The Menacers

19

IT WAS A moment of private triumph for me, and I should have felt real good about it. All my stray hunches and guesses had paid off, and my vague plans had worked out very well-it had been tricky, pretending to suspect everybody but Priscilla Decker so that she wouldn't guess I suspected her. It had taken some finagling, getting myself captured like this, and I should have been pleased at my success.

However, there were a few drawbacks to the situation. For one thing, I now had to survive until I was brought to the place where I could do the job I'd been sent to do, and that might be tough, particularly with Harsek around. For another thing, I wasn't alone in my predicament. I'd hoped Solana might keep Carol out of the action-that was one reason I'd let him take her away-but he'd used her as a decoy instead. I didn't blame him, it was -the logical thing for him to do, but it gave me an additional responsibility I didn't need. I hoped his electronic tricks would make up for it, but I had no faith in them.

"I never have trouble, girl," Harsek was saying in a guttural voice. "Now get them aboard fast, before some Mejicanos decide to make use of their fine paved road."

"Just a minute. There's something I have to do first. Cover the man. Wait, let me give you his guns. We have quite a collection and I have no place to carry them… Okay." Priscilla swung around to confront Carol. "All right, honey, where is it?"

"Where is what?" ~

Priscilla regarded her for a moment, rather like an experienced cat appraising a very young and innocent mouse. Abruptly, she reached out with both hands, grabbed Carol's neatly buttoned bush jacket by the lapels, ripped it open, hauled it down from the shoulders roughly, and yanked it free of the arms. Priscilla kneaded the cloth thoroughly with both hands, feeling for something hard. Finding nothing, she threw it aside.

"Okay," she snapped, "step out of the boots, and take off the sweater and skirt, unless you'd rather have me pull them off you, too… – Ah, I got a reaction, didn't I? It's in one of those ducky little suede boots, isn't it? Dig it out and give it to me!"

Miserably, Carol reached down and fished out a small object, which Priscilla snatched from her and threw far out into the dark. So much for electronics.

"You and your dancing partner really should have given your adagio routine a few more rehearsals," Priscilla said scornfully. "It wasn't as convincing as a lot of high school performances I've seen. So Mr. Solana thought he'd plant a tracking device on me, in the form of a ladylike blonde! What other cute ideas did he have in mind?"

Harsek said sharply, "This is all very interesting, girl, but we have an aircraft sitting on a public highway. We can question them later. Get them aboard."

I'm as brave as the next man, I hope, but no matter how much I ride in them, airplanes always scare me a little. Perhaps this is because I don't know anything about flying them except what little I've absorbed by watching other guys do it.

I can drive a car pretty well, and I've been checked out on horses, bicycles, motorcycles, skis, skates, and snowshoes; I can handle a boat in an amateurish fashion and I once managed to ride a surfboard without falling off; but the air is not my element. One of these days I'm going to take a few flying lessons so I'll at least know if the guy up front is doing the right thing or the wrong one.

In the meantime, crowded into the back seat of the little plane beside Carol, I didn't immediately do a lot of constructive thinking about our situation, although there was obviously a lot to be done. As far as I was concerned, the intensive cerebral effort could wait until Harsek got us the hell off that dark desert highway and up into the sky where we couldn't hit anything, at least not until it was time to come down again.

It took him a while. I've called it a little plane, and you could have checked it aboard a commercial jet and had baggage allowance left over, but it still had two engines and carried four people, which is a lot of plane for a private job. With a full load of passengers, it didn't really leap off the ground; and as we roared along the shadowy blacktop fighting for takeoff speed, I expected at any moment to see a car or truck appear ahead to contest our right to the road.

There was nothing to indicate the exact moment we stopped rolling and started flying. Harsek just reached out and hit a switch and I heard the wheels come up, so it seemed reasonable to assume that we were airborne. When we'd achieved a safe margin of altitude, I cleared my throat.

I said, "You drive this thing better than you did that taxi in Mazatlбn."

He was busy getting things trimmed and organized for level flight. He said without turning his head, "It wasn't much of a taxi. This is a good airplane. It is too bad that we must lose it."

"Lose it how?" I asked.

"Never mind. You will see." He glanced towards Priscilla, who sat half-turned in the right front seat so that her revolver could cover us in back, particularly me. Harsek said, "Give me a report, girl. You used the emergency code. What went wrong?"

She said defensively, "I don't have to report to you, Harsek. You are here to assist us, not to give orders or conduct interrogations. I will make my report to Command, when the assignment is finished."

"For a chicken that has just missed being plucked, if my guess is correct, you talk very bravely. But of course you are right." His voice was dry. "Harsek does not give orders here; he merely lends his well-known face and name to the operation. He also flies airplanes and drives taxis, and shoots guns if necessary. But the bright young children get the credit-and the blame, don't forget, if things go wrong."

"Nothing's gone wrong!" Priscilla said sharply. "Anyway, nothing serious."

"To be sure. Allow me to amend my request. Do not make a report. Merely bring me up to date, as one colleague to another. What situation did you leave behind in Puerto Peasуo? Since you did not bring him along,. I assume you silenced that young man, the handsome, shifty-eyed one who wanted to kill his middle-aged wife for her money. It is really remarkable how many people can be found, if one looks hard enough, who are eager to commit a murder if only the blame can be placed somewhere else, even on beings from other worlds. Or did the man escape you? Is he now in the hands of the police, telling them about our project, as much as he knows? Which is not much, but enough to be damaging."

Priscilla hesitated. "He didn't escape; he's dead. However, there's a Mexican policeman or government agent, the man with whom I rode down there, who seems to have made some good guesses. I tried to have him killed-" She threw me an angry look. "-but I was not successful. But it does not really matter. No one will believe him. No one of consequence. Besides, he'll be unconscious for – several hours, and his ingenious tracking device is lying back there in the cactus."

"So a policeman knows," Harsek said grimly.

Priscilla said, "I tell you, it doesn't matter! If we were dealing with military secrets, or technical data, it would be different, but we are dealing with flying saucers. It is a subject upon which people are not rational!" Either her vehemence, or the fact that she was talking to Harsek, who did not have to be deceived, had brought a faint accent to her speech. She went on quickly, "Let one Mexican government employee scream to heave4hat these recently 'sighted' Mexican saucers are a hoax and do not exist, that all the latest reports from this area are total fabrications: no one will listen. No one, I tell you. The skeptics will remain skeptical and the believers will continue to believe."

"If you say so, girl." Harsek sounded unconvinced.

"I say so. That was the beauty of the scheme from the beginning. We are not dealing with scientific facts, we are dealing with a variety of religious fanaticism. Indeed, that is one of our problems. Even when we have demonstrated that all these individual deaths, and the final mass catastrophe, can be blamed on callous aeronautical experiments-perhaps even hostile military demonstrations-carried out by the United States over Mexican territory, some people will remain firmly persuaded that the real responsibility rests on creatures from Jupiter or Polaris, and that somebody is covering up the truth for reasons of policy."

Harsek shrugged his massive shoulders. "It is an interesting theory. Personally, I have the old-fashioned notion that secrets should remain secret, particularly from the local authorities, but as you have pointed out, this is not my mission. For your sake, I hope you are right."

There was silence in the plane for a while, as far as conversation went. The motors out on the wings were far from silent, however, and there were a number of small, constant, unidentifiable-at least by me-vibration noises. Presently I felt Carol grope for my right hand and grip it tightly. I glanced at her. Her white sweater and pale face were dim blurs in the darkness of the cabin.

"They're going to kill us, aren't they, Matt?" she breathed. "And Ramуn can't help us now."

"They probably intend to. But let's not confuse intention with execution, doll. Can you fly one of these things?"

"What?"

"Can you handle a plane?"

She shook her head quickly. "Heavens, no! The few other times I've been up in little private jobs like this, I was scared half to death." She laughed wryly. "And people weren't even thinking about murdering me, those other times."

Priscilla, in front of us, shifted position irritably. "Be quiet. We have a long way to go, too long for listening to a lot of chatter."

The plane flew steadily on through the night in a southerly direction, judging by the compass I could see past Harsek's head. Priscilla kept the muzzle of the.38 aimed at me over the back of her seat. It could not have been a comfortable position, but her attention did not waver as the hours passed. At last Harsek glanced at his watch, studied a map or chart briefly, and looked down through the darkness that was no longer quite as dark as it had been.

"The life preservers are in the rear," he said. "Get them out and put them on. We are about twenty minutes from our ditching point. Remember, do not inflate the preservers in the cabin or you will have difficulty getting through the door."

Carol found my hand again. I felt her fingers tighten fearfully. "You mean -. – you mean we're going to crash?"

"Not crash, Mrs. Lujan, ditch. I will put the aircraft down on the water in the shelter of a certain deserted little island down there. A boat is waiting to pick us up. There is no danger. The Plane will float for several minutes. Miss Decker and I will disembark first, then you two from the rear. And, Mr. Helm, please remember that while we have adequate time to get out, if we work quickly, we do not have time for any foolishness. Don't be clever, unless you want to accompany the plane down into fairly deep water. Drowning is not a pleasant death, I am told. Now the life preservers, if you please."

We put them on awkwardly, in the limited space, and settled ourselves to wait some more. The sky was getting light to the left, now, and looking down I could make out that we were flying over water, presumably the same Gulf of California we'd known at Puerto Peflasco. I could see some ghostly islands far ahead, one kind of crescent-shaped; and near it was a small speck that might have been a boat. I leaned over to get a better look.

"Sit still!" Priscilla said sharply. "Harsek will do the navigating. Your assistance is not needed, Helm."

I grinned at her, and glanced at Carol, whose face looked pale and strained in the growing light.

I said, "Anyway, your question is answered, Carol." She seemed startled at being addressed. "My question?"

"Back there you kind of asked if the lady was a real American agent working for a real American agency. The answer is: she isn't."

Priscilla laughed. "But I am! I am a very highly regarded operative of a fine new department run by the coming man of U.S. intelligence-an arrogant, handsome, ambitious, pompous nincompoop who knows nothing about our kind of work whatever. That is the great American fallacy, that there is such a thing as an administrator, per se, and that what he chooses to administrate is unimportant. Your schools are run by educators who know nothing of what is taught; your government is run by politicians who know nothing of governing; and now you commit the final absurdity of entrusting the delicate task of international intelligence to a pipsqueak who only knows how to outmaneuver other pipsqueaks for positions of administrative importance."

I grinned as she paused for breath. "Don't look to me for an argument. I don't like the guy, either."

Priscilla went on: "Planting a few agents on such a man, when he was building his organization, was ridiculously simple; and guiding him to the proper attitudes and actions was no more difficult, since he had no real grasp of what he was supposed to be doing." She laughed again. "Of course, I am telling this only to you, because you will not be repeating it to anyone. As far as the world is concerned, this vicious U.S. Air Force crime against Mexican sovereignty was only made possible by the ground activities of disciplined agents obeying the sinister orders of a fiendishly clever American spymaster."

I said, "Sure. Our undercover genius, Herbert Leonard. Well, it couldn't happen to a nicer fellow. I suppose some of those disciplined U.S. agents are going to get themselves captured by the Mexicans when the smoke has cleared, so they can spill the international beans."

"They will be captured or perhaps, driven by their consciences, they will defect in the next day or two after seeing the flaming horrors for which they have been responsible. And while you will disown them, as is the custom, you will not be able to do it very convincingly, since it will be well known in Washington that they were actually employed by an American agency."

I would have liked to ask more about the flaming horrors that were being planned for the next day or so – a mass catastrophe, she'd called it earlier-but she would probably have refused to answer a direct question on the subject, and I didn't want to stop our little chat while it was still producing valuable information.

"And friend Harsek, here?" I asked. "What function does he perform?"

Priscilla smiled. "Why, he is the communist menace against whom we, as Mr. Leonard's operatives, have been struggling. There had to be some obvious and conspicuous adversary, did there not? If there had been no visible enemy, even Mr. Leonard, stupid as he is, might eventually have begun to wonder suspiciously why things were forever going wrong with his brilliant plans. But with the great Harsek opposing us, we raw U.S. recruits could be excused for a few failures-the great Harsek and the equally well-known Vadya."

"I see," I said. "Very ingenious."

Priscilla said, "Of course, where Vadya was concerned, there was a further motive: the people back home had been somewhat concerned about Vadya lately. Her continuing relationship with a certain U.S. agent had caused a few doubts about her reliability. We were asked to investigate. We found the doubts to be justified and took action accordingly-first selling it to Mr. Leonard, of course, as necessary retaliation for her murder of one of his agents in Acapulco. We persuaded him that his 'image'-a word he loves-that his image and that of his agency would be forever tarnished if the woman were permitted to live, and he gave the appropriate orders."

I asked, "And just exactly what did Vadya do to justify those doubts of her reliability?"

Priscilla laughed maliciously. "Need you ask? Are you going to pretend, at this late date, that there was nothing between you? I saw the way you greeted each other, remember? I was following when she took you for a cozy evening tour of Mazatlбn, including a certain area that should not have been called to your attention. I saw you afterwards speaking together very seriously in the restaurant where you had dinner, the place with the odd name: The Glass of Milk. Obviously she was negotiating with you, her lover, for sanctuary in the United States. What was she offering and what price did she ask?" Priscilla shrugged. "It does not matter. I saw enough to confirm that she had to be eliminated. I had already made the arrangements; one likes to be prepared. It was only a question of carrying them out."

I felt Carol stir uneasily beside me, listening to these details of my secret life, but for the moment she didn't count. I was thinking of another woman I'd known, and of the fact that there are always people, on both sides, who have a thing about fraternizing with the enemy, even when it's done with the most patriotic motives. So Vadya, without a thought of betraying her country, had died at the hands of her own people because a vicious, suspicious girl had misconstrued her behavior. Well, it wasn't exactly a new idea. The possibility had occurred to me before, when I'd had time to think about what had happened. Harsek spoke suddenly: "There is the island, below us. And there is the boat, on schedule."

I looked down and saw the crescent-shaped island below, and a black power cruiser of reasonable size, the kind with a cockpit large enough to hold a couple of fishing chairs.

Harsek was still speaking: "Have no fear, Mrs. Lujan. You will be picked up almost before you have time to get wet."

He was a little too reassuring, a little too soothing; and Priscilla was watching me too closely. There was something in her eyes that I did not understand; I could think of no personal, private reason for her to show so much hatred and triumph. Between agents, even agents of hostile nations, it was an unprofessional display of emotion.

She said, "Of course, it was not expected that Laura would die because of your trigger-happy behavior. I am not forgetting that, Helm! You killed her and you will pay for it. Very soon now you will pay!"

She was quite a pretty girl, but I saw again the funny dry look in her face that I'd once taken for unawakened virginity, but which I now realized was something quite different. I remembered a red-haired girl saying casually: come to that, I'm not really sure she likes boys. If true, it explained a number of things about Priscilla Decker, including the fact that her sexy getup had never seemed quite convincing, even when she was presumably luring me to her room for purposes of seduction.

It also explained the cold hatred in her eyes; and I realized suddenly that all this business of life-jackets and ditching-advice meant nothing where Carol and I were concerned, because we were not intended ever to leave the cabin. We were merely being kept docile and unresisting until the time came to slam the door in our faces-to the accompaniment of a few shots if necessary-and let us sink with the plane.

After all, we served no useful purpose. We'd merely been brought along because there had not been time to dispose of us neatly, earlier. Well, it was too bad. I'd hoped to get farther and learn more, but obviously this was, for the moment, the end of the line. Somehow I'd have to find another streetcar to take me the rest of the way.

I looked at the girl in the front seat, and gave a malicious laugh. "Sure," I said deliberately. "Sure, I killed her. But what's one bull dyke between friends? You can find another soon enough."

I heard Carol gasp at my crudity-I was getting a little tired of that mechanical ingenue reaction-but I was really watching Priscilla, waiting for her response, and it came. Her face went totally white, her eyes narrowed dangerously, and her finger tightened on the trigger.

I yelled loudly, as if giving a prearranged signal: "All right, Carol! Now!"

Priscilla's eyes wavered for an instant, giving me time to grab the gun and force it aside before it fired. The crash was very loud inside the cramped cabin.

Harsek did not move for a second or two. The bullet hole in the right side of his neck was clean and small, but the exit hole on the left side was ragged and much bigger, and there was blood and stuff splattered all over the window beside him.

Then he slumped forward against the controls, and the plane nosed down in a screaming dive towards the Sea of Cortez, five thousand feet below.