The Threateners Read online

  I’d figured that if I was patient, somebody more important in the hierarchy, and better informed, would reveal himself. Now he had. All I had to do was simply turn the tables on him and beat the information out of him. Simply.

  Finding nothing of importance in the wallet, Ackerman patted me in an exploratory way and located the concealed shoulder-holster rig in which I carried my documents and serious money. He unfastened my shirt and, rather than go to the trouble of undressing me extensively to remove the underarm purse, just pulled it around to where he could get at it, unzipped the various compartments, found what he wanted, and making a little breathy sound of satisfaction, removed it. Then I heard him close the zippers neatly again. I felt him put the money holster back under my armpit and pull my shirt more or less into place. He even tucked the wallet back into my hip pocket before rising. A tidy man.

  “You can open your eyes now, Mr. Helm,” he said, without any alcoholic speech impediments. “Sit up if you wish. I hope your head isn’t giving you too much pain. ”

  I sat up with a great dramatic effort, groaning pitifully. I saw that Ackerman was rising and tucking a blackjack into his hip pocket; he’d known I wasn’t altogether out and he’d been ready for me to try something. I was glad I hadn’t. Another crack on the cranium I didn’t need.

  I touched the back of my head gingerly. "Ouch! Oh, Jesus, that hurts!”

  Stoicism seldom buys you anything; let the opposition know what a softy you are and how terribly you’re suffering. They love it. The man standing over me produced a silenced .22 Colt Woodsman pistol, an obsolete weapon, but in its day the preferred assassination tool of many undercover organizations. Although at least as old as my Browning relic, which he’d tucked inside his waistband, this was a well-cared-for piece; and it’s hard to wear out a quality firearm that’s kept in good condition.

  “I apologize for the violence,” Ackerman said. “However, it was a necessary precaution.”

  I licked my lips and said ruefully, “Pretty tricky, Mr. Ackerman. First you play cop outside the door, with a corny Latin accent, to get me to open up all unsuspecting, and then you put on a betrayed-husband act so that, knowing myself to be pure and innocent, I won’t take your wild accusations, or you, very seriously. . . . And where my brains were hiding while all this was going on is a question I prefer not to answer.”

  Ackerman said, “You have a certain reputation, Mr. Helm. It seemed necessary to take you completely by surprise to avoid, at the very least, an unnecessary and undignified struggle in which someone could have been hurt.”

  His speech bothered me; he didn’t talk like, or look like, a typical employee of a South American drug baron. Even the gun was wrong; I was under the impression that they generally like the big, noisy, macho blasters, .357 minimum. I reminded myself that I really had very little experience with the breed. They undoubtedly came in all shapes and sizes; hell, El Viejo presumably had bank presidents, not to mention other presidents, working for him. Anyway I still, with a king-size headache, probably wasn’t very sharp on nuances.

  I touched my bruised scalp again, winced, and said, “Well, I surely am happy that nobody got hurt. And I won’t ask why you couldn’t just knock on the door normally and state your business without all this horsing around. I’m sure it will all become clear eventually. ”

  “I’m sure it will. . . . Please sit over there.” When I’d made a production of pulling myself up painfully, tottering a few feet, and lowering myself into the indicated chair, Ackerman spoke over his shoulder: “Bring her in, Belinda.”

  The connecting door opened and Ruth came in followed by plump Mrs. Ackerman, still in her tight white pants and loose purple shirt. High-heeled white sandals. Stainless-steel Smith & Wesson revolver, five-shot, caliber .38 Special, the new ladies’ model with the rosewood grips. Ruth was also dressed as last seen, in her standard tour costume of denim skirt and open-necked knitted shirt. She didn’t seem to have taken any damage, but her eyes were furious, as was her voice, rushing into indignant protest as soon as she saw me.

  “Matt, she barged right through the connecting door and waved her silly gun at me, and opened the hall door for that man, you know the one, who immediately started tearing my things apart; he’s still in there making a mess of . . . Matt, you’re hurt!” She hurried across the room to me. “What in the world do these crazy people think they’re doing? She pawed all over me, searching me, damn her! What do they want? Are you all right?”

  My dull mind wanted to ask about the still-unseen man I was supposed to know, but Ackerman’s impatient expression told me I’d better let my curiosity wait.

  “Just a small dent in my skull,” I said to Ruth. “And a large one in my pride. Sit down, sweetheart, and I’m sure the nice man will explain everything.”

  “Yes, do sit down, Mrs. Steiner, please. Keep an eye on both of them, Belinda.” Ackerman laid his pistol down once more and spoke to me: “Mrs. Ackerman is a competent marksman—excuse me, Belinda, markswoman—so I hope, Mr. Helm, that you have no grandiose plans in mind for altering the balance of power here."

  I said, “There’s nothing grandiose in my mind at the moment.” I looked at Belinda Ackerman. “I’m deeply hurt. Here I thought you always smiled at me so pretty because you found me attractive!”

  The blond girl laughed. “Oh, I do, darling, I do! It’s always nice when a girl can combine business with pleasure.”

  But her big blue eyes, emphasized by the long, dark, curling lashes and the elaborate baby-doll makeup she always wore, were cold and wary, and the revolver resting on her plump knee was quite steady as she perched on the nearby cocktail table. Then Ackerman looked around impatiently and walked to the connecting door and told somebody to hurry up, returning to his former post near us. Moments later a familiar figure appeared in the doorway between the rooms—well, I’d only met the guy once but I hadn’t forgotten him: Dennis Morton, the young hero who’d backed down from a confrontation in Santa Fe.

  Some pieces of the puzzle fell into place, and I started to get mad. I mean, I’d thought I’d accomplished something, getting Ackerman to reveal himself, and it didn’t please me to learn that I’d called the wrong coyotes out of the brush at the expense of a damaged head.

  Ackerman looked around. “Finished, Dennis?”

  Dennis Morton said, “I’ve done all I can with her laptop; it’s not a very powerful machine, sir.”

  He was as neatly shorn and shaved as he’d been in Santa Fe, wearing a crisp seersucker suit and a flowered sport shirt open at the throat. He was also wearing his gun, in the same place as last seen, high on the right hip well back under the suit coat. He’d been a little reluctant with that, once; but apparently he was an eager man with a computer. The look he sent in my direction indicated that he hadn’t forgotten me, or our last meeting, either.

  Well, at least I’d been right about something: the fact that the Ackermans had not been on the tour list had been significant, although not in the way I’d expected. And they hadn’t been spotted in our hasty preliminary check because, as a government man with, presumably, a reasonable amount of clout, he could undoubtedly—just as we could—make his official records, and the records of associates like Belinda, conform to whatever identities he chose to employ. His cover would be proof against a casual search, although our research boys and girls in Washington would undoubtedly penetrate it eventually and feel very proud of themselves as they made their report next week or next month. Being a kindly soul, I wouldn’t ever dream of asking where all this great information had been when I needed it.

  Ackerman asked Morton, “What did you find in there?”

  The younger man said, “She’s got a little portable computer with a hard disk—that’s the built-in job that has a very large storage capacity and will handle some reasonably elaborate programs. The program she’s working with has a fairly secure encryption feature; the people in Washington can undoubtedly break it but I can’t. There’s a separate drive that lets
her copy stuff from the hard disk onto a three-and-half-inch diskette or, for that matter, from diskette to diskette. She has a couple of boxes of blank disks. And hidden in her toilet kit, I found two diskettes that, according to the labels, are identical copies of a missing original and hold Chapters Twenty-seven to Thirty-four of Mr. Steiner’s book, which he apparently called Manuscript X2, or MSX2 for computer purposes. Those are the ones I was trying to read just now but the machine wanted a password and I couldn’t supply it.”

  Ackerman frowned. “You say the original is missing? You searched the room thoroughly?”

  “Yes, sir, and Belinda searched Mrs. Steiner; she does not have it on her person.”

  Ackerman frowned. “Well, here is another disk I took from Mr. Helm just now. Chapters Nine to Eighteen, according to the label. It’s probably also coded or encrypted or whatever you call it, but you’d better put it into the computer and make sure.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  After Morton had disappeared into Ruth’s room, Ackerman looked at me and said, “Well, Mr. Helm? I see by your face that you’re beginning to get a grasp on the situation at last. Do you know who I am?”

  I said, “You must be the boss, lucky man, of that handsome character who just left us, the one I met in Santa Fe who bluffs so easily.”

  “Morton wasn’t sent to Santa Fe to secure any loose cannon that rolled his way; he had other work to do.”

  “Then he should learn to concentrate on his work instead of trying to make a sideline of collecting firearms that don’t belong to him. And his commanding officer should learn that it’s unwise to tangle with experienced old Washington politicos who have more influence than he does.”

  I was trying for a reaction and I got it: the gray-haired man stepped forward and slapped my face hard. He stepped back to glare at me.

  “That power-hungry old goat!” he said harshly. “The assignment was mine. Vasquez is mine! I have lived with this case for years; he had no right to—”

  He broke off, breathing hard, apparently unaware in his anger that he’d just changed the situation drastically. A moment before, we’d still been colleagues after a fashion, working toward the same goal, Gregorio Vasquez, for the same employer, Uncle Sam. The fact that Ackerman had tricked me and struck me down to gain an advantageous position wasn’t a serious matter between us. A judicious tap with a sap, no harder than necessary, is quite forgivable in our racket; I had no right to resent the one he’d given me. It was strictly business. However, a gratuitous slap in anger was a different matter entirely. That was not permitted. The Ackerman season was now open, he’d just opened it himself, and if a good shot offered itself, I’d have no qualms about taking it; but there’s never anything to be gained by talking big and mean and blustery about it. Why warn them?

  So I just sat there without raising my hand to my stinging face and said, “I don’t suppose that Ackerman is your real name, or that Belinda, here, is really Mrs. Ackerman.”

  The gray-haired man said, “Call it a working partnership, like yours and Mrs. Steiner’s. And for purposes of reference, Ackerman is as good a name as any.” He sounded, for a moment, quite reasonable; then his calm and his voice broke:

  "That aging gray spider sitting in his dingy little office sending his young men out to kill, like the Old Man of the Mountain!”

  I said, “We’re all aging, every day of the year; and if you’re referring to me as one of Mac’s young men, I thank you for the compliment. But unlike the Old Man of the Mountain, he doesn’t pass out hash with our orders, damn it.”

  “I will not tolerate humor involving drugs!” Having put me into my place, Ackerman drew a long breath and went on: “It was simply an exercise in influence to him! He cares nothing for the evil done by men like Gregorio Vasquez; he cares nothing for the terrible disaster that faces us now, if the man is permitted to saturate our country with his vicious product at bargain prices.”

  I said, “He cares. He cares about cancer, too, and AIDS, and nukes, and the national debt; but he doesn’t feel that we’re qualified to solve those problems, either. And power and influence may have had something to do with his taking over this mission against his usual policy—after all, you did throw him a direct challenge—but as it happened, we were involved already. I suspect he was happy when you gave him an excuse to take over; he thought that his way I wouldn’t create a nasty hassle by tangling with you and your mission on my way to the target, since it is my mission now. Clearly he was wrong.”

  “Your mission!” Ackerman’s face had lost its healthy pinkness, replaced by an angry flush. “I was the one who realized the possibilities of Mark Steiner’s research—well, he was calling himself Raoul Marcus Carrera Mascarena then, and writing as Marcus Piedra. I was the one who offered protection to him and his family if he’d come to the U.S. I was the one who managed to save his wife when she was kidnapped. We lost a good man in the process. I was the one who, when his first American identity was compromised, arranged to give him and his family a new home and identity out west. And then this ungrateful woman whose life we saved turns around and—”

  Ruth, who’d been listening to all this in silence, now stirred and spoke harshly: “Ungrateful? What’s to be grateful for, that after all the promises of perfect security you made my husband before we came to this country, your people actually watched over us so carelessly that almost right away a man slipped into the backseat of my car with a bottle of chloroform? So your clowns managed to repair that damage after I’d gone through almost a week of hell, big deal! I’m supposed to be oozing gratitude all over for that? And why should I be grateful, anyway, to a man who never let me see him?” She drew a long breath. “There’s nothing to make a girl feel grateful like being treated as a blabbermouthed nitwit who can’t be trusted when important schemes are afoot that concern her and her children, Mark told me he wanted me to sit in on his discussions with you, but you kept screaming security. So as far as I’m concerned, all your big talk about the wonderful things you did for us is a lot of . . .a lot of bull. The great, marvelous things that were done for us, like letting me be kidnapped and my husband be killed, were all done by Mr. Morton and his merry men. All right, if you’re the one who gave the orders and want to take the responsibility, what have you done about the fact that in spite of your fine promises, Mark is dead?”

  “My dear lady . . .”

  “Nevermind that dear-lady nonsense!” Ruth said sharply. “I’ll tell you what you haven’t done. You haven’t come out of your beautiful, secure anonymity to comfort the grieving widow and apologize for the fact that you and your underlings failed dismally to keep your promise of safety, the promise with which you lured us to the U.S. I haven’t heard a single word of regret or remorse from anybody in your idiotic undercover circus that let Mark be murdered as easily as I was kidnapped. I haven’t even heard anybody—not Mr. Morton and certainly not you—promise to make up for your total incompetence, at least a little, by making certain Mark’s murderers are brought to justice.”

  “Mrs. Steiner. . ."

  Ruth went on, unheeding: “All you people cared about when he died was getting hold of his book, because you thought it might give you the answer to some of your drug problems. Well, I didn’t give a damn about your stupid problems; I wanted Mark’s assassins found and punished. So I turned to an organization in which people had the odd notion that murder is a slightly more heinous crime than substance abuse, to use the silly name you people have for it.” She glared at Ackerman. “I was a new widow, my husband was dead, and all your boy Dennis could think about and talk about and hound me about was that lousy manuscript! I presume he was acting under your instructions. Well, there’ll be six-foot snowdrifts in the jungle outside that window before either of you ever lays hands on that book, Mr. Roger Ackerman!”

  Ackerman stepped forward and slapped her hard.

  Chapter 17

  I always wonder about these sluggers: how do they manage to live so long with both hands
still attached? The normal human reaction to being slapped—at least it’s my normal human reaction—is to perform at least an amputation, if not a total extermination; so how do they continue to survive intact?

  "Watch her, Belinda!" Ackerman snapped, stepping back.

  But Ruth made no effort to lunge at him; she just set the spectacles straight on her nose, touched her mouth with her fingertips, saw the blood, and dug a crumpled Kleenex out of a skirt pocket to hold against her split lip.

  “This disk is also coded, sir.” That was the boy wonder returning from Ruth’s room.

  “And you say you can’t break it?” Ackerman asked.

  “I’m afraid not, sir. Not with the facilities I have here.”

  “Very well. We’ll try it another way. You’d better get behind Helm and hold your pistol to his head. Correction, make that my pistol. It’s silenced, so it shouldn’t disturb anybody if you have to use it. Here, take it and lend me yours. Belinda, I believe you carry cigarettes.”

  “Yes.”

  Ackerman said, “It’s a dirty habit and an unhealthy one, but it has advantages. Light one, please. You can put away your weapon; I’ll watch the woman.” He moved to stand before Ruth, holding Morton’s revolver. “Now, Mrs. Steiner, I want two things. I want the password or computer code or whatever it takes to unscramble the text on these disks. And I want the names and addresses of the people here in South America to whom your husband sent the remaining disks on which he recorded his book. We still lack Chapters One to Ten, Chapters Twenty to Twenty-six, and however many chapters he wrote beyond Thirty-four. You can start by telling me how many there were altogether.”