The Terminators Read online

  He stood there for a moment, his handsome, tanned face wet and shiny in the dusk of the tunnel. "It's a funny damn' thing," he said slowly. "Do a guy a good turn, and often he'll detest you the rest of his life for putting him in your debt. Do him a bad turn, and pretty soon you find yourself hating the self-righteous sonofabitch you double-crossed. ... It ought to be the other way around, don't you think?"

  "Well, I'm not exactly fond of you these days, Paul," I said.

  "Ah, but you don't hate me," he said softly. "You'll flatten me like a mosquito, given a chance—or try—but you don't live it and sleep it. I know you. Hell, after the first, you probably never thought about me once a year. I was just a bit of unfinished business you'd take care of if you ever got the word to go; meanwhile it was ancient history and to hell with it. But I've been looking over my shoulder for seven years, waiting for you, you bastard."

  As he said, it was kind of a backwards situation. By any reasonable standard, I was the injured party. The whole thing was ridiculous, but he was rolling up his shirtsleeves, and what he had in mind was fairly obvious, if fairly childish. Well, hell, when it came to a personal matter, like an old betrayed friendship, I could be as childish as anybody. I removed my hat, coat, and jacket, and laid them beside his. I stuck my gun and knife into the coat pocket as he had. Then we had to stand there a moment, looking innocent, as a car made its way through the long tunnel.

  I said, "Hell, I haven't done this since grammar school. We used to go out behind the gym where the teachers couldn't see us."

  "That's enough talk," he said. "Let's fight."

  He put down his head and came in swinging. It was rather touching in a way. I mean, he was putting himself into my hands. It was his party, and he was indicating how he wanted it run; but there was nothing compelling me to play by his infantile rules. There are a number of adult responses to that clumsy windmill attack that leave the other party in very bad shape. We're taught most of them and he knew it because he'd been there. If I wanted to trot out the fancy stuff, he was telling me, that was my privilege; but it would cancel all obligations between us, because this time he was playing it straight. . . .

  I met him and traded blows with him, blocking, chopping, feeling him out awkwardly. It would have looked like hell in a ring or gym. The honest-to-God fact was that we weren't very good at it. The manly sport of boxing wasn't part of the repertory of dirty tricks we'd been taught, so we didn't look very professional as we circled each other, fists up, looking for openings. Then I slipped one through and caught him on the mouth, and at the same time he got me hard in the ribs. Stung, we both forgot about caution and started slugging heedlessly. Abruptly he broke away.

  "Hold it!" he panted. "Car coming!"

  We leaned against the tunnel wall, looking as peaceful as possible, while a small truck came through heading for the docks.

  "Ding-dong bell," Denison said. "Second round. Ready?"

  We went at it again. Twice more we had to stop and act innocent while vehicles passed. It was, I suppose, a stupid damned business, two grown men pounding each other with knuckles. My own theory had always been that you leave the guy alone or you leave him dead. There are often sound arguments for removing people permanently but none, I used to feel, for beating them up.

  Well, I'd been wrong. Denison had found one, or made one. Remembering a man called Mark, and a man called John, and a girl named Luisa, all dead due to his treachery, I found myself taking a good deal of satisfaction in each blow that landed solidly. I found it even more satisfying when he began to give ground and I drove him backwards savagely, looking for a way to finish him off. He slipped and went to one knee.

  Old reflexes came into action; I started the lethal kick that would do the job right, and stopped with some difficulty. This crazy fight wasn't like that. Instead of killing him, I stepped back politely to let him get to his feet. I was surprised to see him try, and fail to make it.

  "Soft living, Luke?" I gasped. My voice sounded harsh and rusty.

  "Hell, you can hardly stand up yourself, Eric," he panted and I realized that he was perfectly right. "Give me a hand, you sonofabitch," he breathed.

  The thought of a final trick passed through my mind as I stepped forward to help him up; but of course there was no trick. He leaned against the striped sawhorse, breathing deeply and raggedly, while I steadied myself against the tunnel wall trying to catch up with my own respiration.

  "I guess that's enough exercise for one morning," he said at last. "If you want to say you licked me, you're welcome."

  "Go to hell," I said.

  "You understand, I don't regret a goddamn thing," he said without looking at me. "Not any of it. Except maybe that I couldn't put you down just now."

  "Sure."

  He drew a long, uneven breath. "Well, I guess we haven't settled anything except that we're the world's two lousiest boxers. They'd have booed us out of the ring. . . . Matt."

  "Yes?"

  "You can send the girl in safely. Tve had somebody keeping an eye on Elfenbein since you put him ashore with a mangled hand—some day you'll have to tell me about that. Whatever you did to him, it made him mad as hell, but he's a pro and he's playing it cool nevertheless. He's letting this drop go by, figuring to get the stuff from you later, before you hand it over to your naval captain up north—I guess he knows Priest has specified he's to make delivery to L. A. in person, no substitutes accepted. Maybe Elfenbein figures letting you make this first contact peacefully will throw you off guard, or something."

  "You seem to know a lot about what Elfenbein figures," I said.

  Denison grinned. "Hell, that fancy Aloco P.R. boy has dollar signs for eyes. Norman Yale. I've had him on the payroll for weeks and I think he's collecting elsewhere as well. A real clever lad, playing us all against each other, and crying all the way to the bank about his lost integrity. Well, I'm in no position to criticize anybody for liking money—I'll say it for you, Matt—but the little shithead doesn't seem to realize he's messing with folks who play for keeps. However, as long as he lasts he's very useful, if slightly expensive."

  "Has Dr. E. got himself any additional muscle?" I asked.

  ''That's another reason he's leaving this drop alone," Denison said. "He's got three plug-uglies on the way and he doesn't want to make his move until they arrive. You can figure on being hit in Svolvaer, one way or another. But here you're okay."

  XIV.

  I WAS waiting by the ship's gangplank, entertaining myself by calling myself a naive and incompetent jackass for trusting a man who'd already betrayed me once—how gullible could you get?—when I saw Diana returning, at last, along the rain-wet road. She had the bright scarf she'd used before tied over her head to protect her hair. She was wearing her own gray slacks and sweater, and Evelyn Benson's tan raincoat, left open despite the weather so as not to make too obvious the fact that it was slightly too small for her. The cased binoculars were slung casually over her shoulder.

  Even at a distance, I could tell everything was fine. Although she'd got pretty wet hiking to the railroad station and back, wet enough that she was no longer bothering to avoid any but the largest puddles, she walked lightly and briskly, almost skipping along through the cold drizzle; obviously a girl who was happy and pleased with herself for carrying out a dangerous mission successfully.

  I drew a relieved breath and made a silent apology to Paul Denison, the calculating louse. He'd managed to change our relationship drastically this morning, and I didn't think for a moment it had come about by accident.

  First he'd let me have the satisfaction of beating him to his knees—well, one knee—and now his report on Elfenbein had saved me a lot of unnecessary precautions; and what the hell, seven years was a long time to stay mad at a guy, whatever he'd done.

  The trouble was, he was applying his psychology to the wrong man. Mac had indicated what was expected of me. He had said there was no current word on Paul Denison. He had said that, until the situation changed or
could be changed, Mr. Denison was untouchable. He had said that he hoped he'd made himself clear; and he had.

  The literal record made by the phone monitors said one thing, in case anybody cared to investigate later; but any agent with half a brain and a little experience could, and was expected to, read a totally different set of instructions from that record. The cold fact was that the sentence of death had once more been passed on Paul Denison.

  What I'd actually been directed to do, in careful Washington doubletalk, was change the situation in such a way that Mr. Denison could at last, in the jargon of our great fellow-organization with its lovely estate down in Virginia, be safely terminated with extreme prejudice. The termination squads, as Paul himself had called them, had not been alerted—it's very seldom that Mac puts together that kind of a group these days, and never to deal with just one man—but a single terminator, if you want to call him that, had. Me.

  Diana came running up the gangplank and stopped in the shelter of the deck to yank off her kerchief and shake it vigorously. Her hair, judiciously darkened by the dye Hank Priest had supplied, was further darkened around the edges now by rain. She looked damp and flushed and pretty, all breathless from hurrying and I discovered—it seemed to be a morning for awkward personal discoveries —that I was so glad to have her back that it frightened me a little. I mean, it's always advisable in the business to keep clearly in mind that ever>'body's expendable. It's much better not to get emotionally involved, today, with an associate, male or female, whom you may have to write off tomorrow in the line of duty.

  "Don't look so grim, darling," Diana said, smiling. "Everything's wonderful. Were you worried?"

  "Sure," I said, "Of course, the Skipper said this drop wasn't really essential, so I wasn't too concerned about that; but when you didn't get back I started wondering where the hell I could scrounge up another female for the important Svolvaer contact. Not to mention those special glasses."

  She laughed. "I love you, too, you coldblooded creep," she said. "My God, I'm soaked to the skin! How about buying a girl a cup of coffee to warm her up?"

  Inside the dining salon, I helped her off with her wet coat—well, the late Evelyn Benson's wet coat—and hung it over an empty chair. I went to the end of the room and returned to the table with two cups of coffee.

  "Nothing to eat?" I asked.

  "Heavens, no! I stuffed myself in that damned restaurant, waiting. He let me eat everything on my plate and go back for seconds before he deigned to wander by at last and notice the binoculars. The old jerk! Did you know that they let dogs into restaurants around here. Matt?"

  "Oh, that guy," I said. "He was there earlier; he must have had a long wait. Didn't you see any dogs in Oslo or Bergen?"

  "Well, I guess so, but I must have figured they were seeing-eye dogs or something. But this old character had those two big bird dogs with him, right there in the cafeteria with everybody eating. Crazy!"

  She was all hopped up with her experience; she was talking too brightly and too fast, about anything but what was really in her mind: the long scary wait, the tense contact, and finally the triumphant knowledge that she'd actually done it. She, Diana Lawrence, the timid friend of the blackfooted ferret and the whooping crane, had actually pulled off a risky assignment without benefit of protective seat belts, ignition interlocks, crashproof bumpers, or miracle antibiotics. She'd done the civilized unthinkable. She'd deliberately gambled with her life; and she had won. She'd never be quite the same girl again.

  She was smart enough not to want to spoil it by discussing it yet. And of course I wouldn't have dreamed of pointing out that it had actually been a pretty simple little errand and the risk hadn't really been very great. After all, you couldn't judge this girl and her achievement by hardboiled undercover standards. She'd been brought up on the modern philosophy that any risk is totally unacceptable and everybody's supposed to live forever, or at least present the body, intact and unscarred, to the geriatric intensive care ward for final processing, after a long, safe, and uneventful life.

  "What's crazy about it?" I asked. "I think it's great."

  "Dogs in restaurants? But isn't it unsanitary?'' I grinned. "Where's that brave and independent female spirit who's mad because everybody keeps protecting her from germs and auto accidents against her will? As a matter of fact, I took a course in how to deal with attack and guard dogs once and we were told that dogs have very clean mouths and if we were bitten not to worry too much, assuming we survived the bites. Now, if we were bitten by a human guard, that was different, and we'd better get medical aid fast before infection set in; a human bite is almost as poisonous as that of a rattlesnake. Maybe, if we let all the dogs in and kept all the people out, we'd have a lot nicer and safer restaurants."

  She laughed. "I didn't know you were a dog man. Matt." "I'm not," I said. "Not really, but I had to travel with a mutt once—actually a very well-bred and well-trained young retriever, part of my cover for the assignment—and I got damned sick and tired of being treated like a leper accompanied by a rabid wolf. Hell, that pup was a lot better behaved than most of the humans we met along the way. And he was a damned sight better company than a lot of agents I've worked with. Present company excepted, of course."

  "Thank you, sir," she said. She'd had time to wind down a bit now and she glanced at the binocular case on the table. "But, talking about agents and their work, aren't you even going to look at it?" She pushed it towards me.

  "Why should I?" I asked. "When you obviously have, and are aching to tell me all about it?"

  "More clairvoyance, Mr. Helm?" She grinned tomboy-ishly. "As a matter of fact, I did slip into the ladies' room and take a peek—"

  That figured. Wanting desperately to grab the stuff and run, she'd forced herself to walk calmly down the hall and spend a little longer in the building, just to see if she .could.

  "Tut-tut," I said. "Not very smart. Agent Lawrence. Statistically, a public John is a very dangerous place."

  "But your great good friend Paul Denison had assured you I was perfectly safe, remember? Not that I believed it. I was scared stiff the whole time; but that's what you told me."

  "Sure, safe from Elfenbein," I said. "But he said nothing whatever, nor did I, about your being safe from Denison, even behind the door marked damer. Here, as it happened, you were, because his employer is concerned chiefly with Torbotten and doesn't give a damn about Ekofisk and Frigg, at least not at the moment. But don't ever count on Paul's being a friend of mine, or yours. Basically, he's a friend of Paul Denison and nobody else." I glanced down. "Well, what did our doggy contact slip into that slightly-too-large case when he took the money out?" I'd noticed earlier that the leather container, although it had all the right markings, didn't fit the glasses inside quite as well as it might have, for obvious reasons.

  Diana said, "Well, it's an envelope full of onionskin paper, with a lot of numbers and funny symbols and a lot of words in Norwegian that I couldn't understand. It looked like the kind of super-technical stuff I probably wouldn't understand if somebody translated it into English."

  I said, "At least they're keeping it simple. No microdots or microfilms or any of that jazz. Or tapes. After all that political mess in Washington, I couldn't look a tape in the face."

  "Well, you'd better take charge of it," she said. "You can have the responsibility of protecting it. I've done my part; I got it here at the risk of Denison and double pneumonia. Do you really think we have to watch out for Denison? After all, he's kind of on our side, isn't he? He wants Mr. Kotko to get this material and the Svolvaer material, doesn't he? Just as we do?"

  "Not necessarily just as we do," I said. "We don't deliver direct to Kotko, do we? We deliver to the Skipper who delivers to Kotko, isn't that right? At least that's what I gathered, indirectly, from something he said in Alesund, and Denison kind of confirmed it this morning. Of course, nobody tells me anything directly. It's more fun to watch me work blindfolded."

  "Poor Matt," she said. "B
ut you might try asking, some time. The answer is, yes, the Skipper will make contact with us on the ferry that goes from the Lofoten Islands to Narvik on the mainland. It's an overnight boat-ride, starting from Svolvaer at nine in the evening. The Skipper will take over everything as soon as he thinks it's safe; he'll take it from there, and get it to Kotko."

  "Sounds great," I said. "Of course, we've got to get it first."

  XV.

  THEY had some peculiar machinery on that ship. It ran all the time. In a way it was very restful. There was never that sudden, shocking, dead hush in the middle of the night when they pull into a port and everything shuts down and you lie in the eerie silence listening to the distant thumps and bumps on deck and waiting for all the shafts and gears and pistons, or whatever it is that runs the bucket, to go into soothing, rhythmic action once more so you can go back to sleep. . . .

  That last night on board, I awoke anyway, sometime after midnight. Something told me we weren't moving. I rose and glanced out the porthole and saw the lights of a little harbor reflected in the still water.

  "Where are we?" Diana's voice asked from behind me, thick with sleep.

  I said, "If I remember the schedule right, tonight it's either Br0nn0ysund, Sandnessj0en, or Nesna. Take your choice. Of course, this late in the season, they seem to be passing up some of the minor stops, so it may be that one or two of those candidates aren't in the running. In the morning we hit 0rnes, followed by Bod0 and Stamsund.

  Then comes the moment of truth, Svolvaer, at twenty-one hundred hours, nine pee em to you. Since the ferry to the mainland leaves at nine, you said, we probably couldn't make the connection if we wanted to. Anyway, we've got a bit of business to transact so we'll have to stay over in the Lofotens at least one full day."

  "We?" she said, invisible in the darkness. "Oooh, listen to the lousy male chauvinist! Anybody'd think he was the one who'd hiked endless miles in the freezing rain to keep the gas tanks of America from going dry, dry, dry. Anybody'd think he's the one who'll be standing all alone, like a target in a shooting gallery, on a windy hill beside an airstrip hewed from solid Arctic granite, or whatever kind of geology they have around here.... Matt."