Hamilton, Donald - Matt Helm 14 (8 page)

           
"Who is he? Is he dead?"

           
Crouching beside the body, I looked
up at Martha Borden who, shod at last, had come up behind me.

           
"He's dead," I said.
"As for who he is, I have a hunch I'm not going to like it when I learn
the answer to that question."

           
I got the wallet out of the hip
pocket and found that I was perfectly right. The first identification card I
came to told me that I was looking at what remained of Mr. Joseph Armistead
Tolley
, age twenty-four, special agent of the Bureau of
Internal Security of the
Federal
Information
Center
of the
United States of America
.

           
The man inside the Ford was also
dead. I didn't haul him out to see exactly what had killed him. I just checked
for a pulse in a dangling wrist and didn't find any. This one was older, his
name was Howard March, and he was a senior special agent for the same bureau.
Why the senior man had been doing the driving puzzled me briefly; but I
reminded myself that I prefer to handle the wheel myself, no matter how many
bright young people I have along to help me.

           
Maybe Howard had felt the same way.

           
With sonic difficulty, I got the
identification folder-unlike his assistant, he'd carried it separately-back
into the inside coat pocket where I'd found it. I looked around. We'd left some
footprints, and there would be tire tracks along the dirt road that a police
technician could have lots of fun with, taking measurements and making casts to
his heart's content. It didn't worry me greatly. If police intervention had
been wanted, I'd have been stopped by an efficient
Arizona
state trooper hours ago. This was private
business-well, private government business-and I had a hunch a lot of people
would work very hard to keep it that way. They didn't need casts and measurements
to learn whom they were after. They knew.

           
The girl beside me licked her lips.
"Well!" she said. "I hope you're satisfied now! Now that you've
killed two fellow-agents due to some kind of a crazy misunderstanding-"

           
"Three," I said.
"Don't forget Mr. Joel Patterson and his crazy misunderstood little 7mm
Magnum rifle. I'll lay you army odds you like that if we check him out
carefully, we'll find that F1NC paid his salary, too, not to mention supplying
him with firearms and ammunition." I cut her off when, aghast and
incredulous, she tried to speak. "Let's get out of here," I said.
"It's not much of a road, but somebody must use it occasionally or they
wouldn't have bothered to build it in the first place."

           
Martha Borden was silent during the
ride back to
Tucson
, which was just as well. Spending three weeks' vacation with an
incurable sentimentalist had been bad enough; dragging one along during working
hours was getting to be a terrible strain on my tolerance. I pulled into the
first filling station that had a public telephone and asked the man to fill the
tank. We'd driven barely a hundred miles since
Nogales
, but the giant mill up front had an
impressive thirst.

           
Under the circumstances, I figured a
full tank was a reasonable precaution.

           
"Come on," I said to the
girl, and led her to the phone in a corner of the parking area. "I'm
calling
Washington
," I said, fishing for a coin. "I
want you to listen. It will save me a lot of explanations. Don't say anything.
Just listen."

           
I dialed the number-the special
number, this time- and got the connection after a lot of buzzing and clicking.
Audibility wasn't even as good as the last time. When the familiar voice came
on, I could barely hear it. We went through the same identification procedure
as before.

           
"Where are you, Eric?"

           
I tilted the receiver so the girl
could hear. "
Tucson
,
Arizona
, sir," I said. "I had the bright
idea of spending the night at the ranch. That way I could start east with a
good, safe night's sleep, I figured, but I was wrong."

           
"What's the matter?"

           
"Have you had any contact with
the ranch recently, sir?"

           
"Not for a week or so. There's
been no reason. Why?"

           
"Something is very haywire
there," I said. "I ran into a deadfall, only it didn't fall quite
hard enough. I need a cleanup squad. Tell the boys to take
State Road
I gave the coordinates.

           
"Tell them to look for a white
Falcon four-door and two bodies. One's in the car, the other was thrown out and
wound up in a little wash about twenty yards east of the shortest line between
the car and the road, about halfway out. A dreadful accident. You know how
treacherous those desert roads can be. They were driving too fast and failed to
make a curve. What did you say, sir?"

           
"Nothing." There was a
little silence. "Did you determine the identities of these two men?"

           
"Yes, sir. What's the Bureau of
Internal Security?"

           
There was another pause. "I'm
afraid that's Herbert Leonard's private police force, Eric."

           
"I see," I said slowly.
"He's got a special bunch of snoops to snoop on us snoops-with the highest
patriotic motives, of course. Well, he's got three less of them now, if
yesterday's marksman was one, and I think he was." I waited, but Mac did
not speak, so I said, "Even though the man has personal reasons not to like
me, dating from the last time we met, I can't believe he's merely engaging in a
private vendetta using government personnel. What's he actually doing, sir,
making war on our whole outfit? Wiping us out wherever he finds us? Jesus!
Either he's got delusions of grandeur,
sicking
one
government agency on another like that, or-"

           
"Or what, Eric?"

           
"Or they're not delusions. He's
got reason to think he'll have support higher up, even in murder. Of course, he
wouldn't call it murder, would he? He'd figure out some good disciplinary
reason. What excuse is he using in my case, sir?"

           
The voice on the phone sounded
distant and very tired. "I don't know," it said softly. "I just
don't know. Of course, we've never been a very popular agency. Probably he's
afraid of us after the way we upset his plans a couple of years ago; he's
making certain it doesn't happen again. We've already lost several good agents
for bureaucratic or security reasons. He has scrutinized the files very
carefully and taken advantage of every slight irregularity. I didn't realize
what was happening in the field. I was aware that some of our people were
failing to report on schedule, but this often happens. I didn't realize. .
." His voice trailed off.

           
I said, "Well, you'd better
pass the word for the boys and girls to take cover until the storm blows
over."

           
"I wish I could be optimistic
enough to think it will," he said wearily. "But the political
situation here in
Washington
is very tense. All kinds of people are recommending all kinds of
violent and repressive measures to deal with people and movements they don't
like. Leonard is apparently just taking advantage of the general climate of
opinion to move himself into a position of real power. Since he sees us as an
obstacle, I'm afraid his intention is to decimate us to the last man on one
excuse or another. What the original reason was in your case, I have no idea,
but now that three government employees have died at your hands. . . ." He
stopped and was silent for several seconds. I waited. At last he went on,
rather uncertainly, "I-I just don't know, Eric. Maybe . . . I think you'd
better come in and we'll see what can be done to clear up the situation. In
fact, that's an order. I still have a few resources

           
I said, "The hell with that,
sir. With all due respect, I doubt that I'd live ten minutes if these
characters caught me inside four walls. But obviously Leonard doesn't want
publicity for what he's doing. That gives me a slight edge. You go ahead and
see what you can accomplish at your end, sir, but I'll keep on here as
originally planned." I waited, but he didn't speak. 1 drew a long breath,
and put some crude arrogance into my voice. "Oh, and tell our white-haired
Herbie
-boy that he'd better call up his first team if
he's got one. The stuff he's been sending at me so far has been kind of
pitiful, like swatting a bunch of sick flies."

           
Hanging up without waiting for a
response, I expected the girl to jump me at once and tell me again what a
horrible man I was, but she was silent all the way back to the car and until we
got going on the highway once more. Even then, she wasn't her usual critical
self at first.

           
What she said, as the car gathered
speed, was, "He-he sounded so old. So old and tired, Mr. Helm."

           
"He's in a bad spot," I
said.

           
With some of her former spirit, she
said sharply, "And you didn't make it any better, demanding that he
forward your crude message of defiance."

           
"Wake up, doll," I said.
"Nobody needs to forward anything. Mac and I were both talking for public
consumption. There's not a chance in the world that line wasn't bugged." 1
shook my head irritably. "I was just trying to take the heat off him,
Borden. The tape will show that I was instructed to come in and refused, in my
usual high-handed and arrogant manner. Mac can't be held responsible if an
agent deliberately disobeys an order, can he? That's presumably why he gave it,
and that's certainly why I said what I did. Okay?"

           
She glanced at me and looked away.
"Maybe I was wrong. If so, I'm sorry. But if you knew you'd be overheard,
why did you call at all?"

           
"So they'd know where their
boys were and get out there and rake them up before the police found them. One
complication nobody wants is cops."

           
"I can't believe all this is
really happening! The head of a government agency ordering men out to kill his
own people!"

           
"It's not the first time,"
I said. "The spook shops have always been dangerous to cross.

           
They've got a tremendous amount of
power and, since their operations are secret, very few real restraints. But you're
missing the point. The point is that we're not Herbert Leonard's people, and he
knows we'll never be, from Mac right on down to the lowest filing clerk in the
outer office. He can gain control of the big, sprawling organizations by the
usual bureaucratic procedures, because there's seldom much personal loyalty
involved there, but he knows he'll never really take over a small, specialized,
one-man agency like ours. We'll always be Mac's people, not his; and apparently
he doesn't trust Mac to go along with his grandiose political plans-I, don't
know what they are, yet, but if they're Leonard's they're bound to be
grandiose."

           
"But," she protested,
"but he's in charge! He could just -just fire you all, couldn't he? He
doesn't have to shoot you!"

           
I grinned. "Sweetheart, you're
forgetting a little thing called civil service. There's also the question of
publicity; if he just up and cans us all, somebody may ask why. But you have
spotted the really interesting angle: the fact that he feels he has to do it this
way. I figure that means he's up to something pretty nefarious of which Mac
would disapprove. He wants to make certain that, when the chips are down, Mac
doesn't have the power-meaning the live, armed agents-to implement his
disapproval in a practical way." I made a wry face. "Hell, the
farther we go, the wilder it gets. Well, maybe Lorna has some answers we
don't."

           
I sent the big station wagon through
Tucson
, easing westward cautiously, watching the
mirrors. Nothing significant showed. I risked stopping at a drive-in for
hamburgers, stalling, waiting for total darkness. Then I drove the rig out into
the desert again, on the other side of town this time, gradually working my way
on small back roads farther and farther out from civilization.

           
"Where are we going now?"
Martha asked at last.

           
"To the ranch, of course,"
I said. "Hell, a lady's waiting for us there, isn't she?"

           
"But-"

           
I said, "Don't worry. We won't
try the front door this time. Did you ever hear of a hideout that didn't have a
secret escape hatch somewhere? . . . That's our turnoff, right there, but I'd
better leave the boat around the bend, up the arroyo. As I remember, it gets
rough from here. Be prepared to do some digging if we bog down."

           
We didn't. The sand of the arroyo
was nice and firm, and I got the boat backed out of sight.