The Silencers

XXI

When things cleared up again, I was lying on the floor inside the cabin. The door was closed. At least I could feel no cold draft. I was aware that the borrowed firearms- the ones I'd been careful to mention to Gail-had been removed from my possession-which was perfectly all right. I'd never looked upon this as a gun job, anyway. I'd only brought the weapons along as props, to establish my character as a dangerous man bent on a deadly mission. It wouldn't do for anybody to think I'd come here wanting to be hit over the head.

Despite a throbbing headache, lying there with my eyes closed, I felt kind of happy and peaceful. I suppose, as the victim of cold-blooded treachery, I should have been angry, but hell, I'd practically conned the girl into it, hadn't I? Now that it had actually happened, I couldn't develop any strong resentment. It was what we, Mac and I, had planned from the start, wasn't it? There remained only the question of whether or not she had betrayed me into the right hands.

Her voice reached me from some distance: "You didn't have to hit him! He wasn't doing anything! You promised-"

A man's voice, closer, said, "I was just making sure. After all, you said he was a dangerous-a trained government man sent to get me. They must think I'm real important." The man laughed as he stepped closer and kicked me casually in the side. "He don't look very dangerous lying there."

"Stop it, Sam!" Her voice was cold. "We made a deal. I've kept my part, now you keep yours. Go buy a football if you have to kick something."

Well, there was my answer. It had been a long, long chance, but it had worked. 1 think you had better get me Gunther, Mac had said, and here he was. All I had to do, now, was get him. I opened my eyes.

He was still the movie cowboy in boots, stagged pants and a big light hat. Tonight he was wearing one of those straight, sawed-off saddle-length overcoats that are often worn by ranchers and people who like to be taken for ranchers. In the background, I could see Wegmann, the service-station man, with his freckled country face. He was holding a gun. Dr. Naldi, the seismologist, was also there wearing his bifocals, but unarmed. It seemed like an odd assortment of conspirators, but then, they usually are.

"Up, you!" Gunther said. I got to my feet unsteadily. "All right!" he snapped. "Where are they? We know you've got them!"

Wegmann said impatiently, "I still say this is a waste of time. My men have already lined up the equipment, visually. The map and other data Dr. Naldi claims to have copied would have been very useful if delivered in time, but they are no longer necessary."

"Claims to have-" This was Naldi speaking hotly. "I did copy them, and if you had let me deliver the films to you in Carrizozo, instead of-"

"Dr. Naldi, you may be an expert on earthquakes, but you know very little about undercover work." Wegmann's voice and attitude had changed somewhat since he'd sold me gas in Carrizozo. "Your contact in Juarez was Gunther. This was agreed on. For obvious reasons, we could not have your part of the operation connected with mine in any direct way; that was an elementary precaution. As I explained to you when we first made our arrangements, the impression we wished to give, if anything went wrong at your end, was that of simple espionage with the information being smuggled straight out of the country. If everything looked perfectly safe, Gunther could then transmit the films back North for us to use. If it didn't -.. Well, it didn't, so we've had to get along without your valuable contribution, Doctor. It slipped out of our hands. You should have retained a copy-it would have been easy enough to make-but you didn't. You very clumsily got yourself suspected, and your information intercepted. It makes one wonder if you really managed to copy the correct documents, and if so whether the photographs were in focus and properly exposed. In any case, it does not matter now."

"It certainly does matter!" Naldi's face was white. "To obtain those pictures, I risked my career and my reputation. Risked? As it had turned out, I sacrificed them! And now you try to minimize… I will show you whether I copied the right documents or not!" He turned his head.

"Gunther!"

Gunther nodded and turned to me. "All right, where are those films? We know you've got them. She told me you brought them along to trap me in some clever, clever way." I shook my head. He grinned at me, pleased. He wouldn't have liked it if I'd made it easy. "Well, we'll just have to do it the hard way, then," he said. "Strip."

I didn't look directly at Gail, but I could see that she was smiling oddly. I sat down on a chair to pull off my boots. Gunther took them and gave them to Naldi who, squinting through his bifocals, examined them carefully. I got up and passed my coat and shirt over for inspection.

I dropped my pants and kicked them over. It wasn't fun, exactly, but when you've been searched as often as I have, you come to take it with reasonable equanimity, even in mixed company.

As I straightened up, wearing nothing but socks, shorts and T-shirt, I saw Gail looking me over with a strange kind of intentness.

"All the way!" she murmured. I remembered a nightclub in Juarez and a hotel room in El Paso. "All the way, darling! Take it off!"

All of them were busy going through my clothes-except Wegmann, who was handling the gun department with professional concentration. I watched Gail come up to me deliberately.

"Remember, Matt, darling?" she murmured.

"How could I forget?" I said. "You bring it back so clearly."

"You laughed at me," she said. "You ripped my lovely dress off and thought I looked very funny standing there in my furs and… and my foundation garment, like a cheap, leggy pin-up. I promised myself right then that you'd pay for it, no matter what it cost me! I-I had to keep that promise. I couldn't forget it just because…" She stopped. "They won't hurt you," she said after a moment. "That was part of the deal."

"Sure."

She looked me over once more, unsmiling now, but she'd paid for the privilege and she was going to by-God use it. "Dr. Naldi," she said without turning her head, "I think-I just remembered something. Something he said once. You'd better look at those boots again, closely." She spoke to me. "Matt."

"Yes?"

"I had to do it. Do you understand? I-i'm a proud woman; I can't bear to be made to look ridiculous."

"Sure." I glanced towards Naldi who was about to do a dissecting job on my boots with a pocket knife. "Never mind the knife," I said. "No sense wrecking a good pair of boots. What you need is a screwdriver. Take off the right heel."

Gail smiled. I guess she was remembering herself saying, under very similar circumstances: Well, I don't see much point in putting up a losing battle for my girdle and bra. The past was very strongly with us as we stood there facing each other-the few days of past we'd shared.

"Sarah said Wegmann, didn't she?" I said. "That's the guy over there with the gun, the gas-and-oil man? And you went to the filing station tonight and made your deal.

That's where you disappeared to, isn't it?"

She nodded. "I didn't expect to find Dr. Naldi and Sam there, of course. They were hiding in a storage room with a lot of tires and stuff. They had barely escaped some kind of general security roundup. I guess the men who came to get you at the motel were part of it. We worked it out together. It was Dr. Naldi's idea that there was bound to be some place called Wigwam somewhere up in this locality with all the motels and summer places, and that Ruidoso does sound very much like Carrizozo if you say it fast."

"In this locality?" I said. "What's so important about this locality? The project they're interested in is clear across the valley."

She shook her head to indicate that she didn't know.

There was a sound of triumph from Naldi. He had the boot heel off was shaking the little capsule out of the hollow space inside. I looked at Gail standing before me soberly, not triumphant but not remorseful, either.

"You take your vengeance seriously, glamor girl," I said. "It must have cost you something to deal with Gunther, the man who made a renegade of your sister and probably had her killed."

"You're only saying that!" she retorted. "I asked your chief who killed her-remember?--and why. He didn't know." She didn't want to believe it, I saw; it would be inconvenient. "You haven't any proof! Anyway, no matter what Sam's done, what you're after is murder, just plain, brutal murder, you can't deny that! I don't feel much guilt for interfering, if that's what you're driving at."

"And what about the other thing you're interfering with?" I asked, with a gesture towards Naldi and Wegmann. "I don't know exactly what they have in mind, but the general idea seems to be that they're going to try, somehow, to sabotage an important government project. What about the help you're giving them?"

She laughed shortly. "Frankly, darling," she' said, "those atom bombs always did give me the creeps, and I don't blame anybody for being upset about them and trying to stop them. The hell with whether or not it helps the Russians. All that fall-out poisoning the very air we breathe-"

"Very dramatic," I said, "but you ought to check your facts. It just so happens that there's no fall-out or atmospheric contamination from an underground burst."

"Well, there's something else," she said. "Dr. Naldi says-" She paused, as if slightly embarrassed.

"What does Naldi say?"

"Well, it sounds kind of farfetched, I'll admit. Something about continuing harmonic vibrations set up by the recent Russian tests that have caused a massive instability-I think he said massive instability-like when a regiment of soldiers walk in step across a bridge. They can make the bridge start to swing and eventually wreck it."

I said, "You wouldn't know a massive instability if one came walking down the street, Gail."

"Well, Naldi would, and he says there's danger, real danger, if this test is allowed to proceed before the amplitude of the induced waves has diminished below the critical… Well, anyway, I think that's what he said. He was talking pretty fast, and I didn't understand all the long words."

"Sure," I said. "Danger of what?"

"Why," she said, "of earthquakes, naturally! Worldwide earthquakes!"

I stared at her and started to laugh, but a hand on my shoulder swung me around abruptly. It was Gunther, of course; he was another one of those who can't keep his fingers to himself. Dr. Naldi was there, too, his face grim and angry-Wegmann had moved in a little with his gun.

"Where is it?" Gunther demanded.

"Where's what?" I asked innocently.

Dr. Naldi thrust the empty halves of the capsule under my nose. "Where are the films, Mr. Helm?"

I had a choice to make. I could tell them the films were in Washington, but they might believe me. If they did, having no further use for me, they might shoot me through the head or simply tie me up and leave me there. So I smiled mysteriously, shook my head stubbornly and got a slap from Gunther for my pains. After that he proceeded awkwardly to beat me, over Gail's protests.

"You promised!" she cried.

Dr. Naldi took her by the arm and pulled her back a ways, and Gunther went to work in earnest. He had the right instincts, but he'd had no training. Besides, he was afraid of damaging his hands. It wasn't so bad. Wegmann stood back all the while with his gun, covering the situation and watching tolerantly, like an adult observing children at play. Presently he made an impatient sound and stepped forward.

"We're wasting time," he said. "Let him get dressed. We can continue this- elsewhere if we must. Dr. Naldi, you've done a lot of driving in this country with all kinds of vehicles. Can we get his half-ton truck up the mountain? I don't want to leave it here."

Naldi looked at the empty capsule bitterly and flung it aside. "I would say yes, particularly if there's a set of tire chains to fit… What about it, Mrs. Hendricks?"

Gail said, "There are chains, you-all ought to know that."

Naldi frowned. "Why should we know that?"

"Well, after all, Wegmann took them off for us, down in Carrizozo, and besides, we had them on when one of your men tried to run us off the road in San Agustin Pass; that's why he failed."

"I have no knowledge of any such attempt," Naldi said. "Wegmann?"

The man with the gun shook his head. "I haven't been over that pass in months, nor sent anybody."

"Gunther?"

"Not me. I've been laying low since that trouble in Juarez; I've had no contact with anybody. Hell, I just crossed the border a few hours ago, and almost got caught in a dragnet at that!"

Naldi said, "Describe the incident, Mrs. Hendricks."

"Well, a man in a big gray car followed us from El Paso and… what's the matter?"

Wegmann had laughed. "A big gray car? An Oldsmobile, perhaps?"

"Why, yes. An Oldsmobile with Texas license plates." Wegmann was grinning. "It's all right," he said. "I know about that car. As a matter of fact, I buried it myself."

He stopped grinning and became businesslike. "Gunther, you drive our four-wheel-drive job and lead the way. Keep an eye on the mirror in case we need help. Dr. Naldi, you can handle the pickup better than a gun, I think. You drive the truck and I'll ride in back with the prisoners… What is it now, Mrs. Hendricks?"

I felt kind of sorry for her, standing there looking startled and indignant. For a sophisticated woman, she was very naive in some ways. She'd really expected they wouldn't hurt me, I guess. She'd even expected that they would let her go.