The Interlopers

25

INLAND, IT WAS A FANTASTIC country. The stuff along the coast was picturesque enough, but I was brought up on mountain scenery, and it takes a lot of rock to impress me. The real experience for me came when I climbed out of the coastal cliffs and canyons and topped out on the endless roof of the world, bright in fall colors. I'd seen something like it once before, in northern Europe at the same time of the year, but that kind of landscape doesn't grow old very fast.

The road was just as lousy as I'd been promised it would be, making the total impression even more memorable. There's something kind of insulating about asphalt and concrete. In order to appreciate a country fully, you've got to dodge the rocks, smash into the potholes, weave along the ruts, splash through the puddles, and taste the high-flung mud blown in through the open window…

My next-and last, thank God-pickup wasn't scheduled until early this evening, at the final border crossing at a small town called Beaver Creek, only some three hundred miles ahead. It was still early. I had plenty of time to make it if I didn't get in a hurry and break something, so I just cruised easily along the twisting gravel road- gravel, in that part of the world, means anything from chicken-gravel to head-sized boulders-across the gaudy tundra, if that's the proper term for the terrain I was viewing.

There was no human habitation and no traffic for a good many miles beyond the border. Then I passed a single car, a fellow straggler from the bunch off the morning's ferry, judging by the shiny paint and the California plates. It was a big new Lincoln carrying a middle-aged couple obviously reluctant to get their expensive sedan bent or dirty; the man was driving very cautiously, picking his way along the rugged road like a lady trying to cross a wet street late at night without ruining her party shoes.

Five miles farther on, I saw another vehicle approaching from ahead. As it drew closer, I realized that I knew it, even though it was going the wrong way and had got pretty muddy since I'd seen it last. It was the lab truck, as young Smith had called it. It was heading back toward Haines for some reason, and the boys weren't sparing it a thing the road could dish out. They were really coming, hammering over the washboards and sliding through the curves. As they neared me, I pulled over to give them plenty of room, since they didn't seem to have the situation altogether under control.

The man at the wheel-whichever one of them it was- flashed his headlights at me and slammed on his brakes. He skidded to a halt well beyond me as, in answer to his signal, I stopped my rig more sedately on the other side of the road. It seemed like a hell of a place for a conference, out in wide-open country where anybody within a five-mile radius could see us together; but it was their mission and their security, and if they wanted to blow it, it was their business. Actually, considering what Holz probably knew or guessed by this time, there wasn't much left to blow, but they weren't supposed to know that.

I got out. The driver of the panel job got out. I saw that it was Smith, Junior. He came running toward me across the muddy road. Something about his approach didn't strike me as friendly. I moved clear of the truck to give myself maneuvering room, and checked on the bearded partner I'd seen on shipboard. He was just coming around the pseudo-delivery-van, too far away to be an immediate threat. Young Smith ran up to me, breathless.

"You killed them!" he shouted wildly. "You damn crazy murderer, you killed them!"

He swung a fist at my face. I stepped back. As he started to bring the other fist into action, I kicked him between the legs, quite gently. Castrating him might not have been a bad idea, but it's not for me to say who should, and who should not, be permitted to perpetuate the race.

Young Smith doubled up and went to his knees. I looked at the other man, who had his hand inside his zipper jacket.

I said, "I'm not the world's greatest quick-draw artist, friend, but when I pull it, I shoot it. Don't wave anything at me you don't plan to use."

He brought his hand out empty. After a moment, he came across the road and looked down at his kneeling associate and up at me.

"You didn't have to do that," he said.

"No," I said. "I didn't have to. I was just feeling magnanimous. The routine response to that windmill attack involves a karate chop and a broken neck." I drew a long breath. "Who are you?"

"Davis," he said. "Lester Davis, sir."

I regarded him for a moment. He was a chunky, powerful-looking young man, wearing jeans, a heavy sweater, and the zippered windbreaker. His beard was reddish and so was his hair, which was fairly long. It had to be a disguise. His chief, Mr. Washington Smith, would just naturally take a dim view of hair, attributing all kinds of high moral values to razor blades and clippers.

Personally, I'm not all that sold on the virtues of barbering. I just like to be able to tell the boys from the girls, but in this case no confusion was possible. Hair or no hair, whiskers or no whiskers, I rather liked the rugged appearance of Lester Davis. At least he didn't have the hungry look of fanatic self-righteousness that seemed to run in the Smith family.

"Are you going to break down and tell me what this is all about?" I asked him. "Does your friend make a habit of going ape in the middle of the public highway or does he have some particular reason for flipping his wig today?"

"Ronnie's upset," Davis said. "We just got word that a couple of our friends have been shot."

This information, imparted under these circumstances, made no sense at all. At least I couldn't see how it applied to me-and the idea of having friends in this business was fairly outlandish anyway.

I said, rather helplessly, "Honest, amigo, I haven't shot anybody all day."

"They were shot by an Indian called Pete," Davis said. "Ronnie seems to feel that you're responsible, sir."

I blinked, trying to figure out what might have happened, but the only answer I got was so incredible I didn't want to believe it. Before I could speak, a car appeared on the road, far away, approaching from the direction of the coast. Davis stepped forward to grab one of young Smith's-well, Ronnie's-arms; I grabbed the other and we straightened out the casualty and leaned him against the truck, more or less surrounding him sociably until the tourist couple in the big Lincoln had passed. By that time, he could stand by himself.

I looked at the red-bearded man. "I don't get it," I said. "I suppose the friends you mentioned are the agents who've been watching over me and spotting all the people with whom I made contact-"

"That's right. They've been switching operatives and cars on you pretty frequently on this job, sir, but these two are the ones who made the ferry ride up from Prince Rupert with us."

"Sure," I said. "I figured some of them might be along, but it seemed best not to look for them too hard. But they were supposed to be keeping an eye on me. How the hell did they get mixed up with Pete, for God's sake!"

Davis started to speak, but it was Ronnie Smith who answered indignantly: "They couldn't just leave the man to die by the roadside after what you'd done to him, could they?"

I stared at his gaunt young face and at his eyes burning with anger and idealism, if that's what it was. Sometimes I have an uneasy feeling that the rest of the world operates on a different wavelength from the one to which Mac and I and a few other hard-working agents are tuned.

I mean, back there near Haines were a couple of presumably well trained and carefully briefed operatives who'd been given a job to do. It had undoubtedly been impressed on them, as on me, that the safety and welfare of their country depended on their doing it right. But instead of minding their assigned business, they'd wandered off to perform a totally irrelevant rescue of a totally irrelevant gent in a wrecked car!

All right, if you want to get technical, Pete wasn't completely irrelevant to the mission. Nevertheless, he was a known quantity. The work on Pete had all been done, or should have been. They'd had a week, more or less, to study up on him, circulate his description, and arrange to have him grabbed when convenient. They had absolutely nothing to learn, nothing to gain, by meeting the guy face to face, and they could lose the whole ball game if their mission of mercy misfired. Apparently, they'd gone right ahead and lost it.

Ronnie said harshly, as if sensing the direction of my thoughts: "You ran him off the road and drove away and left him. Somebody had to go down there!"

"Why?"

"You can't just leave a human being pinned in the wreckage of-"

"He can't have been pinned very hard," I said sourly. "At least he seems to have got an arm free to shoot with. Your friends could have figured on that. Why the hell do you think I went off and left him? Because I don't tackle any wounded grizzlies unless I have to, certainly not when I've got important work to do. You people did say this job of yours was important, didn't you?"

Ronnie started to speak angrily, but drew a long breath and decided against it. He glared at me instead and turned away. Walking a little stiff-legged, he marched to the lab truck and got behind the wheel, slamming the door hard. He cranked down the window and stuck out his head.

"Come on, Les!" he called. "We aren't getting anywhere with this guy. Let's go!"

"Just a minute." Davis looked at me and said, "Actually, the man wasn't in the wreckage, according to the report we got. He'd crawled off into the bushes a little way and was lying there with his gun, waiting. When the boys started looking for him, he let them come in close and shot them both. One was hit in the face. He was unconscious for quite a while afterward. When he came to, both his partner and Pete were dead. He managed to struggle back to his car and raise us on the two-way radio."

"And now you're hurrying back to hold the poor guy's band?"

Davis flushed. "He's badly hurt, sir."

I glanced at my watch. "At nine this evening you're supposed to take some important material off my hands at a place called Beaver Creek. You'll never make it if you drive clear back to Haines, particularly if you get tangled up with doctors and cops."

"I know. That's why we stopped, sir. To ask you to hold things up until tomorrow morning. There's nobody to cover you now and see who slips you the stuff, and we need that lead to the commie cell operating up here. You'd better pass up the evening rendezvous altogether, on one excuse or another, and use the alternate contact at breakfast instead."

"And where do I make contact with you afterward?"

"We'll set up an emergency drop down the road. Stop for coffee at The Antlers Lodge, east of Tok, Alaska. That's where you check back in through U.S. customs and immigration. The road divides, one branch going to Fairbanks and one to Anchorage. Turn left toward Anchorage like you're supposed to anyway. It's fifteen or twenty miles to the lodge. Try to make it as soon after nine as you can. We'll be waiting. Run the dog as usual before you go into the cafe. I'm told there's good cover east of the main building. Give us fifteen minutes and turn him loose again for a bit before you take off. After that, we'll handle the Anchorage part as originally planned, and tie it all up with pink ribbons. Okay?" The horn of the Ford blared impatiently. Davis glanced that way and called, "I'm coming, Ronnie."

I said, "Okay, but there's one thing you'd better keep in mind."

"What's that, sir?"

"Pete wouldn't have burned down just any two Good Samaritans who wandered down there. Since he shot your boys, that means he knew who they were. Maybe, not realizing their warm and friendly intentions, he thought they'd come to finish him off. Or maybe he was just doing the best he could to strike a final blow at me. But the important thing is that he knew them; and that therefore the two of you could be known, too. So watch your steps, every damn one of them. Now you'd better go before your friend blows a gasket."

I watched them drive away; then I got back into the truck and headed toward Haines Junction, where the ferry cutoff from Haines joins the Alaska Highway. As I drove, I tried to dream up a plausible way of killing a few hours so I'd be late for tonight's contact without being obvious about it. I needn't have bothered. The excuse I needed was ready and waiting for me.

A good fifteen miles before the junction, I came upon a muddy Cadillac convertible stopped in the road. It was kind of slumped toward the left rear, like a bogged-down horse, and that wheel-not only the wheel and tire, but the brake drum and part of the axle-lay in the road nearby.

As I approached, a slender figure in yellow-brown corduroy jumped out of the crippled car and waved me to a halt.