The Intriguers

VIII.

The man inside the Ford was also dead. I didn't haul him out to see exactly what had killed him. I just checked for a pulse in a dangling wrist and didn't find any. This one was older, his name was Howard March, and he was a senior special agent for the same bureau. Why the senior man had been doing the driving puzzled me briefly; but I reminded myself that I prefer to handle the wheel myself, no matter how many bright young people I have along to help me. Maybe Howard had felt the same way.

With sonic difficulty, I got the identification folder-unlike his assistant, he'd carried it separately-back into the inside coat pocket where I'd found it. I looked around. We'd left some footprints, and there would be tire tracks along the dirt road that a police technician could have lots of fun with, taking measurements and making casts to his heart's content. It didn't worry me greatly. If police intervention had been wanted, I'd have been stopped by an efficient Arizona state trooper hours ago. This was private business-well, private government business-and I had a hunch a lot of people would work very hard to keep it that way. They didn't need casts and measurements to learn whom they were after. They knew.

The girl beside me licked her lips. "Well!" she said. "I hope you're satisfied now! Now that you've killed two fellow-agents due to some kind of a crazy misunderstanding-"

"Three," I said. "Don't forget Mr. Joel Patterson and his crazy misunderstood little 7mm Magnum rifle. I'll lay you army odds you like that if we check him out carefully, we'll find that F1NC paid his salary, too, not to mention supplying him with firearms and ammunition." I cut her off when, aghast and incredulous, she tried to speak. "Let's get out of here," I said. "It's not much of a road, but somebody must use it occasionally or they wouldn't have bothered to build it in the first place."

Martha Borden was silent during the ride back to Tucson, which was just as well. Spending three weeks' vacation with an incurable sentimentalist had been bad enough; dragging one along during working hours was getting to be a terrible strain on my tolerance. I pulled into the first filling station that had a public telephone and asked the man to fill the tank. We'd driven barely a hundred miles since Nogales, but the giant mill up front had an impressive thirst. Under the circumstances, I figured a full tank was a reasonable precaution.

"Come on," I said to the girl, and led her to the phone in a corner of the parking area. "I'm calling Washington," I said, fishing for a coin. "I want you to listen. It will save me a lot of explanations. Don't say anything. Just listen."

I dialed the number-the special number, this time- and got the connection after a lot of buzzing and clicking. Audibility wasn't even as good as the last time. When the familiar voice came on, I could barely hear it. We went through the same identification procedure as before.

"Where are you, Eric?"

I tilted the receiver so the girl could hear. "Tucson, Arizona, sir," I said. "I had the bright idea of spending the night at the ranch. That way I could start east with a good, safe night's sleep, I figured, but I was wrong."

"What's the matter?"

"Have you had any contact with the ranch recently, sir?"

"Not for a week or so. There's been no reason. Why?"

"Something is very haywire there," I said. "I ran into a deadfall, only it didn't fall quite hard enough. I need a cleanup squad. Tell the boys to take State Road I gave the coordinates. "Tell them to look for a white Falcon four-door and two bodies. One's in the car, the other was thrown out and wound up in a little wash about twenty yards east of the shortest line between the car and the road, about halfway out. A dreadful accident. You know how treacherous those desert roads can be. They were driving too fast and failed to make a curve. What did you say, sir?"

"Nothing." There was a little silence. "Did you determine the identities of these two men?"

"Yes, sir. What's the Bureau of Internal Security?"

There was another pause. "I'm afraid that's Herbert Leonard's private police force, Eric."

"I see," I said slowly. "He's got a special bunch of snoops to snoop on us snoops-with the highest patriotic motives, of course. Well, he's got three less of them now, if yesterday's marksman was one, and I think he was." I waited, but Mac did not speak, so I said, "Even though the man has personal reasons not to like me, dating from the last time we met, I can't believe he's merely engaging in a private vendetta using government personnel. What's he actually doing, sir, making war on our whole outfit? Wiping us out wherever he finds us? Jesus! Either he's got delusions of grandeur, sicking one government agency on another like that, or-"

"Or what, Eric?"

"Or they're not delusions. He's got reason to think he'll have support higher up, even in murder. Of course, he wouldn't call it murder, would he? He'd figure out some good disciplinary reason. What excuse is he using in my case, sir?"

The voice on the phone sounded distant and very tired. "I don't know," it said softly. "I just don't know. Of course, we've never been a very popular agency. Probably he's afraid of us after the way we upset his plans a couple of years ago; he's making certain it doesn't happen again. We've already lost several good agents for bureaucratic or security reasons. He has scrutinized the files very carefully and taken advantage of every slight irregularity. I didn't realize what was happening in the field. I was aware that some of our people were failing to report on schedule, but this often happens. I didn't realize…" His voice trailed off.

I said, "Well, you'd better pass the word for the boys and girls to take cover until the storm blows over."

"I wish I could be optimistic enough to think it will," he said wearily. "But the political situation here in Washington is very tense. All kinds of people are recommending all kinds of violent and repressive measures to deal with people and movements they don't like. Leonard is apparently just taking advantage of the general climate of opinion to move himself into a position of real power. Since he sees us as an obstacle, I'm afraid his intention is to decimate us to the last man on one excuse or another. What the original reason was in your case, I have no idea, but now that three government employees have died at your hands…" He stopped and was silent for several seconds. I waited. At last he went on, rather uncertainly, "I-I just don't know, Eric. Maybe… I think you'd better come in and we'll see what can be done to clear up the situation. In fact, that's an order. I still have a few resources I said, "The hell with that, sir. With all due respect, I doubt that I'd live ten minutes if these characters caught me inside four walls. But obviously Leonard doesn't want publicity for what he's doing. That gives me a slight edge. You go ahead and see what you can accomplish at your end, sir, but I'll keep on here as originally planned." I waited, but he didn't speak. 1 drew a long breath, and put some crude arrogance into my voice. "Oh, and tell our white-haired Herbie-boy that he'd better call up his first team if he's got one. The stuff he's been sending at me so far has been kind of pitiful, like swatting a bunch of sick flies."

Hanging up without waiting for a response, I expected the girl to jump me at once and tell me again what a horrible man I was, but she was silent all the way back to the car and until we got going on the highway once more. Even then, she wasn't her usual critical self at first.

What she said, as the car gathered speed, was, "He-he sounded so old. So old and tired, Mr. Helm."

"He's in a bad spot," I said.

With some of her former spirit, she said sharply, "And you didn't make it any better, demanding that he forward your crude message of defiance."

"Wake up, doll," I said. "Nobody needs to forward anything. Mac and I were both talking for public consumption. There's not a chance in the world that line wasn't bugged." 1 shook my head irritably. "I was just trying to take the heat off him, Borden. The tape will show that I was instructed to come in and refused, in my usual high-handed and arrogant manner. Mac can't be held responsible if an agent deliberately disobeys an order, can he? That's presumably why he gave it, and that's certainly why I said what I did. Okay?"

She glanced at me and looked away. "Maybe I was wrong. If so, I'm sorry. But if you knew you'd be overheard, why did you call at all?"

"So they'd know where their boys were and get out there and rake them up before the police found them. One complication nobody wants is cops."

"I can't believe all this is really happening! The head of a government agency ordering men out to kill his own people!"

"It's not the first time," I said. "The spook shops have always been dangerous to cross. They've got a tremendous amount of power and, since their operations are secret, very few real restraints. But you're missing the point. The point is that we're not Herbert Leonard's people, and he knows we'll never be, from Mac right on down to the lowest filing clerk in the outer office. He can gain control of the big, sprawling organizations by the usual bureaucratic procedures, because there's seldom much personal loyalty involved there, but he knows he'll never really take over a small, specialized, one-man agency like ours. We'll always be Mac's people, not his; and apparently he doesn't trust Mac to go along with his grandiose political plans-I, don't know what they are, yet, but if they're Leonard's they're bound to be grandiose."

"But," she protested, "but he's in charge! He could just – just fire you all, couldn't he? He doesn't have to shoot you!"

I grinned. "Sweetheart, you're forgetting a little thing called civil service. There's also the question of publicity; if he just up and cans us all, somebody may ask why. But you have spotted the really interesting angle: the fact that he feels he has to do it this way. I figure that means he's up to something pretty nefarious of which Mac would disapprove. He wants to make certain that, when the chips are down, Mac doesn't have the power-meaning the live, armed agents-to implement his disapproval in a practical way." I made a wry face. "Hell, the farther we go, the wilder it gets. Well, maybe Lorna has some answers we don't."

I sent the big station wagon through Tucson, easing westward cautiously, watching the mirrors. Nothing significant showed. I risked stopping at a drive-in for hamburgers, stalling, waiting for total darkness. Then I drove the rig out into the desert again, on the other side of town this time, gradually working my way on small back roads farther and farther out from civilization.

"Where are we going now?" Martha asked at last.

"To the ranch, of course," I said. "Hell, a lady's waiting for us there, isn't she?"

"But-" I said, "Don't worry. We won't try the front door this time. Did you ever hear of a hideout that didn't have a secret escape hatch somewhere?… That's our turnoff, right there, but I'd better leave the boat around the bend, up the arroyo. As I remember, it gets rough from here. Be prepared to do some digging if we bog down."

We didn't. The sand of the arroyo was nice and firm, and I got the boat backed out of sight. I got out, unfastened the hitch, the safety chains, and the electrical connection, and cranked.down the jack to take the weight of the trailer tongue. Then I gave the fiberglass flank of the boat an affectionate pat, to tell the little vessel that I wasn't deserting it in this desolate spot: I'd be back. I mean, hell, I knew it was only metal and plastic, but did it know? Some day my life might again depend on an extra, willing, loyal knot or two of speed.

We got back into the car, found the side road I'd glimpsed in the headlights, and started down a track that had seen no traffic since the last rain, whenever that night have been. Presently I switched Off the lights. It was a long, slow, rough ride in the dark, with brush squealing and scraping along the sides of the big station wagon in the tighter spots and the trailer hitch smacking bottom as we crossed the deeper gullies. I passed the right landmarks, but they seemed much farther apart than when I'd been shown this trail in daylight, years ago. At last the odometer showed the right mileage. I stopped, got the wagon turned around, and cut the engine. Getting out, I gave the oversized vehicle a reassuring slap on the hood, telling it not to get lonely.

"Come on, Borden," I whispered. "There's a flashlight in the glove compartment. Bring it along. Don't slam the door. Leave it open."

She came around the car to me. "You're weird," she whispered, as we moved off together. "You're really weird, Helm! You kill people, and then you pat a hunk of machinery on the nose as if… as if it was a horse or a dog or something. As if you really liked it!"

"Like it?" I said. "Hell, I think it's a miserable, sluggish, overstyled gas hog, but I wouldn't dream of hurting its feelings by telling it so. And I don't want it to worry while I'm gone, either. I mean, it might get mad and refuse to start when we get back." I saw her glance at me sharply in the darkness, to see if I was serious. I grinned and stopped grinning. "That's enough talking. Watch where you're putting your feet. We're getting close."

Suddenly the fence was right in front of us. It was an impressive thing, all right, even in the dark, topped with barbed wire and equipped with enough warning devices- I knew, although they weren't readily visible-to protect those inside against anything but an open tank attack or inside treachery. But in our line of business we try to think of all contingencies, and no experienced agent is going to put himself into a place, even a forty-thousand-acre place, that he can't slip out of secretly if necessary.

I took the flashlight from the girl and, after some careful consideration, aimed it at a bush that was out of range of the TV monitor I'd seen on my long-ago tour of inspection. Hoping the installation hadn't been changed in the years that had passed-I should have been told, but that didn't necessarily mean I would have been-I pressed the button for three long flashes. I paused, gave two short squirts of light, and stuck the torch, as our British friends call it, into my pocket. Then I waited. I guess I was expecting something to go wrong: alarms to ring, searchlights to glare, savage hounds to come baying along the wire. Nothing of the sort happened. There was merely a soft rustle in the brush off to the right.

A woman's voice whispered, "Give me a word, whoever you are."

"Would Ragnarok do?" I asked.

"No, but you're close. Try some other Armageddon."

"How about Gotterdдmmerung?"

A slim figure in pants stood up, brushed the dust off her clothes, and came forward. "I hope you've got some water," the low voice said. "Or ice-cold beer for a preference. God, this is a miserable dry country to hide out hi!"