The Shadowers mh-7 Read online

  The Shadowers

  ( Matt Helm - 7 )

  Donald Hamilton

  An agent like Matt Helm might be a nice man to live with, for a while -- but he's not the kind a woman would want to marry. Unless, perhaps, the marriage was part of an ingenious cover. Here the man whose daily bread is violence takes himself the most unlikely bride in the world -- just to make sure that death doesn't part them.

  Donald Hamilton

  The Shadowers

  I

  WHEN I came hurriedly out of the hotel, the car was waiting for me. It was white with letters in gold: REDONDO BEACH-CITY POLICE. They seem to be painting al] police cars white these days. I guess it makes them easier to keep clean. The uniformed man at the wheel threw the door open and leaned over.

  "Mr. Corcoran?"

  "I'm Corcoran," I said.

  Well, I was, as far as Redondo Beach, Florida, was concerned. The fact that I might have other names elsewhere-in Washington, D. C., for instance-was nobody's business down here where I was spending a month's well-earned rest in the sun. At least I hoped it wasn't.

  "Please get in, sir," the policeman said.

  I got in and he had us going before the door had closed. He switched on his flasher and cut around the block sharply.

  "Where did it happen?" I asked.

  "South along the Miami highway a few miles. At least that's where they told me to take you."

  "Is she badly hurt?"

  He didn't look at me. "You talked with Headquarters, sir; you know more than I do. All I know is I'm supposed to get you there fast."

  He hit a button and the siren cut short the conversation. For a city cop in a city cop car he had highway patrol ideas. We shot through the late evening traffic like a runaway missile. Near the edge of town we picked up another red flasher ahead. That was the ambulance heading for the scene. My man cut around it and slowed a bit to stay with it, breaking trail.

  It was a good try on everybody's part, but when we got there I saw at once it hadn't been quite good enough. There were two state cars and some other cars and a number of people; and those people had stopped caring when we'd arrive because they knew there was no longer anything for us to do. That race had been won by the gent on the pale horse. They were more interested, now, in watching the Cadillac burn.

  We circled to get over to the northbound side of the highway, and parked behind the other official cars. A state policeman came up as I got out.

  "Mr. Corcoran?" he said. "I'm sorry."

  "Where is she?" I asked.

  "Down this way," he said. "She was thrown clear. If they won't wear seat belts-"

  I said, "I know. It's much better to stay with the car. Particularly when it's an open convertible that first rolls and then burns like a torch."

  He glanced around, started to get annoyed, and thought better of it. We'd reached our destination, anyway. There was a uniformed man standing by the blanket-covered form on the ground.

  The man who'd brought me said, "I'd better warn you Well, she must have been doing damn close to ninety when she missed the curve."

  I bent down and pulled the blanket back and had my look, then replaced the cover and walked off a little ways until I stood looking down at something gleaming in the rank grass. It was a silver evening pump to go with the dress she'd worn. I reflected on women's shoes and how they never could seem to stay on in a crisis. If the final cataclysm overtakes the human race, I decided, the last trace of womankind left behind in the smoldering wreckage will be a scorched, radioactive slipper with a high, slim heel.

  It was better to formulate this deep philosophy than to remember that we'd quarreled. Take a woman with money and a man without and the dialogue at a certain point in the relationship hardly needs repeating, particularly if both parties are fairly bullheaded. It had started with a party she'd wanted us to go to at the big house of some wealthy acquaintances of hers who didn't think any more of me than I did of them. It had ended with her driving to the party alone. And driving back alone, still angry, unhappy, and probably a little tight..

  "Mr. Corcoran?" It was the state cop who believed in sticking loyally with your car even if it squashed and incinerated you. "I'm sorry to bother you, sir, but we need a little information. Could you give me your wife's full name for the report?"

  I said, "She wasn't my wife."

  He said quickly, "But we distinctly understood-"

  "So I gathered," I said. "When the police called me at the hotel, they asked first if my wife drove a white Cadillac convertible with Texas plates. Since I was more interested in learning why they were calling than in keeping my matrimonial record straight, I said yes. The lady's name was Mrs. Gail Hendricks. She was divorced from Mr. Hendricks, whoever he may be. I never met him. She came from Midland, Texas. There are some relatives there, I believe. What made you think she was my wife?"

  "She was wearing a wedding ring. She asked for you."

  "You could get into trouble, making deductions like that," I said.

  "What is your full name, Mr. Corcoran?"

  "Paul," I said. "Paul William Corcoran. Newspaperman. From Denver, Colorado."

  Well, that's what it said on the cards in my wallet. My real name is Matthew Helm, but it figures in too many official dossiers for me to wear it carelessly, even on leave. And while I'm technically a government employee, certain people in Washington prefer that my exact duties remain unspecified, as far as the general public is concerned.

  "And what was your relationship to Mrs. Hendricks?" the policeman asked.

  "We'd known each other for a couple of years," I said. "We were staying at the same hotel by pre-arrangement. The Redondo Towers. If that's a relationship, you name it."

  He hesitated, a little embarrassed by my candor. "I'll say the identification was made by a friend of the deceased," he said, and that's the way it went down in the record.

  There was no reason to think the accident was anything but what it seemed, except that accidents are always suspect in my line of business. I hung around long enough, therefore, to make the routine checks, trying not to show any more interest, however, than would be expected from a friend of the deceased who was also a reporter. When they could move in on the car, they found no indication that it had been gimmicked in any way. The body, said the doctor, displayed no signs of violence. I couldn't help wondering just what he called being hurled from a car at ninety miles per hour-I mean, how violent can you get?

  – but his general drift was clear.

  When I got back to my hotel room at last, I took the little knife from my pocket. You could call it a large pocket knife or a small folding hunting knife. It was more or less a duplicate of one I had broken in the line of duty. I'd happened to complain about the loss, and Gail had secretly given the description to a well-known and expensive knife-maker and surprised me with the handsome result.

  She'd been trying to give me things ever since we came down here together. It isn't smart to accept presents from people-particularly women-who have more money than you have, but I hadn't been able to turn down this particular gift without seeming stuffy and unappreciative. I mean, a wealthy woman can give a man a watch or even a car without signifying much more than that she's got money to throw away; but when a woman gives a man in my line of work a weapon, knowing how it's apt to be used, it means something special. It means she has faced and accepted certain things about him. That was before we'd quarreled, of course.

  I shoved the knife back in my pocket, went downstairs, and called Washington from a pay phone in the lobby. There was nothing I could do here that would make any difference now, and I don't like hanging around to bury people. I said I was tired of being lazy and asked if they could use me. The answer was yes.

/>   Two hours later I was flying kitty-corner across the Gulf of Mexico on my way to New Orleans, Louisiana.

  II

  I'D BEEN told to maintain my cover as Paul Corcoran, Denver newspaperman, for the time being, and to register at the Montclair Hotel in New Orleans under this name. Since I'd requested immediate work, I was being shoved late into a going operation, and there wasn't time to build me a new identity.

  After getting a room at the hotel, I made contact according to instructions, never mind with whom. I wouldn't know him if I saw him on the street, myself. He was just a voice on the phone. He told me-it was morning by this time-to spend the day sightseeing, which is a technical term for making damn sure you're not being watched.

  Reporting back in the evening with the all-clear signal, I was told to leave the hotel casually, on foot, a certain exact number of minutes before midnight. I was to walk in a certain direction at a certain pace. If a red Austin-Healey sports job pulled up beside me, and the driver wore a Navy uniform and uttered a certain phrase, I was to answer him with another phrase and get into the car.

  The upshot of these Hollywood maneuvers was that just before dawn I found myself on a motor launch crossing Pensacola Bay, which put me back in Florida again after a wild night drive, but near the top of the state instead of the bottom. There was an aircraft carrier anchored out in the bay. It loomed over the still water massive and motionless, as if set on permanent concrete foundations. It was as easy to imagine the Pentagon putting out to sea.

  I glanced at the lights of the Naval Air Station from which we'd come, bid terra firma a silent farewell, and scrambled onto the platform at the foot of the long, flimsy stairway suspended from ropes-a ladder, in Navy terminology-that ran slantingly up the ship's side to a lighted opening far above. My escort was beside me, ready to keep me from falling in the drink.

  He was a trim young fellow with a shiny gold stripe-and-a-half on each shoulder of his immaculate khaki gabardine uniform, and a shiny Naval Academy ring on his left hand. There were shiny gold wings on his chest, and a neat little plastic name plate, white on black, reading J. S. BRAITHWAITE. He waved the launch away. This left us stranded on the rickety platform just a few feet above the water, with no place to go but up.

  "After you, sir," he said. "Remember, you salute the quarterdeck first, then the O.O.D."

  "Quarterdeck," I said. "I thought quarterdecks went out with sail." I glanced at the two-and-a-half stripes on the shoulder of the uniform I had been supplied for the occasion. The change of costume had been made in an empty apartment in town.

  "You're a lieutenant commander, sir," he said. "The quarterdeck is aft, that way." He pointed.

  I started climbing, trying to fight off the sense of unreality that came of switching location and identity too fast. I saluted the quarterdeck and the O.O.D., as Braithwaite had called him-the Officer of the Deck-who wore a pair of binoculars hung around his neck and looked sleepy and bored. I guess the early-morning watch is a bitch in any service, uniformed or otherwise. I followed my guide along a vast empty hangar space to a stairway- excuse me, ladder-leading down. Presently, after negotiating a maze of narrow passages below, I found myself in a white-painted cabin with a single bunk.

  "You can flake out there if you like, sir," Braithwaite said. "They're still in conference. They won't be needing you for a while. Would you like some coffee?"

  In the business, we go on the assumption that, among friends at least, we'll be told what we need to know when the time comes for us to know it. I didn't ask who was in conference, therefore, but I did drink the coffee. Then, left alone, I shed my uniform blouse, stretched out on the bunk, closed my eyes, and tried not to think of a shape under a blanket and a single silver slipper. After a while I went to sleep.

  When I awoke, my watch read well past eight, but the cabin had no direct connection with the outside world, so I had to take daylight on faith. I noticed a certain vibration and deduced that we were under way. Presently Braithwaite appeared and guided me down the passage to the plumbing, after which he took me to the wardroom for breakfast.

  I knew it was the wardroom because it said so on the door. We had a table to ourselves, but there were other officers present who looked me over casually as I sat down. I hoped I didn't look as phony as I felt in my borrowed uniform.

  "We don't want to make a mystery of you, sir," Braithwaite said. "As far as the ship's company is concerned, you're just a reserve officer on temporary active duty observing carrier training operations for the day. There'll be less talk that way than if we tried to hide you from sight." He glanced at his watch. "We should have some advanced jet trainers coming in shortly. As soon as we've finished chow, we'll go topside and watch them practice landings to make it look good. I hope you don't mind a little noise."

  He grinned. I didn't get the significance of the grin just then, but it became clear to me a little later, as I stood on a narrow observation walk on the carrier's superstructure, or island, looking down at the flight deck, which was the length of three football fields, with catapults forward and arresting gear aft, all explained to me in detail by my conscientious young escort. We were well out in the Gulf of Mexico by this time, out of sight of land on a clear, bright, cool fall day, and the ship was steaming into the wind fast enough that I had to pull my uniform cap down hard to keep it from being blown away. Braithwaite laughed.

  "We've got to have thirty-two knots of wind along the flight deck to take the jets aboard," he said. "This time of year there's usually a breeze to help out, but in summer, in a flat calm, the engineering officer has to sweat blood to make it. Here they come now, sir."

  They were already circling the ship like a swarm of hornets; now the first one came in fast, snagged an arresting wire with its tailhook, and slammed to a stop. It was hardly clear and taxiing forward, past the island where we stood, when the second one hit the wires-and I began to understand Braithwaite's remark about noise. The damn planes roared, shrieked, sobbed, and whistled. The port catapult would fling one thundering jet off the bow to go around again, while another blasted away on the starboard catapult, awaiting its turn. Meanwhile number three was taxiing up amidships, howling up a storm, and number four was coming in over the stern, screaming like a banshee…

  There was something hypnotic about the tremendous din. It brought back memories of other places I'd stood some years ago watching other planes take off, planes that upon occasion I'd helped prepare the way for in secret and unpleasant ways. I don't suppose the kids in those planes ever knew that anybody had been before them, any more than these earnest kids with their faces half hidden by their helmets and mikes realized that if the time ever came for them to take their deadly machines up armed, they would be contributing only a little official noise and glamor to the silent, unofficial war that's always being fought by quiet people without flashy helmets and often without microphones, too, or any other means of communicating with home base. What we undercover services needed, I thought wryly, was a public relations department. People just didn't appreciate us.

  Suddenly the planes were gone, and it was quiet again except for the wind and the muted rumbling of the ship's machinery. Braithwaite glanced at his watch.

  "Just about time for the HUP to pick up the brass from Washington," he said. "There she is, right off the quarter."

  A clattering sound broke the relative peace, and a banana-shaped helicopter with two rotors settled to the deck right below us. Three men-two dignified civilians and an Army officer with a lot of fancy stuff on his cap-made their way out to the chopper, climbed aboard, and were borne away to the north. I glanced at Braithwaite. He showed me a smooth young poker face, so I didn't deem it advisable to start a discussion of the fact that we'd just seen three fairly important people whose faces would be recognized by almost every alert newspaper reader or TV viewer. On the other hand, it didn't seem likely I'd been shown them by accident. Somebody was trying to impress me with the importance of the forthcoming job, whatever it m
ight be. Braithwaite made reference to his watch again; the boy was a real chronometer fiend.

  "Well, they should be just about ready for you below, sir," he said, and showed me to the door, or hatch, by which we'd come out. "Watch your head going down the ladder..

  I couldn't tell you exactly where aboard the ship the little movie theater was, but it had obviously just seen use as a conference room, judging by the scattered paper, empty glasses, full ashtrays, and the smell of tired tobacco smoke. There were only two people in it now. One was a woman. The first impression she made on me can best be described by saying that after a brief glance to make sure I didn't recognize her, I looked at the man.

  He was lean and gray-haired, with black eyebrows. He wore a charcoal-gray flannel suit, a neat white shirt, a conservative silk tie, and he may have looked like a well-preserved middle-aged banker or businessman to some people, but he'd never look like that to me. I happened to know he was one of the half-dozen most dangerous and ruthless men in the world.

  I recognized him, all right. I should, having worked for him for well over fifteen years, off and on.

  Mac said, "Thank you, Mr. Braithwaite. Wait next door, if you please."

  "Yes, sir."

  Mac watched the young lieutenant (jg) turn smartly and depart. He smiled briefly. "They train them well up there on the Severn, don't they?"

  I wasn't particularly interested in Braithwaite's training, but if Mac wanted to apply the casual touch I'd play along, for a while at least.

  "He's a good boy," I said. "He hasn't allowed himself to be human once, so far. And he drives a sports car like an artist. But he's going to sir me to death if he isn't careful."

  Mac said, "I seem to recall another young officer who had a predilection for that word. He was a pretty good driver, too."

  "Yes, sir," I said. "But, sir, I don't think you'll have as much luck getting this one to switch services, sir. He likes the Navy, sir."