The Damagers Read online

  Contents

  Cover

  Also by Donald Hamilton and available from Titan Books

  Title Page

  Copyright

  The Damagers

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

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  17

  18

  19

  20

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  23

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  About the Author

  THE DAMAGERS

  Also by Donald Hamilton and available from Titan Books

  Death of a Citizen

  The Wrecking Crew

  The Removers

  The Silencers

  Murderers’ Row

  The Ambushers

  The Shadowers

  The Ravagers

  The Devastators

  The Betrayers

  The Menacers

  The Interlopers

  The Poisoners

  The Intriguers

  The Intimidators

  The Terminators

  The Retaliators

  The Terrorizers

  The Revengers

  The Annihilators

  The Infiltrators

  The Detonators

  The Vanishers

  The Demolishers

  The Frighteners

  The Threateners

  TITAN BOOKS

  The Damagers

  Print edition ISBN: 9781785654886

  E-book edition ISBN: 9781785654893

  Published by Titan Books

  A division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd

  144 Southwark Street, London SE1 0UP

  First edition: February 2017

  1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  Copyright © 1993, 2017 by Donald Hamilton. All rights reserved.

  Matt Helm® is the registered trademark of Integute AB.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

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  THE DAMAGERS

  1

  My crew reported for duty early in October, a strapping Viking of a girl with long blond hair. Well, I’d figured they’d send me a girl when the time came, if it came. I was supposed to be doing my best to look harmless—a tempting target for sabotage and assassination—and a man and a girl cruising together on a boat look much more vulnerable than two men, even if the girl is a tanned Brunhilde almost six feet tall.

  Standing on the dock with a seabag over her shoulder and a bundle of foul-weather gear under her arm, the impressive lady requested permission to come aboard, in good nautical fashion. Permission granted, she threw her belongings onto the side deck, about three feet higher than the floating dock, and swung herself up after it, disregarding the ladder I’d hung at the gate in the railing to make boarding easier.

  “Nice sunny weather we’re having,” I said. “Unusual for Connecticut so late in the summer, if you still want to call this summer.”

  “Connecticut is not so bad,” she said. “Maine, that is much different, just fog, fog, fog all the time.”

  Okay. There was certainly no doubt that she was the right sex, the sex I’d expected, and she’d answered my Connecticut sunshine with Maine fog, so we had the official identification nonsense all taken care of.

  “I live up forward, ja?” she said, after an appraising glance up the masts and around the deck. “You will show?”

  “Let me take some of that stuff.”

  “I carry it okay.”

  My parents came from Sweden and I’ve spent some time in that country; but I couldn’t tell if the accent was real, and it didn’t matter. What the hell, nothing was real on this ship, particularly the skipper; as a sailor I make a great cowboy. Well, that was what the girl was for, to compensate for my nautical deficiencies.

  I led her into the big, light deckhouse with its all-around windows giving a full view of the marina, the winding river that led to Long Island Sound, and the open salt marsh beyond. She followed me down two steps forward into the main cabin, considerably darker since it was illuminated by considerably less glass. The galley was to port facing a big table three-quarters surrounded by a U-shaped settee to starboard. The whole boat was paneled in teak and the upholstery was dark-red velour or something similar; kind of a bordello decor, but after living with it for a couple of months I’d grown to like it.

  The boat was a husky thirty-eight-foot motor sailer built in Finland, of all places; and she was the most luxurious private vessel I’d ever inhabited, with wall-to-wall carpeting, refrigeration, hot and cold running water, and central heating, not to mention an intimidating array of navigational instruments, some of which I still hadn’t really mastered, even after studying the manuals hard. Well, my worries were over; my blonde shipmate was undoubtedly familiar with all the modern electronic miracles.

  “Go on forward; there isn’t room for both of us,” I said, moving aside to let her squeeze past. “Watch your head. For anybody over five-eight, this boat ought to be a hard-hat area. I still brain myself twice a week forgetting to duck.”

  “I know. They are all like that.”

  She unloaded her gear on the cabin table and made her way through the brief passageway to the wedge-shaped stateroom in the bow that had tapering twin berths obviously designed for a special race of people with very wide shoulders and very small feet. She surveyed her quarters with experienced eyes. She studied the overhead hatch for a moment to figure out the latch system and opened it, setting the braces to keep it from flopping back down. Having solved the ventilation problem, she tested the plushy red mattresses with her fingertips, checked for access, and decided that the port berth would be the easiest for her to operate out of; the starboard one would do for her gear. She hauled her seabag and oilskins forward and checked the doors along the brief passageway, returning to me.

  “This is much fine,” she said. “Much locker space, and I even have for myself a klo… what you call a head, yes?”

  It’s Swedish slang: klo, pronounced kloo, short for klosett, like in water closet. People can think of the damndest circumlocutions when they simply want to say crapper. The fact that she knew this one made me think her accent might actually be genuine.

  I said, “Yes, there’s more plumbing aft so this one’s all yours. What do I call you?”

  “My name is Siegelinda, Siegelinda Kronquist, but everybody calls me Ziggy.”

  I said, “See
ms a pity. Siegelinda is a mouthful, but it’s a pretty name.”

  “Ziggy is okay. I will not be called Linda. Every stupid little American girl who wants to be a movie star is called Linda. Ziggy is fine.”

  “Okay, Ziggy. I’m Matt.”

  We shook hands on it. Her hand was sizeable and her grip was firm.

  “Now you will show me the rest of this boat.”

  I showed her the significant stuff in the galley: the groceries, the dishes, the drawer for the silverware (okay, stainless), the knife rack, the refrigerator, the sink, and the garbage can under the sink. I explained the three-burner propane stove and showed her the big butane lighter, the kind used to fire up charcoal grills, that I used to light it. I demonstrated the safety switch that, by remote control, cut off the gas at the propane tank in its vented locker aft. I explained to her how, any time you were through with the stove, you were supposed to turn off, not only the burners, but the main gas supply as well, and make sure the red warning light was out. Propane is heavier than air, and you don’t want to run any risk of having it leak out and collect in the bilge waiting for a spark to set it off…

  The trouble with the girl was that she’d obviously been on so many boats that she knew practically everything I was telling her about this one. I sensed her attention wandering.

  “You drink,” she said.

  I saw that she was looking at the bottles. Behind the main cabin settee, along the side of the ship, were some small lockers flanking a couple of long shelves. There were seven bottle-sized holes in the bottom shelf for liquor storage—you don’t want any glass containers bouncing around loose on a boat when things get rough. I’d filled the rack with two fifths of Scotch, two of vodka, and three of wine, a California Chardonnay if it matters. I saw no need to apologize for them.

  “I drink,” I said.

  “That is good. I never trust a man who can not trust himself with sprit.” That was Swedish for spirits, meaning alcohol. “Now we will see the engine room, ja?”

  The engine hid under the deckhouse floor. The instruction manual that came with the boat said that it should be checked daily when you were under way. That was obviously some kind of funny Finnish joke, since getting at the mill was a lengthy and laborious process that involved disassembling and removing the little pedestal table for the comer breakfast/cocktail nook, moving out the helmsman’s stool and everything else in the deckhouse, hauling up the carpet, lifting up two enormous hatches that were lead lined for soundproofing, and then dismantling the lead-lined box that surrounded, for further soundproofing, the big four-cylinder mill itself. There wasn’t a piece weighing much less than twenty pounds. The girl wanted to do the work so she would know how. I didn’t fight her.

  When she had it all open, I pointed out the eighty-gallon fuel tanks port and starboard, the valves that controlled them, the water separator and fuel filters, the three batteries strapped into their boxes—two house batteries and one reserved for starting the engine—the pressure pump for the fresh-water system, and the pressure pump for the saltwater system that was used for hosing down the decks—also for cleaning off the anchor and chain when they came up muddy. Siegelinda Kronquist studied the engine for a moment.

  “Ford?”

  I said, “Yes. Eighty horsepower. It’s a Swedish conversion of a Ford block. Should make you feel right at home.”

  “I understand not.” Then she laughed. “Oh, because it is Swedish? But I am American now. You know this boat pretty good, ja?”

  “I’ve had since August to get acquainted with her.”

  “I will put it all back now. I must learn how.”

  “Be my guest.”

  She made it look easy, swinging the awkward slabs of lead-lined plywood back into place without much apparent effort. She was wearing short, but not excessively short or tight, blue denim cutoffs, well faded and fashionably frayed; her legs were brown and magnificent, and she had long feet tucked into ancient brown moccasin-style boat shoes. I had a hunch we wouldn’t see much of those shoes; they were made to come off easily, and she looked like barefoot-nature-girl to me. As far as I’m concerned, broken toes hurt like hell, and cuts and splinters aren’t much fun, either; besides, when you kick somebody with suitable shoes it’s more effective than when you kick them without.

  Above the waist, Miss Kronquist wore a thin T-shirt with a cartoon face on it. Even thought there was no TV on board and I don’t watch it much even when I have it, I recognized a character that had recently taken the country by storm. What was under the idiot face was unfettered and spectacular. I helped her put the carpets back into place and replace the deckhouse furniture.

  “Carpets on a boat are stupid,” she said. “Where is the bilge pump?”

  “It’s the middle switch in the panel right behind you. It’s marked. There’s a manual pump for backup, in that locker to port. And the wash-down pump can be rigged to suck bilge water instead of seawater in an emergency. I should have shown you when we had the engine room open.”

  “You can show me later; let us hope we do not sink today.” She looked ahead through the windshield at the machinery mounted in the bow. “An electric windlass? What if the electricity fails?”

  “It can be worked manually. The emergency handle is clipped to the bulkhead right over there by the port deckhouse door.” I pointed to it, a one-inch stainless steel pipe about eighteen inches long, with a plastic grip.

  “And what is aft?”

  “My stateroom, down two steps. Plumbing to starboard. Double berth, well, you can see it from up here. The rudder head, emergency tiller, and hydraulic steering machinery are under it.”

  “A double berth is convenient, ja?” she said, looking down into the aft cabin without expression.

  “If you can find somebody to occupy the other half,” I said. I hesitated, but it was a lot of girl on a boat that seemed to have got a lot smaller since she came aboard. As a normal male, I had to be thinking along certain lines— well, I was—and it had better get said and put behind us. “You’re welcome to fill the vacant space any time, Miss Kronquist. Don’t hesitate to wake me if I’m asleep.”

  She regarded me steadily for a moment. I noted that her eyes were very blue. “But you will never come up forward to bother me in my little cabin, is that what you wish to tell me, Matt? It is my decision?”

  “Yours entirely, Ziggy.”

  “That is good,” she said calmly. “I will think about it when I know you better. Now you will tell me about the life jackets and flares and other nonsense the Coast Guard loves so much, so I can show them if they board us, and then you will go and pay the marina while I warm up the motor, and when you come back we will get under way, yes?”

  I glanced at my watch. “It’s almost lunchtime.”

  “We can eat as we sail. I will make sandwiches. With eighty horsepower this boat should cruise good at seven or eight knots; if we start now, we can be in Montauk before dark. Those who send me, they want this boat to stop wasting time and money here, where nothing happens, and start moving south, where maybe something does happen.”

  “Aye, aye, skipper.”

  “No. You are the skipper. I am just the big stupid Swede girl you bring to pull the ropes, and maybe sleep with. And maybe not. Let everybody guess; it will do them good.”

  I hesitated. “Well, just let me know how you want to divide up the work on board. As you’ve probably been told, I haven’t had much cruising experience. Hell, that’s why you’re here.”

  There were sliding doors port and starboard, open now, letting the breeze blow right through the deckhouse. It blew a lock of blonde hair across her face as she stood by the big wooden steering wheel. She tossed back the yellow strands and looked at me gravely for a moment with those blue Norse eyes.

  “The work?” she said. “But the division is really very simple, Matt. I will keep us afloat. You will keep us alive. Okay?”

  2

  “You were selected because you have had some experi
ence with boats,” Mac had told me back in early August.

  I remembered that I’d groaned at the time, but not aloud. That’s the way it works in our outfit. We’re not big enough to support a bunch of temperamental specialists. If you once manage to figure out how to paddle a canoe across a farm pond in the line of duty, you’re the resident clipper-ship expert forever after, as far as Mac is concerned.

  He went on: “The boat’s name is Lorelei III. It is an eight-year-old motor sailer, ketch rigged—that means two masts, I believe—displacing about twelve tons. It is currently lying in a slip in the Pilot’s Point Marina in Westbrook, Connecticut, about twenty miles east of New Haven. It is being offered for sale, its owner having died last spring. You will travel there and inspect it with a yacht broker. You will also, for appearances’ sake, look at some other boats he has lined up for you, but this one will strike your fancy and you will buy it. I am told it needs considerable work. You will have that done and learn how to sail the craft as well as possible in the time available.”

  “How much time?”

  “If your mission is not completed before winter weather sets in, the boat will have to be moved south. You should plan to have it seaworthy by late September.”

  It seemed to me that he was skipping lightly over a couple of important details that needed further explanation. He was wearing his customary gray suit; and his face was unreadable, as usual, made more so by the bright window behind him through which I could see Washington, D.C., if I wanted to see Washington, D.C. I was more concerned with the familiar, lean, gray-haired gent with the black eyebrows, on the far side of the big desk, who’d called me back from my New Mexico home sooner than I’d anticipated.

  I’d hoped to have the whole summer free to train a young Chesapeake Bay retriever I’d acquired in the course of a recent assignment; I’d even hoped, optimistically, to have the autumn free to hunt him. Instead I’d had to leave him with a professional trainer in Texas I’d used before— who’d undoubtedly do a better job of completing his education than I could have, but I’d miss the fun of doing it myself—and rush east to learn that I was about to become a yachtsman.