The Intriguers

xxxii.

Mac hadn't changed much. He still looked, if you didn't look too closely, like a banker strayed from the financial fold, in a neat gray suit that, in deference to the local climate, was a little lighter than his customary working uniform. His black eyebrows still made a striking contrast with his gray hair. His cold gray eyes hadn't changed much, either; but his voice was a little different, here in the admiral's living room, from the crisp, businesslike tones I was used to hearing over the phone or in his Washington office. It occurred to me that this was the first time in our long relationship that we'd met socially, so to speak, in a private house.

"I haven't had an opportunity to speak with you, Eric," he said.

"No, sir," I said.

He'd been waiting on the Priests' dock when the Frances II brought us in. I'd given him the mission-accomplished sign as I stepped ashore, and with that off his mind, he'd turned his attention to his daughter. What the two of them had found to say to each other under the circumstances, I didn't know; but they'd apparently worked out some basis for coexistence, and it was none of my damned business anyway.

"I want to thank you," Mac said.

I looked out the window of the bright room at the dark screened porch from which I'd once eavesdropped on a political meeting. That had happened only twenty-four hours ago, but it seemed like the distant past. Through the wire netting of the porch, I could see the big sportfisherman lying at the flood-lighted dock as if she'd never left it, the shovel-nosed Whaler that had brought me armed help that I'd no longer really needed; and my own little craft, well, I still thought of her as mine, although actually she belonged to Uncle Sam and always had. The chewed-up prop had been replaced, and she was ready to go again, but the assignment was completed, and there was nothing more for her to do here or myself either.

I turned to look at Mac. It was the first time I could recall that he'd ever thanked me for anything. Well, I guess it was the first time he'd had anything to thank me for. You can commend or reprimand a subordinate for the way he does his job, but you don't generally thank him for it.

"Por nada," I said.

He said, "I couldn't in good conscience put a sniper in a situation like that hampered by orders not to harm, particularly when a member of my own family was involved."

"No, sir."

"The other solution would have been acceptable. You understand that."

"Yes, sir."

He smiled faintly. "Of course, as the head of a government agency, I'm obliged to point out that your behavior was sentimental and reprehensible, but… Thank you."

"Yes, sir," I said. "The fact is that we've worked together for a hell of a long time. I couldn't shoot a kid of yours, job or no job. I hope you couldn't shoot one of mine. Where the hell does the admiral hide his liquor, anyway?"

It was an undigestible mixture of personal and business relationships, and I walked away from it. If he didn't like it, he could go for tarpon in the morning and take it out on a fish. I found the liquor cabinet by tracking down the sound of glass clinking against glass. Martha was pouring herself a stiff concoction involving, mostly, vodka. She'd washed off the mud of the morning's adventures, but as some kind of protest, I suppose, she was back in her grubby pirate costume: the striped jersey, the white pants, and the frayed sneakers. She was talking with the admiral. When I came up, I reminded her of something.

"Uncle Hank," she said, "when you port your helm, does the boat go right or left?"

"Right, of course," he said, "but who ports any helms around here? What are you trying to do, impress somebody with how salty you are? The Navy command to the wheel is 'right rudder,' and that's what I taught you, young lady… Excuse me. Laura seems to want me in the kitchen."

When he was gone, I said, "Now you know."

She made a face at me. "I wasn't trying to impress you with how salty I was! I was just… It happened so fast, and I didn't know what commands you were used to."

I said, "Hell, I'm an old Annapolis man, didn't you know?" I grinned at her unbelieving look. "1 spent a couple of weeks there once, taking a course in small-boat handling for spooks who might be put ashore on strange coasts. I learned to do things the Navy way, on the water, at least."

"You're a surprising man, she said. "And a terrible one. But I'm glad you're here."

"Why?"

"I can count on you not to be sweet to me. Everybody else is being so goddamned sweet and understanding and forgiving I could urp." I didn't say anything. After a moment, she continued, rather bitterly: "Code double negative!"

I grinned once more. "Cute, wasn't it?"

"Does it always mean two days early, like the fifteenth instead of the seventeenth?"

"Two days," I said, "or two hours, or two minutes, depending on how the time is given. It's just a little understanding between your dad and his more senior operatives. You won't find it in the official manual of procedure, so even if you'd mentioned it to Leonard-apparently you didn't think it important enough-it wouldn't have meant anything to him." I gave her my nasty grin still one more time. "It also means that the bearer of the code is untrustworthy and should be utilized accordingly."

She flushed. "Like you utilized me, you and Daddy between you!"

I said, "If you'd played it straight, you wouldn't have got utilized, would you?"

"I had to do it!" she said. "I had to do something. It was all so wrong." She stopped. I said nothing. After a little, she said, "But I'd like you to know that before I told Leonard about Cutlass Key, I made him promise-it sounds naive as hell now-but I made him promise that Daddy wouldn't be harmed." 1 made no comment on that, either. She gave me a sharp, sideways glance and went on' defensively, "How could I know? After watching you and your cold-blooded friends in action, 1 had to believe that somewhere there were normal, decent people with a sane regard for human life! And Mr. Leonard seemed so civilized. How could I know he was just as bad as the rest of you?" She shivered. "I keep seeing his face," she said, looking at me. Her eyes were wide and dark.

"It'll fade," I said.

Martha shook her head minutely. "I don't know. Why aren't you telling me what a brave girl I was, saving the day by my heroic… I didn't care about saving any days. I just knew that after he killed you, he'd shoot me, too. I did it simply because I didn't want to die. I did it, in spite of my… convictions, simply because I was scared, that's why! That's how much my… my ideals are worth, Matt! How am I going to live with that?"

I said, "Cut it out. Everybody's scared. It's a perfectly natural-"

"You weren't scared."

I said, "Hell, this is the first time I haven't been petrified in twenty-four hours."

"No, don't lie to me!" she breathed. "You don't know what fear is, that kind of fear. We were safe, and then you.

You didn't really get mixed up about port and starboard, did you, Matt? That's what you told them, so they wouldn't know you'd deliberately let them catch you. You ran that boat aground on purpose when you could easily have got away, because you hadn't carried out your mission. Well, I suppose that's very admirable, in a way. But you'll excuse me if I find it just a little sick, considering what your mission was!"

I looked at her for a moment longer. We'd come a long way around, but we seemed to be back just about where we'd started one evening in Mexico; and it was a circle we'd never break. Anyway, she was Mac's daughter. He was a good man to work for, in his field, but I had no desire to become a member of his family, even by association.

I got out of there, out the front door, and headed towards the big station wagon I'd parked on the other side of the driveway, after cleaning up at the lodge. Then I stopped and stepped back into the shadows instinctively as a sedan turned in from the highway and pulled up behind the parked vehicle. A lean, feminine figure in pants got out. I moved forward. Lorna stopped and squinted up at me in the dark.

"I can't make out your features, mister, but the elevation is familiar," she said. "Agent Lorna reporting, sir. Mission accomplished, sir." She drew a long breath. "Well, we pulled it off. I hope the man is happy. What happened to Carl, going suicidal like that and getting himself shot by a cop?"

I said, "It's too hard to explain. Anyway, he got the man he was sent after, didn't he?"

"Don't snap at me. You look as if you'd been taking a beating, both physically and psychologically. I think you need a drink and a woman."

"I need a drink," I said. "I've had a woman."

Lorna glanced at the house, as a youthful shadow showed briefly on a drawn blind. "Hell, that's not a woman," she said. "You can do better than that."

As it turned out, I could.