Helm - The Menacers Part 1

The Menacers.

Donald Hamilton.

1.

I ALWAYS FEEL A little bad about smuggling a firearm through Mexican customs. The boys in khaki make their inspection so nice and casual you feel you're taking advantage of their courtesy. Of course, if you're found in their country later with an unregistered gun, particularly a revolver or pistol, and most particularly a big .45 auto-the Mexican Army caliber-they'll throw you in jail and lose the key, but that's a chance you take in a good many countries with much less violent histories than Mexico.

Mine wasn't a .45, just a little .38 Special, and it was pretty well hidden in a compartment designed for the purpose, so I wasn't really worried when the man approached my suitcase. I needn't have given it a thought. He saw that I stood innocently ready with the key, so he didn't even make me open it. He just hefted it briefly to determine, perhaps, if I was packing any large gold ingots or weight-lifting equipment. A moment later my bag was on its way out to the plane on the ramp.

I had to wait half an hour longer, with a lot of other people, before they'd let me aboard. The Juarez terminal building isn't air-conditioned; however, Mexican beer is very cooling and it was good to be working again after spending most of the summer at the G.o.dd.a.m.n ranch.

The G.o.dd.a.m.n ranch-we hardly ever call it just the ranch-is located in Arizona, which is no place to be in summer. But even with ideal weather, the G.o.dd.a.m.n ranch is no place to be. It's where we're sent when somebody decides a thorough mental and physical overhaul is required. I wasn't really in bad shape, but 1 had collected a scar or two, and perhaps a disturbing memory or two, since the last time they'd checked me out, and that spring there was apparently nowhere in the world that my talents were needed for the moment, so 1 was shipped to Arizona for a good going-over.

I'd finally managed to get myself sprung by claiming urgent personal business in nearby Santa Fe, New Mexico-well, it's only some five hundred miles away-but not before I'd been given the works in every department from psychiatry to marksmanship. I was so d.a.m.n healthy and efficient and dangerous I could hardly stand myself. I'd been in Santa Fe, where I'd lived in a previous incarnation, trying to tear myself down a bit at the local bistros with the help of an attractive acquaintance of many years' standing-named Carol, if you must know-when word had come through, never mind how, that I should transport myself to Mexico City immediately by the most direct and rapid method available.

This happened to be, to start with, a small commercial prop plane that fluttered down to El Paso in an erratic manner, touching earth here and there on the way. From the El Paso airport an eager taxi driver had rushed me south across the border into Juarez and halfway through Mexico, it seemed, before he caught up with the elusive Juarez airport somewhere far south of that city and collected his seven bucks fare.

He could have saved some of his Stirling-Moss-type efforts. I had time to spare, plenty of time in which to show my pa.s.sport to the Mexican immigration man and receive my tourist card from him, and to smile at the nice customs official who pa.s.sed my suitcase containing the little Smith & Wesson revolver and some other gear that he'd probably have found interesting, had he come across it... .

The Aeronaves de Mexico plane also had a few stops to make, so we didn't reach Mexico City until well after dark. I got into a taxi with some other people-they have kind of communal airport cabs down there-and gave the name of the hotel at which I'd been instructed to stay. The driver wasn't sure he'd ever heard of a hostelry called the Monte Carlo, but I had the address, and he finally managed to get himself going the right way on a narrow, dark, grubby one-way street in an older part of town. He pulled up dubiously before a tremendous, dark, shabby doorway above which burned a small illuminated sign with the right name on it.

Well, it's only in the movies that a man in my profession gets to spend all his time in the best hotels surrounded by the most beautiful girls. I retrieved my suitcase, gave the man some U.S. currency since I didn't have any pesos, and approached the great doors cautiously. I mean, I supposedly had the word straight from Washington, but codes have been compromised before. There are, unfortunately, a few people in the world who don't like me, and one of them could be in Mexico, D.F.-which is what they call their capital city, the equivalent of our Washington, D.C.

It was, in other words, a good place for a trap, but nothing happened when I stepped inside. I just found myself in the s.p.a.cious lobby of what had once, obviously, been a magnificent luxury hotel, now grown rather old and tired. A polite individual in a neat dark suit came around the desk to introduce himself as the manager and to ask, in perfect English, if I was Mr. Helm, Mr. Matthew Helm, who had a reservation.

When I said I was, he had a boy relieve me of my bag, and personally escorted me up a great marble staircase guarded by a fine bra.s.s railing that was nicely polished but didn't look as if, after all these years, it would bear a great deal of weight. He established me in a room with a ceiling at least fifteen feet high and made me promise that, if anything was needed for my comfort, I would call him at once.

After he'd departed, taking the bellboy with him, I looked around my quarters. I decided that I liked the place. It wasn't just another nylon-carpeted cell in another chrome-plated beehive. It had character. It also had clean sheets on the beds, and a full complement of working plumbing in the bathroom, including that practical European gadget known as a bidet. I was inspecting this curiosity when the telephone rang. I went back into the bedroom and picked it up.

"Seor Helm?" said an accented voice in my ear.

"This is Helm," I said.

"You seem to be in the clear so far," the voice said. "n.o.body's tailing you that we can see. How do you like your accommodations? Very picturesque, don't you think, amigo? Hah! These people with their urgent missions, they expect one to perform instant housing miracles in the middle of the tourist season! Anyway, in that grand old place you can probably trust your phone; n.o.body'd bother to bug it since n.o.body stays there any more. I have a call for you. Just a minute." There was a silence as the relay man worked on the connection. He was a man I would probably never see, and if I saw him I wouldn't know him, and that was the way he liked it. His voice reached me again, speaking to someone else: "I have Helm on the line now. Go ahead, sir."

"Eric?" said a faraway man whose voice I recognized, using my code name, as was his custom. At least I thought he was far away. I figured he was probably calling from Washington, but of course he could have been right around the corner, modern communications being what they are.

"Eric here, sir," I said, and we went through some mandatory secret-agent stuff to satisfy the rule book.

Mac said, "You have a reservation on Mexicana Airlines Flight 906 leaving at eight-twenty tomorrow morning for Guadalajara, Puerto Vallarta, Mazatlan, Guaymas, and Los Angeles. You will get off at Mazatlan, which is, I believe, a west coast port, beach resort, and sport-fishing center, of some seventy-five thousand people. An agent will make preliminary contact with you at the airport. You will check into the Hotel Playa Mazatlan, about three miles north of town, and behave like a vacationing tourist until she gets in touch with you again."

"She?" I said.

"Your contact is female, brunette, under thirty, and not unattractive, I'm informed. She is going under the name-it may be her own-of Priscilla Decker. She will be wearing white linen trousers, a flowered silk blouse, dark gla.s.ses, and one of those crazy palmleaf hats that are sold on the beach. The adjective is not mine. I thought female trousers were not approved for public wear in Mexico."

"They aren't," I said, "and hooray for the Mexicans. But a lot of U.S. tourists couldn't care less if they offend the backward natives."

Mac said, "You have been described to the lady. When she sees you, she will remove her gla.s.ses and clean them briefly to give you the privilege of looking at her face. You will mop your forehead with your handkerchief as you pa.s.s."

"You're sure I shouldn't carry a red hibiscus in my teeth, sir? And simultaneously whistle a few bars of 'La Cucaracha,' just to show I can do it?"

Mac said gently, "As you will gather, this is a cooperative venture. The lady is not one of ours, nor is the man with whom she is working. We must follow the wishes of their department in the matter of identification. Just be sure you can recognize her. And don't be surprised if there's a bit of hostility. n.o.body likes to be superseded on a job."

"I'm taking over from her?"

"You are taking over one phase of the operation from her and her male partner."

"And the nature of the operation, sir?"

"This, we are informed, does not concern us. We are to concentrate on our a.s.signed duties."

"Which are?"

"There is someone to be brought out of Mexico; someone with certain information. An interview has already been taped, and the tape is safely in our hands, but some people at Los Alamos would like to check further, by direct interrogation."

"So it's a simple escort job on the face of it." I frowned at the wall of the room. "What's so tough about it that we were called in, and what are the boys on The Hill up to now, and who's the character they want to talk to, a stray scientist of some kind?"

"You ask too many questions, Eric." Mac's voice was mild. "I repeat, the nature of the Los Alamos project, by official decree, does not concern us."

"Yes, sir," I said. "Sorry, sir."

"I can tell you, however," Mac went on, "that the subject of your a.s.signment is not a scientist, just an individual named O'Leary who happens to have witnessed a phenomenon of interest to a special research team that has established temporary headquarters at Los Alamos. I should mention that for various reasons friend O'Leary is not eager to make the journey."

"That's nice," I said. "That helps."

"I should also add that other people from other parts of the world are apparently interested in the phenomenon observed by this O'Leary, extremely interested, to the extent of being willing to spend large sums of money, and perhaps a few lives, to obtain a detailed description."

"Yes, sir," I said. "And that's where I come in, to protect this valuable specimen of humanity? Body-guarding is hardly my specialty, sir."

"And protection isn't exactly what we have in mind, Eric. The people already on the job would probably serve quite well as protectors."

"I see," I said slowly. "That is, I think I see. But perhaps you'd better be a little more explicit."

"You may run into difficulties, bringing the subject north," Mac said. "And if difficulties should arise, serious difficulties, some people here in Washington want to be quite certain the matter is in the hands of an experienced operator who knows the proper steps to take and will not hesitate to take them." He was silent briefly, and went on: "There is a great deal of sentimentality in the world, Eric, but there is no place for it in our work."

"No, sir."

"I hope you understand the situation. We have the tape containing the essential data. n.o.body else has it; we do. The Los Alamos team would like to check the information and perhaps elicit a few more details, but this is not absolutely necessary. What is necessary is that the information must be communicated to n.o.body else. No matter what has to be done to prevent it, this O'Leary person must not fall into other hands. Do I make myself perfectly clear?"

"No matter what has to be done," I repeated, making a face at the phone. "Yes, sir. It's clear. Is there anything else I should know?"

"Nothing that Miss Decker can't tell you. However, you are to keep in mind that our relations with our neighbors to the south have been deteriorating of late, to the extent that there is growing concern about the situation here in Washington. It is felt that a deliberate campaign of alienation is being waged by someone with considerable resources."

I said, "That's not exactly new. The communists have been playing their Yankee-go-home records all over Latin America for years."

"There are indications that their efforts have been intensified recently. So it would be well if you were careful not to give the anti-American propaganda machine anything -to feed on."

I said sourly, "Sure. I'm to sneak into a foreign country with an illegal weapon, perform an illegal abduction-maybe even an illegal homicide-but I'm to be careful not to hurt anybody's feelings while I'm doing it. Yes, sir. Anything else, sir?"

Mac paid no intention to my sarcasm. "Nothing else, Eric," he said. "Well, just one more thing... ."

"Yes, sir," I said, when he hesitated uncharacteristically.

He was silent a moment longer, then he asked abruptly: "Eric, do you believe in flying saucers?"

I was proud of my presence of mind. I didn't hesitate. "Yes, sir," I said.

"I said 'Yes, sir.' Sir." It isn't often one has an advantage over him, and I rode it for what it was worth. "I saw one once, sir."

"Indeed? Where?"

"In Santa Fe, New Mexico, where I was living as a solid citizen in that happy period when I was out of your clutches for several years, sir, before you caught up with me again and shanghaied me back into service."

"As I recall, a great deal of duress was not required. What did you see?"

"A luminous, pulsating, greenish object moving steadily over town in a southeasterly direction, just about dusk. I saw it, and so did my former wife-she was still Mrs. Helm at the time-and so did another couple that was in the car with us. We all got out to make sure we weren't just getting reflections off the gla.s.s. We watched it until it kind of switched itself off and vanished, up near the mountains. When we got home, a few minutes later, I called the police. The officer who answered asked me politely to wait a moment as he was just taking down another report of the same nature."

"Other people confirmed the sighting?"

"All the way across town. It was in the newspaper the next day. You can check the files if you wish. I think it was some time in fifty-eight or fifty-nine." I stopped, but he did not speak. I said, "I don't claim to have seen an extra-terrestrial s.p.a.ce ship crewed by little men with pointed heads, but something flew over the city, and it wasn't any type of aircraft with which I'm familiar."

"Indeed?" He didn't sound convinced. "That's very interesting, Eric."

"Yes, sir. Of course the Air Force continues to insist there's nothing up there. Well, it was a h.e.l.l of a lifelike hallucination, shared by a h.e.l.l of a lot of people. It makes one kind of wonder just what the flyboys are trying to cover up." I paused. "Anything else?"

"No." His voice was curt. I had a hunch he'd had a pep talk ready for me, but I'd made the wrong answer and aborted his little speech on keeping an open mind about strange manifestations no matter how incredible. At least I figured that was the subject he'd had in mind, and I knew he didn't like to have his speeches go to waste. Or maybe he just disapproved of my doubting att.i.tude towards the U.S.A.F. He went on in businesslike tones: "Just remember the instructions. Alive, the subject goes nowhere but Los Alamos. This is the preferable solution. The other is, however, perfectly acceptable. Oh, and Eric... ."

"Yes, sir."

"Try to complete this mission within a reasonable time. It is only a favor we are doing to certain people in Washington, who want to make sure the matter is in competent hands. I have another a.s.signment for you, or will have, as soon as I can find you an adequate partner. Unfortunately, young ladies of character and mentality suitable for our type of work seem to be in short supply lately, and our trained people are all engaged elsewhere."

I said, "Yes, sir. If I stumble over a sufficiently bloodthirsty chick, I'll let you know."

I hung up and sat there for a little, thinking about flying saucers, for G.o.d's sake.

2.

IN THE MORNING, I had a taxi run me out to the airport early enough for me to have breakfast in the gla.s.s-walled restaurant overlooking the field. It had no particular character. It looked like any glossy airport restaurant anywhere in the world.

When I got back down to the Mexicana desk, where they were just starting to check in my flight, I discovered something that might have come as a traumatic shock to a younger and less hardened member of the organization: I learned that Mac wasn't quite omniscient and infallible. At least he didn't know Mexican airlines. What I mean is, I had no reservation. Whatever pa.s.senger list he'd had my name put on somewhere, that particular list hadn't got here.

The young man behind the counter studied all his doc.u.ments and manifests and records and shook his head. He went into the office and came out shaking his head some more. We held a consultation, and he a.s.sured me he would get me on the plane somehow. I showed him the corner of a fifty-peso note I'd taken in change at the hotel. He grinned.

"You will catch your plane, senor," he said, looking me straight in the eye, "you will catch it, and it will cost you nothing extra."

So much for the prevalent theory that everybody in that country has his hand out. Chastened, I stood and waited beside my suitcase until, at eight o'clock, the deadline for no-shows, he waved me forward and checked me through. We took off, and would have had a good view of the high valley in which the Mexican capital lies, the cradle of-the old Aztec civilization, if it hadn't been for the new Los-Angeles-type mist. If they haven't got a real smog problem yet, there in the Distrito Federal, they soon will have.

At Guadalajara, we were booted out of the plane for twenty minutes, after which we climbed over some pretty spectacular mountains and glided down to the coast and Puerto Vallarta, a pretty little seaport, where we had to deplane again, as the jargon goes. They don't let you stay aboard their aircraft while they're brushing and currying it between runs.

I'd been pretty relaxed so far, enjoying the ride and the scenery, but now as we got back into our seats and were flown up the green Pacific coastline towards Mazatlan, which means the place of the deer, I felt the familiar, nervous, beginning-of-the-job tightness take hold of my throat and abdomen. It's a sensation you never lose, no matter how long you stay in the business. At least I don't seem to.

Not only was I working again after several months' layoff, but I was working with people who were bound to resent me, which meant I couldn't trust them even to make it to the john without explicit instructions and careful supervision. .

My contact was there, all right, in the Mazatlan terminal, in her snug white linen pants and her crazy palmleaf hat. She wasn't exactly what I'd expected. She looked like a kid. I don't mean the cuddly, blonde, lisping, baby-face type, but the slim, dark, big-eyed, hollow-checked kind of young girl who doesn't seem aware of the fact that she's going to be beautiful some day.

She annoyed me at first glance, which wasn't quite fair, since I'd been prejudiced against her before I ever saw her. But now I wasn't condemning her merely for her taste in clothes and countersigns. The two most dangerous aberrations in our line of work are idealism and innocence, and if I was any judge she suffered from both.

She was talking to a tanned, rather husky young woman with short blonde hair who wore a skimpy, sleeveless, bright orange garment with native designs on it-just a sack with holes for the arms and head-undoubtedly purchased at one of the local tourist shops. My girl took off her sungla.s.ses casually and wiped them with a Kleenex as the crowd from the plane kind of washed me past her.

I responded by mopping my face with a handkerchief as instructed. It wasn't hard to make the gesture convincing. I was dressed for Santa Fe and Mexico City, mountain communities a mile and a half high, cool and dry. Down here at sea level the temperature was in the high nineties and the humidity was running it a close race for the hundred mark.

I did notice, as I went past, that Priscilla Decker didn't look quite as dewy at short range as she had across the room. She was getting on towards twenty-five, I judged, and she was beginning to show just a hint of the dried-up look of the professional virgin, which is what happens to them if they're left on the vine instead of being picked, so to speak, at the proper time. I didn't know whether this was good or bad from my point of view, but at least I wouldn't have to make allowances for extreme youth. She'd had the years. If she hadn't taken advantage of them, that wasn't my fault.

That was all there was to it. I didn't look to see where she went; I wasn't supposed to pay her any attention. She was supposed to find me when the time came. I waited for my suitcase to be unloaded-I don't think flying is going to be really practical until they invent self-propelled luggage to match the planes-and was driven to the Hotel Playa by a genial robber who charged me twenty pesos, about a dollar sixty, which was obviously too much since he was disappointed when I didn't give him an argument. There was a reservation waiting for me here, but it didn't really matter. The winter season wouldn't begin for a month or so yet, and they had lots of room.

Playa means beach in Spanish, and they were situated right on theirs. It seemed like a h.e.l.l of a good idea, so after making sure the air-conditioner was going full blast in my room, I changed into trunks and walked out there. Some pretty big waves were breaking against the sh.o.r.e-well, big for -a calm summer day-but I'd recently learned a bit about surf and swimming in the line of duty, and I watched the crests briefly to get the timing, and dove under one and paddled out a ways, ducking beneath the white stuff as it came at me.

There were some other people playing around out there, including a woman in a white satin bathing suit -a sleek, one-piece job, not a bikini-who caught my eye for some reason, perhaps just because I have that kind of an eye and she was the only woman venturing out that far. She swam pretty well, but with a European touch to her style that I couldn't quite identify. Maybe she behaved just a bit as if she'd been brought up on the breast stroke and the crawl were a later accomplishment.

She was quite slender, almost thin, and her hard adult body sheathed in wet white satin was a lot s.e.xier than most of this soft nymphet stuff you see on the beach covered by practically nothing but a good tan. Something about her had aroused my curiosity-if you want to call it curiosity-so when she headed towards sh.o.r.e I gave her a minute or so and then picked up a crest, paddled hard to match its speed, and let it carry me in.

A good-sized breaking wave, even a summer wave, can give you a pretty rough ride; it's kind of like being shaken by an angry dog. I cut out of it before it buried my head in the sand, and stood up. I'd been carried past the woman, and I turned casually to seaward as I pounded the water out of my ears, and there she was, coming towards me, smiling faintly.

"I wondered how long it would take you to recognize me, Matthew," she said.

For a moment I still wasn't quite sure. I mean, the lady whose name popped into my mind had been pretty good at changing her appearance to suit the job, but she'd always been a fairly well-developed specimen of womanhood. She'd often been described as s.e.xy in official reports-sometimes even as voluptuous-but never as slender. But it was Vadya, all right. There was no doubt about it. I'd slept with her a couple of times and shot her once; I ought to know.

I said, "I'm ashamed of you, Vadya, trying to fool your old friends like that. When did you decide to go on a diet?"

"Diet, h.e.l.l," she said, "if you'll excuse it, darling. Do you know how many operations they had to make after you were so ungentlemanly as to put a bullet into me, and how many operations to erase the signs of those operations? I was a shadow, a skeleton, when they finished carving me up and putting me back together. And then it seemed like a good idea to try to keep my new svelte figure. Some people do not have as sharp eyes as others. Obviously. I have been here for several days. If anyone among your people had recognized this sylph-like creature as Vadya, you would not have been sent here, would you? They would have sent someone I did not know, instead."

"You knew I was coming?"

"Of course not. We did not know who was coming; but we knew someone else probably would be, besides those already here. It is not a job for a college boy with a degree in accounting or foreign relations, even if he can draw his pistol in a fraction of a second and make magnificent scores on the targets that look like men but are really paper. Nor is it a job for an unclaimed maiden with beautiful ideals and strange yearnings." Vadya smiled. "It is a job for crude, realistic people like you and me, darling. Of course, now that you are here, I will probably have to kill you, but I am glad to see you nevertheless. Let us get out of these soapsuds and have a drink."