated. After a moment, she shook her head and said wryly, "No, you're not correct, darling. I would very much have liked to have a thing going with Mr. Robert Wetherill, but that's not quite the same thing, is it?"

  "Does that mean he just couldn't see you, or that he was looking elsewhere?"

  She sighed. "Now who's clairvoyant? If you must know, Robbie's attention was firmly concentrated elsewhere. As a matter of fact, it was really rather funny, I guess, if you had a good sense of humor. There was I yearning after Robbie, who couldn't see me; and there he was yearning after Evelyn, who couldn't see him. And she, well, I think she kind of hoped the Skipper, once he got over the loss of his wife. . . . No, I'm not being fair. I don't know that. We weren't quite close enough to compare yearnings. But it would have been like her. She was a very dignified and proper girl, you know, much too dignified and proper to get involved in a hot and messy affair with somebody her own age; but a discreet liaison with a distinguished older man. . . . Oh, damn, I'm being catty, and I promised myself I wouldn't, particularly now she's dead."

  I was a little surprised at Hank Priest, with his wartime experience. The group he'd got together—the youthful U.S. part of it, at least—sounded like just the kind of half-baked outfit I'd feared I was getting involved with, with everybody distracted by private little loves and hates and jealousies, and nobody tending to the public business, weird though it might be, that was supposed to be the organization's chief concern.

  I said sourly, "It's a wonder any of you got any work done, with all this round-robin yearning going on. But I think you're right about Evelyn Benson, not that it makes much difference now."

  "What makes you think so?"

  "Something she said when she was dying. Tell me, what's your feeling about our commanding officer, Diana?"

  She looked a bit surprised; then she thought for a moment and said carefully, "The Skipper? Why, I think he's a pretty good guy who ran into a bunch of bad luck and is keeping himself very, very busy so he won't have to think about what he's going to do with the rest of his life, and that empty house back in Florida, and the boat he used to love working and cruising and fishing on, that he can't bear to go aboard now after what happened on it."

  It was a pretty fair analysis, I decided, as far as it went. I said, "Did you ever feel sorry enough for poor, bereaved Captain Priest to try to console him, to put it discreetly, in a practical way?"

  She spilled a little beer on her knee, jerking around to look at me, shocked and angry. Then she saw I'd been deliberately trying for a reaction, and grinned.

  "You louse! The answer is no. What put that idea into your head?"

  I offered her my handkerchief to mop with, but she rejected it in favor of a Kleenex from her purse.

  I said, "Not what, who. Evelyn Benson. She thought you had, or at least wanted to. 'Doting' was the word she used to describe your attitude towards your employer."

  "She must have been crazy—"

  "Not crazy, just jealous. I don't know exactly how your duty roster read, but I gather that she was kind of a field girl and you stuck pretty close to headquarters, meaning Hank Priest. And apparently she was so infatuated with our retired naval gent that she took for granted that any woman exposed to him daily, like you, couldn't help but feel the same way. Which seems to confirm your hypotheses."

  She looked at me, frowning a little. "What are you trying to prove. Matt?"

  "I don't know," I said. "I'm just trying to get all these relationships cleared up. Most of them probably don't mean a thing. Now tell me about Wetherill, Robert, defunct."

  Diana winced. "You don't have to be so callous. . . . Ah, nuts. Life goes on, and all that jazz. Robbie was . . . well, he was a very nice guy in spite of being a patriot."

  "The DAR wouldn't like the way you put that," I said with a grin.

  "Well, you know. Love it or leave it . . . and you always have to love it their way, the way it happens to be at the moment. If anybody tries to change it to something a little better, they want to ship him off to Russia or Africa or anywhere. But, well, aside from being a rabid reactionar
y, he was swell. The Skipper's pretty reactionary too, you know, in certain areas. I guess it's all those years in the military. What America needs, America gets, and to Hell with all the poor backward Scandihoovians. Considering that his ancestors came from around here, it seems a funny attitude."

  "If it is his attitude," I said. "We're not too damned sure about that, remember. He could be kidding somebody, and it could be us."

  She shrugged. "Well, he certainly acted as if Robbie was a kindred spirit, and I was just a token liberal he'd hired on to satisfy the ADA or somebody. I felt kind of outnumbered when they got to talking."

  I looked at her curiously. "But you still yearned for this Robbie guy?"

  She said rather stiffly, "Don't be silly. Who the hell loves a man for his politics, for God's sake? Personally, I thought he was a sweet guy, kind of innocent if you know what I mean; and he treated me as if I were his lousy kid sister and told me all about the great, unrequited passion of his life. Ugh!"

  "And then he died in an auto accident. Where?"

  "Outside Oslo, while we were getting things set up for all this. Have you seen those Norwegian roads, the high ones? A mountain goat could break his neck."

  "But you suspected, as the saying goes, foul play?"

  She said judiciously, "When you're playing games with people like Dr. Elfenbein and somebody dies unexpectedly, you can't help wondering, can you? We'd heard he was interested and had people snooping around. Robbie had been assigned to check the rumor—Operation Ivory—and if it turned out to be true, to find out whom Elfenbein was working for. Then he died." She shrugged. "Obviously, we had to consider the possibility that he'd got too close to something they didn't want us to know."

  "Aloco?"

  "What else? You saw that slick P.R. creep with the little pistol who tried to bribe you." She grimaced. "I'd bet he'd sell his grandmother for a quarter and give back twenty cents change. And you heard what he said: anything he couldn't handle, he knew where to hire people who could. Those big companies wall do anything to protect their lousy corporate reputations. And Parson Elfenbein, as you call him, would do anything to protect a lucrative job. Matt?"

  "Yes?"

  "I don't think that little man likes you very much, judging by the way he looked at you. You'd better watch yourself as long as he's around."

  "I always do," I said. "No matter who's around. But you'd better watch yourself, too."

  ''What do you mean?"

  "I have a hunch friend Elfenbein has the modem hostage mentality: if the guy you want to hurt—or the society—is too big or tough or elusive, just grab somebody easier and take out your hate on them. In this case, you." I grimaced. "Well, to hell with it. It's been a delightful, relaxing, ocean cruise, Mrs. Barth, and tomorrow we go to work. Trondheim at the crack of dawn, the schedule says. Contact number one."

  There was a brief silence. "Matt."

  "Yes?"

  "Am I supposed to be scared?"

  "Drink your beer," I said. "You're the little girl who loves being scared, remember?"

  XIII.

  BACK down the coast in Bergen, I'd heard they were feeling very cocky nowadays, because the latest census figures indicated they'd overtaken Trondheim and were now the largest city in northern Norway. It seemed like an odd cause for pride, these crowded days. If I were a Trondheimer, I reflected, I'd concede the population title graciously, happy to know that people were settling elsewhere and leaving my home town alone.

  Trondheim was still a sizable community, as far as I could make out from the ship. It looked like an old, historical, well-established place; apparently it had not been systematically wrecked by the withdrawing Germans back in '45. The guidebook said there was an old cathedral, intact and worth seeing. There were also, apparently, some massive ex-Nazi submarine pens at the end of the harbor, now used for peaceful ship repairs and associated activities. I couldn't make out either of these points of interest but it was only a little after six on a misty and drizzly Arctic morning, and the visibility was terrible.

  Not terrible enough, however, I thought wryly. What I needed, if I was going to be subtle, was a fog with less than ten feet of visibility, that would allow me to get myself—and later, Diana—off the ship without being seen; but maybe that was too much to ask for.

  The water looked too cold and dirty for swimming. I'd never learned to fly without an airplane—as a matter of fact I wasn't much good at flying with one. That left only one way to get ashore, and I made my way down the damp, steep, cleated gangplank to the pier, flipped a mental coin, and turned left.

  The Trondheim railroad station is quite near the docks. The roof of it had been pointed out to me by the ship's purser. However, there are all kinds of tracks and railroad yards in between, and to reach the station, I'd been told, I'd have to either go left a couple of hundred yards around the end of them, or right a quarter of a mile to an underpass tunneling beneath them. My simple-minded plan was just to make the circle tour and see what Diana might have to cope with in keeping her—well, Madeleine Earth's —rendezvous in the station restaurant, time unspecified. In the meantime, she was staying in her cabin with my .38 for company, although she'd complained that by this time she and Mr. Smith and Mr. Wesson had very little left to say to each other.

  It was a damp walk in the penetrating drizzle, and I hoped the gent behind me had forgotten his raincoat and was getting good and wet. I wasn't quite sure where I'd picked him up, but suddenly I was just aware of him back there. Well, he'd keep. I paid him no attention. I just hiked along the curving road and made my way through a muddy construction area—one of these days, I hope, they'll stop rebuilding the world and let us settle down to live in it. Then the station was ahead of me, a big building obviously designed by folks who'd had the old-fashioned notion that railroad stations were fairly important structures and ought to look it.

  The restaurant was at the near end, a big, high-ceilinged cafeteria. I went in and got a cup of coffee and a piece of pastry, which wasn't as good as the stuff I remembered eating in Sweden some years back; but maybe I'm prejudiced because my ancestors came from there. Anyway, it beat the plastic doughnuts served up in equivalent U.S. eateries.

  Sitting in a small booth, I surveyed the room, sparsely populated at this hour of the morning. The only individual at all out of the ordinary was a well-dressed, elderly gent sitting half a dozen booths down the aisle; and he was distinctive only because he had with him a pair of handsome hunting dogs—German short-haired pointers. That's the good-sized spotty one with the stubby tail. Well, all the Continental breeds have docked tails, as far as I know. In case you haven't got them straight, the cute little ones are Brittanies, the handsome, red-brown fellow is a Vizla, and the odd, smoky-gray guy is a Weimaraner. Anyway, that's what I was told by a Labrador fancier, but he had no use for any dog that wasn't black. He wouldn't even have a yellow or chocolate Lab around the place, although the colors are perfectly legitimate, according to the breed standard I'd had to read in the line of duty—I was pretending to be a guy who knew something about dogs, at the time.

  Sipping my coffee, I wondered idly if maybe the dogs might not be a secret signal of some kind. After all, there had been an old man with a dog in the restaurant in Alesund where I'd last talked with Hank Priest. I toyed with the notion playfully. One dog, all clear. Two dogs, condition yellow. Three dogs, condition red. . . .

  It was an intriguing idea, but I decided regretfully that I probably just kept seeing dogs in restaurants because the relaxed Norwegians allowed dogs in restaurants, and more power to them. By now the gent outside—he hadn't followed me in—had had time to get nicely soaked, I hoped. I went out without looking around and hiked off through the drizzle in the direction from which I hadn't come. Pretty soon I had him behind me again. Here the road ran along a kind of canal or inlet. There were some beautiful, sturdy fishing boats tied up along the sides. You can say what you like in favor of fiberglass, and it may well be the boat material of the future if th
e petroleum from which it's derived holds out, but for pretty, it doesn't compare with wood, particularly varnished wood.

  Then the road curved right, away from the canal, and ducked down into the underpass beneath the railroad tracks. I'd reached the end of my orbit in this direction and would shortly be heading back for reentry. It was a long tunnel, not very well lighted. I stopped when I'd come about thirty feet from the entrance.

  I didn't have long to wait. I heard his footsteps coming. They never paused. He just marched around the comer, a husky familiar figure with that wide-brimmed hat, and walked up to me. I was happy to see that he was actually pretty wet, although he did have a raincoat. We faced each other for a moment.

  "You make a lousy shadow, Paul," I said. 'T hope you weren't really trying. I taught you better than that. . . . What the hell are you doing?"

  There was a black-and-white-striped barricade, like a sawhorse, standing at the side of the tunnel. Apparently there had been some construction or road-patching done down here, too. Denison had hung his hat on the end of it. Now he was taking off his raincoat and jacket, together. He laid these across the horse. Then he took a snub-nosed Colt revolver from a waistband holster and tucked it into the pocket of the coat. He reached down and got a flat little knife from under his pants leg somewhere, and stuffed that in with the gun, and turned to face me.

  "These's been enough horsing around," he said. "You can't kill me; L. A. will put too much heat on your outfit if you do. But I can't kill you, either. If I do, Mac will say to hell with Mr. Kotko and send out the executioners, the termination squads, anyway. Agreed?"

  "Okay so far," I said. "Which brings us where?"