The Interlopers

12

I'D BEEN PLANNING TO DRIVE straight through to the next rendezvous, on a body of water up north called Francois Lake. My intention had been to get up there early enough, by staying on the road all night, so I'd have plenty of time to look the situation over ahead of the contact, which was set for six-thirty the next evening. However, with Nystrom Number Three and his friend hanging around, it seemed advisable to take things a little more easily and maybe get some idea what the boys-not to mention the girl-had in mind.

I thought I knew what it was. The last time I'd seen the tall man, he'd had a black dog like mine conspicuously in tow. I couldn't be absolutely sure there wasn't an animal hidden in the rear of the Opel, but the man had also, undoubtedly, waiting somewhere, a Chevy-based camper rig similar to the one I was driving. At the scene of Nystrom's murder, Mr. Smith's eager operative had interfered before the murderer could dispose of Nystrom's body and appropriate his truck, but Chevy pickups, and pickup campers, aren't hard to come by. Bellman and Company wouldn't have tried the impersonation without a suitable vehicle. But Nystrom Three wasn't driving it now, even though it would have been faster and more comfortable than his present transportation.

The implication was that he'd given up his Nystrom act. That left only one Nystrom in the running: Nystrom Number Two-me. But apparently I wasn't to be allowed to garner the fruits of victory undisturbed.

Pat Bellman hadn't looked like a girl who gave up easily, and she was bright enough to see the obvious, if her Nystrom couldn't get the stuff-and he'd been pretty well disqualified in Pasco-she still had a chance, if she let somebody else's Nystrom get it for her, and then moved in and took it away from him. At least I figured that was the way her mind worked. If I was right, I was in no immediate danger. She wouldn't act until I'd picked up all the material she wanted. But I could count on having plenty of company on my journey northward.

After giving Hank another run, I put the rig back on the road again, watching the big truck-type rearview mirrors. Sure enough, after a few miles, the battered little Opel appeared behind me. It wasn't much of a car- General Motors' uninspired answer to the Volkswagen- and with over two hundred horses under the hood I could have run away and hid from it, but that wasn't the idea. Besides, while international arrangements seemed to have been made to let me commit murder with impunity, I might not be able to get away with speeding.

I poked along deliberately, therefore, up through the spectacular canyon of the Frazer, and north across the rolling country beyond. Once out of the canyon, I didn't find it particularly interesting driving. The scenic mountain ranges pretty well hug the coast in that part of the world. Inland it's just forests and fields, lakes and rivers and more forests. After a few hours, one evergreen begins to look pretty much like another.

Nystrom Three kept up pretty well, considering his limited mechanical resources. It occurred to me that if he continued to come along like a good boy to a suitably lonely place-discreet, was the word Mac had used-I could get started on the secondary phase of my assignment and, incidentally, promote myself a couple of nights of bliss with Libby Meredith, one for each man in the car behind. It seemed like earning your sex the hard way. Maybe I should have checked to find out just what she was willing to pay in cash.

How the Opel had managed to pick me up was, of course, no real mystery. After all, these interlopers, whoever they might be, had managed to learn about the last rendezvous somehow. Presumably they'd found out about the next one the same way. I considered the possibility that the real Nystrom might have talked a little more than was good for him, but the precise source of the information didn't concern me greatly. Obviously there had been a leak in Communist security somewhere, but it wasn't my problem, at least not at the moment.

Knowing I was heading for Francois Lake, the boys in the Opel would only have had to start early, get up here in B.C. ahead of me, and pick a suitable spot to wait for me to go by. There weren't enough good roads this far north to make my route even slightly unpredictable.

It occurred to me that others might be using the same leapfrog system for keeping tabs on me. Pat Bellman, for instance, could have buzzed up here in her little maroon pseudo-sports car and stationed herself somewhere along the road ahead to tag me if I should elude or outrun this pair. She might even have other reinforcements spotted around: a real dragnet.

And the fact that I'd seen nothing of Stottman and his Indian-faced partner didn't necessarily mean I was through with them for good. They could also have gambled on my running a predictable course, like a circling rabbit, and headed up here to cut me off. I sincerely hoped they hadn't. I hoped the pudgy man had given up trying to prove I was an impostor and returned to his own stamping grounds farther south. He was a pro, and I preferred not to tangle with him unless I had to.

Judging by their performance so far, the rest of them- all the bright young interlopers, alive and dead-were strictly amateurs and nothing to worry about. If I had needed evidence on this point, the clumsy tailing job being done by the characters in the Opel would have set my mind at rest. There are circumstances under which a clever agent will deliberately let a man know he's under surveillance, but instinct and experience told me these people weren't that clever. They were doing their best to be inconspicuous, but they hadn't had much practice at it, and it wasn't very good.

We passed through small communities with names like Seventy-Mile House and Hundred-Mile House, reminders of the days when every mile up this pioneering road, away from civilization, had represented a real achievement. Farther on, we came to a good-sized lake with a sandy beach, and I pulled up to the office of a motel in the nearby village and rented a large and pleasant unit complete with bath and kitchenette for six dollars, which didn't seem exorbitant.

With Hank romping outside, happy to be free after the long ride, I carried the essential luggage, and groceries enough for breakfast, into my room. Then I whistled in the pup, closed the door, drew the blinds, and took off his collar. It was time for me to make like a real secret agent once more; I'd stalled long enough. I got the bottle of dog-vitamins Stottman had given up so reluctantly. With the point of my knife, designed for more lethal purposes, I pried the waxed cardboard liner out of the metal cap. Underneath was a small round wafer of tinfoil about the size of a dime-to be exact, two thicknesses of foil with something sealed between them, perhaps a little disk of film, perhaps not.

I was tempted to separate the layers of foil and do some snooping. What stopped me wasn't my orders from Mr. Smith to leave everything in this line to his boys, but the possibility that the communication I held might be rigged to destroy itself somehow-perhaps by exposure to light or air-if not handled in a specified way. Besides, I'd never be able to reseal the wafer properly, and I probably couldn't make much sense of what was inside, anyway. Weapons are our specialty; microdots and ciphers and such are out of our line.

I followed instructions, therefore, and used the knifepoint to pry one of the big metal studs from Hank's collar the way I'd been shown. I fitted the wafer inside, and refastened the shiny stud to the black leather collar. There were five flat studs in all, alternating with five smaller and more pointed metal decorations, perhaps designed to keep hostile dogs from chewing on Hank's neck. If everything went according to plan-which would be a welcome change-I'd fill another receptacle tomorrow evening, leaving three to go. By this manner of reckoning, the job was barely started. It was a discouraging thought.

In the morning, I rose early, cooked myself some breakfast-I'm no great chef, but I can manage bacon and eggs-and hit the road well before daylight. No headlights followed me away from Lac La Hache, as the place was called, but by the time the sun had come up and burned the mists out of the hollows where it lay like cotton, the beat-up red car had taken up its station behind me once more. You had to say this for the boys: they might not be expert but they were persistent.

Later, I stopped for a cup of coffee and a doughnut in the good-sized town of Prince George. The road forked here, the right-hand branch leading inland to Dawson Creek and the Alaska Highway proper, while the left-hand branch led to the coast and the town of Prince Rupert, the southern terminal of the Alaska Ferry system. By taking the ferry, the less rugged traveler could bypass all but a few hundred miles of that he-man highway in smooth comfort.

I didn't think comfort was the reason Grant Nystrom's Communist superiors had chosen to send him by the latter route. The Alaska Highway, built in wartime, had been routed through the remote interior where it would be reasonably safe from hostile action by sea. The ferry, on the other hand, went up the coast; and the coast presumably was where most information on the Northwest Coastal System was to be found.

I reached Francois Lake in the afternoon with plenty of time to spare, and found the lodge at which I was supposed to stay without any difficulty. It was some miles off the main highway on a small dirt road, but there were plenty of signs to point the way. The place, when I got there, consisted of a good-sized main building, half a dozen log cabins overlooking the outlet of the lake, and a dock with some boats. I checked in, rented one of the boats, and went fishing.

There was just one hitch, when Hank refused to enter the boat. Apparently, he'd never ridden in one, and none of Mr. Smith's canine experts had taken the trouble to check this aspect of his education. But he was a good dog, and I managed to coax him aboard, hoping that nobody was watching the performance, at least nobody who counted, like Stottman or the local contact I was to meet. Grant Nystrom's rig sported a trailer hitch, and I'd been told that he'd used it for towing some kind of fishing boat, but that we didn't have to worry about it since he hadn't brought it along on this jaunt. But if Nystrom had owned a boat, his dog had probably been a seasoned sailor. My dog was making it quite clear that he wasn't.

He stood on the middle seat, very tense, ready to unload in a hurry if this crazy, unstable, waterborne vehicle should sink or explode. I talked to him reassuringly while I shoved off and got the motor started. He almost went over the side when the outboard fired; but gradually, as we swung out of the river and into the lake, he relaxed a bit and sat down to enjoy-or at least endure-the ride. I snapped some kind of a flashy lure to the end of my line, tossed it overboard, and settled down to tow it around the lake in a slow and purposeful manner, as if I really expected it to catch a fish.

I trolled down the shore away from the lodge for half an hour, then cut across to the south side of the lake and came back, passing opposite the outlet and the lodge. I continued in that direction for another half hour, and turned back again, having seen no fish and very few fishermen. Reaching the spot opposite the lodge once more, I glanced at my watch and found that the time was a few minutes before six. I'd hit it about right, just a little early.

I reeled in my well-traveled lure, exchanged it for a gaudy red-and-white spoon, and made a show of casting for a while. No fish were intrigued by this performance, either, which was just as well, since I wouldn't have had time, now, to mess with one if I had managed to hook him. At a quarter past six, I cranked in my line once more, started up the motor, and headed straight across the lake toward the lodge I could see on the distant shore.

It was a big lake. East and west it ran, according to my road map, for better than fifty miles; but even its narrow north-and-south dimension was impressive to a landlubber brought up in the relatively waterless areas of southwestern U.S.A. I was glad that the day was clear and calm, and that the rented motor was running strongly. I wouldn't have wanted to have weather trouble on a body of water that size, or engine trouble either.

"You and me both, pup," I said, as Hank shifted position nervously. "Take it easy. We'll be back on terra firma pretty soon."

I saw my contact coming. Another boat was approaching from the left-excuse me, from port-running down the lake on a course that would intersect mine about a quarter of a mile ahead. It was another open fishing boat, pretty much like my rental job, but slightly larger and with a somewhat bigger kicker hung on the stern. When we were within about thirty yards of each other, the other man cut his motor and I did the same. The boats ran on silently, losing speed until they lay still in the water, almost side by side.

I saw that my contact was a big, red-faced, city-fisherman type with sunglasses. He was wearing a straw hat that had a number of glittering lures hooked to the band. A fancy tackle box was open on the seat beside him. I was aware of his eyes studying me and my dog appraisingly from behind the dark lenses. The way the luck had been running on this job, I reflected grimly, it wouldn't surprise me a bit to discover that this man had gone to high school with the real Nystrom, or raised the real Prince Hannibal from a pup.

But if he had any doubts about our authenticity, he didn't show it. He just went smoothly into the act that had been prepared for us.

"Any luck?" he called.

"Not even a strike," I said, reading off the lines I had memorized in San Francisco. "How about you?"

He shook his head. "I guess they're just not biting." He plunged into the identification routine: "Isn't that a Labrador retriever? He's a beauty. What's his name?"

"Yes, he's a Lab," I said. "His name is Hank."

"No, I mean his full name. He's pedigreed, isn't he?"

These were the exact words Stottman should have used to me in the pet clinic in Pasco, only he hadn't got a chance to. They were almost the words Pat Bellman had used to me earlier the same day. I wondered if, knowing the required gibberish, she had perhaps paraphrased it deliberately to confuse me. But anyway, it was nice to have a contact proceed strictly according to plan, for a change.

I said, "His registered name is Avon's Prince Hannibal of Holgate." That took care of the identification part of the dialogue, and I went on casually, "Say, you don't happen to have a jug of water or something. I forgot to bring anything to drink and I'm parched."

"I've got some beer," he said. "Here, have one… No, no, it's all right, I've got plenty more in the cooler. Well, I'm going to try that cove over there. Good luck."

"Same to you," I said. "Thanks for the beer."

The red-faced man yanked his motor into life once more. I pulled the cap off the beer bottle, and raised the bottle in a salute, which he answered with a wave of his hand. I drank deeply, watching him draw away, riding out of my life, I hoped, as rapidly as he'd come into it. What happened to him next was none of my concern. Mr. Smith's boys would presumably put a tail on him, hoping he'd lead them to other members of the local cell. Or maybe the Canadian authorities would take over. In any case, like Stottman and his partner, this man would be rounded up later, after we'd spotted the rest of Nystrom's contacts.

I wondered what the Canadians had worth spying on in this remote part of the north woods, but it wasn't really any of my business. I drank some beer and it was flat. Well, that figured. You can't keep capping and recapping a bottle without losing some of the fizz. I set the bottle on the seat, pried the cork liner out of the cap, took out a little tinfoil wafer similar to the one I'd obtained from Stottman, and hid it in the second stud of Hank's collar. Then I carefully stuck the cork back into the cap, dropped the cap overboard, and watched it sink out of sight to where nobody would ever see that it had been tampered with. The beer I drank, flat or not, and the empty bottle I left in the bilge for the benefit of anybody who might have been watching through binoculars, from the shore.

When I reached the dock, it was just about dark. The proprietor and his wife were climbing into a big outboard runabout. They said they were heading up the lake to have dinner with some friends, and asked if I minded holding the fort alone. I said I didn't, and watched them disappear around the point. I whistled for Hank, and started for the cabin, and told him to shut up when he growled softly as we approached the door.

It was nice of him to warn me, but I'd set a few indicators about the door before I left, and I already knew somebody had been inside and very likely still was.