The Intriguers

xl.

Kneeling beside the woman on the floor, I was aware of Martha Borden rising from the bed and coming to stand over us.

"Is she… is she drunk? She certainly talked as if she were drunk."

I said, "Help me get her on the bed. Now, unlace those clodhopper boots and get them off her, will you?" I arranged the pillows under Lorna's head and went into the bathroom for a towel, which I moistened under the tap and brought back to wipe off her face, oddly pale now under the recent sunburn. I said, "Call it what you want. She's just spent two days on the desert living on a couple of candybars and half a gallon of water. Maybe the alcohol hit her, maybe just reaction… Hi, there," I said to Lorna as she opened her eyes. "Come back and join the party."

She made a wry face, lying there. "What happened?"

"You gave us a lecture on the desperate state of this overcrowded world, and passed out."

"Oh, God," she said. "I ought to know better than to drink on an empty stomach. It always makes me gloomy as hell. Call me Cassandra for short."

She started to sit up. I pushed her back down. "Stay put. Martha, pop out to the candy machine by the office and get a fistful of Hersheys or something to fill the aching void until the restaurant opens. Here's some change."

When the girl had left, Lorna sighed, and patted her hair back from her face with both hands.

"Sorry, Helm."

"Think nothing of it."

"I don't particularly want candy. I'd rather wait for bacon and eggs, if you don't mind. That one little hamburger just reminded me of how many meals I'd missed, I guess."

"You don't have to eat the stuff. I just wanted her out of the way for a moment. Remember, Mae said double negative. Even her daddy realizes the kid presents some- thing of a problem. You did frisk her, didn't you?"

Lorna was watching me carefully. "Yes. She's clean."

"Where's your gun?"

"Right here."

"Keep it handy. I want you feeble and helpless, understand, but armed and ready. Okay?"

She frowned quickly. "Are you giving me orders?" In the armed forces, they've got discipline. It must be nice. All we've got is temperament. I said, "I sure as hell am, Mrs. Holt. Mac sent the girl to me, not to you. Take it up with him when you see him next. In the meantime, keep that gun handy, please."

She hesitated; then she smiled faintly. "Very well. As long as you say please. I hope you know what you're doing."

"That makes two of us. Shhh, here she comes now."

In the early morning stillness, the approaching footsteps sounded very loud outside. Martha entered with half-a-dozen candy bars, which she dropped on the bed. Then she turned to me.

"Who's Cassandra?" she asked.

"What?"

"Mrs. Holt said to call her Cassandra for short. What did she mean?"

The woman on the bed laughed quickly. "Cassandra was a Greek girl who could foretell the future, Miss Borden. The only trouble was, nobody'd believe her."

Martha looked back to me. "And what's Ragnarok or however you pronounced it? Back when you were giving her the password, you asked, 'Will Ragnarok do?'" I said, "Ragnarok is the Scandinavian equivalent of Gotterdдmmerung, which is the German equivalent of Armageddon. The end of the world in Technicolor."

"Thanks, I just like to get these things straight. I hope you're feeling better, Mrs. Holt."

"I… I feel fine as long as I don't try to stand up," Lorna said bravely. "I'll be all right in a minute."

I said, "Well, you just lie there while Martha gives us the word from Washington." The girl glanced at me quickly. I went on. "M the words from Washington, doll. Names, addresses, and telephone numbers. The whole list you're carrying. All ten names. Well, nine, since we've already made contact with number one." When Martha hesitated, I asked, "What's the trouble now?"

She glanced towards the bed, and back to me. "I was supposed to tell it only to you, Matt."

I shrugged. "The minute you tell me, I'll tell her, so what's the difference?"

"Do you trust her that much?" The younger woman's voice was sharp.

"I have to trust her that much," I said. "In this business there are two kinds of damn fools. There are the damn fools who trust everybody, and then there arc the damn fools who trust nobody. I try not to be either kind."

"All right," Martha said reluctantly. "All right, but it's your responsibility."

She had a good memory. She stood there with her eyes partly closed and rattled off, without any hesitation, the code names of nine agents, their current cover names, where they were to be found, and how they could be reached by telephone. Some of the names were familiar to me: men and women with whom I'd worked in the past. Others I'd never heard of. Well, they'd probably never heard of me, so we were even. I made the girl go over the list once more; then I repeated it back to make certain I had everything straight. I knew Lorna was assimilating the material right along with me.

"That's it?" I asked when we were finished. "That's everything you were supposed to tell me?"

Martha's eyes wavered slightly. "Yes, that's it. Daddy said you'd know what to do without having it spelled out for you."

I regarded her for a moment, rather grimly, trying to figure the whole thing out: why Mac had used his daughter on this critical mission-even with a built-in warning code-instead of sending a trained agent, and what additional information he'd given her that she was now holding back for some screwball reason of her own. Looking at her I realized, with some surprise, that properly cleaned up she could be beautiful. Even in her dirty pseudo-pirate outfit she was an attractive kid, not that it mattered. What was important was that she was an infuriating nut, if not worse.

"There's another list, there's got to be," I said slowly. Her face told me I'd guessed right, so I went on: "It's got ten names on it, too, or maybe eleven. Give."

"I… I can't!" She frowned suspiciously. "How did you know there was another list?"

"I told you. There had to be. Mac said I'd know what to do. Sure, I know. But I don't know who to do it to. Tell me."

"I can't!" she protested. "If I do-"

"What?"

"If I do, I'll be responsible for what happens to them."

"That's right," I said. "And if you don't, you'll be responsible for what happens to us, your dad included. Not to mention a couple of hundred million fellow citizens who may be adversely affected by your decision." I grimaced, and went on flamboyantly, "The fate of your country is in your hands, Borden. George Washington and Abraham Lincoln are counting on you."

She said angrily, "Stop it! You're not funny!" She was probably right, at that. After a moment, she went on: "You can't really believe that just you and she and Daddy and a few others are going to.. – to change anything? And even if you can make a difference by using violence, how do you know you're right?"

I said, "Go to hell, doll. How do you know we're wrong? Can you take the responsibility of assuming that your father is just a bloodthirsty nincompoop who doesn't know what the hell he's doing?"

She stared at me for a long moment. Her gray eyes were wide and shiny; I thought she was going to burst into tears. Abruptly, she drew a long, shaky breath and said, "Bainbridge, Joseph W., office 2243 Federal Annex A, home 77 Archuleta Circle, Phoenix, Arizona; Dunn, Homer P., office. -.

There were ten names again, in alphabetical order. Again I went over them with her until I had them and got a nod from Lorna saying she had them, too.

"Fine," I said to Martha. "And now, the date. There's got to be a date."

She drew a long breath, shaky with anger this time. "Damn you, if you can read minds, why do you bother to ask questions?" When I didn't say anything, she said, "June 17."

"Just June 17. No hour or minute?"

"No. The date was all he gave me."

I regarded her bleakly. "Why are you so reluctant to cooperate, Borden? You took the job, didn't you? Why-"

"Yes, and I wish to heaven I hadn't!" she gasped. "After watching you kill three men just like snapping your fingers. -. – Anyway, I don't trust you and I don't trust your Mrs. Holt with her dreadful ideas, and I'm sure if Daddy really knew what kind of people he'd hired…

Now that you have all the information, what are you going to do with it?"

I said irritably, "Oh, stop trying to kid your lousy little conscience. You knew what we were going to do with it before you gave it to me, so don't ask stupid questions you don't want to hear the answers of." I turned to Lorna. "He's got them pretty well divided," I said, "east and west of the Mississippi, five and five. You take the Western division of both lists. Get in touch with the other four agents out here. He's got each of them located pretty close to a target address, you'll notice. I guess the one in Phoenix was meant for you. Of course, if one of your people gets into trouble, or you can't make contact with him, you'll have to arrange for his touch to be made by somebody else, or make it yourself. Oh, and tell your people it had better look as accidental as they can make it look."

"Yes," she said, "but you've forgotten something, haven't you, Helm?"

I looked down at her. She waited, smiling faintly. I grinned and said, "Goddamn a world full of temperamental females. Please?"

"That's better."

I looked at Martha. "Okay, is that it? Is there anything else you were supposed to tell me?"

"No," she said, "no, that's all. Just the two lists of names, and the date, and that you'd know what to do."

I studied her grimly. She never gave up. She was still holding out something. After a moment I realized what it had to be.

"You're forgetting one item, aren't you, Borden?" I said wearily. "One more thing he told you. An address, a place on the water, but where?" She faced me and didn't speak, but the resentful gray eyes told me I was right. I said, "Eleven hot-shot agents, the best he's got, specially selected, carefully hidden out of harm's way. Eleven agents but only ten targets. That's one left over: me. Me, and a boat he was very eager for me to have. Tell me where I'm supposed to go boating, Borden, and when."

She started to blurt out something frustrated and furious but held it back. "He… he wants you to report to him the night before."

"The night of June 16th. Where?"

She glanced towards Lorna, and back to me. "That I'm not going to tell you in front of her! If you want to risk having her know Daddy's hiding place, you'll have to tell her yourself."

Lorna swung her feet off the bed and stood up. "It's something I'm better off not knowing, anyway," she said. "If I don't know, it wasn't I who spilled it. Excuse me, folks, while I go wash my face."

The younger woman watched her go, waiting until the bathroom door had closed fully. Then she looked at me once more. "If you betray him, I'll kill you!"

I said wearily, "Oh, shut up, doll. Don't make loud noises about things you're not going to do. You're the little girl who doesn't believe in killing anything, remember?"

She glared at me. "Damn you! Why do you have to be so-" She stopped and drew a long, ragged breath. "It's in Florida," she said, "but I don't know the exact. -. – There's a man Daddy goes fishing with, a friend, Hank Priest, Congressman Henry Priest, who's got a waterfront place near a little town called Robalo, on Robalo Island. That's on the west coast. You're supposed to get in touch with him. He'll tell you where to go and get you a reliable guide. Give yourself time enough so you can pick the right tide. It's somewhere out in that maze of mangrove islands off the edge of the Everglades, I think, but you'll never find anything in there without a guide-anything, that is, except snakes, alligators, and mosquitoes."

"It sounds real inviting," I said wryly.

"Of course you're supposed to make sure nobody follows you."

"Of course," I said. "Naturally. A station wagon the size of a Greyhound bus towing a great big white boat, and I'm supposed to drive it invisibly across two-thirds of the continent-"

"It's spring. The roads are full of cars towing boats. Anyway, Daddy's got confidence in you for some reason. He knows, with the information I've given you, you'll make it good."

I nodded slowly. "All right, I'll try to live up to his goddamned confidence in me." I regarded her deliberately, until she shifted position and licked her lips as if to protest. Then I said, "Now tell me how much of all this is the truth, if any, and who really told you what to say. Lorna!"

The bathroom door opened, and Lorna stood there in her stocking feet, with her little revolver steady in her hand.