The Devastators

chapter EIGHT

Riding away from there, nobody spoke for a little. Vadya shifted position beside me, and reached up as if to rearrange her furs. I brought the snub-nosed revolver out where she could see it.

"Hands off the pelts," I said. "I once knew a girl-a colleague of yours, as a matter of fact-who had a real tricky fur that looked just like that. She's dead now, poor kid."

Vadya let her gloved hands sink back into her lap. "You're making a mistake, Matthew," she said quietly.

She might well be right; but I couldn't afford to show any doubts. "It happens to us all," I said. "You make one, 1 make one. You wouldn't want me to be perfect and show you up."

"I don't know what you mean-"

Our aristocratic chauffeur spoke without turning his head. "There's a Mini following us, sir."

It took me a moment to remember that this was the British way of referring affectionately to those boxy little Morrises and Austins-they're identical except for the nameplate-that have the engine mounted crosswise to operate a tricky frontwheel drive, and tires borrowed from a small motorscooter. I didn't look back. Instead I looked at Vadya. Her face was expressionless. Well, it would be.

I said, "That's okay, driver. Let's keep him on ice. The more the merrier. If I don't get the information I want out of the woman, I'll just work on down the line. You can keep him from interfering, can't you?"

"Yes, sir."

Vadya stirred uneasily beside me. "Matthew-"

I said, "Not now. You'll get your chance to talk, later."

We finished the drive without further conversation. The car stopped in a rather shabby, dark street of row houses several stories high. I had no real idea where we were. London is a big city and few foreigners learn it all. Les came around to open the door. I backed out cautiously, keeping Vadya covered as she emerged in her turn.

"It is the first door on the right on the first floor, sir," Les said. "Ah, I believe you Americans call that the second floor, sir. One flight up, sir."

"Very good."

"I will be waiting, sir. There will be no interference."

"Thanks. Come on, Mrs. Dumaire."

Vadya started to speak and thought better of it. She started to yank her furs straight, but saw my gun steady, and thought better of that, too. She turned sharply and marched into the house ahead of me. The downstairs doors were unlocked. There was dim but adequate light in the dusty stairway, which looked somewhat like another London stairway I had reason to remember. The woman ahead of me turned right at the top, and stopped at the proper door.

"Open it," I said.

Unlike most hail doors, it opened outward. It had to, since there was another door right behind it, opening the other way. I saw Vadya take stock of this soundproof arrangement. She glanced at me, shrugged, pushed the second door open, and went into the room beyond. I followed her, closing both doors behind us, locking the inner one, and pocketing the key.

Aside from the double door, it seemed like a room that matched the run-down neighborhood. It had a threadbare rug, a battered dresser, a tired old bed, and a single heavy armchair that seemed in better repair than the rest of the furnishings. There was an enameled tin basin, and a water pitcher, on the dresser. The cracked handle of a china thunder mug peeked out from under the bed. The illumination came from an ancient fixture suspended from the ceiling that had once burned gas. It gave surprisingly good light considering its apparent age.

Vadya had turned to face me. Her glamorous hairdo and glossy furs looked completely out of place in the dismal room. I felt a momentary qualm, but what the hell, she wasn't really the pretty, plump, fashionable Madame Dumaire. She was just a cheap hired actress masquerading in a fancy-dress outfit paid for, no doubt, with state funds.

She said, "Matthew, really, I-"

The nice white kid gloves were a handicap, from her point of view. They not only made her fingers a little less nimble than they might have been, they made it very easy for me to see what her hands were doing. When one disappeared inside the furs, I socked her hard, right in the middle of her expensive suit. She doubled up, gasping. I clipped her judiciously across the neck and she fell to the floor. I mean, you can ask questions all night and get nowhere and prove nothing. If you're going the interrogation route anyway, you might as well save everybody a lot of time by showing right at the start that you don't mind bruising your knuckles.

I picked up the purse she had dropped, and yanked her furs free. She was already beginning to stir. Waiting for her to recover, I looked the stuff over. There was nothing in the purse beyond the usual feminine accessories and some official items confirming her identity as the widowed, wealthy Madame Evelyn Dumaire, citizeness of France. I tossed it on the bed.

The furs, as I'd expected, proved more rewarding. A cunningly hidden pocket at one end yielded up a tiny automatic pistol. Another secret fold in the satin lining produced a slim little plastic case. Inside was an interesting assortment of pills and powders and the means with which to administer them. It was the other side's counterpart of our special drug kit, a sample of which reposed in my suitcase at the hotel.

I remembered that, down in Mexico, Vadya had been a fast girl with a Mickey. At that time she'd happened to be working to our mutual advantage, but it was something to keep in mind. I tossed the things on the bed, and went over and nudged her with my toe.

"Wake up," I said. "But do it slowly." She didn't move. I said, "Cut it out, Vadya. Don't play possum with me. This is your old friend Matt speaking. Remember Matt, the guy you once carved your initials on with a hot iron? Get up and get into that chair, and be very, very careful doing it."

After a moment she moved, and pushed herself to a crouching position, and looked up at me through the hair that had fallen into her eyes. She started to speak, changed her mind, rose, and walked unsteadily to the big chair and sat down. I went to stand over her.

"I've got your gun," I said. "I've got your cute little portable pharmacy. There's one more thing I'm going to have from you before we commence the singing lesson. Will you give it to me now, or do I have to strip you to find it?"

"I… I don't understand."

I said, "Cut it out, Vadya. Save it for the peasants. We're both pros here. You've got one somewhere. Hand it over. The kill-me capsule."

Her eyes narrowed slightly, perhaps with a hint of apprehension. My taking the trouble, before questioning her, to separate her from the death-pill most agents carry made it seem as if I really meant business. Well, it was supposed to.

After a moment she drew a long breath and pulled off her left-hand glove and tossed it to me. I caught it. "The button," she said.

I examined the glove and found she'd told the truth. The small wrist button wasn't a button at all. While I was looking at it, she stripped off the second glove and tossed it toward the bed, and at last made the customary feminine motions of patting her hair into place, pulling down her skirt, and making a rueful face at a nylon torn at the knee. "You play very rough, darling," she said. "Look at my poor stocking."

I said, "To hell with your poor stocking. It's your working costume, isn't it? Like a blacksmith's apron or a mechanic's coverall. You expect it to take a beating; don't give me that poor-stocking bit. You'll put three pairs on the expense account when you turn in your report, if you live so long. Get your mind off your nylons and start worrying about your neck, doll. They can't buy you a new one of those."

She laughed in my face. "Are you really trying to frighten me, Matthew? Do you know me so little then?" I didn't say anything. I just waited for the question she had to ask, unless she was going to admit she knew why we were here, and it came: "Why have you brought me here? What do you want?"

I looked at her sitting there, a little mussed and rumpled now, no longer quite in character, with her phony accent, her phony identity, and her voluptuous, phony figure. I thought of a smaller, browner, blonder girl whose life could very well depend on what happened here in the next few minutes. I reached into my pocket and took out the black leather belt.

"I want," I said, "the answer to just one question. I want to know where Winnie is."

She looked quickly at the belt. Again there was a hint of apprehension in her eyes. "Winnie? Who is Winnie?"

It was the first real break. I knew a great sense of relief; I wasn't making a mistake after all. I wasn't bullying an innocent woman-well, innocent in one respect, at least Because even if Vadya wasn't remotely involved in the kidnapping, she'd know who Winnie was. Hell, she'd given me a description while we were talking at Claridge's. She'd said: and now you have a pretty little blonde wife, I'm told. She was bound to have been told the name, also, as part of her briefing.

Her instinctive pretense of ignorance was the kind of nervous reflex that betrays you when you've been waiting hours to put on a dumb act and had a few drinks, and taken a few blows in the process. If the name had had no guilty associations for her, she wouldn't have been so quick to deny knowing it.

She realized it, and said, "Oh, I remember now. That is your new little wife? She is missing?"

I said, "Not very good, Vadya. Not good at all."

"You think I know something about it? But I assure you-"

"Cut it out," I said. "Never mind the denials, sweetheart. We'll just take them as said. You don't know anything, you never did know anything, you never will know anything. Okay? That's what you were going to tell me, isn't it?"

"Matthew, I-"

I said, "We both know how these question-and-answer sessions go, so let's see if we can't dispense with some of the usual corn. Here is a belt." I held it up. "It will be around your neck-I wasn't kidding when I said you should be worrying about your neck. The tongue will be through the buckle here, so. I'll be behind your chair. I'll ask my question, for the record this time. I'll give you a reasonable time to answer. If you refuse, or start telling me a lot of junk about what you don't know and didn't do, I'll pull on this end here and cut you off. Then I'll loosen it again and give you another chance. Maybe I'll even give you a third chance. It depends on my patience and on whether I sense, shall we say, a growing spirit of cooperation. But make no mistake, before we leave this room, I'll know where my wife is, or you'll be dead."

I stopped. It was very quiet in the room. The sound-proofing apparently extended to the windows facing the street. Not a murmur of traffic reached us from the great city outside. Vadya looked at the black leather noose, and licked her lips.

"Why… why, you are serious, Matt. You are really threatening to torture and kill me-"

"Good," I said. "That's much better. You're really catching on. I knew the idea would penetrate eventually. However, I'm not going to torture you, not in the ordinary sense of inflicting pain in the hope of breaking you down. I do know you, Vadya. I know you're pretty tough. I don't expect you to spill anything just because it hurts. Therefore I'm giving you a clear-cut choice. If you talk, you live. If you don't talk, you die. It's as simple as that."

"I don't know where your wife is! I didn't even know she was… missing. I don't know anything about it!"

"Sure, sure," I said. I walked around the chair and dropped the belt over her head and drew the loop up tight enough so that she was pulled against the back of the chair. "Can you breathe?" I asked.

Her voice was strained: "Yes, barely. Matthew, I swear-"

"Just one thing more," I said. "When I cut you off, you obviously won't be able to talk. Hit the arm of the chair with your hand when you're ready to give me what I want. Okay? Are you ready for the question?"

"Matt, I-"

"Here it comes," I said. "The show is now on the air, and no extraneous dialogue is permitted." I drew a long breath and leaned forward to speak in her ear. "Where is Winnie?"

"Matt, you're making a terrible mist-"

I took a strain on the belt. Vadya's voice was cut off abruptly. She started to try to pull the noose free; then she remembered and beat one hand quickly against the chair arm. I slacked off. I heard her breathe deeply and raggedly.

"I told you," I said. "I warned you. Don't give me any of that innocent crap, Vadya. Here we go again. Where is Winnie?"

"Darling, how can I possibly tell you what I don't know-"

The noose cut her short. She started beating at the chair immediately, but I gave her several seconds before I eased off and let her breathe.

"I'm getting tired, doll," I said. "Third time coming up. It could be the last one. I can't spend all night on you."

"Matt," she cried. "Matt, you must believe me. I really don't know… I haven't any idea…"

I said, "Your Moscow alma mater will be real proud of you, honey. Maybe they'll even put up a little posthumous plaque in the hall for other trainees to see: In Memory of Vadya, Dumb to the Death. Hell, I know it's the prescribed routine, but is it really worth it? Would your employers hold you to it if you could ask them? Is one lousy little blonde worth the life of a trained, experienced agent?" I put a little pressure on the strap and leaned forward. "Where is she, damn you? Where's Winnie? Where are your people holding her… No, keep your damn hands down!"

"Matt, please, I can't breathe!"

"For God's sake cut it out!" I snapped. "Can't you get it through your head that you're going to die if you don't come through? For the last time, where's my wife?"

"Matt," she gasped, "Matt, I swear… Matt, don't!"

She was pretty good, all frightened and desperate. Well, I'd been pretty good, too, all mad and menacing. We were two old pros hamming it up for each other, but I was the guy holding the end of the noose.

"Goodbye, baby," I said. "When you get to hell, give my regards to your friend Max. He thought I was bluffing, too."

She grabbed for the belt with both hands as I yanked it up tight. She was too late to get her fingers under it. She came to her feet, clawing at her throat, and lunged away from me. I felt the loop pull even tighter, and let go rather than risk breaking her neck or some essential part of it.

I came around the chair fast, expecting to have a fight on my hands. Instead, I found her on her knees, clawing desperately at the strap about her neck. The soft black belt, instead of releasing when I let it go, seemed to have locked into place as if obeying some murderous impulse of its own. Vadya's eyes were bulging and her face was darkening. She fell to the floor, rolling about convulsively, while her frantic nails ripped the collar of her blouse and drew blood from her neck but made no impression on the taut black leather.

It was going a little farther than I'd intended. I mean, no matter what threats I'd made for effect, she was no use to me dead; and while I did owe her something for the fun she'd had with a hot soldering iron a couple of years back, it wasn't really a debt that weighed heavily on my mind.

I managed, after a couple of tries, to pin her to the floor. It took all my strength to hold her down while I shoved the loosened hair forward so I could get at the noose. I tried to free it, and it wouldn't release. I looked at it more closely-as closely as her violent struggles would let me-and realized at last just what it was I had found among Winnie's gloves and hose and hankies. It was no wonder she'd "accidentally" managed to leave it behind. It wasn't something a shy young bride would normally carry in her trousseau. It could have betrayed her, if her captors had got a good look at it.

Apparently I wasn't the only one in the organization who liked trick belts. This was a new one on me: an efficient, camouflaged garotte. The fancy buckle was actually a locking device, designed to jam solid when a certain amount of strain was put on it. Of course you could wear the thing as an ordinary, decorative belt, if you had a twenty-one-inch waist, until you needed it for other purposes. That was the idea.

Vadya's struggles were diminishing. I searched for a release catch and couldn't find one. I reached into my pocket for my knife, but realized I'd practically have to cut the girl's throat to free her, the way the strap was embedded in the flesh. While I hesitated, she stopped moving altogether. I took advantage of her stillness to make another quick study of the flashy buckle, and saw at last how it worked, and pressed the right decoration the right way. The belt came loose. I pulled it off and rolled Vadya over.

She looked very bad, but it hadn't been much over a minute, and they've been brought back from much farther away than that. I got her arms going, the way artificial respiration is done these days. It used to be you could sit on the victim comfortably and just push at the ribs, but this new method is supposed to be more effective. I haven't got a great deal of faith in it, but either it worked or she was getting ready to breathe anyway: pretty soon her chest started to heave and the ugly, congested color began to die from her face. Presently her eyes came open.

"Damn you!" she whispered. Her voice was a hoarse croak.

"Sure," I said. "Can you sit up?"

With my help, she managed to sit up against the end of the bed. She fumbled the tangled hair out of her face and felt of her bruised and lacerated neck. Her hand made contact with the dangling collar of her blouse. She grasped it with vague curiosity and held it out for identification. The sight of the torn rag of silk seemed to shock her. She let it fall and looked down at herself, dismayed by what her violent struggles had done to her Madame Dumaire disguise.

"Oh, God, what a mess!" she croaked. Then she shrugged fatalistically. A funny, wry little grin came to her lips. "Ah, well, as you say it is a working costume and expendable. But you will have to lend me your coat to go home in. Help me up, darling."

I helped her up and steadied her as she swayed. I said, "Don't get your hopes up, doll. There was a little matter of an address, remember?"

I heard her breath catch. She looked at me with an expression of horror. Her blue eyes were big and dark in her pale face.

"Oh, you can't…!" she whispered hoarsely. "I… I really don't know… Matthew, you can't, not again!"

There was real fear in her voice-at least it sounded very real. Doubt crept back into my mind. She was good, I knew, but was she good enough to keep up the act after being choked almost to death? For a while I had been absolutely sure she had the answer, but now I felt my assurance wavering.

I said, making my voice hard, "Baby, do you remember a garage in Tucson? And a chair with a man tied in it? And a nice new electric soldering iron plugged into the wall? Somehow, I don't seem to recall anybody turning me loose just because I happened to pass out temporarily." I picked up the belt and jerked my head. "Get back to your seat."

She hesitated, and started to move dully toward the chair; then I heard a sob and she went to her knees, clinging to the foot of the bed. She turned her head painfully to look up at me. There were real tears in her eyes.

"Shoot me!" she gasped. "I mean it! You'll kill me in the end, anyway. Well, at least do it quickly, damn you! Don't put that… that thing on me again! It won't do you any good. I don't know anything about your damn wife! We haven't got her, I swear it!"

"If you haven't, who has?"

She hesitated. She looked away. "Go ask Madame Ling."

"Madame who?"

Vadya looked up again and spoke breathlessly. "She's the one who took your little blonde away. She and one of her men. I saw them from the lounge. Ask at the desk, they'll tell you. If you'd done a little simple investigating, instead of jumping at conclusions-"

I said, "Hell, I talked to the desk man. So what? An Oriental stooge is no harder to hire than an Occidental one, in a cosmopolitan city like London, and you'd know just where to go, wouldn't you?"

"Why would I lie to you?" she demanded. "If I had your wife, would I deny it? Would I not boast of it and use it as a club against you?"

I said, "You might be that dumb. And then you might be smart enough to know you'd never get any useful cooperation out of me that way. People in our line of work don't make good blackmailees." I drew a long breath. "Well, all right. Who's this Madame Ling supposed to be, anyway?"