Hamilton, Donald - Matt Helm 14 (6 page)

           
Maybe you're accustomed to calling a
government office and being greeted with a fancy organizational name. I'm not.
Ours isn't that kind of an office and we have no name. At least we hadn't the
last time I called
Washington
, less than a month ago.

           
Obviously, I'd just learned what Mac
had wanted me to learn, or part of it. There had been some kind of a shakeup,
the gobbledygook boys and girls had taken over, and we were now something
called the
Federal
Information
Center
, or a branch thereof. Well, such things
happen in
Washington
. To learn the full extent of the disaster,
I drew a long breath and called the same number again. I got a different girl,
but she'd learned her lilt at the same school.

           
"
Federal
Information
Center
."

           
I decided to try the head-on
approach and see what happened. "Give me Mac," I said.

           
"Mac? I'm sorry, sir, without
the full name I don't think I can. . . . Oh, yes, of course! You want the
Bureau of Public Safety. I'll connect you." I waited. Presently another
woman's voice came on the line. This was a severe, businesslike,
liltless
voice. "Bureau of Public Safety, Miss
Dodds
. With whom did you wish to speak, please?"

           
I didn't know any Miss
Dodds
. "
Gimme
Mac," I
said crudely, since that seemed to be the password.

           
"Who's calling, please?"

           
"Somebody who wants Mac,"
I said.

           
"Really, sir-" She broke
off. There was a brief pause; and her voice came again. "I'm sorry, sir.
You did say Mac, didn't you?"

           
"I did."

           
"Yes, of course. I'll see if I
can reach him on the temporary line,. His office is still in the old building
for the time being, and we haven't been able to make very satisfactory
arrangements. You know what telephone service is these days. Please hold."

           
Normally, calling the office in the
old building on a side street where
nobody'd
expect a
government office to be, I'd have got a girl who simply said hello, unless
there was a special message for a particular agent who was expected to have to
call from a bugged phone or a roomful of people. In that case the girl might tell
me I'd reached the residence of Mrs. Amos Aardvark, say, or the home of Mr.
Zachariah Xerxes. If the coded message was for me, I'd apologize for dialing
the wrong number and hang up. If it wasn't for me, I'd ignore it, say an
identifying word or two, and ask to be put through to
Godalmighty
,
the Big Cheese, the Mother Superior, or whatever other facetious name I chose
to employ. The whole transaction would generally take considerably less than
ten seconds. Obviously, things had changed.

           
There was a clacking in the phone,
and Miss
Dodds
' prim voice came again. "Sorry to
keep you waiting, sir. I'm trying to reach him for you. We've been having some
trouble with that connection. It's temporary, you know."

           
"So you said," I said.
"Keep plugging. That's a joke."

           
"Yes, sir. Ha-ha.. . here we
are now. Go ahead, sir."

           
The line she'd got me was fairly
noisy, but the voice speaking from the other end, while slightly weak, was
familiar and reassuring after all the abnormal yak-yak. It spoke three words,
mandatory secret-agent-type stuff. I spoke two words in return.

           
"Eric?"

           
"Yes, sir," I said.
"What the hell's going on in that madhouse city in the
Potomac
swamps, anyway? The Bureau of Public
Safety, for Christ's sake! Wasn't that who chopped off all those heads in the
French Revolution?"

           
"I believe you're thinking of
the Committee of Public Safety, Eric."

           
"Bureau, committee, what's the
difference?"

           
Mac's distant voice said
deliberately, "What's going on is, quote, a streamlined reorganization of
all governmental intelligence functions, unquote."

           
I said, "Again? If I remember
rightly, a guy tried to pull the same thing a few years back, only he knew so
little about intelligence operations that he couldn't even run his own outfit
without getting a bunch of communist agents planted on him, so the big deal
fell through. . . .Leonard. That was his name. Herbert Leonard."

           
"You have the right man, Eric.
Mr. Leonard is apparently a persistent individual and a skillful politician;
and this time he seems to have powerful backing."

           
"So it's serious, sir?"

           
"Quite serious. We are going to
have to be very circumspect for a while. Mr. Leonard has already given clear
indications that he doesn't like us very much. Just a minute. I have another
call." I waited until his voice spoke again in my ear. "Eric? What
were we talking about?"

           
"About the way Mr. Leonard
doesn't like us, presumably because of the way we helped to lower the boom on
him last time. Maybe he's afraid we'll do it again."

           
"Maybe. What kind of a vacation
did you have, Eric?"

           
"Lousy, sir," I said.
"My girl Friday turned out to be a missionary at heart, and somebody tried
to shoot me."

           
"Shoot you? What
happened?"

           
"He missed. Then,
unfortunately, he kind of drowned," I said. "They fished him out of
San Carlos
Bay
this morning. His death was strictly
accidental, of course."

           
"Of course. Do you have any
clue as to his motive?"

           
"No, sir. We never really got
on speaking terms."

           
"I see. Well, there are a
number of people employed by other nations who have reason not to be
particularly fond of you."

           
"Yes, sir."

           
"I don't want to seem to
dismiss an attempt on your life lightly, but there are reasons why I'm rather
disinterested in would-be murderers at the moment-as long as they are safely
dead, of course. We have trouble inside our own ranks. As you'll gather, it
couldn't have come at a worse time."

           
"No, sir. What's the
problem?"

           
"To put it bluntly, one of our
people has gone a bit berserk."

           
"It's an occupational hazard,
sir."

           
"Particularly among agents with
families, it seems. Whenever anything happens to their spouses or offspring,
their immediate reaction is to employ their training amid experience for
purposes of vengeance. It's always very awkward, but particularly right now."

           
"Yes, sir. Who's the current
berserker? Do I know him?"

           
"You did a job with him in
Cuba
. Agent Carl."

           
"A big blond guy. Sure, I
remember him. What's up with Carl?"

           
"Let's just say that he
received some rather bad news concerning a member of his family.

           
He called immediately afterwards to
say that he was resigning to take care of some private business. He said not to
send anyone to try to stop him, because anybody who was sent just wouldn't come
back." I couldn't help a wry laugh. Mac heard me, two-thirds of a
continent away. He spoke in a severe tone of voice: "You seem to find that
amusing,
Erie
. Why?"

           
"Only because I've used the
same line myself upon occasion, as you may remember, sir." I made a face
at the phone. "But you are sending somebody after Carl, in spite of his
warning."

           
"Yes. You."

           
"Thanks a whole lot, sir."

           
"He is presently in
Fort Adams
,
Oklahoma
, or somewhere nearby. We don't have his exact address. You'll contact
him and take whatever steps necessary to prevent him from involving us in a
scandal that could destroy us. I repeat, whatever steps are necessary. Do I
make myself clear?"

           
"Yes, sir," I said.
"You always do, sir. But if Carl has resigned, officially, how do his
actions reflect on us?"

           
"Don't be naïve, Eric. Mr.
Leonard is just waiting for an excuse to crack down on us. Do you think he'll
let a little thing like a resignation stand in his way?"

           
"It's a point," I
admitted. "Well, you'd better give me Carl's current description. These
days of long hair and beards I might not recognize him. That
Cuba
assignment was a long time ago.

           
Oh, and if it isn't too
confidential, you might tell me precisely what the news was that sent him off
his trolley. . .

           
The girl was back in the station
wagon when I returned to it. I signed the charge slip for the gasoline and got
behind the wheel. We didn't speak until we were out of
Nogales
, heading up the four-lane freeway towards
Tucson
. It's a funny thing, much as I enjoy
Mexico
, and much as I detest that interminable
border hassle, I always feel a sense of relief and relaxation when I'm back in
the
US
with American gas in the tank.

           
"Well?" Martha said at
last.

           
"What do you know about
something called the
Federal
Information
Center
?"

           
"Just what everybody
knows," she said. "FINC is the brainchild of a red-faced,
white-haired, smoothie political type named Leonard, who's mounted a real slick
takeover operation with powerful political support."

           
"What did you call it?"

           
She laughed. "Officially, it's
abbreviated FTC, but everybody calls it FINC. What else would you call a
national collection of snoops and spooks?" After a moment, she glanced at
me.

           
"Did you talk to . . . him?
What did he say?"

           
I reported my conversation with Mac,
practically verbatim, and said, "Apparently, we are now the Bureau of
Public Safety, operating under said FINC."

           
"Well, we've got lots of
company, Mr. Helm. The CIA's latest overseas booboo and J.

           
Edgar's recent death made it
relatively easy for Herbert Leonard. Obviously, it was time for a change, or
Congress thought it was, and he's it. The whole ball of wax. All the nation's
intelligence agencies wrapped up in one glorious unified package. You must have
read about it."

           
I said, "Hell, I don't read the
papers when I'm on leave. Particularly when I'm on leave in
Mexico
. I don't listen to the radio, either."

           
"No, all you do is make eyes at
skinny blondes." Martha spoke without altering her voice or turning her
head. "Tell me, was she really any good in bed? She was tall enough even
for you, but it didn't seem to me there was enough of her, crosswise, to give a
man any real satisfaction."

           
I said, "Hush your dirty mouth,
Borden. What do you know about an agent of ours with the code name Carl?"

           
Martha hesitated. "Well,"
she said after a moment, "his real name is Anders Janssen. He's on the
list. There are ten names, eleven including you. He is number six, if that
matters, but you were supposed to find him in
New Orleans
, where he'd been sent to hide out until the
right time came, and the right man, meaning you."