The Interlopers

11

HANK WAS SO GLAD TO SEE ME that he tongue-washed my face all over before darting off to take care of his business in the bushes. He was really a pretty good pup. In spite of having been locked up all night, he'd made no mess in the camper. He hadn't chewed up anything, either, although there was plenty of gear in there for him to exercise his teeth on if he got the notion.

I should have played with him a bit-at least tossed him something to retrieve as a reward for good behavior- but at the moment human considerations took precedence in my mind over matters canine. I whistled him back, therefore, as soon as he'd concluded his rendezvous with nature, locked him up again, got into the cab of the truck, and hesitated, feeling for the bottle of vitamins in my pocket.

It was still there, and whatever it contained besides dog pills was presumably intact since I was in a good position to swear that Libby Meredith had had no chance to get at it and, in spite of distractions, I was fairly sure nobody else had entered the room all night. I don't sleep that soundly, particularly when I'm not alone in bed. There were certain things I was supposed to do now to make Mr. Smith happy, but they didn't weigh on me very heavily. I had other things on my mind; I could play secret agent later.

I started the truck and drove out of there fast, heading north. What I really wanted was a telephone, but I didn't want to be seen using one, since I preferred not to be asked, later, whom I'd been calling. Of course I'd used one in Pasco, but then I'd been following Mr. Smith's childish instructions to the letter, since there had seemed to be no good reason not to. Now the situation had changed rather spectacularly, and I figured I'd better be a little more careful until I'd heard Mac's ideas on the new developments.

All the way up through Seattle, the freeway traffic was too heavy for me to determine whether or not I was being tailed. Even after I'd left the city limits behind, I still had enough company to make it look as if half the population of the state of Washington had decided to move up to British Columbia, but apparently most of these northbound emigrants were making for Vancouver, on the coast. When I turned off the big coastal highway and headed slantingly inland on a smaller road that crossed the Canadian border near a little town called Sumas, I had more privacy, but I decided to wait a little longer to be quite sure I was safe from observation.

The border ritual was no trouble at all. I told the man I had a sporting rifle and shotgun, and he said fine, just keep the weapons unloaded and cased while in Canada. He didn't even ask me about sidearms as they generally do, so I didn't have to lie about Grant Nystrom's.357 which was chafing my hipbone. He just checked on Hank's rabies inoculation and waved me on.

Pretty soon I was rolling eastward along a four-lane highway more or less paralleling the border. The day was bright and warm and windless, and the truck ran straight and true down the smooth pavement, like a locomotive on tracks. It's one of the mysteries of the automotive business, how few people really appreciate the virtues of the ordinary American half-ton truck. On the highway it'll keep up with the fastest traffic, and off the road it'll go just about anywhere you'd care to take a jeep. Please understand, I'm talking about the real truck now, not about all the dressed-up little bastard delivery vans that are sold under sporty names to people too proud to be seen in an honest, work-horse commercial vehicle with the engine Out front.

The vehicle Nystrom had bequeathed me was a fast, powerful, and rugged machine. I wouldn't have matched it against a Ferrari on a twisty road-race circuit, but I thought it would probably run down any ordinary car on any ordinary back-country road, particularly one that was paved badly or not at all. For the sparsely populated areas of the continent toward which my mission was leading me, I couldn't have asked for better transportation.

Since angling was still part of my act, I stopped to buy a fishing license at a tourist-bureau office set up along the highway to make such purchases convenient for visitors to the province. Afterwards, I turned north again, according to instructions, on a two-lane blacktop road leading up the Frazer River-a historic waterway, I'd been told: the ancient gateway to the interior. No single car had made the whole route behind me. Of course, somebody could have assigned me a surveillance team, two or three different cars taking turns, and probably Mr. Smith's people were using just this technique to watch over me, since I'd detected no signs of them. As for the opposition, the people in whom we were interested, if they were going to that much trouble it meant that my cover was blown anyway and a phone call more or less wouldn't make much difference.

I wasn't really worrying about the whole west coast Communist spy apparat ganging up on me. What concerned me was the possibility that a single gent with a suspicious nature-say a guy named Stottman-might be running an unofficial check on my activities in the hope of catching me doing something Grant Nystrom wouldn't, like telephoning Washington, D.C.

By now I'd taken as many precautions as the possibility would seem to merit, but just to be on the safe side, rather than be seen standing in a roadside booth, I stopped for lunch at a small-town restaurant that boasted an inside pay phone. As a final precaution, I made my report to Mac by way of our relay man in Vancouver, insuring that there'd be no incriminating record of a long-distance call across the border.

"Indeed," Mac said when I'd finished. "Very intriguing. What do you make of the lady, Eric?"

I said, "I know what she'd like me to make of her, sir. A crackpot nymphomaniac with alcoholic tendencies complicated by an obsessive guilt complex-that's the picture she was painting for me, stroke by careful stroke. She wants me to believe that deep down in her subconscious she knows it was she who got Grant Nystrom killed by roping him into this courier job in the first place. I'm supposed to think that her mind rejects this knowledge and instead, in self defense, blames everybody else for her lover's death; her Communist pals-or ex-pals-and this gang of youthful interlopers that did the actual shooting. To keep from admitting her own guilt, she's embarked on a career of vengeance against everyone else involved. At least that's the theory I'm supposed to buy."

"But you don't?"

I said, "Hell, that isn't a picture, sir, it's a psychiatric caricature. She's just making it up as she goes along. This girl is as phony as a ten-dollar pawnshop Stradivarius. I don't know who she is, but I do know what she isn't, and that's a rich, dipso, nympho society woman who went Communist for kicks, talked her boyfriend into joining up with her, and is now overwhelmed with remorse because he wound up getting shot as a result."

Mac said dryly, "You seem to have an attraction for interesting young women who aren't what they seem. Don't forget, whoever and whatever she is, this one did save your mission, and probably your life."

"Yes, sir," I said. "I'm keeping it in mind. Question, sir."

"What is it?"

"She couldn't be one of ours, could she?"

Apparently the question took Mac by surprise, because there was a rather lengthy pause. When he spoke, his voice had a stiff and offended note: "If we'd had any agents on the job who might possibly be of assistance to you, I would certainly have let you know when I briefed you, Eric."

This, of course, meant nothing at all. If the girl was working for us, and there were good reasons for her to keep her mouth shut even with me, they were still good. And if those reasons had caused Mac to refrain from mentioning her earlier, he'd certainly lie about her now. In other words, asking the question had been just a gesture on my part; a way of establishing for future reference-if my suspicions proved correct-that I wasn't quite as easy to fool as people seemed to think.

"Yes, sir." I drew a long breath. "Well, what do I do about the instructions I received from the lady?"

"Instructions?"

"I mean, should I or should I not go out and earn myself some wonderful nights with Miss Meredith?" When Mac didn't speak at once, I said irritably: "For God's sake, sir! Do I kill them or don't I?"

"Oh," he said, "I see what you mean. The answer is fairly obvious, is it not? As long as they're alive, these people are a constant threat to you. Not only are they interfering with your mission, but also, if captured by the opposition, they will undoubtedly reveal that Grant Nystrom-the real Nystrom-is dead because they shot him, and that you are therefore an impostor just as this fellow Stottman suspects."

I said, "I thought we wanted them to suspect me. I thought, since Holz is riding shotgun on this espionage operation, we were trying to give him a motive for descending on me, breathing fire and destruction."

"That was what we'd hoped to do, certainly," Mac admitted. "But I think you can see that the plan must be revised in the light of your recent experiences. Apparently we can't count on Holz coming to you. You must therefore be prepared to go to him, by continuing as Grant Nystrom. It follows that you cannot afford to have your cover compromised by anybody, and that, whatever Miss Meredith's motives may be, her suggestion is quite sound."

"Yes, sir," I said. "Sound. What about the authorities? Dead bodies tend to attract attention, and I'm told the Mounties always get their man. It would be awkward if I were the man."

"Arrangements have been made. The Canadians have a large stake in your mission. You have nothing to fear if you are reasonably discreet. Is there anything else?"

"No, sir," I said. "Not a thing. Eric, signing off."

Hanging up, I made a face at something on the wall of the booth, or maybe it was just in my mind. I tried to tell myself firmly that the fact that she knew how to swing a fishing rod and talk about dogs didn't really say much about a girl's character, and that Pat Bellman was nothing to me but a female fink who'd tried to set me up for murder. This was perfectly true, but I found that I wasn't particularly eager to shoot, or otherwise dispose of, any female finks.

Thinking this, I came out into the warm sunshine after lunch to see a small car-a battered red Opel two-door- carrying two men in front and a rear seat full of luggage, being driven slowly through the parking lot. It seemed about to pause behind my camper rig; then the driver spotted me emerging from the restaurant and put on speed again, swinging back onto the highway. He was a tall man I'd seen once before, leading a black dog into an animal clinic south of the border; he was Pat Bellman's entry in the great Nystrom sweepstakes.

There was no sign of the dog among all the luggage, which was all right with me. I'd been given no instructions to destroy the poor beast, but Mac might insist on a clean sweep if he was in a bloodthirsty mood and I was fool enough to ask.