The Infiltrators (17 page)

“Yes?”

She drew a long breath. “About that chandelier. Don’t you know I couldn’t do that to my life now, after what you just did to preserve it?”

Her gratitude embarrassed me, since I’d done very little to earn it; in fact I’d almost got her killed by briefing her inadequately. “Madeleine, look—”

She laid a gentle finger across my lips. “No, don’t waste your strength telling me how it was all in the line of duty and you’d have done it for anybody you’d been assigned to protect. I happen to be the girl it was actually done for. I know how I feel about it, and you’re not going to change my mind.” She bent over and kissed me lightly on the forehead. “Be good.”

I grinned up at her weakly. “I’ve got a choice? You be careful.”

“I don’t have to be careful. I have two big men outside to be careful for me. With guns. Don’t worry about me. I’ll be back in the morning.”

She was back next morning and each morning thereafter, spending most of her days with me. The staff of the little hospital, shorthanded, was happy to let her look after me in a nonmedical way; and Jackson, also short-handed, was glad to have her where he could have an eye kept on both of us simultaneously. When I wasn’t sleeping, we spent our time reading the books and magazines she brought, or watching TV, or talking about nothing in particular; but occasionally I’d wake from a nap to find her just sitting there in that patient way of hers and I’d wonder what she was thinking about, if she was thinking at all. Maybe she’d just learned, during the long years of her imprisonment, how to turn off her mind altogether and let the endless, useless penitentiary hours slip by.

But towards the end of the week she spoiled that theory by pulling her chair closer to mine—I was practicing sitting up by that time—and saying: “Matt, I’d like to talk about me a little, if you don’t mind.”

“My favorite subject, next to me,” I said, “Says the man who hasn’t told me a thing about himself since the day we met that I didn’t pry out of him with a crowbar!” She laughed, and became serious again: “I’ve been trying to figure out what I’m going to do. I can’t go back to what I was even if they’d let me. Even if I could stomach the law, I wouldn’t want to spend the rest of my life playing catch-up with the attorneys who didn’t have most of a decade amputated from their careers. Anyway, at the moment it doesn’t seem very likely I’ll get the chance, so that’s out.”

I said, “Don’t be too quick to toss all your legal training out the window. Who knows, you may wind up all vindicated and rehabilitated before this is over, with a dozen law firms clamoring for your services.”

“Well, I’ll worry about that when it happens,” she said dryly. “In the meantime I’d better figure out what else I’m fitted for. Besides scrubbing floors. Actually, I do know a lot about the law and the courts and the legal system. Not to mention what I’ve learned about the penal system the hard way. I also know how to dig for facts. I’m a pretty good investigator; at least I used to be. And I know how to organize those facts and write them up so they make sense. I’ve done it often enough. I think, particularly if I can find myself some kind of a little job near the campus, even if it doesn’t pay very much, I’ve got enough money waiting for me to get a degree in journalism. The question is, if I get it, will any newspaper or magazine hire a female reporter—maybe a police or political reporter eventually, something like that—with a criminal record, particularly my kind of criminal record?”

I looked at her for a moment, with an odd, tight feeling in my throat. “Hey,” I said, “welcome back to the human race, Ellershaw Number 210934.”

She was a little embarrassed. “Well, I’ve done just about enough moaning about my lost lovely past. It’s time to think of the future, isn’t it? But you haven’t answered my question.”

“I don’t really know the answer,” I said. “But all kinds of people seem to be getting out of prison and buying typewriters these days; I don’t see why you shouldn’t. I can ask around and find out what you’re apt to run up against. You don’t have to be on the staff of a publication, you know. There’s always free-lance work; in fact that’s what I did back when I was married.”

“I remember—to that gentle and nonviolent girl you told me about. But you didn’t say what you did for a living during your nonviolent phase.”

“It’s no way to get rich, but we made out all right. But in your case there’s one big catch,” I said.

“You mean that even as a free-lance I won’t be able to escape my prison background?”

“No. I shouldn’t think anybody’d give a damn about that, particularly if you stuck to reasonably nonsensitive and noncontroversial subjects; but you wouldn’t, would you? There’d be one controversial subject in particular you couldn’t stay away from.” I studied her thoughtfully. “Isn’t that what’s at the back of your mind, Madeleine? Sure you’d like to make a living as a journalist, and I think you could do it; in fact you’d probably be very good at it. But all the time you were writing fascinating pieces about women’s fashions, or horse breeding, or hang-gliding, or even crime or politics, you’d be dreaming how to break the great story of your innocence, complete with irrefutable proof that would smash the people who killed your husband and framed you into prison.”

She hesitated. “Well, what’s wrong with that?” she asked defiantly.

“Two things,” I said. “First of all you can’t make it alone. You seem to be forgetting: there have been at least two and probably three attempts on your life since you left Fort Ames. If we turn you loose right now to carry out your new life plan, you won’t live long enough to get anywhere near your journalism degree, let alone the proof you yearn for—somebody wants you dead, remember? And probably they want you dead precisely because they’re afraid that now you’re free you’ll start digging up stuff they don’t want dug.”

She said wryly, “I’m not likely to forget that little detail, looking at you in those bandages. It does present a difficulty, since I seem to have decided that there are certain advantages to being alive, after all. And the second obstacle?”

“Not really an obstacle,” I said. “Just a point to keep in mind as you plan your future: your secret ambition is a little redundant.”

She frowned. “Translate, please.”

I said, “What I mean is that the information you were planning to search for eventually, after you got established in your journalistic career, is the information we need right now. We can’t wait around for it while you’re getting yourself properly educated. At least it seems likely that your innocence, and the guilt of the people we’re after, are two faces of the same conspiracy or whatever the hell you want to call it. Prove one and you prove the other. I can’t promise exoneration, but I’ll certainly do my best to arrange it in return for your help. But there’s another problem.”

“What’s that?”

I looked at her and I looked down at myself and I looked back to her. “A pretty ridiculous undercover team, wouldn’t you say, Ellershaw? If things get tough—well, tougher—how would you figure the survival quotient of a task force composed of one feeble one-armed agent and one untrained sedentary dame with a crippled wrist who’s in such lousy shape she can’t climb a flight of stairs without turning blue in the face?”

Madeleine said resentfully, “Damn it, Matt, I’m not all
that
flabby!” Then she looked down at herself, noting the way she filled the rather handsome blue slacks she was wearing. She sighed. “Oh, all right. Point taken. What do you suggest?”

“We have a choice. We can use me in an advisory capacity for the time being—well, as soon as I’m ambulatory again—and get Washington to send us a husky, healthy, violent young man to stick close to you and watch over you while we start stirring things up in Santa Fe—”

“No!” Then color came into her face, as she heard the unexpected vehemence of her own voice. “I mean… well, damn it, I don’t want to be wished off on some other macho bastard with a gun; I had a hard enough time getting used to this one.”

I grinned. “Flattery, I love it.”

“What’s the alternative?”

“Instead of a husky, healthy, violent young man, how about a husky, healthy, violent young woman?”

Madeleine groaned. “Oh, God, you mean I’d have to get along with a muscular and very superior female agent, probably with lesbian tendencies…?” She stopped and frowned at me. “Or isn’t that what you meant?”

I shook my head. “No,” I said. “I meant you.” There was a little silence. We could hear somebody rolling a cart of some kind down the hospital corridor outside.

“Me?” Madeleine licked her lips. “That’s kind of a bad joke, isn’t it, Matt? I told you, I’ve never fired a pistol in my life. I was never even taught how to punch anybody in the nose, let alone handle firearms.”

“But the basic aggressive impulses are there,” I said. “You demonstrated that when I was shot, going for my gun like that. Obviously, unlike my ex-wife, you’re not sincerely dedicated to the principles of nonresistance and nonviolence.”

“You forget where I’ve been,” she said quietly. “Nonviolence wasn’t very big in Fort Ames, Matt. Not if you were moderately attractive, and if you were heterosexually inclined and wanted to stay that way. I… I discovered very fast that it doesn’t take a lot of training to learn what hurts. Just take a finger joint that bends one way, for instance, and bend it the other. And they really don’t like it when you use your nails and go straight for the eyes.” Her face was bleak with memory. “I found that, dazed and shattered though I was when I was finally delivered to the prison after that ghastly jail-to-jail cross-country ride, I wasn’t quite beaten enough to let another woman do
that
to me—I told you I was always very conventional about sex. I guess I went a little crazy at being threatened with this… this final indignity. Fortunately I was still a pretty strong girl back then; although afterwards it wasn’t easy to live with the image of the former dignified lady attorney rolling on the soapy floor of the prison laundry kicking and clawing and biting and scratching like an animal to protect her stupid virtue. But they learned to leave the snooty bitch alone to go to hell her own way, not theirs. I guess I was a little stuck-up after all. And I learned that peace is something you have to fight for. Call it a paradox if you like.” She grimaced. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to bore you with any more pitiful pictures from the pen.”

I wanted to say something sympathetic and understanding, but she obviously didn’t need or want my sympathy. I said instead, “On the record, you’re a very bright lady who catches on very fast. To just about anything. The mind is good, and there’s nothing wrong with the body that couldn’t be fixed in a place I know, probably including the wrist. It wouldn’t be fun. You might even wish you were back in Ames fighting off those amorous lady convicts; but at the Ranch, as we call it, they’d sweat the lard off you and really teach you how to take care of yourself. And of me, until I’ve got two functioning arms again. Normally it’s a three-month basic course; however, there’s some stuff you wouldn’t be allowed to study because of security, and some we simply wouldn’t bother you with. We wouldn’t take time to teach you things like surveillance, electronics, explosives, codes and ciphers, safes and locks. If necessary, I can handle that end of it after a fashion. We wouldn’t be making a full-fledged agent of you; we’d only be interested in getting you conditioned and trained to the point where, with a little left-handed help from me, you’d have a reasonable chance of keeping us both alive.”

I stopped. She was watching me with a curious intentness, but she didn’t speak. A heavy truck went by in the street outside the window. When its noise had subsided, I went on:

“You got your other degrees in record time; you can probably earn a limited field qualification in six weeks if you grit your teeth and really go after it. And by that time, they tell me, I should be getting around okay, although it’ll take longer to get my arm back to normal again. I’ve checked with Washington by phone, and the word is that we can afford the delay if I consider it essential. Whatever it is we’re dealing with, it’s been going on at least since your husband disappeared, and that happened nine years ago. A few more weeks shouldn’t… What’s the matter?”

She had got to her feet, very deliberately, to stand over me. Her face was pale and her eyes were wide and a little shiny.

“Who do you think you are?” she whispered. “Who the hell do you think you are, Matthew Helm? God?” She swallowed hard. “Just what do you plan to do with me when you get me all created, Mister God?”

I said, startled, “I don’t know what—”

She spoke furiously: “You’ve been sneaking up on it ever since you saw what a broken-down female wreck I’d become in that p-place. Encouraging the trembling wretch to drive a car again. Treating the miserable female ruin to some new clothes and a becoming hairdo. And the goddamned sexual reawakening—okay, so I made the first move, but I don’t for a moment think you put us together in that room by accident. I don’t suppose you planned the police bit, but you probably had it all fixed up to restore the poor downtrodden creature’s self-confidence some other way. And now, with the psychological problems taken care of, comes the convenient program of physical conditioning to make a slim, trim, sexy beauty out of the sloppy, overweight jailbird lady…” She stopped, breathless, glaring at me. “Me Galatea, you Pygmalion. You crummy patronizing bastard!”

She turned and ran out of the room, obviously wishing she could slam the door behind her, but hospital doors are pretty slam-proof. I sat there slightly stunned, realizing that there was some truth in her accusations. Not that I’d planned it all deliberately from the start, as she seemed to think, but I’d certainly taken pleasure in watching her steady comeback. I’d seized every opportunity to hasten the process, and maybe even got a kick out of being such a thoughtful and bighearted fellow. And even now I found myself, after the first shock, smiling rather fondly, if a bit ruefully, at the thought of the fierce pride she’d just displayed, which she couldn’t possibly have summoned up ten days ago. Okay, patronizing.

There was a light knock on the door, and she reentered the room without waiting for my response and marched up to my chair rather stiffly.