The Terminators (15 page)

''Half a million," I said, and was a little startled to see that for a moment I was taken seriously. There was a funny little silence. I went on plaintively, "Hell, that's only a fraction of what you folks are expecting to make on this deal, Yale. It's got to be, or you wouldn't be taking the risk."

His eyes had narrowed. "Half a—"

"Take it or leave it," I said.

"You've got to be kidding]"

I grinned abruptly. "Friend, you're catching on. It's nice to be smart, isn't it?" I stopped grinning. "Now, if you have any more funny jokes, why don't you save them for a better occasion? Right now, I've got some advice for you, Mr. Yale. You're going to sit right in this corner. You're not going to move a muscle. You're not going to open your mouth unless directly addressed by me. If you disobey any of these instructions, this young lady will put a great big hole through—"

Suddenly I slammed the little pistol, flat in the palm of my hand, against the side of his head, hard. He bounced sideways against the cabin wall and slumped there, staring at me with big, brown, shocked, and angry eyes.

I said, harshly, "In case you're wondering what that was for, Mr. Norman Yale, it was for looking at Mrs. Barth the way you just did and thinking that I was obviously bluffing and she wouldn't shoot, not a nice young lady like that. It was to save your life, 
amigo
, because I'm not bluffing and she will shoot. . . . Okay, Madeleine, he's all yours. I'U take care of the ones across the room."

"I've got him. Matt," Diana said quietly, sliding past to take the middle of the berth close to her prisoner. "Matt, I—"

Whatever she'd been about to say, she checked it. I knew what it was, anyway. She'd been going to teU me that she'd had perfect faith in me; absolute confidence that I wouldn't sell out, not even for half a million.

I grinned. "You're a lousy little liar."

"I didn't say anything," she protested, but there was a spot of color in each cheek.

"His name was Wetherill," Greta Elfenbein said abruptly.

"What?" I glanced her way.

"That's what you want to know, isn't it?" Her voice was impatient. "You want to know who betrayed you, who gave Papa the information that brought us to this ship? That's what you asked. Well, I'm telling you. The man was one of your people. He was paid a good deal of money. His name was Robert Wetherill. Now . . . now will you 
please
 take Papa down?"

Diana stirred indignantly beside me. "That's not true! Robbie would never have—"

I glanced at her sharply. "Keep him covered, dammit! Robbie? The guy you said was dead?"

Greta Elfenbein laughed sharply. "Of course he's dead. When they learned he'd betrayed them, they murdered him —or isn't it murder when one government agent kills another? Of course they made it look like an automobile accident." She went on quickly before Diana could protest: "Please, Mr. Helm, now will you pull out that dreadful knife? Please?"

"And have you clam up just when you're speaking your piece so nicely?"

"I'll tell you everything I know if you only ... if you'll just take him down. I promise!"

Diana was fuming, obviously on the verge of bursting with counter-accusations; as if I gave a damn, at the moment, who'd killed a guy who'd been dead before I arrived in Norway. I gave her a sharp little sign to remind her that her business was Norman Yale, and reached around and got one of the ship's towels from the rack by the little sink in the comer. I wondered how soon we'd start getting. complaints from the stewardess about all the disappearing linen—I'd already shot a hole in part of this cabin's quota. I folded the towel once and laid it across the unconscious man's lap. Then I took the strain off his arm, yanked out the blade, and placed his hand on the towel so he wouldn't bleed all over himself and the bunk.

"How about some Kleenex?" I asked Diana.

"Right there on top of my back by the foot of the berth." Her voice was cool and unfriendly. "The first aid kit you wanted is on the edge of the washbasin, in case you didn't notice."

"You can start talking again while I clean up," I said to Greta. "What did Robert Wetherill have to say?"

She glanced at her parent, whose color seemed to be returning, although he still hadn't opened his eyes.

"Very well," she said. "I'll keep my part of the bargain; but I can't tell you everything he said because he did a lot of talking to Papa when I wasn't there. There was something about a fantastic invention cooked up by a drunken oilfield mechanic—well, we'd already heard about that from the Aloco people. That's why Mr. Yale got in touch with Papa in the first place. Papa had put out feelers, the way he does, and turned up Mr. Wetherill, who was willing to talk, for a price."

I'd wiped off the knife, folded it, and put it away. "Shut up, Madeleine," I snapped when Diana started to speak quickly, obviously to protest this further slur on her dead associate's name. I reached for the first aid kit and got out some sterile gauze pads and a roll of bandage for Elfenbein's hand. ''Go on," I said to Greta.

"Mr. Wetherill confirmed the existence of the invention. I wasn't in on those discussions but Papa made sure I was there when Wetherill described how you people were going to pick up all the information up the coast. The railway-station restaurant near the docks in Trondheim and the little rocky hill above the parking space behind the Svolvaer airport. The courier would be a woman. Wetherill didn't know who, but he told us the ship and cabin number so we could identify her when she came aboard. She would carry a pair of special binoculars for identification: Leitz Trinovid 6x24s. It's a very expensive little glass, and it has been discontinued. The smallest currently listed is the seven-power, Mr. Helm, and that now costs close to five hundred of your American dollars. We had a terrible time locating a dealer who still had a specimen of the smaller model in stock."

"I see. You were going to be the courier." Her presence suddenly made sense.

"Of course. Mr. Wetherill supplied me with all the information I'd need. In addition to the binoculars there's a kind of password. The other person offers to buy the glasses, apologetically, saying he couldn't help noticing them and he'd been looking for a pair for a long time. Then I—well, the courier—will say: 'Oh, I wouldn't part with them for all the oil in Arabia!' " The smaller girl glanced towards Diana triumphantly, but spoke to me: "Ask her! If you haven't been told all the details yet, Mr. Helm, ask her if I haven't got it right! And if I do, how could I have got it except from her precious Mr. Wetherill?"

There was a little silence then Diana said reluctantly, "Well, that's pretty close, but it doesn't mean—"

"Never mind," I said. "Miss Elfenbein, we stop at Molde, up the coast, in a few hours. For your sake, I hope we see you there. On the dock. With your luggage, your daddy, and your tame P.R. man. Persuade them, doll. Cry, scream, kick, and yell but get them to hell off this boat. Okay, let's wake up Papa. .. ."

Then I saw that Papa was already awake, watching me steadily, unblinkingly, like a snake. There was a cold, vicious hatred in his eyes. Again, I got the impression he wasn't really a very pleasant person, but then, who is?

XII.

THE ship's captain apparently used the same undocking technique everywhere, going ahead against the wire-cable spring line, as I think it's called, and then backing free as soon as the stem had swung out far enough to give him maneuvering room. At least he used it in Molde just as he had in Alesund.

As we drew away stem first, I waved a friendly hand at the little group standing beside the cluster of suitcases on the dock: the dark-haired girl in the gaily checked slacks, the white-haired man with the bandaged hand, and the tousle-haired young executive type in the sharp sport coat. I didn't really expect to get a response, and, except for a glowering look from Dr. Elfenbein, I didn't. The wind turned sharper and colder as, moving forward now, the ship picked up speed out of the small harbor.

I said, "Let's go have a beer in the lounge. I guess it's still inhabitable; they don't seem to turn on the terrible telly until six."

Shortly, Diana and I were installed in a couple of the comfortable, shackled-down chairs in the first-class lounge. The TV was, happily, blank and silent and a waitress from the dining room was plying us with the best the ship could legally offer in the way of booze, pretty feeble stuff. I took a taste of the Norwegian brew and decided that it tasted no worse than any other beer. You'll gather I’m not really an 
aficionado
.

I said, "Okay, now that we're out of the wind, tell me. Am I correct in deducing, from the way you kept trying to stand up for him, that you had a thing going with Mr. Robert Wetherill?"

Diana hesitated. After a moment, she shook her head and said wryly, "No, you're not correct, darling. I would very much have 
liked
 to have a thing going with Mr. Robert Wetherill, but that's not quite the same thing, is it?"

"Does that mean he just couldn't see you, or that he was looking elsewhere?"

She sighed. "Now who's clairvoyant? If you must know, Robbie's attention was firmly concentrated elsewhere. As a matter of fact, it was really rather funny, I guess, if you had a good sense of humor. There was I yearning after Robbie, who couldn't see me; and there he was yearning after Evelyn, who couldn't see him. And she, well, I think she kind of hoped the Skipper, once he got over the loss of his wife. . . . No, I'm not being fair. I don't 
know
 that. We weren't quite close enough to compare yearnings. But it would have been like her. She was a very dignified and proper girl, you know, much too dignified and proper to get involved in a hot and messy affair with somebody her own age; but a discreet liaison with a distinguished older man. . . . Oh, damn, I'm being catty, and I promised myself I wouldn't, particularly now she's dead."

I was a little surprised at Hank Priest, with his wartime experience. The group he'd got together—the youthful U.S. part of it, at least—sounded like just the kind of half-baked outfit I'd feared I was getting involved with, with everybody distracted by private little loves and hates and jealousies, and nobody tending to the public business, weird though it might be, that was supposed to be the organization's chief concern.

I said sourly, "It's a wonder any of you got any work done, with all this round-robin yearning going on. But I think you're right about Evelyn Benson, not that it makes much difference now."

"What makes you think so?"

"Something she said when she was dying. Tell me, what's your feeling about our commanding officer, Diana?"

She looked a bit surprised; then she thought for a moment and said carefully, "The Skipper? Why, I think he's a pretty good guy who ran into a bunch of bad luck and is keeping himself very, very busy so he won't have to think about what he's going to do with the rest of his life, and that empty house back in Florida, and the boat he used to love working and cruising and fishing on, that he can't bear to go aboard now after what happened on it."

It was a pretty fair analysis, I decided, as far as it went. I said, "Did you ever feel sorry enough for poor, bereaved Captain Priest to try to console him, to put it discreetly, in a practical way?"

She spilled a little beer on her knee, jerking around to look at me, shocked and angry. Then she saw I'd been deliberately trying for a reaction, and grinned.

"You louse! The answer is no. What put that idea into your head?"

I offered her my handkerchief to mop with, but she rejected it in favor of a Kleenex from her purse.

I said, "Not what, who. Evelyn Benson. She thought you had, or at least wanted to. 'Doting' was the word she used to describe your attitude towards your employer."

"She must have been crazy—"

"Not crazy, just jealous. I don't know exactly how your duty roster read, but I gather that she was kind of a field girl and you stuck pretty close to headquarters, meaning Hank Priest. And apparently she was so infatuated with our retired naval gent that she took for granted that any woman exposed to him daily, like you, couldn't help but feel the same way. Which seems to confirm your hypotheses."

She looked at me, frowning a little. "What are you trying to prove. Matt?"

"I don't know," I said. "I'm just trying to get all these relationships cleared up. Most of them probably don't mean a thing. Now tell me about Wetherill, Robert, defunct."

Diana winced. "You don't have to be so callous. . . . Ah, nuts. Life goes on, and all that jazz. Robbie was . . . well, he was a very nice guy in spite of being a patriot."

"The DAR wouldn't like the way you put that," I said with a grin.

"Well, you know. Love it or leave it . . . and you always have to love it their way, the way it happens to be at the moment. If anybody tries to change it to something a little better, they want to ship him off to Russia or Africa or anywhere. But, well, aside from being a rabid reactionary, he was swell. The Skipper's pretty reactionary too, you know, in certain areas. I guess it's all those years in the military. What America needs, America gets, and to Hell with all the poor backward Scandihoovians. Considering that his ancestors came from around here, it seems a funny attitude."

"If it 
is
 his attitude," I said. "We're not too damned sure about that, remember. He could be kidding somebody, and it could be us."

She shrugged. "Well, he certainly acted as if Robbie was a kindred spirit, and I was just a token liberal he'd hired on to satisfy the ADA or somebody. I felt kind of outnumbered when they got to talking."

I looked at her curiously. "But you still yearned for this Robbie guy?"

She said rather stiffly, "Don't be silly. Who the hell loves a man for his 
politics
, for God's sake? Personally, I thought he was a sweet guy, kind of innocent if you know what I mean; and he treated me as if I were his lousy kid sister and told me all about the great, unrequited passion of his life. Ugh!"

"And then he died in an auto accident. Where?"