The Terminators Read online

  "What?"

  "About Robbie. I've been thinking. Robbie might have betrayed us. I don't think he did, but I suppose it's possible. But he'd never have betrayed Evelyn. He'd never have done anything to put her into a position where she might get hurt."

  "And he didn't," I said. "At least he did his best not to. Whether it was Wetherill or somebody else, he was very careful not to give the Elfenbein forces the name of the courier, remember?"

  "What does that prove?"

  "Well, whoever talked out of class had all the other information. He knew about the specific drops, the binoculars, and the whole password routine. Little Greta rattled it all off word-perfect, if you recall. Is it likely that her informant really didn't know who the Skipper was sending north to pick up the stuff? But he held it back, that's the significant point. He fixed it so they couldn't grab Evelyn on her way to join me, and dispose of her before she got to Bergen; they didn't know her. They had to wait until she stepped aboard the ship and asked for a certain cabin. In other words, he'd arranged it so she'd be safe until she'd arrived where she'd be under the protection of that infallible super-bodyguard, M. Helm."

  "Do you like kicking yourself because it feels so good when you stop?" Diana murmured. "Well, never mind. Do you want to know something? I'm still scared. When I think of what happened to Evelyn, and Robbie, I get all jellylike inside, particularly when you mention nasty words like Svolvaer and Elfenbein."

  I grinned in the dark. "You love it," I said. "You told me so yourself. It makes you feel alive. It makes you feel real."

  "It makes me feel real, all right," she said. "Come here and I'll show you how real I feel." I went, and she showed. It was a very convincing demonstration for a girl who had, at our first meeting, impressed me as being rather pale and dull. A long time later, she said, "Matt."

  "Uhuh."

  "Is it considered very improper to talk about love? Among secret agents, I mean?"

  I lay in the warm, crowded little berth and listened to the steady beat of the ship's machinery. "Very improper," I said.

  "Well, I’m a very improper person, darling. At least I seem to be getting that way fast after long years of strict propriety—well, more or less strict. And I'm falling very much in love with you, I think." After a while, when I didn't speak, she said, "Did you hear me?"

  "I heard you."

  "Well?"

  "Physical relations, even intimate physical relations, are permissible between operatives," I said formally. "Emotional attachments, on the other hand, are frowned upon, ma'am."

  "Then it's just as well that I'm not really an operative, I'm just a girl," she said. "May I ask, sir, if you feel no emotional attachment whatever?"

  I said, "You're an inquisitive bitch. I'll take the Fifth on that one. Judge. Go to sleep."

  She laughed softly, and fell asleep in my arms. The following morning I slipped ashore at one stop and made a call to Oslo. In the evening, after an otherwise uneventful day of steaming through spectacular scenery frosted with snow at the higher elevations—we were now north of the Arctic Circle—we landed in Svolvaer in the dark.

  There seemed to be nobody waiting, hostile or friendly, to greet us on the lighted dock. There seemed to be no sinister figures lurking in the shadows. Presently some taxis materialized. I commandeered one. It transported us and our luggage to a hotel not far from the waterfront; a blocky, red, frame building several stories high, with one of those tiny elevators beloved by Europeans. After the formalities at the desk had been concluded, the diminutive cage carried us up to our room—all pretense of chastity had been discarded, and we were now, for the record, Mr. and Mrs. Helm—where we were greeted by the usual tiny Norwegian beds, two of them, side by side in the middle of the floor.

  They displayed another Norsk sleeping trick, which is to pass up the normal bedding arrangements in favor of a single bottom sheet. A bolster or comforter protected by a kind of linen bag serves as a unified substitute for top sheet and blankets. This all-in-one contraption is carefully sized so it's too small to tuck in all around. On a cold night, you keep nice and warm chasing the slippery, elusive thing as it tries to escape to the floor.

  Sometime after we'd settled down sedately in our separate toy beds like the blase married folks we were now supposed to be, I heard the whistle from the direction of the docks signaling the ship's departure. It made me feel deserted and lonely. I'd become kind of dependent on that floating home, I guess, and on the competent captain I'd never seen. It was like being expelled from a warm, safe womb into a cold, hard, friendless world.

  "Matt."

  "Yes," I said.

  "Maybe I should have gone to the airport right away," Diana said worriedly. "What if you're wrong. What if our contact expected. . . ."

  "He'll wait till morning," I said. "He's supposed to be a timid type, and he didn't pick an exposed hilltop for the drop for nothing. He wants to see who's sneaking up on him. He can't do that in the dark. And I'm not going to have you scrambling around strange Arctic rocks in the middle of the night. You might fall and break a leg, and

  I'd have to shoot you; and I'm short of cartridges for the only gun I have that's worth a damn—just Bj0rn's one clip, with one shot gone already."

  "You're all heart," she said. "I'm so glad you care. Good night, darling."

  I didn't sleep, of course. Not tonight. I was all caught up on my sleep. I'd had plenty of sleep on the ship, despite distractions and there were things to be figured out—but I couldn't figure them out.

  Actually, I'd worked all the combinations in my head already, several times. Now I made a last effort to see if there wasn't something I'd missed, some other way it could be done. If there was, I couldn't find it. It would have to be a sacrifice play. All I could do, besides keep the losses as low as possible, was make as certain as possible that the gambit would pay off. That, I reflected grimly, would make it all worthwhile as far as the big boys were concerned—the big Washington boys, one in particular. They never concern themselves much with minor losses as long as you can present them with major payoffs.

  At eleven o'clock, still wide awake, I got up and started dressing in the dark. I heard Diana stir.

  "No," I said. "No lights, doll."

  "What are you going to do?"

  "Sneak out of here, making like the invisible man, I hope. When you keep your airport appointment, I'll be somewhere around. It's several kilometers out of town, according to the guy at the desk. I'd better do it on foot and keep out of sight while I'm doing it, and I want to be there ahead of anybody else with the same idea, so I'm giving myself plenty of lead time."

  There was a long silence while she thought it over. When she spoke, her voice was quite steady: "All right, if you think it will work. I certainly won't mind a bit of moral support out there; but if you won't be here to hold my hand when I leave for the rendezvous, you'd better brief me now. For instance, when should I start?"

  "Wait for daylight," I said. "At this latitude, this time of year, the sun won't actually be up until well after eight, but there's a long morning twilight. It'll probably start getting light, after a fashion, sometime around five. Wait until you can really see. As I said, I don't think our contact will risk approaching you until it's good and light out there, and anyway, I need reasonable illumination to cover you properly."

  "Should I. . . . should I kind of talk to myself in here when I get up, to make it sound as if you're still here?"

  "Swell," I said. "We'll make a lady superspy of you yet."

  "What about transportation? Should I figure on walking, too?"

  "That's not necessary," I said. "To put it bluntly, you're just as vulnerable on foot as you are in a cab. We're gambling that they'll play it cool, like in Trondheim, until we actually have the information they want. That's the logical thing for them to do, wait until it's all in one place before they grab it."

  "What makes you so certain they're even around. Matt? Maybe you really put the fear of God into them, i
sn't it possible, in spite of what Denison said? There hasn't been a sign of anybody since we left them on the dock back in Molde."

  I said, "Dr. Elfenbein has been masterminding his specialized brand of larceny too long to be scared off by a little hole in the hand. It'll only make him more determined to beat us. This is just his modus operandi, as we sleuths call it. He used it on me in Bergen, remember, leaving me strictly alone, no signs of surveillance, until the time came to hit and hit hard."

  "You're such a cheerful man to work with," she said. "Always looking on the bright side."

  Finished dressing, I sat down on the edge of her little bed. "Of course, I may have it figured wrong," I said. "The crystal ball is a little cloudy. It could happen earlier than I think. That could leave me hiding behind a rock way outside town twiddling my thumbs while you're impersonating Custer's Last Stand somewhere along the route, or even in here."

  "Like I said, cheerful," she murmured. "Any advice to cover that happy eventuality?"

  "Here are some extra cartridges for the gun I lent you," I said. "Keep them handy. I showed you how to reload. And remember, a firearm is not a magic wand, and you're not anybody's fairy godmother. I think I mentioned that before."

  "Mention it again," she said. "Let me see if I remember."

  "You've got to shoot the thing to accomplish anything significant," I said. "Just waving it around chanting ancient incantations like 'Put your hands up,' or 'Drop that' gun,' or 'Don't come any closer or I'll pull the trigger,' won't buy you a thing. Yank it out and fire it or leave it alone. And if you shoot it, do a good job. Use both hands like I showed you, hold steady, keep firing, and really perforate that target. Never mind the Cossacks attacking from the left flank and the Apaches galloping in from the right, whooping and hollering. Get that guy in front of you and get him good. You'll be surprised how discouraging one thoroughly dead gent can be to a lot of people." I hesitated. "Oh, and don't let anybody talk you into giving up that pistol, no matter how prettily he pleads."

  "What do you mean?" she demanded indignantly. "I'm not likely to—"

  "You've never been there, sweetheart," I said gently. "You don't really know what you're likely to do until you do it. Just don't fall for that line about how we're all reasonable people here and just hand over that gun, you know you're not really going to shoot it, my dear, so please pass it across and let's talk things over in a civilized manner. . . . Don't give it to anybody, and if somebody tries to take it, figure that's all the proof you need of his hostile intentions, and blast him to hell right then."

  She gave a short little laugh. "It sounds as if I'll be wading knee deep in blood, come morning."

  "Probably not," I said. "If you're ready to use that revolver on the slightest provocation, if you're absolutely certain in your mind that nobody but nobody is going to take it from you until it's empty and you're dead, you'll probably make it without firing a shot. People don't like to go up against a hairtrigger lady just licking her lips in happy anticipation of a gory massacre. If you march straight at them, letting them know you're prepared to make your fight right there, live or die, they'll probably let you through. But if you start trying to figure out some easy, safe, noiseless, bloodless way of doing it, if you start worrying about laws and morals, and how much racket you'll make and what the folks back home will think, if you attempt one of those idiot stick-them-up-or-I'll-shoot routines you've seen in the movies, well, it's been nice knowing you, kid. Til put some posies on your grave, if I can find it. ..."

  I didn't know where the back door of the hotel was located, and it didn't matter anyway. If there was one, and if they were working at surveillance, they'd have it covered. I was betting, however, that Dr. Elfenbein would be a victim of his own modus operandi. Once they find something that works pretty well, they tend to get hung up on it, particularly if they have a tendency towards believing they're smarter than other folks. I was gambling that, enamoured of his own cleverness, Elfenbein would keep his people well back so as not to alert us, until the time came for action. After all, he undoubtedly knew where we were, and he certainly knew where we'd be going in the morning, or Diana would. He didn't have to keep watch on us.

  Whether I had him figured right or wrong, nobody followed me away from the hotel. After making sure of this, I hiked back towards the center of Svolvaer and past it, and found the taxi waiting near the dock at the point the driver had indicated, never mind how, while taking us to the hotel, earlier. I got into the rear, and he drove away.

  "Sorry to keep you waiting," I said, and we went through a little secret-agent business.

  "You are Eric," he said, when the formal identification procedure had been concluded. "I am Rolf."

  "Happy to know you, Rolf," I said. "What are your instructions concerning me?"

  "The man in Washington signals, by way of Oslo, that you are to be helped in every way possible, short of homicide. That is not my specialty. I understand it is yours. What do you need, friend Eric?" I told him.

  XVI.

  SIGMUND!" said the old lady. "That wicked, bloodthirsty man with a heart of stone!"

  She was a rather striking old lady, with white hair done up in a bun at the nape of her neck, and a seamed, peasant face as rugged as the rocky island on which she lived. From the lined old face looked a pair of young, bright-blue eyes. Her English was considerably better than average for her generation—I doubt they taught it in the schools back when she was that age, although they do now —but otherwise she was the kind of old lady you'd expect to find, in a long, old-fashioned dress, rocking peacefully by the fire of a picturesque old Scandinavian farmhouse as she knitted warm winter clothes for her grandchildren's children.

  Actually I'd found her, in slacks and a sweater, sitting on an unfortunate couch, the Nordic equivalent of Grand Rapids modem, in a fairly new little house that, with certain concessions to local tastes and weather conditions, could have been lifted bodily from any U.S. housing development catering to lower-middle income groups. The slick little living room had no more character than a motel unit. It differed from its American counterpart only in that there was no television set. Instead, there was a good-sized and fairly expensive radio, to which the old lady had been listening when Rolf showed me in. She'd turned it off, politely, to entertain me, while Rolf disappeared to make certain arrangements.

  I said, "You should make allowances, Mrs. Sigurdsen. All men have hearts of stone when there's a war to be fought."

  "All men do not let hostages die, min herre. All men do not send brave volunteer fighters to their deaths in order to create a mere—what do you call it, diversion, distraction? All men do not sink ships and wait on shore to cut the throats of those who escape the icy waters. Even Germans, even Nazis, are human beings, min herre; although I will admit I had some doubts at the time. But not to be slaughtered when they are helpless and lined up on the beach in stiff rows, like dead fish. Six hundred Germans died that night and half a dozen of our men, including one of my sons, were sacrificed in cold blood so that the killing could take place. Sigmund! And now he comes again; and again the men follow him, like so many sheeps—"

  She stopped as Rolf came back into the room. "Grandmother!" be protested. "Whatever you think of Sigmund, he is this gentleman's good friend."

  "Then this gentleman should know what kind of a good friend he has; a man who will let him die without a moment's hesitation, just so he can kill, kill, kill."

  "Grandmother, please!"

  It was a new slant on Hank Priest, who'd always seemed to me a fairly conventional gent for a military man. Of course, you don't make a career of the armed forces if homicide bothers you terribly; but I hadn't realized the Skipper had made quite such a hobby of it in his younger days. Ingenious, effective, and ruthless, Mac had said. Well, I was hardly in a position to pass judgment, considering my own profession.

  I followed Rolf out of the house and got into the taxi beside him. "How did it go?" I asked.

  "Communications were
satisfactory," he said. "The aircraft will be there at o-seven-thirty as you requested. It will land at the usual signal. The formalities are being arranged, so there will be no official interference. You must not mind Grandmother. My uncle, the one who died, was her favorite son, I think."

  ''Sure," I said. "Tell me about it. ... Oh, take me somewhere near the airport road, where I can get out without being seen. I'll walk from there."

  "Very well." He turned a comer, and said, "The way it started, I was told, was a guerrilla raid on Blomdal, a little village down the coast. Five German soldiers were killed. The Nazi colonel was very angry. He took hostages, ten for each dead man. If the guilty did not give themselves up, he proclaimed, the hostages would die. Nobody surrendered. The fifty hostages were shot. Sigmund disappeared. He was not heard from for months. It was thougt that remorse had affected him, perhaps, or that his superiors in England had disapproved of his behavior and withdrawn him permanently. The Germans relaxed. Then one night there was a strong attack—at least it looked like a strong attack; actually it was carried out by only a handful of men—on a munitions depot at Varsj0en, back in the hills. But a big attack had been expected. A quisling had given information. The Germans were ready. They had a great trap prepared, utilizing every soldier who could be spared; they were going to catch Sigmund at last—"

  "Did the men know they were being sent into a trap?" "It is said they did not. It is also said that the informer had actually been fed his information by one of Sigmund's agents. All this has been said, but it has not been proved. The facts are that, with most of the Nazi soldiers engaged back in the mountains, Sigmund was free to make his arrangements on the coast by Rosviken, through which a troop transport was scheduled to pass that night." "Rosviken," I said. "The Bay of Roses. Nice." "Yes, there were red roses blooming there that night," said Rolf, apparently a poet at heart. "Everything went as planned. The explosion occurred at the proper time and place. The ship sank. The German troops that were not killed outright, and did not die of exposure or drowning, were dispatched by Sigmund's guerrillas as they struggled ashore. In the morning, on the door of the Nazi headquarters, was a neat sign in German. I'll try to translate: TEN FOR ONE IS THE GAME, HERR OBERST. YOUR MOVE."