The Interlopers

10

1 AWOKE TO FIND MYSELF LYING in a big motel bed without any clothes on, with a naked woman for company. Morally speaking, it was no doubt very shocking, but we don't do much moral speaking in this line of work. I was more concerned with the professional aspects of the situation.

Ungrateful and unappreciative though it might seem, after the pleasant night we'd just spent together, I couldn't help wondering just what the glamorous Miss Meredith really wanted from me. I mean, it hadn't been essential for her to go to bed with me as part of the act-in fact it hadn't been necessary at all-and I've long since given up the notion that I'm so irresistible that any woman who meets me just naturally grabs at any excuse to get out of her clothes and into my arms. I've found it much safer to assume that ladies who act in this uninhibited manner probably have nasty, ulterior motives for their behavior.

"What's your name, darling?" Libby Meredith's voice interrupted my wandering, early-morning thoughts. "And I don't mean Grant Nystrom."

I turned my head to look at her. She was being very casual about security. I certainly don't make a fetish of it myself, but I am aware that there are such things as electronic eavesdropping gadgets that can easily be installed in motel rooms. She read my thoughts and laughed at me.

"Relax, darling. I'm a very important person in the organization. They still trust me implicitly; they don't suspect a thing. I'm sure they wouldn't bother to put a microphone in my room."

It was a naive little speech for anyone as deeply involved with a lot of unpleasant people as she seemed to be.

I said, "If by organization you mean this Russian west coast espionage outfit we're trying to trip up, this is the first I've heard of any Communist group having implicit faith in any of its members, particularly amateur help playing at intrigue just for kicks."

I was trying it for size. Apparently it fit well enough, or she wanted me to think it did, because she didn't get very mad. A truly dedicated idealist, whether radical or reactionary, will blow his stack violently if you accuse him of being a thrill-seeking political amateur. Miss Meredith merely narrowed her eyes slightly.

"Don't be obnoxious, darling. I helped you out of a lot of trouble last night. You might at least be grateful enough to be polite."

"Sorry, ma'am," I said. "I always take off my manners with my pants. And I'm grateful enough for the trouble you helped me out of, but that doesn't keep me from wondering about the trouble you're helping me into." I reached out thoughtfully and drew a finger across her breast, incompletely covered by the sheet. "I mean, Miss Meredith, it was a lovely evening. Now what am I expected to do to pay for it?"

Her eyes remained narrow a moment longer; then she laughed softly. "I think I'm going to like you," she murmured. "Grant was sweet but he wasn't very bright. A woman gets bored with a man who has implicit faith in her. Poor Grant."

"Sure," I said. "Poor Grant. Did you get bored enough with him to set him up for murder?"

Still she didn't get mad. "No," she said quietly, "no, just bored enough to con him into betraying his country. I mean-" She hesitated, and made a wry little face. "-I mean, when you get a man like that trailing you around with big sheepy eyes and offering to do anything in the world for you, the temptation to take him at his word is hard to resist. But I didn't know I was putting his life in danger. In fact, they promised me that, as a courier, he'd be running no real risk except, of course, of going to jail. And there wasn't even much chance of that, they said, if he used his head."

"And you believed them?"

"Why not? The whole business had turned out to be pretty much a drag, as far as I was concerned. I mean, I'd gone into it for excitement, mostly, but all it was a bunch of mousy little men and drab little women making a big deal of sneaking around snapping pictures of dull documents snitched from dusty files. No sex, no shooting, no nothing. I was about to ditch them and take up shoplifting or something for real kicks when… when Grant disappeared. And then a couple of government men were waiting for me, a day or two later, and they took me to see the poor damn guy and his poor damn dog…" She stopped. After a little, she said, "They just looked so damn dead! Do you know what I mean?"

"I know," I said. "So you decided to change sides and give the government boys a hand, by way of atonement."

"Atonement, hell!" she said. "Those lousy red bastards promised me he would be safe, didn't they? I'm going to wreck their lousy red spy ring, every crummy cell of it, clear up to Point Barrow, Alaska. Well, Anchorage. I don't think they've got anybody much north of there, this particular gang anyway. And I'm going to take care of anybody else who had anything to do with Grant's death! You still haven't told me your name."

The sudden change of subject caught me off balance. I stalled by asking, "Didn't they tell you in San Francisco?"

"Those government boy scouts? Everything was a big secret to them. All they'd say was that they'd picked somebody to take Grant's place, and that this somebody needed all the information about Grant and his route and his instructions that I could supply." She paused. "Oh, they did show me your picture after you'd had your hair bleached. They asked what I thought of the resemblance. I had to tell them I didn't think it was very close."

I grinned. "Well, that figures. They wouldn't tell me much about you, either. What little I got, I got the hard way, and it's a good thing I did. They've got a serious epidemic of professional lockjaw in that department."

"It isn't your department?"

"No, thank God," I said. "I'm just kind of out on loan to them temporarily."

"But you are a government man, too?"

"That's right."

She smiled. "This is a hell of a place for a public servant, darling, in bed with a female subversive-even if she's a reformed female subversive."

"Maybe I'm a hell of a public servant," I said. "And my name is Matthew Helm. Now you know it, you'd better forget it."

"I will, but thanks for trusting me with it. I get a little tired of everything being so goddamned classified." She hesitated. "If they hadn't told you I was helping them, why did you risk coming here with Stottman? How did you know I wouldn't reveal you as a phony the minute you put your face on the door?"

"I didn't," I said. "I was bluffing. Stottman suspected me. I had to back him down, somehow. I was hoping that, by the time we got here, you'd have taken off for parts unknown. Or fallen out a window, headfirst, onto a concrete sidewalk. Which brings up the point: why are you here in Seattle, anyway? Those omniscient lads in San Francisco told me I didn't have to know anything about you because there wasn't a chance of my running into you up here."

"I don't take orders from them," she said. "They may think I do, but they're wrong. How about a drink?"

I shuddered and glanced at my watch. "At seven-thirty in the morning? What are you, a dipso or something?"

"Right now I'm a girl who wants a drink at seven-thirty in the morning."

She got out of bed, quite unconcerned about her nakedness. Her figure was as trim and attractive without clothes as it had been with them, which isn't often the case except among the very young. She kicked around among the garments strewn about the carpet-hers and mine-to find the pants she'd discarded the evening before, and pulled them on without benefit of underwear. Then she unearthed her blouse from the same heap, made a face at its wilted appearance, and struggled into it. Wearing it open, like a thin, loose, ruffled jacket, she moved, still barefoot, to the dresser, where she peeled the paper sock off a motel glass and poured herself a healthy slug from a bottle standing nearby, tempering it with barely a splash of water from a pitcher.

"You're sure you won't have some?"

"Positive," I said. "I've got a long way to drive today, if I'm to make contact up in British Columbia tomorrow like I'm supposed to."

I got out of bed and started dressing. I probably didn't carry it off quite as well as she had. Not that I was actively embarrassed, but we hadn't really been acquainted very long and I felt more comfortable after I'd got a few clothes on. When, after zipping up my pants, I glanced her way again, she was sprawled in the big chair in the corner, grinning at me.

"Skinny, aren't you?" she murmured.

"No skinnier than some others you've known. At least one other."

Her grin vanished. "Why bring that up?"

"Because it's the central fact of our existence, sweetheart-or should I say of our coexistence. At least I'm here because I'm supposed to look somewhat like a tall skinny guy you used to know pretty well. I was kind of assuming you were here for the same reason."

"Well, I came here to back up your impersonation of him, if that's what you mean."

"I wasn't told I'd be having any help from you. Quite the contrary."

She laughed. "Neither was, I, darling. In fact, I was told I was staying in San Francisco on pain of drastic penalties, I forget just what they were. Probably a whole gaggle of government pretty-boys is searching for me right now, to lock me up for getting independent. But I could see this impersonation deal just wasn't going to go over, the way they had it rigged. Sooner or later, somebody was going to get suspicious of you, probably sooner..

"Somebody did. Stottman."

"Yes," she said, "and if you hadn't had a member of the lodge in good standing to vouch for you, your act would have been finished right there, wouldn't it? And so would you. That's why I managed to get myself sent up this way without letting those government jerks know about it, so I'd be handy if you needed me."

"Your efforts are appreciated. Can I expect more assistance farther up the line, if required?"

"I'll do the best I can. After all, I've done some good work for this creepy spy outfit; I've earned a certain amount of latitude. And Grant and I are-were-known to be pretty close. I don't think anybody will suspect anything if I continue to dream up excuses to be near him-you."

I said, "Just the same it could be risky."

"I told you, I got in this mainly for kicks. I don't mind a few risks." Her lips tightened. "I'm going to smash this whole lousy apparatus, no matter what it costs. At least I'm going to louse up this operation for them so they'll never put it back together-and you know how Moscow deals with failures!" After a moment, she asked in a totally different tone of voice: "What do you know about these other people, the ones who tried to have you killed so they could bring in their own imitation Nystrom?"

"Very little, so far," I said, tucking my shirt into my pants. "I've seen three of them, but there may be more. There's a blond girl in jeans. There's the guy you saw in the vet's office, call him Nystrom. And there was a juvenile gun expert with moustache and sideburns, but he's dead."

"You don't know what they're after?"

"Well, that's fairly obvious, but I don't really know why they're after it," I said. "It seems pretty clear that they're trying to do the same thing we are: hijack the information Stottman and his friends-your ex-friends- have collected on NCS, whatever that may be."

Libby glanced at me sharply, surprised. "You mean, you haven't even been told that? The government sure makes you boys work blindfolded! NCS stands for Northwest Coastal System, darling. Everybody knows that."

"Sure," I said. "Everybody."

"Well, almost everybody. Of course, only a few people know what it actually is; in that respect, security is very tight. But it's something very fancy being tested here in the Northwest, a defensive system of some kind, we hear, but that could mean anything. Nobody, but nobody, builds aggressive systems these days, or admits it if they do. Anyway, Moscow is very eager to learn all about NCS. And obviously somebody else is, too."

"Maybe Peking," I said.

Libby gave me another of her sharp, surprised looks. "Why do you say that? Were any of those interfering brats Oriental?"

"No," I said, "but they could have been hired, couldn't they? Or persuaded by the customary, cockeyed ideological arguments? And if something interesting is being developed on this shore of the Pacific, the people on the other shore would seem like logical customers for the information. And I had a case over in Hawaii not too long ago where young people were being pumped full of highfalutin notions and used as suckers by shrewd professionals. That one was run from Moscow, but some Chinese agents were involved, too. Maybe they're not too proud to borrow a good idea from their fellow Marxists."

She shrugged. "You're just guessing."

I said, "Sure. But I don't think Bellman and Company dreamed up an operation like this on their own…

"Bellman?"

"That's the girl's name. Pat Bellman."

"Is she pretty?"

"Don't be corny," I said. "The kid's not bad. Not a sexpot like you, but not bad. Incidentally, if you were to button that damn blouse, I could keep my mind on our conversation without the distraction of wondering if I'm being seduced all over again and why."

She made no move to comply with the suggestion, smiling up at me in a provocative way. Trousered women don't do much for me as a rule, but this one managed to overcome the handicap nicely. Lounging there half-naked, glass in hand, in somewhat bedraggled remnants of yesterday's elaborate fancy-pants costume, she was a wanton challenge to the whole male sex.

The catch, as far as my libido was concerned, was that my mind really did want to know why. She was putting on a fine, tarty act for me-had been, ever since we met- but my instincts warned me it was just that: an act. Not that she was necessarily an unspoiled and innocent child at heart, but neither was she, I thought, just a sexy slob who normally drank whiskey at the crack of dawn. Last night, after a long hard day, when she'd had plenty of reason to relax with a couple of stiff ones, there had been no liquor on her breath. To the best of my knowledge, there are very few morning drinkers who don't lap it up at night as well. So why was the lady deliberately making herself look cheap and dissipated for my benefit?

I looked down at her bleakly for a moment longer. When she didn't speak, I said, "Honest, it's a great routine, Libby. But what does it mean?"

Her eyes narrowed. After a moment, she rose and drew the blouse closed over her breasts, buttoned it up, and stuffed it into her pants. Then she looked up at me and, after a little pause, laughed softly.

"I keep thinking you're really Grant, I guess," she murmured. "He was kind of a coward where women were concerned. You had to make things easy for him. I mean, when we first met, I gave him the glamour treatment for weeks and nothing happened. Finally, I realized he was actually scared of touching the shining lady in her expensive clothes. I mean, he wanted to, God how he wanted to, but he was afraid he'd make me mad by mussing my dress or wrecking my hairdo or something. I had to let him catch me cleaning house with my hair tied up and some old rag on, drinking beer… Ugh, how I hate beer! As the man said, they ought to pour it back into the horse. But it's a nice, lower-class, down-to-earth drink, and we got lit on the nasty stuff, and it did the job. In a faded old dress with dirt on my nose and a skinfull of beer, I was human enough that he dared grab me and maul me the way he'd wanted to for weeks." She grimaced. "That sounds pretty snide, doesn't it? I didn't mean it to. Actually, he was a sweet, shy guy without too much between the ears. Whereas you're a smart, cold, calculating bastard who knows everything about women. Aren't you?"

"Sure," I said. "Everything except why this particular woman gives a damn whether I go for her or not."

She said, smiling again, "I guess I underestimated you. I thought you'd just put it down to your personal magnetism. Most men would."

"In my line of work," I said, "those who overestimate their personal magnetism tend to die very young. Come on, Libby, give. You want something, and it isn't me. What is it?"

"Oh, I don't mind you," she murmured. "In fact, I rather like you."

"Thanks."

She hesitated. "Tell me something. That young punk with the gun, the one you shot-that would probably be the one who killed Grant, wouldn't it?"

"Probably," I said. "Why?"

She reached out and took me by the arms, drawing me closer, so close that our bodies touched here and there. The contact obviously wasn't accidental; very little about this girl was accidental, I warned myself. She looked up at me searchingly for a moment.

She said, "Because I want you to get the rest of them, too."

I was just as conscious of the fact that there was nothing but Libby under the thin pants and blouse as she wanted me to be; but this was beside the point.

"Sure," I said. "Will just the scalps do, or do you want the ears, too? Or should I bring you the heads in a basket, individually wrapped like fancy oranges?"

"Don't be funny," she said quietly. "I'm not joking. I want you to get the remaining two we know about-the girl and the tall man with the dog-and any others that may be working with them; I want them all. Dead." Her eyes were steady on my face. When I didn't speak, she went on: "I just paid you, last night, for the one you've already taken care of. Please don't think I fall into bed with every man I meet. I owed you a debt, and I paid it. Do you understand?"

I said, "Libby, I'm afraid you're a screwball. I don't like working with screwballs."

"That's too bad," she said calmly, "that's too bad, because you're stuck with me just as I'm stuck with you. And I'm telling you that for every additional one you get, you can collect the same fee. Me." She waited again for me to speak. When I didn't, she continued in the same cold, steady voice: "Of course, if you'd rather have money, I've got that, too. Name your price. But get them for me. Kill them for me. All of them."