The Revengers Read online

  “I know what you mean,” I said.

  She said, “Look, the ones that go down are mostly kind of slob ships, if you know what I mean; flag-of-convenience vessels that are getting on in age and aren’t too well managed or maintained. Cheapo ships, you could call them. Exactly the kind of beatup old buckets a terrorist would scorn; he’d make his big political statement by sinking some shiny new freighters or container ships or preferably giant supertankers, wouldn’t he? Lots of publicity. Important losses that would make the shipping world sit up and take notice, and pay up promptly when the price was stated. But this has been going on for a couple of years already with no demands that I’ve heard of; and I’ve listened very closely, I can tell you.”

  “Any other kind of pattern?” I asked.

  She hesitated. “Well, there’s something funny about the crews. I’ve been interviewing all the survivors I could trace; that’s what I’m doing here in Nassau. Some of the men off of the last ship sunk are in the hospital here and I’ve been talking with them. I was there yesterday questioning a young officer, the third mate, who was on the bridge when it happened.” She frowned. “Matt, the funny thing is, he’s hiding something.”

  “What?”

  Eleanor shook her head. “I don’t know yet; but he took refuge in being too sick to answer—he was pretty badly burned—when I started asking too many questions about how it happened. Damn it, I know when an interviewee is trying to keep something from me; it’s the first thing you learn in this racket. And I’ve hit some others like that from the other ships, usually officers. They just don’t want to talk. I don’t know what it means yet. Some kind of collusion? Barratry? A giant industry-wide insurance swindle involving ancient ships that are worth more to their owners at the bottom of the sea?” She shrugged. “I don’t know, but I hope to go back to the hospital today, if this business of yours doesn’t take too long, and see if I can’t pry it out of this one. He’s pretty young and I think he’s having a hard time living with it, whatever it is.”

  I said, “You can’t have it both ways, Elly. If it’s a giant criminal conspiracy of some kind, it’s unlikely to be an amateur production.”

  She shrugged. “I can’t help it. But I know damned well it’s not a terrorist caper; I’ve dealt with a few of those and they smelled altogether different.” She grinned abruptly. “Hardly evidence I could present in court, right?”

  I asked, “How do you feel about sharing your information with the OFS?”

  “Stupid question number one thousand,” she said. “How do you think I feel? It’s my story, goddamn it. What’s the matter with these law-enforcement freaks, anyway? The information is there. The sources are there. If they want to know something, why don’t they do a little simple investigative work and find out for themselves, instead of trying to hitch a free ride on our coattails? Then they can go ahead and cheerfully betray their own informants instead of trying to force us to betray ours—and see how far their next investigation gets, after word gets around they’re not to be trusted!” She shook her head grimly. “Like this boy in the hospital. Obviously, what he knows is discreditable to him or he wouldn’t be hiding it, would he? And obviously, he’s not going to tell me unless I swear to him that his name will never come into it; that I’ll only use his information to help me learn what’s going on and nail those responsible, not to crucify him. That I’ll cover for him all the way, even if it means going to jail and telling the judge chuck-you-Farley.” She grimaced. “What the hell kind of a law is it that tries to make people break their sacred goddamn oaths to people who’ve trusted them?”

  I grinned and said, “It’s a great speech and you may need it in court, but we’d better not take any more time to practice it now.”

  She drew a long breath. “Sorry. Push the Freedom-of-the-Press button and out it comes. If that’s my trouble with the OFS, what’s yours?”

  I said, “Whether or not to give you to them.”

  She frowned at me. “Have you got a choice? They’re pretty big and powerful and claim all kinds of jurisdiction, aren’t they? Don’t they?”

  “Claim is the word,” I said. “There are ways of dealing with their claims. My chief made certain I’d remember that I’m here to take all possible precautions where you’re concerned, not to oblige Mr. Bennett of the OFS. I figure that means I’ve got discretion: your safety comes first. For strictly selfish reasons, of course. We can’t afford to have you killed, at the moment.”

  She smiled. “I like dealing with a man who’s all heart.” I said, “Anyway, what it amounts to is that if I think you’ll really be safer with Bennett’s boys, I’m presumably authorized to turn you over to them; but if I don’t think they could protect a dimestore wedding ring locked up in Fort Knox, I’m allowed to keep you for a pet, all my very own.”

  There was a little silence. She was watching me steadily. “Well?” she asked at last.

  I said, “Hell, it’s up to you, Elly. I can only protect you if I have your full and happy cooperation, which I obviously won’t have if I bully you in my usual crude fashion and keep you away from that nice Mr. Bennett and his handsome cleancut agents very much against your will.”

  A smile touched her lips and went away. “But can you really buck them?”

  I said, “Lady, a man with a gun can buck anybody—as long as he lasts.”

  “How?”

  “Don’t ask if you don’t really want to know.”

  She licked her lips. “I want to know.”

  I said, “Well, it’ll be the biggest goddamned circus you ever saw, a real Wild West show. Billy the Kid and Wild Bill Hickok and Wyatt Earp in one neat economy package. My chief will try to quiet me down, of course, he always does; and I’ll tell him where he can go and stuff himself with what, I always do. We’ve worked this crazy-man routine before; we know all the moves. Bennett doesn’t really have any authority over us; but he’s got power enough to make things uncomfortable for us unless I give my chief an out, which I will do, and which he will take. And that will put it strictly up to me, and you. All I ask is that you don’t let me get clear out to the end of the limb and then hand them a saw to cut it off with. Make up your mind. Either we go all the way together or we don’t start. What’s your choice?”

  She picked up her heavy purse and took my arm. “It sounds like fun. I like circuses. Shall we go?”

  The first thing I saw, as we entered the seventh-floor room, was the man whose Adam’s apple I’d clobbered in my own room the evening before.

  Chapter 17

  It was apparently the sitting-room part of a suite, with the sleeping facilities next door. It was Old Home Week in spades, I thought sourly. Not only was one of my last night’s playmates present—I’d had to rearrange my thinking about that incident when I learned the OFS was involved—but also the pair I’d seen in the hall this morning, all lined up on the sofa like pigeons on a wire. Warren Peterson was there, too, for reasons yet to be determined. He was looking grim and handsome and as stupid as I remembered him, in his blond beach-boy fashion. If I’d left a lump on his skull it didn’t show. He had a big chair to the left of the only man in the room I didn’t know by sight, another boldly handsome gent—if you overlooked die fact that he had no hair to amount to anything. Nature had harvested the crop on top and he’d mowed the rest to match. I didn’t like that. It’s an affectation I’d met before; let’s call it the skinhead syndrome. It almost always spells trouble.

  It used to be that the ones with lots of hair were making a statement about what free and independent spirits they were. In those days, the crew-cut joes were the conventional ones. Nowadays, hair is square, and it’s the self-made baldies who are making the statement, generally about how tough and virile they are, as opposed to the lace-pants sissies with the flowing locks. Bennett had a long, big-nosed face with the nose thrusting downward, straight and bony, from a point well up between the eyebrows. The eyes were brown, and as a good blue-eyed transplanted Swede, I don’t trust b
rown-eyed people much—I have never claimed to be particularly tolerant—but I wouldn’t have trusted this one if he’d had eyes like a summer sky. He was wearing a light suit of the kind that used to be called Palm Beach before they started making them out of petroleum. Completing his costume—well, aside from a few odds and ends like shirt and shoes—was a little bow tie, undoubtedly another significant statement in this age of four-in-hand neckwear or no neckwear at all.

  It was too bad. The problem wasn’t that he was tough; the problem was that he thought he was tough—he thought about it all the time. The really tough ones can be reasonable; they’ve got nothing to prove. They know what they are and to hell with you. But this guy with his goddamned statements, obviously wasn’t, quite sure. But he’d die or kill you rather than let his doubts be known.

  He looked at his watch with a flourish. “Helm? You were ordered to report here at eight o’clock sharp.”

  I paid that no attention. I wasn’t his man and my orders and my punctual execution thereof, or lack of punctual execution thereof, were no concern of his. I glanced at Mac who’d been seated at Bennett’s right, but had risen courteously at Eleanor’s appearance, the only man in the room to do so. He was dressed in one of his customary gray suits, one of the lighter ones as a concession to the Bahamian climate. He’s got them, it seems, in every weight from tropical to arctic. Maybe he’s making a statement, too, but after all the years I’d worked for him, I wasn’t going to worry about its meaning now. His smoothly shaved face seemed impassive; but I saw an eyelid flutter almost imperceptibly. It was about as much of a wink as he ever manages, equivalent to a contorted grimace on another man’s face. It said that he knew what I had in mind, what I must have in mind under the circumstances; so put the gaudy show on the road. I turned to the heavy man whose conversational apparatus I’d damaged the night before, now dressed neatly in suit and tie. Apparently the sports shirt outfit had been a disguise.

  “Up!” I said. “Get the lady a chair, slob!”

  Shocked, the man started to answer angrily; but Bennett cut in, “I give the orders around here, Helm!”

  I wheeled on him. “Then give them, for Christ’s sake! A room full of healthy male creeps all parked on their fat rumps; what happened to manners, anyway? And what’s this muscle-bound dodo doing here?” I glanced at Warren Peterson and back to Bennett. “If he’s on your payroll, you must really be scraping the bottom of the barrel!”

  Bennett said stiffly, “Mr. Peterson had certain information that seemed relevant. He claims that the lady and he were attacked by you; and that you must now be using certain drugs—you used some on him, he says—to dominate and control her.”

  I said, “Hell, the stupid bastard threatened me with a gun, so I took it away from him and hit him on the head with it. If that’s a drug. Then I gave him a mild sedative so he wouldn’t come awake violent and force me to kill him. As for Miss Brand, she’s quite capable of speaking for herself, so I won’t bother.”

  Eleanor said quickly, “I’m not under anybody’s domination or control thank you very much. And I asked Mr. Peterson to go away and mind his own business. I have no idea what he thinks he’s doing.”

  Peterson cleared his throat. “Long before that, you asked me to help you and protect you, Eleanor. I feel it’s my duty to continue to do so, even though you seem to have fallen under the spell of the very man you hated and feared. . . .”

  “You’re being very silly,” Eleanor said. Her voice was sharp. “And what you’re really doing is getting back at me because I kicked you out of bed.”

  There was a brief silence in the room. Warren Peterson turned bright red, a real honest-to-God blush that would have done a Victorian maiden proud. Bennett cleared his throat.

  “All right, Lawson. Please get the young lady a chair.”

  I looked at Mac. “Just what are we supposed to be doing here, sir? I came because those were your instructions, but I’d like the record to show that I’m acting under protest.”

  “Matt, there’s no need for hostility—”

  “Tell them that,” I said. “Just how much of their hostility do I have to put up with before I produce a little of my own? Two of the men in this room, and one somewhere outside who belongs with them, have pointed guns at me within the past twenty-four hours. I consider that fairly hostile behavior, don’t you, sir? Two others were laying for me in the hall when I came up here half an hour ago. It’s, well, kind of an effort for me to be polite to them, or their boss, under the circumstances. What’s supposed to make it worth my while, sir? Our while?”

  “Inter-agency cooperation—”

  “Cooperation, my ass!” I said crudely. “What the hell were a couple of OFS characters doing in my room last night with loaded firearms, cooperating? You know damn well what they were doing. You know what they were doing out in the hall this morning. They were going to get the drop on me, they thought, and disarm me neatly, after which they’d have it all their own way, with the lady they wanted safely established under their ‘protection’ instead of ours. Cooperation, hell!” I wheeled as the heavyset man called Lawson turned away, after ungraciously shoving forward a straight chair for Eleanor to sit on. I said, “Here, catch.” He turned hastily and fielded the revolver I tossed him. “That’s your sick pal’s,” I said. “Here’s yours.” The second weapon came too fast for him and, still busy with the first, he fumbled and dropped them both. I said, “Don’t get nervous, amigo. I took the bullets out of them. Us pros generally call them cartridges, but I suppose you amateurs call them bullets like in the lady-type detective novels, so we’ll keep the terminology simple for you.” I turned back to Bennett. “You’d better instruct him not to load them in here. He keeps shooting people accidentally.”

  Bennett said, tight-lipped, “A loud and impressive performance, Helm. Well, at least loud. Now if we can get down to business. . . . I’m sorry, Miss Brand. No smoking in here.”

  I looked at him for a moment, unbelieving. At least I pretended to be unbelieving; actually, from him, I’d have believed anything. I turned to Eleanor and took her arm, urging her off the chair onto which she’d just settled. “Come on, baby. Let’s get the hell out of here.”

  Again she asked no questions; she simply rose and turned with me toward the door.

  “Helm!” That was Bennett, behind me. When I gave him no answer, he snapped, “Lawson! Burdette!”

  The two men came off the sofa and moved to block the door. Then they stood very still, looking at the snub-nosed revolver in my hand.

  I said, “Elly.”

  “Yes.”

  “Now’s the time. Your gun, please. I have the one on the left. You take the one on the right. When I shoot mine,

  yours is all yours. . . . Ready?” Under my breath I said, “I told you it was going to be a goddamn circus.”

  “I’m ready, Matt.” Her voice was quite steady, and so was the weapon she’d produced from her purse.

  Behind me, Bennett’s voice said sharply, “I must ask you please to control this madman of yours!” Obviously he was addressing Mac.

  I said, “Sir.”

  “Yes, Matt.”

  “Warn them, please. They may have some strange notion that I’m bluffing. Tell them. If a gun shows, if there’s a single shot. Tell them what will happen.”

  Mac’s voice spoke calmly, “There was a barge on the Fraser River, up in Canada; a houseboat of sorts. There was a meeting—you’ll be interested, Bennett—of a certain terrorist group. Ten people were present. Two departed; eight remained, including my agent here, a prisoner. There was some shooting. Eventually Mr. Helm walked out. He had in him two metal-jacketed 9mm submachine gun bullets, one soft-nosed .38 caliber revolver bullet, and three double-ought buckshot pellets, but he walked out. Nobody else emerged from that floating shack alive, except for one young terrorist who was carried out on a stretcher, whom the doctors eventually managed to save. I would not be too hasty with the firearms, gentlemen.”

  Af
ter a moment, Bennett said, “Order him to put his gun away, then.”

  “I do not interfere with my agents in the field,” Mac said. “I simply give them their assignments and allow them to carry on as they see fit. You seem to have antagonized Mr. Helm. He’s been attacked with lethal weapons. Traps have been set for him. Oddly enough, he does not seem to consider this appropriate behavior for the members of cooperating agencies. Oddly enough, neither do I. You made the problem, Bennett, now deal with it.”

  He was departing from the standard script which, as I’d described it to Eleanor, requires me to take all the heat while he dissociates himself, and the agency, from my violent antics. Apparently he had no great fondness for, or fear of, Mr. Bennett; and he saw no reason to encourage the man’s high-handed tactics.

  There was a hint of shrillness in Bennett’s voice. “But what does he want?”

  Mac’s voice was impatient. “Why not ask him?”

  “What do you want, Helm?”

  I said, “The lady has been entrusted to my care. I feel responsible for seeing that she is treated with courtesy, respect, and consideration. Her personal habits are not open to criticism. If she wants to pick her nose, she’ll pick her nose, and there will be no comments. If she feels like smoking, she’ll either smoke here or I’ll take her where she can smoke, and I doubt there’s anybody in this room who can stop me. If somebody wants to try, let’s get on with it.”

  There was a little pause; then Bennett laughed lightly and I knew it was over, at least for the time being; but he would have to be watched from now on. He would want to avenge this blow to his pride and he would certainly have to be watched. But I would have had to do that anyway.

  “All this fuss about a mere cigarette!” he said easily. “I do most humbly apologize, Miss Brand, I didn’t realize how much tobacco meant to you. Of course you may smoke. Lawson, an ashtray for the lady, if you please.”