The Vanishers (8 page)

When the stewardess—excuse me, the female flight attendant—offered me a drink, I took two of her toy bottles of Scotch, J&B, if it matters, and poured them over the ice she provided, and drank gratefully. Cashews on the side. Back in the cheapo cabin, they probably had to settle for lower-class peanuts.

“Why, you are frightened!”

I glanced at the woman beside me, who’d gone to sleep, exhausted, immediately after having been led to her seat and helped with her seat belt. She’d slept through the inevitable preflight delays, and the taxiing, and the further waiting, and the takeoff, and the circling to the right course, and the climb to cruising altitude; but now her eyes were open. She’d obviously been watching me for a while.

“Welcome back,” I said. “Would you care to have something to drink, too, or is that medically contraindicated?”

She smiled. “I do not think it is contraindicated; at least the doctors said nothing about it. If that is Scotch, I will have some. Unless you have already drunk up all on board in your terrible panic.”

“Oooh, what a sharp tongue it has when it’s conscious,” I said. “Whatever happened to sweet, supportive little girls who encourage their men in moments of weakness?”

“But I am not very sweet, and you are not my man, are you, Mr. Helm?”

I grinned, and got her table down for her, and wigwagged the attendant, who brought the drink promptly. Astrid raised her glass to me.

“
Skål
,” she said, smiling at me. “I mean, we had better practice our Scandinavian customs, don’t you think?”

“And our Scandinavian,” I said, “How are you on Norwegian?”

She shook her head. “They have deliberately made their language impossible for other Scandinavians to understand. I do not think they understand it very well themselves. Years ago if one knew Swedish, one could communicate with the Norwegians, and even the crazy Danes a little, but no longer.”

“Yes, I have heard that linguistic purification is the order of the day up there. But you do speak Swedish?”

“And Finnish. Yes.”

“You are hereby appointed official interpreter for the expedition, Mrs. Watrous.”

She inclined her head in gracious acceptance. She’d been very close to collapse when I’d helped her aboard the plane, but the nap seemed to have revived her. I realized again that she was quite a striking woman. There’s always something offbeat and intriguing about a brown-eyed blonde—genuine or phony, I still hadn’t decided which I was dealing with here.

In a small department store in the same shopping center that housed the friendly druggist who did me medical favors from time to time, I’d managed to pick up a couple of inexpensive suitcases and a very basic travel wardrobe for each of us, not because I’d been seriously concerned about how we looked, but because I’d wanted to have some luggage in which to check the guns through, hoping that airlines hadn’t got around to X-raying checked luggage yet, and that Scandinavian customs officers were still as relaxed as I remembered them. Since I hadn’t wanted Astrid to waste her limited strength on shopping, I didn’t even know that the clothes I’d bought her would fit, let alone that she’d consider them acceptable. However, her present costume was holding up well enough to get us across the ocean respectably, so my taste in ladies’ wear wouldn’t be put to the test at once, which was probably a good thing.

She was regarding me curiously. “I should think a man like you, who risks his life in a job like yours, would not be disturbed by merely flying in an commercial airplane.”

“That’s just the point,” I said. “I like to pick my risks; that’s how I stay alive. Here I’ve got no choice. I have to sit in this seat and take whatever dangers the flyboys up front choose to expose me to. Probably none, but how do I know? A Korean airliner got itself shot down a while ago, flying in the wrong place, remember?”

“Yes, that was a terrible thing. They are dreadful people, those Russians.”

I grinned. “There’s a good Finnish reaction. Has any Finn said anything nice about a Russian since the receding glaciers of the Ice Age uncovered their respective countries?”

“But it was cold-blooded murder!”

“Sure. Surprise, surprise. What did you think—what did anybody think—those paranoid bastards would do when a strange aircraft blundered into their airspace in a fairly sensitive area? Jesus, all the corny, outraged noises that were made because Russians behaved in a perfectly normal Russian manner! What I want to know is what the plane was doing so far off the course. Nobody seems to be a bit concerned about that. But if that’s normal airlines navigation, I feel I’m entitled to a few consoling Scotches when I put myself into their hands. One airliner ran into a bunch of ruthless Muscovites; how do I know this one won’t run into a bunch of rugged mountains, or mistake the North Pole for the Oslo airport?”

“Now you are being very silly. SAS has an excellent safety record. There is really no reason for you to be frightened.”

“Yes, Mama, I’ll be brave if it makes you feel better.”

The oversized plane, some kind of monster Lockheed, rumbled on through the sky that was clear and blue at this altitude; but cottony white clouds obscured the world below us. The great circle course shown in the airlines magazine in the seat pocket before me indicated that we’d actually spend considerable time over land before venturing out across the big water; but if one of the eastern provinces of Canada was down there, it was well hidden.

“I do not really understand what has happened in Washington that we must flee like this,” Astrid said at last. “Just because your chief has disappeared, and the person you expected to take charge in his place, temporarily, has been pushed aside by this man called Bennett… Why does that mean that we have to leave the country, Matt?”

I’d told her as much about the situation as seemed advisable on our flight from Washington to New York; now I said, “Washington is a funny place, Mrs. W. Discreet thievery is perfectly all right, of course—let’s not be unreasonable—but if you’re found with your hand in the till and the news gets out, they’ll clobber you self-righteously to show how they really hate dishonesty, being so honest themselves. Even sleeping in the wrong bed can ruin you if there’s any kind of a scandal; and Heaven help you if you’re found smoking a little pot or—God forbid—sniffing a little coke, at least if your dreadful crime becomes public. The guardians of public morality will bury you. But if all you’re caught doing is betraying your country, no sweat. Don’t give it another thought.”

Astrid studied my face to see if I was kidding. “Aren’t you exaggerating a little?”

I shrugged. “Oh, sometimes they don’t quite have the gall to take you back into the government afterwards, and you’ll have to make it on the celebrity circuit; there seems to be a good market there for traitors. I’m using the term loosely, to refer to individuals who betrayed either the laws they’d sworn to uphold or the country they’d sworn to serve, or both. It seems to be a very safe thing to do. I’ve now been involved in two different cases where a high-ranking bureaucrat allowed himself to become a patsy for folks who, let’s say, were not exactly working for the good of the United States of America or the preservation of its constitution. In each case, even though we’d exposed him thoroughly, the man went on to more prestigious posts in Washington.”

“The Mr. Bennett we are discussing?”

I nodded. “He’s the most recent specimen, yes. We came up against him twice while he was head of a certain undercover agency—you might call it a rival agency—that wasn’t being operated entirely in the public interest. The second time, a couple of years ago, we had him cold on various charges of conspiring and betraying; we could even have made him trouble about his involvement in other kinds of professional behavior including a spot of homicide and attempted homicide unauthorized by Washington. Not exactly the kind of public servant we should cherish, right? Well, his dubious organization was abolished; the FBI took up the slack. However, Bennett didn’t appear to be a very bright guy, and it seemed that he’d merely acted as figurehead while the smart boys did the dirty work. We took care of them; but we decided that Bennett wasn’t dangerous and it was safe to make a deal with him. We agreed to let him tell us some things we needed to know in order to wind up the dirty business, in return for immunity.”

“So he went free?”

I nodded. “The decision was mine, and I’m afraid I was wrong. Apparently the guy wasn’t as dumb and harmless as he acted. Somehow, after we turned him loose, he got himself welcomed back to that screwball city on the Potomac we just left. He even promoted himself a new position with a bit of salary and influence from which, it seems, he’s been keeping an eye on us, the agency that smashed his beautiful government career. Well, his first beautiful government career. Now, with my chief missing, he seems to have embarked upon a second, bossing our outfit…”

I stopped, as our dinners were placed before us, steak for me, fish for her. Having been brought up on fresh-caught mountain trout as a boy in New Mexico, I avoid the tired, mushy stuff that masquerades under the name of fish these days in most parts of the U.S.A. I reminded myself that they do it much better in the European lands towards which we were heading; and I’d better start giving my prejudice a rest. I glanced at the handsome woman beside me.

“What about a spot of champagne, or would that be overdoing it?”

“What else is there to do here but overdo it?” Astrid asked, laughing; but after I’d got us the bubble-stuff, she grew serious again. She said, “So what it amounts to is, you have a new boss, at least until your old one returns. But even if you do not like or respect this Mr. Bennett, is that sufficient reason for us to flee out of the country?”

“I’m not fleeing out of the U.S., I’m fleeing into Sweden,” I said, “By way of Norway, because that’s the way the plane flies. But I’m afraid you don’t quite understand the kind of people you’ve managed to get yourself mixed up with, looking for help with your private problem. Well, by this time you must have some idea of what our outfit really does. Counter-assassination is the polite description; we’re the guys, and gals, who’re sent out to kill the killers when nobody else is tough enough to deal with them. Naturally, with our special talents, we’re also used for other work like visiting pretty ladies in the hospital—pretty ladies with mysterious illnesses.”

I saluted her with my champagne glass. After a moment she smiled and returned the gesture, but her eyes were troubled.

I went on: “Now consider Mr. Bennett. After receiving a serious setback to his career through no fault of his own, as he sees it, he’s managed to fight his way back to the kind of powerful position for which he is, he feels, superbly qualified by talent and experience. In this position he has at his disposal the services of a gang of rabid wolves like me, who don’t much care whose throats they mangle as long as they get to taste a little blood… What’s the matter?”

“You are not like that, Matt.”

I grimaced. “It’s sweet of you to say so, but you don’t know what I’m like, Mrs. W. You’ve only seen me on my best behavior. Anyway, Bennett’s right where he wants to be now, in full control of a government agency pretty much like the one I helped smash for him a few years back. The appointment’s only temporary, in Mac’s absence, but do you think for a moment that Bennett’s going to let it be taken away from him if there’s any possible way he can prevent it? If Mac fails to return, he’s got it made.”

“But how
can
he prevent—” Astrid fell silent, and looked at me in a startled way. “You
can’t
mean—”

I said, “Bennett knows that he probably doesn’t need to take direct action against my chief. All he has to do is prevent help from finding and reaching him wherever he’s being held. Okay, maybe he can break out on his own. Maybe. But he’s not young, and he’s had no active field experience for a long time. He’s counting on outside assistance. If Bennett has his way, it won’t be forthcoming.”

Astrid was watching me warily. “So you think Mr. Bennett is going to order you off the… the rescue mission?”

I shook my head. “No. Because he knows me reasonably well after our previous disagreements. He knows I wouldn’t obey any such order he gave me. He’s got to have me taken out if he wants to leave my chief stranded without help. And as I think I told you, there’s also another agent involved, a guy we call Joel, who’s got to be dealt with somehow.”

Astrid licked her lips. “‘Taken out.’ That means killed, does it not?” She studied my face. “You are serious, Matt? You truly believe that this government official who has assumed temporary control of your organization will actually give orders to have an agent—his agent for the moment—murdered just so he can keep his new job? You think that somebody in your agency, somebody with whom you have worked perhaps, will accept those instructions and come to kill you?”

I said, “You just don’t understand the kind of homicidal creeps you’ve got yourself mixed up with. Sure I believe it. When the man points the finger and says make the touch, we make the touch. Of course it depends a bit on who gives the order. I wouldn’t kill just because a jerk like Bennett told me to, no matter what authority he claimed. I wouldn’t trust his motives or his good sense; but there are younger agents around who’ll go on the word, without question, like killer Dobermans. That’s the way they’ve been trained.”

Astrid shook her head. “That is what is wrong with an agency like yours. Perhaps it serves a useful purpose in the right hands, but in the wrong hands it becomes a terrible weapon; so would it not be better for it not to exist at all?”

I shrugged. “I’ll let the political scientists field that one. In the meantime, my job is to get my outfit out of the wrong hands and back into the right ones. That means, for a start, following the orders I’ve been given and hoping the guy who gave them knew what he was doing. Well, he usually does.”

“It is good to see a little faith in this mistrustful world.”

“Don’t think Bennett’s driven only by ambition,” I said. “He’s got a full charge of hate working on him, too. Hate for Mac, who gave the orders, and hate for me, who carried them out. It wasn’t just a matter of losing a lot of prestige and status; there was physical humiliation, too. Our interrogation teams play rough. I’m the man who had him put through that, on Mac’s instructions. I’m the man who saw him sitting unshaved in his grubby underwear afterwards, with his head in his hands, broken and cooperative. He wouldn’t settle for just calling me off the assignment even if he could. Joel, maybe, but he wants me dead. Along with Mac.”