The Terminators Page 21

  "So you decided to go after Kotko, just like that."

  He said, 'That's right." He hesitated, and gave me that quick, boyish grin once more. "It was great, son, really great. I knew I had to get him to Norway where I had friends. I hadn't had a problem like that to solve since the end of the big shooting. No commanding officers, no Navy Regulations, no Uniform Code of Military Justice, just the great old feeling of being on your own with just one thing in mind: how are you going to put it over on the sons-a-bitches, really put it over on them, get them running one way while you go the other and strike where nobody's expecting you. The old razzle-dazzle, Mr. Helm. And it worked, by God. Crazy as it was, it worked!"

  I said, "I can see a bunch of dumb Washington bureaucrats falling for it, several thousand miles away, if you made it look attractive enough. But how the hell did Kotko and Elfenbein get fooled? They're supposed to know something about oil."

  Priest snorted. "Not Kotko. Not really. Basically, he's a money-man, not an oil-man. He thinks he knows something about oil, that's all. And he runs the kind of one-man show where everybody just tells the boss what he wants to hear. He's very proud of his reputation for spotting profitable situations ahead of the crowd. I figured, with all the smoke and dust I was stirring up, he'd be intrigued enough to want to see my pretty pictures before he made up his mind. He knew enough to know they were phony when he saw them, but by that time it was too late—or would have been, if you hadn't interfered. Why the hell couldn't you mind your own damned business, son?"

  "It was my business," I said. "You made it my business. And Elfenbein?"

  "Well, I'll tell you," he said. "I was worried about Doctor Ivory, I really was, at first, when I heard Aloco'd hired him. I thought he'd blow the whistle on me for sure, but he didn't, so actually he turned out to be the best card in my hand. If Elfenbein was after it, Kotko was sure to want it."

  The old sea-dog was really slinging the metaphors— smoke, dust, whistles, and cards—but his rhetorical style was the least of my worries. I said, "But Elfenbein's supposed to be a genius in the field. He must have known he was being sent to hunt for an impossible gadget. How do you figure that?"

  "Well, there are two possibilities. After all, the man's the biggest crook out of jail. Maybe he decided to take Aloco's money and give them the papers they wanted without bothering to tell them the stuff was worthless. If they balked at the payoff, he could threaten them with making the whole illicit deal public; they couldn't afford that. Our doctor isn't above a bit of polite blackmail. But then again—" Priest hesitated. "What if the gadget wasn't impossible? Oh, this glorified three-way sewage system is a phony, sure; but maybe it could be done, what we were just pretending to do. Maybe friend Ivory knew it could be done, and wanted to see if we'd hit on a good way of doing it. Interesting thought, eh?" He sighed. "It makes me fear for humanity, son. You never saw such a bunch of larcenous bastards in your life. ... Of course, I had to play some dirty tricks, too, but you've always got to play some dirty tricks. Somebody always gets hurt. That's the price you pay."

  I didn't say anything. After a moment, he said, a little defensively, "The guy deserved it, son. You can't say he didn't deserve it."

  I said, "I told you. You can have Kotko. Any time. We hold no brief for Kotko."

  "Responsibility," said Priest. "Nobody's willing to accept responsibility these days. The Army blames its atrocities on its junior officers, and the colonels and generals stay safe behind their desks. In Washington, the little fish get hooked and the big fish get away. And the businessmen whose business is to supply us with this and that say it's all the fault of somebody else, so walk, swabbie—or drown. We've got to bring the responsibility home to them, son. They've got to learn that when they shaft somebody, they'd better lock the doors and windows, because somebody'll be coming for them sooner or later."

  I looked at him, seeing a tough old gent who'd casually caused the deaths of several people in his elaborate effort to kill a man he'd never seen. Well, I've caused a few deaths myself, from time to time, and a hundred years from now an impartial jury might have trouble deciding they'd all occurred for valid and important reasons. The moral judgment wasn't mine to make.

  Practically speaking, however, the fact was that Captain Henry Priest, USN, Ret., had put his country and its local representative, me, in an impossible situation. His wild homicidal joke wouldn't look very funny in the public press, with a retired U.S. naval officer getting jailed or executed for murder and international conspiracy and various U.S. government officials getting dragged into the mess, including perhaps a certain mysterious U.S. agent and his mysterious chief. And then, of course, there was the personal factor. ...

  Mac could handle his friendships without help from me; but it was still my gun the old seadog was aiming at me, and I was just a little tired of the highfalutin rhetoric. It was time to bring the conversation down to earth.

  I drew a long breath and said harshly, "You're a hell of a one to talk about responsibility. Hank, when you can't even admit that you drowned your own wife."

  There was a lengthy silence. When he spoke, his voice sounded a little thin, a little distant, almost like the emasculated voice of L. A. Kotko.

  "What do you mean, son? It was an accident."

  "Accident, hell," I said. "Civilian landlubbers have boating accidents. U.S. naval officers don't have boating accidents. Would you have the nerve to get up in front of a court-martial and call that demonstration of nautical incompetence an accident, Captain Priest?"

  It was unfair, of course. By normal standards, Frances Priest had died quite accidentally, with no serious blame attached to anybody under the circumstances; but I knew I was dealing with a man who did not operate according to normal standards. I'd spent a little time around the Naval Academy once, and I'd had enough contact with the finished product in the Hne of business to know how they were trained. Regardless of what anybody else would think about the incident—just plain bad luck, the average boatman would say—I knew an Annapolis man would not accept that excuse, or any excuse. There is no luck in the Navy. There's only good seamanship and bad seamanship.

  "Who're you trying to kid, Hank?" I said. "You know damned well who was responsible. It was your ship, all thirty feet of it. You were in command. You made the decision to gamble on running the inlet with insufficient fuel, instead of waiting for the Coast Guard outside. . . ." Something in his face gave me the clue, and I went on: "Or did you let your wife talk you into it? Was that the way it was? She insisted that you had to get that injured boy to the hospital pronto and you got mad at her for interfering with your running of the ship and stalked up forward, letting her climb into the tower and take the boat through. When the engines died, as you knew they would, you flung the anchor over angrily without checking. . . . And what the hell kind of a naval officer is it who blames a fouled-up, short-tempered operation like that on a dumb gas pump attendant and a stray millionaire, Captain Priest?"

  It was the thing that had brought him here; the thing he couldn't face. He wasn't about to face it now. I saw his expression change; now there was something ugly and mad and broken in the pale blue eyes. His hand tightened on the Smith and Wesson and he leaned over the table to fire, forgetting the basic principle that guns were invented to kill at a distance; close up, you might as well use a club.

  My left hand got the revolver, deflecting his first and only shot. My right hand slipped the little Colt .25 out of Kotko's fur cap lying on the table. I got all six into him before he fell, taking his own gun—well, my gun, Diana's gun—with him. He was welcome to it now.

  The tiny automatic closed after the last shot, instead of locking open as most of them do to facilitate reloading. Since I didn't want to be caught with anything that even looked like a loaded gun, I tossed it out into the middle of the rug, where they'd see it as they came boiling up the stairs. I waited with my empty hands in plain sight. . . .

  XXIV.

  I WOKE up in a Narvik hospital. Alt
hough it was as anonymous as any hospital room, I knew it was in Narvik. Hell, I'd ridden ten kilometers over a damned rough, snowy road to get here, in some kind of a bastard jeep-type vehicle without any springs to speak of, with my shoulder on fire from three old slugs out of a practically prehistoric weapon—fortunately the ancient Sten gun had jammed after three. I even remembered stumbling up the steps to the office of a doctor who, we'd been told, remembered Sigmund and would probably make discreet arrangements if we used the right words on him. We?

  I tried to remember. I wanted to remember all by myself, but the assignment had been complicated by a number of girls. . . . Girls? I remembered, and opened my eyes, and there was the blonde, sitting on a straight-backed hospital chair, knitting. I didn't know people actually knitted any more.

  "Hi, Misty," I said. "Or do you prefer Jan?" I was just showing off my phenomenal memory.

  "Oh, you're awake." She put the knitting aside nearly, sticking in the needles the way they do. She rose and came to the bed. "How do you feel?"

  "Like somebody'd dug a bushel of slugs out of my shoulder. Did you get a message out like I asked you?"

  "I called the Oslo number and explained the situation. There have been no police, but there's a man here to see you. American, middle-aged. Gray hair, black eyebrows. Shall I get him?"

  "Just a minute." I frowned at her for a moment. She was a nice-looking kid, in her snub-nosed way and I remembered that she'd displayed considerable guts and something that might be called integrity, a rare commodity these days. "Just what the hell do you think you're doing here?" I asked. "Isn't it about time you learned not to volunteer?"

  She grinned. "I didn't volunteer. For you, I was drafted, remember? They threw us both out of the car together and told me I'd better see that you were taken care of quietly, or else."

  I said, "How long ago was that? And you're still here? What are you trying to prove, Jan Morrow?"

  Her eyes had narrowed a little, hurt. "Do you mind?"

  "As a matter of fact," I said, "I do mind. Because I think you're letting your romantic imagination run away with you. I think you've kidded yourself into, some funny ideas about this business; and maybe even about me as a knight in shining armor or something, fighting dragons on behalf of poor defenseless millionaires. Well, let me tell you something about Sir Matthew Helm, doll. I didn't risk my life for Lincoln Alexander Kotko. I just risked my life to get him the hell out of there for political reasons and because I had to stop the man who was after him before that man loused things up for everybody."

  "But you did save Linc's life," she pointed out.

  "For the moment," I said. "But he's probably dead by this time; and if not, he soon will be."

  She started to speak quickly, and checked herself. She was silent for several seconds. "Why?" she asked at last.

  "It's an old story, an old betrayal," I said. "There was a man who was bought, and a man who bought. Two men died as a result, and a girl, but she wasn't one of us so she doesn't really concern us. But a little retribution is necessary; and the man who was bought prefers to live, so I think he'll take care of his buyer for us, settling the score."

  ''Denison is going to kill Linc? Why?"

  "I told you; because Denison prefers to live. And because I asked him to."

  "That's . .. pretty cold-blooded, isn't it?"

  I said, "I knew you'd catch on, if you really concentrated, Misty Moreau."

  Her face was pale. "I ... I guess I was being a little romantic. Thanks for setting me straight."

  "De nada, as we say in our fluent Spanish. Send in that guy with the eyebrows as you go out, will you?"

  I watched her leave, a nicely built girl in jeans, with that long, silvery hair. I told myself I really didn't think much of girls in jeans who bleached their hair and if she just kept going and put a lot of distance between us, maybe she wouldn't be in the line of fire if somebody decided to open up on me with a real, modem machine gun that wouldn't jam, or heave a knife or a bomb or a bucket of acid. Noble. The fact is, I'm kind of a one-girl man—one girl at a time, at least. I hadn't quite got over the previous incumbent. Although this was quite a good specimen, I wasn't in the market for any silvery blondes today.

  Mac came in, wearing his usual gray suit and his usual expressionless face. He closed the door carefully behind him, pulled the chair Misty had used closer to the bed, and sat down. He didn't ask about my health. He'd have checked with the doctors about that; why waste time soliciting amateur opinions when you can get the straight word from the pros?

  "Priest?" he said.

  "Taken care of," I said. There was a little pause. I went on, "That's the phrase you used. Take care of him, you said. I told him you'd said for me to look after him, but those were not the actual words you'd employed, and they don't mean quite the same thing in this context." He still said nothing. I asked, "How did you know, sir?"

  "He lied to me." Mac looked up. Maybe there was a hint of pain in the cold gray eyes. He went on softly: "After thirty years, Eric, he walked into my office and lied to me, and thought I wouldn't know. It wasn't even a very convincing lie. Of course, I had to investigate."

  "And while you were investigating," I said, "you sent him what he'd asked for:- me. But with reservations. You carefully didn't tell me we were doing this one for good old Hank Priest because he was such a grand fellow and we owed him so much. No, you pulled the need-to-know gag and sent me to Norway cold, expecting to make contact with a perfect stranger. Eventually, I got smart and asked myself why you'd wanted me to look on good old Hank as a stranger. And I found out." I grimaced. "I'd like to point out, respectfully, that there's a good deal to be said for using the English language, sir. One of these days the ESP connections are going to break down. I'm going to misread the brainwaves or misinterpret the double-talk. Maybe I already have?" I made it a question.

  He shook his head. "No. It had to be done. Too much was involved; too many people. He'd spread it too wide, made it too complicated, too dangerous. I think. ... I think he was really trying to commit suicide, Eric."

  "He sure went the long way around the barn to do it," I said. "But you could be right." "Where is he now?"

  "They took him. His old Norwegian comrades in arms. Maybe they'll put him in a Viking ship and set it on fire and let it sail into the sunset. . . . There was a man named Lars. He stopped the others from finishing me off, after the gim of the first guy up the stairs jammed up tight. Lars said that Sigmund must not be known to have died, at least not like that. He said they would handle that problem, if we'd do our best to hush up the rest. I said we'd try."

  "The diplomatic circuits have been very busy," Mac said. "Judicious pressure has been applied here and there. His total disappearance will help. But why did they follow him on such a wild and pointless adventure, those old friends of his?"

  I shrugged. "I can only quote old Lars. He said, It is not so interesting a life we lead today.''

  "How did he die?"

  We were no longer talking about Lars. I looked at the man beside the bed, and said, "The details don't really matter, do they, sir?"

  "Tell me." It was an order.

  I said, "I let them find two guns and a knife on me. They figured that was enough weapons for any one man, and didn't look further. I used a lousy little hideout .25, one full clip and the cartridge in the chamber. You never know what kind of a job a pipsqueak gun like that is going to do."

  "Very well." He drew a long breath and changed the subject. "You may be interested to hear that Kotko is dead. The Paris Herald has it, in case you want to read about it in English. Here. Financier shot to death in argument with bodyguard, who has disappeared. Would you know anything about that, Eric?"

  "Yes, sir," I said. "I thought you'd be willing to settle for Kotko, since he was the man actually responsible for our trouble seven years ago, and since you don't much like political pressure or the gents who exert it. I needed Denison's help and I figured it earned him a break. And I won't go
after him again, sir. You can't kill everybody."

  There was a little silence. "Very well. We will consider the whole matter closed, Eric." It was a big concession. We don't usually try to tell him what we will or won't do, or get away with it if we do try. "As for killing everybody, somebody seems to be making an effort in that direction. A young man named Yale, Norman Yale, was found floating in the Vestfjord off the Lofoten Islands. Any ideas?"

  "Probably Elfenbem," I said. "He may have learned that Yale was selling him out to anybody who'd buy. Or he may just have been covering his tracks after an unsuccessful job." I hesitated. "Has anybody heard anything about a girl calling herself Madeleine Barth, or Diana Lawrence?"

  "No," Mac said, "there have been no reports of a woman being found, dead or alive, under circumstances occasioning comment. It's just as well. We've had enough troublesome comments already. But I think it's all under control now." He rose. "The doctors inform me that you will probably make a fast recovery, Eric, I am happy to say."

  I said deliberately, "I'm happy you're happy, sir."

  He looked at me for a long moment. He said quietly, "I know. I gave the instructions, and you interpreted them correctly. I have no complaints. It had to be done."

  I watched him leave the room. We'd never been exactly friends, but we'd been closer at other times than we were at the moment. Well, as he'd often told me, friendship has no place in our line of work. I slid down into the bed and went to sleep. When I awoke, she was standing there, with a clean white bandage on her hand.

  She was a little paler than I remembered her and she was wearing a neat, wool dress and moderately high heels. I'd never before seen her in anything but slacks. Her legs were slim and lovely and her eyes were green and angry as she looked at me, moving closer.