The Intriguers

Iv.

The Posada San Carlos had only one drawback. The location was lovely, the rooms were comfortable, the food was good, the service was excellent, and the prices were reasonable; but at certain times of the day the noise in the lounge and adjoining dining room was almost unbearable due to an electronically amplified group of musicians who didn't seem to feel they were earning their pay unless the big windows facing seawards were rattling in their frames, and the silverware was dancing on the tablecloths. One thing no Mexican band really needs, anyway, is amplification.

They were playing now. I discovered that there was something to be said for them after all. They made conversation possible, if the other party was close enough, without any danger of being overheard by anyone else in the room.

I regarded the girl for a moment, and said, "Naturally, I haven't the faintest idea what you're talking about."

She said, "You're Eric. I'm Nicki. The code is double negative."

I finished my drink and set my glass aside. "Double negative? What does that mean?" I shook my head. "Sorry, Nicki. You've got the wrong guy. My name is Matthew."

"Armageddon," she said.

I'd started to rise. I sank back into the big chair and lifted a finger to summon a waiter. "Another martini, please," I shouted to him over the noise. "Anything for you?" I asked the girl.

"Yes, I'd like a margarita."

My previous female companion had considered margaritas a corny tourist tipple, but then she'd had a lot of screwy ideas. I have no objections to that cactus-juice cocktail myself, although it's not, in my opinion, designed for serious drinking.

"And a margarita for the lady, por favor," I yelled, and watched the waiter move away, while the waves of sound from the band washed over me rhythmically. They weren't bad, you understand, they were just too damned loud.

I turned my attention to the girl beside me. She was a reasonably sized, well-proportioned, dark-haired, basically sound specimen of human female, but she was doing her best to hide the fact, at least the female fact. She had a boy's haircut, or what used to a boy's haircut before they all started letting it grow. She also had a boy's pants on, complete with fly-pretty soon nothing will be safe from women's lib, not even our jock-straps.

They were white cotton pants, slightly flaring, and quite dirty. Her horizontally striped blue-and-white jersey was pretty dirty, too, as were her frayed white sneakers, not to mention the visible areas of her ankles. She obviously had no brassiere on under the jersey, and it didn't make any difference, not because she wasn't endowed with the customary protuberances, but because she didn't give a damn, and if she didn't, who did?

She was, obviously, a product of years of television commercials, although she'd have hated anybody who told her so. But if enough stupid industrial magnates spend enough million dollars on tastelessly revolting advertising, telling kids that the thing to be is clean and sexy-using product A, of course-the brighter and more rebellious ones are bound to figure out that the only sensible response to make to all this nauseating propaganda is to be dirty amid sexless.

Actually, she wasn't a bad-looking girl. She had a nicely rounded young figure inside the grubby pirate costume, and a tanned, slightly snub-nosed face with clear gray eyes. The heavy, dark eyebrows were, of course, totally unplucked, just as the mouth was totally devoid of lipstick. It was a pretty good mouth, big enough, potentially sensitive, but rather firm and disapproving now. I watched it take a sip of the margarita magically produced by the waiter, as I tasted my own martini.

"You haven't given the countersign, or whatever you call it," the girl said.

"Gotterdдmnerung," I said, and went on casually: "He's getting doomsday as hell in his old age, isn't he?"

"Oh, he's not so old," the girl said quickly and rather defensively, as if she thought I was trying to trick her into betraying herself, and maybe I was. "Not really."

"So the code is double negative," I said.

"Yes, whatever that may mean."

"If you were supposed to know what it meant, he'd have told you, wouldn't he?" Actually, it was a warning that this young lady, while working for us, was not to be trusted too far; and that therefore any information she supplied should be corrected in certain ways before being used as a basis for action. "What's he called?" I asked.

"I've given you the word. What more do you want?"

" What do we call him?" I asked again, patiently. It was important for me to learn just how much of an outsider I had to deal with.

"He's known as Mac around the office. I never learned why."

"Nobody knows why," I said. "Maybe it's his name."

"Nobody there knows what his real name is." I said, "You're doing fine. Where's the ranch?"

"What?"

"The ranch, sweetheart. The place we go to have the wrinkles ironed out after a rough assignment. Where is it?"

"Just west of Tucson, Arizona."

"What's behind his desk?"

"A chair, of course. Oh, and a window. A bright window."

"Have I worked for him long?"

"Yes. You were out for a while some years ago but you came back in. You're one of his very senior people."

"Gee, thanks," I said. "I can feel one senior foot slipping into the grave as you say it."

"He has a lot of faith in you, Mr. Helm."

"And you wonder why, don't you?" I grinned as she didn't speak. I asked, "What did I do when I wasn't working for him?"

"You were a photographer; a photographer and journalist."

"Have I ever been married?"

"Once. Three children, two boys and a girl. Your wife's remarried and living on a ranch in Nevada with the kids. Well, the oldest boy is in college somewhere on the West Coast. UCLA, I think."

I hadn't known that. In the business, it's best to stay clear of people you love or somebody'll get the bright idea of using them against you.

"You've done a lot of homework," I said. "If you're Nicki when I'm Eric, who are you when I'm Matthew Helm?"

"Martha," she said. "Martha Borden. No relation to Lizzie with the ax. Do I gather that the inquisition is over, Mr. Helm?"

"For the time being."

"You're a suspicious man." She was silent for a little and went on: "And a vicious one. You didn't have to kill that man."

"That's right," I said. "I didn't have to. He could have lived a long, happy, fruitful life. The choice was his. He chose to shoot at me."

"So you dumped him overboard, towed his boat away, and left him out there to drown!"

I looked at her grimly. I couldn't get away from them, it seemed. Having just got rid of one who made fine distinctions between birds and birds, I'd acquired one who made fine distinctions between homicides and homicides: shooting was apparently okay but drowning was terrible. Or perhaps it was just unsuccessful shooting that was morally acceptable, while successful drowning wasn't.

"Poor fellow," I said. "If only he'd managed to blow a hole through me with his cute little 7mm Magnum, nobody'd have hurt a hair of his cute little head. My heart bleeds for him. But you didn't conic all the way to Mexico just to sympathize with unsuccessful murderers, I presume."

Her lips, innocent of lipstick, were tightly compressed. "Mr. Helm, just because you're shot at doesn't give you the right-" I said, "Honey, you're getting tiresome. How many times have you been shot at?"

"Well-"

"Wait till somebody takes a crack at you before you start telling people what kind of patient and long-suffering targets they're supposed to be. Anyway, who's talking about rights? It's a practical matter, Nicki. The man shot at me six times today. He missed, but he had quite a few cartridges left. He probably had instructions from somebody-it would be interesting to know who-to keep trying until he got me. But unless he's a hell of a lot better swimmer than I think, he won't be trying anymore. It's as simple as that. Now tell me what I'm supposed to do that I'll be able to do a lot better without an eager rifleman breathing down my back trail."

She drew a long breath. "Well, okay. You're supposed to get to a reasonably safe phone as soon as possible."

I regarded her narrowly. "You were sent all the way down here just to tell me that?"

"You're not supposed to call his special number. Call the office number and ask for him. There's a reason."

"But you can't tell me what it is?" She shook her head. "I don't really know."

"How soon is as soon as possible? I can't call from here; there's only one phone in the village and one at the hotel desk, and both are too damn public. I either call from somewhere in the city of Guaymas proper, if I can find a phone and get a US connection, or I wait until I'm across the border, a two-hundred-and-fifty-mile drive. And if I head north tonight, I may be stopped by the Mexican authorities who want to ask me questions about an empty boat I found drifting out in the Gulf. Anyway, I don't think I can pick up my boat at the marina this late. I'd have to leave it-"

"No," she said, "don't do that."

I grinned. "I didn't think he'd want me to leave that damned little nautical hotrod after the trouble he went to plant it on me."

"And you'd better not antagonize the Mexican authorities. I don't think a few hours are critical right now."

"Okay, I'll plan to leave in the morning, then. Tell me one thing, did he expect an attempt on my life?"

"I don't think he expected it, but he told me to make contact with you at once if I saw one made."

"That," I said, "is expecting it in my book. I had it figured otherwise, but I'm generally wrong when I try to second-guess him. But he might have warned me."

Her gray eyes were cool. "You're a pro, aren't you, Mr. Helm? Always alert, always prepared, like a Boy Scout? Are you supposed to need a warning to keep your eyes open?"

I grinned. "And if no attempt on my life was made, Miss Borden? What were your instructions then?"

"I was supposed to contact you in another day or two, anyway."

"But if I was shot at or otherwise attacked, you were supposed to move right in with instructions. Well, that figures. He'd know that would change my plans and he'd want you to catch me before I took off to report the incident in the normal manner. How long have you been here?"

"Two weeks."

"Staying where?"

"With sonic kids. You saw them. I was coming alone, but when I heard they were heading down here I kind of invited myself along, it made a better cover. They've got a converted panel truck to sleep in, over at the trailer court, amid one of the boys borrowed his daddy's boat. Sometimes we take our blankets in the boat and sleep on a beach somewhere. Smoke pot. Shoot speed and drop acid. Sniff cocaine. Get high on heroin. Copulate like animals. Real orgies, man." She grimaced. "Actually all they really use, besides a little marijuana, is beer."

"How much do they know?" I asked.

"Nothing."

"How did you work that?"

"I'm an ecological nut, man. Specifically, I'm a bird-watcher concerned about the fate of our feathered friends in this polluted world. I flip over frigate birds and blue-footed boobies and cormorants and pelicans and stuff. Did you know that the brown pelican is an endangered species, just like the hawks and eagles, all because of DDT? The eggs get so fragile they squash or something." She drew a long breath. "I shouldn't try to be funny about it. It isn't funny."

"No," I said. "So you're a birdwatcher. What does it get you?"

"The privilege of crawling around rocks with binoculars-I was on a hill across the bay when you went racing out to… to meet him. I saw the whole thing through the glasses. And sometime I get this terrible compulsion to go out in the roughest weather to see what the birds are up to-"

"At night?"

"Tonight I talked them into going out to one of the bird islands. You know, those big rocks covered with guano just outside the harbor. We shone the boat's spotlight on it so I could see the birds roosting there. Actually… actually I figured that if he'd managed to stay afloat, with the wind the way it was, that's where he'd most likely come ashore. But he wasn't there."

I said, "With a partner like you, I might as well give up homicide as a career. I drown them; you give them artificial respiration. 'What's the use?"

"That isn't very funny, either," she said coldly. "Anyway, he wasn't there. And I'm not your partner, Mr. Helm. I'm just a messenger girl."

I nodded slowly. "Armageddon," I said. "Gцtterdammerung. At the time he switched the identification signals, just recently, I thought Mac was just getting fancy with the vocabulary, but it could be he was trying to tell us something. Like that there's something big and desperate going on." I hesitated. "And the gent who's making like a fish out there was sent by somebody who wanted me put out of action-me and how many others, Nicki? And how many messengers like you have been waiting around to deliver Mac's word to the guys like me whom that mysterious somebody would like to have eliminated?"

Martha Borden licked her pale lips. "You underrate yourself, Mr. Helm."

"What does that mean?"

"As I said, for some reason he has a lot of faith in you. There are some others, yes, but I have the only action message, to be delivered to you. You're supposed to take it from there, once you've been in touch by phone. It all depends on you."

"What does?"

"I wish I knew," she said. "I wish I knew; and I wish I could believe he'd picked the right man for the job, whatever it is!"