The Revengers Read online

  “Yes?”

  “I’m sorry. I’m just a bitch. I can’t help being nasty about this.”

  “Sure,” I said, rising to look down at her, and retrieving the gun from the bedside table. “A horrible, ugly, nasty bitch. But you’re wrong about one thing. It’s not just your ankles. Your shoulders are kind of pretty, too. Good night, Elly.”

  The light went out behind me as I passed through the connecting door without looking back. Back in my own room I stood for a moment looking out the dark window, thinking it was a damned unnecessary complication to an already tricky assignment and tricky relationship. I had a sudden unwanted picture of a small girl with a swollen and discolored face and a couple of broken teeth bending over a pinned-down man, wielding a bloody knife. Nightmare stuff. But would I rather play bodyguard to a dainty tenderhearted wench who’d call me a beast because I’d hurt those poor little fellows who’d been waiting for us in here with loaded guns? I’d had that experience, thanks; and in a pinch I’d take Eleanor Brand any day, Elly with her ruthless attitude toward her work, her terrible self-loathing, her vengeful anger, and her ready high-heeled shoe. To hell with all the sweet unresisting females—and sweet unresisting males, too—everybody thought were so great these supposedly nonviolent days.

  I didn’t sleep nearly as well the second half of the night as I had the first half; and when I finally did start sleeping soundly, the telephone woke me. I looked at my watch and saw that it read almost seven o’clock.

  “Room 743,” said the female voice that had given me the red priority message yesterday.

  “What’s there for me?”

  “He’ll be there and he wants you there on time.”

  “I’m always on time,” I said. “What time?”

  “I was supposed to wake you exactly one hour early ... Mark.”

  “Right. Where’s Fred?”

  “Unavailable at the moment. Meeting his special flight at the airport and running some errands afterward. You’ll continue to cover the subject yourself for the time being. I’m to tell you to be very careful.”

  “Message received and understood.”

  I hung up and looked up to see the subject in question standing in the doorway between the rooms, yawning, looking childish and innocent in the flowing nightie that left her arms bare. I’d already determined that the stuff was cotton, or a good modem imitation, and that the pattern had a lot of little red flowers among a lot of little green leaves. There was some demure lacy white stuff around the neck. She had, I noticed, rather small and pretty feet. I didn’t like noticing that; I seemed to be getting a thing about female feet lately. And why the hell did my mind keep dredging up memories of Martha Devine?

  I told myself to forget about Elly’s pretty feet. All I was required to do, I reminded myself firmly, was to keep this weird little knife-wielding dame alive until she could do us no harm by dying. I didn’t have to like her.

  “We’ve got an hour to dress and eat,” I said. “The big boss is coming to Nassau. Big deal.”

  “I’m sorry about last night,” Eleanor said.

  “De nada, as we say in our fluent Spanish.”

  She grimaced. “I let it all hang out, didn’t I? My God, I told you stuff I didn’t think I’d ever tell anybody; and the funny thing is I hate people who moan and groan about their sad fates. So a couple of creeps beat me up and raped me in a vacant lot, so what? Forget the whole gooey performance, will you, please?”

  “Did it help?”

  She looked a little startled. “Well, I slept like a baby the rest of the night, so I guess it did help. Thanks.” After a moment she said, “Matt?”

  “Yes?”

  “Why did you say that, last night?”

  “What?”

  “About my shoulders. That’s kind of silly, isn’t it? Ankles, legs, okay. Tits, ass, cunt, swell. But who cares about shoulders, for God’s sake?”

  I said, deliberately deadpan, “Maybe I’m a shoulder freak. Anyway, a girl with a face like a mud fence ought to have a little encouragement. Even if it’s only shoulders.”

  The quick anger came into her eyes and she started to speak hotly; then she gave me her special, big, engaging grin instead. “You bastard. You’ve got it all worked out, haven’t you? Keep the girl off balance and she’ll follow you anywhere. I’ll be ready by the time you’ve shaved.”

  Chapter 16

  She wore her neat little chambray suit again with the same or another round-necked white blouse. As we left the table after breakfast, I noticed that her ankles really were quite attractive, set off by her nice sheer hose and slim-heeled tan leather pumps. I told myself again to cut it out. She’d make an intriguing project for somebody who liked intriguing rehabilitation projects—there was really too much good stuff there for her to be allowed to go around forever thinking of herself as ugly and spoiled—but it wasn’t my line of work; and it was hard to forget what she’d done in retaliation even with the best, or worst, provocation in the world. On the other hand, I told myself, considering my own violent profession, it hardly became me to be squeamish about a little thing like that.

  She glanced at me, almost shyly for her, as we waited for an elevator. “Now I wish I hadn’t told you,” she murmured. “It did help, but you’re looking at me differently. That’s why I never told anybody before. I didn’t want their lousy slushy sympathy.”

  “It’s not that,” I said. “I’m just wondering where you keep that damned knife. I’ve heard of castrating-type women before, but this is ridiculous.”

  After a startled moment, she laughed and took my arm to enter the cage. “Are you always so blunt, or is this your idea of therapy, Dr. Helmstein?”

  I said, “Oh, I can be diplomatic as hell when I want to be.”

  “But you can’t quite remember the last time you wanted to be.” She flashed her big grin at me, and stopped grinning. “Talking about wanting, are you sure I’m wanted at this high-level conference, whatever it is?”

  I shrugged. “You’re wanted by me. I’m supposed to protect you, remember? My instructions specifically said to be very careful, and since we’re always supposed to be very careful anyway, the fact that it was mentioned in the orders would seem to indicate that there’s something special to be very careful about. So until Fred is available, you don’t get out of my sight; and I don’t plan to trust even Fred too far if the going gets rough. If I were supposed to park you somewhere and come alone, the orders would have been worded differently.” Riding up, we had the lift, as the British call it, to ourselves; and I regarded her approvingly and said, “I thought lady journalists were all strictly trousers types.”

  She glanced at me, again rather shyly for her, and hesitated a bit before she said, “When . . . when you’re not very pretty, you’ve got a choice, Matt. Either you say to hell with it, you’re obviously a total loss anyway, so you might as well look like a complete slob in dirty jeans, what have you got to lose? Or you say to yourself, honey, if you had a face like an angel you could get away with dressing like a tramp, but since you’ve got nothing else going for you you’d better be careful to look as good as you can.” She made a wry face at me. “Anyway, you haven’t seen me in slacks, let alone jeans. I look positively deformed— well, even more positively deformed than usual.”

  It was very revealing and, I suppose, rather touching; but I forced myself to say deliberately, “I don’t mind ugly girls, but ugly girls who keep talking about it all the time kind of bore me.”

  She turned on me sharply; then she drew a long breath and said very softly, as if speaking to herself, “A sense of humor is supposed to help. And a very thick skin.”

  “You’re the one who said it,” I reminded her. “An ugly little monkey with a notebook, you said.”

  We stepped out of the elevator on the seventh floor, checked the room numbers, and started in the right direction, but Eleanor touched my arm and came to a halt facing me.

  “Look,” she said, “look, do you really have
some kind of crazy therapeutic theory about me, is that why you keep needling me like this?”

  I said carefully, “I’ve got to put up with you in the line of duty, Elly. And you’ll be a lot easier to put up with if I can kid you out of this nonsense about what a revolting freak you are. The other, what happened to you, you can’t help. Okay. So I have to listen to the lady’s nightmares; I don’t have to listen to her daymares, too. What’s the matter, did you have a pretty little sister your daddy loved better than you?”

  We were walking again. Looking straight ahead, she said rather stiffly, “No, but I had a pretty little mother who wanted a pretty little doll-baby to play with and got something that looked like a junior-grade female chimpanzee instead. Well, what did she expect? Daddy wasn’t the handsomest man in the world; he was just smart and rich which was why she’d grabbed him in the first place. But if she wanted pretty babies she should have married a movie star.” She paused, and a funny little smile tugged at the corners of her mobile mouth. “You haven’t told me I’m not a revolting freak.”

  “Hell, I told you you had pretty shoulders, didn’t I? I’ll get around to reporting on the rest of you eventually, don’t rush me. . . . Hold everything!” I caught her arm and pulled her to a halt.

  “What is it?”

  We’d turned the last corner, and the room numbers were going the right way and getting close, and there were two men waiting outside a door down the hall ahead. When they saw us, they stopped talking and moved apart—and I knew at once that it was wrong.

  These were not just a couple of lower echelon escort-type gents waiting for the big shots inside to finish their business, meanwhile chatting casually about football or baseball or women, and pausing in their talk to open the door for some honored and expected guests, after which they’d just resume their interrupted conversation. These were men waiting to carry out a prearranged plan, taking up prearranged positions. I knew from the way they moved a little too stiffly, a little too carefully, that they were feeling somewhat tense, the way you always do before the action starts—even though it shouldn’t be too damned difficult to deal with just one man and a girl, all unsuspecting.

  “Back to the elevator,” I said, swinging Eleanor around. “If I say run, run like hell. Do you remember the number I told you last night?”

  We were walking away now. They didn’t follow us, at least not while I had them in sight, but that meant nothing.

  “23572?” She must have had questions, but she didn’t ask them.

  “Good girl,” I said. “If anything happens and we get separated, you get clear, all the way clear and call that number. Somebody’ll come for you.”

  The elevator was before us now and we were in luck: the door was opening. Two well-dressed young black men stepped out, talking with soft Bahamian accents, paying us no attention. I took us back down to the fourth floor. There was nobody in the hall except a black maid shoving a cart, who didn’t give us more than a casual glance. The room doors showed. undisturbed. Apparently the maid hadn’t got to us yet; more important, nobody’d been in to set a trap since we’d left. I let us into my room and locked the door behind us.

  “Okay,” I said. “So far so good. That was what he meant by being very careful, apparently. Now we wait for Phase Two.”

  “What is it, Matt?” she asked. “What’s happening?”

  I shook my head. “Let’s not waste time guessing. Sooner or later somebody’ll let us know what’s up. Open your purse.”

  She glanced at me curiously but obeyed. I pulled one of the guns I’d liberated yesterday from the depths of my suitcase—it was Warren Peterson’s, I noted—and showed it to her.

  “Do you know how?” I asked.

  “Just a little.” She studied the weapon carefully and said, “At least I know it’s a revolver and doesn’t have a safety.”

  “Hell, you’re a ballistics genius,” I said. “A lot of people who write books about the damned things don’t know that much.”

  “It’s the kind you don’t really have to cock, isn’t it? You can, but you don’t have to.”

  “Correct. A long, strong pull on the trigger will do it all.”

  She licked her lips. “What do I shoot?”

  “When I tell you to point it at somebody,” I said, “you point it at him. And when I tell you to shoot him, you shoot him. And keep on shooting him until I tell you to stop shooting him. Not after lunch or tomorrow or next month. Now.”

  She grinned briefly. “Yes, sir, Mr. Helm, sir.”

  I checked the loads and snapped the cylinder back into the frame. I stuffed the weapon into the big leather purse that matched her shoes.

  “One more little detail,” I said. “I don’t really care who you blow away, as long as it isn’t me. But be kind of careful about that, huh?”

  She nodded, sober now. “Yes, I know. I’ll be careful.” She touched the weapon lightly, before closing the purse. “I wish I’d had that, that night.”

  “Best purity-preservation medicine in the world,” I said. ‘That’s one of the things it was invented for. But nowadays they seem to figure, better ten lovely innocent virgins deflowered than one lousy rapist shot. Well, it’s a funny world full of funny people. . . .”

  The telephone interrupted my foray into social philosophy. I glanced at Eleanor and picked it up. A familiar voice spoke in my ear.

  “Matt?”

  “Yes, sir,” I said. “I was reporting at the specified location at the specified time, but I didn’t like the looks of the welcoming committee.”

  “I’m afraid you’re getting a bit jumpy, Matt.” Mac’s voice was cool. “As soon as we finish here we should consider another visit to the Ranch for rest and re-evaluation; don’t you think?” The Ranch is the place in Arizona where I’d wanted to send Brent for training, the place where they also patch up the damage from the last mission and make you ready for the next. I didn’t take the suggestion too much to heart, since Mac was talking for public consumption, as indicated by the fact that he was carefully and repeatedly employing my real name instead of my code name, the warning signal. He went on, “Our colleagues of the OFS are quite harmless, I assure you.”

  “Yes, sir,” I said. “Will you ask them to be harmless inside the room, please? Back from the door where I can see them all as I come in. The door unlocked and nobody behind it or near it. No weapons in sight. I’ve had trouble with somebody in this hotel already, two somebodies— three somebodies, come to think of it—and I’m responsible for the young lady’s safety. As you say, I’m jumpy as hell. If anybody waves a firearm at me with whatever motive, or comes at me from an unexpected direction, no matter who, I won’t be responsible for my jumpy reactions.”

  Mac said, “It all seems quite unnecessary and even slightly paranoid, but if that’s the way you prefer it, I will ask Mr. Bennett to instruct his men accordingly. Incidentally, he’s very interested in said young lady. He thinks she may be able to provide him with valuable information about a nautical terrorist problem with which his organization is concerned. He’s very anxious that she should be delivered here promptly so that he can interview her. As a matter of fact, he finds the delay quite annoying, although I have explained to him that your instructions require you to take all possible precautions where Miss Brand is concerned.”

  “Yes, sir,” I said. “I’ll bring her along. Matt out.”

  I laid down the instrument and sat for a moment, running the conversation back in my mind to determine just what he’d really been telling me, that didn’t necessarily correspond with the words he’d been speaking. Eleanor was silent. The girl had an endearing habit of keeping her mouth shut and saving her questions until the time was right for them. At last I looked up at her where she stood, waiting.

  “We’ve both got trouble,” I said.

  ‘Tell me.”

  “Mr. Bennett of the OFS wants to interview you. That’s polite for taking you over and, presumably, freezing us out. The OFS, as you undoubtedly know
better than I do with your Washington experience, is the Office of Federal Security, formerly the Federal Security Bureau, formerly . . .”

  “Yes, I know.”

  “Whenever somebody complains too loudly about their high-handed methods they get themselves reorganized under a different name; they change their name almost as often as they change their shirts, and they’re very meticulous about their button-down shirts. A very high-class bunch of spooks, far above us low peasants laboring sweatily, and sometimes bloodily, in the undercover vineyard, lie takeover kids. If there’s publicity involved they’ll grab it, no matter who was on the job first. Strictly in the public interest, of course. Right now they seem to have a terrorist problem at sea and think you can help them, which means they must have come across a political angle to all these sinking ships of yours. . . . What?”

  Eleanor was shaking her head. “No. It’s not political and it’s not terrorist. I don’t know what it is, but it’s not that.”

  “What makes you so sure?”

  “What made you so sure those men were waiting in this room last night, Matt? I’m a pro; it’s my business to know. Take it from me, whoever thinks that, is wrong.” She grimaced. “It’s just the sort of simple-minded answer those officious jerks of the OFS would grab at. They’ve got two pat answers for everything, and if it isn’t drugs, it’s just got to be terrorism. But they’re full of shit, if you’ll pardon the phrase.”

  I nodded. “I guess you’ve done quite a bit of work on this story already.”

  “Enough to get the feel of it. There’s a crazy random feeling to it, Matt, a kind of amateur feeling, if you know what I mean. Did you ever come across a case where you just knew that when you caught up with the guy he wouldn’t be a trained agent on a mission, or even a dedicated revolutionary following his stem political principles? You could just feel that you were dealing with a poor damned jerk who’d grabbed a gun and started shooting people, simply because somebody creamed his new car or hurt his girlfriend.”