DEATH OF A CITIZEN Donald Hamilton A Fawcett Gold Medal Book Published by Ballantine Books Copyright 0 1960 by Donald Hamilton

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof. Published in the United States by Ballantine Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto ISBN 0-449-12798-2 All the characters in this book are fictional and any resemblance to persons living or dead is purely coincidental. IN CANADA First Fawcett Gold Medal Edition: February 1960 First Ballantine Books Edition: November 1984 Twenty-fifth Printing: March 1988

SCANNERZ NOTES Going through my library, I noted the Matt Helm series. During my youth, these books were my constant companion, through school and innumerable camping trips. Excellent reads, gritty, and holds up well even after all these years. A true piece of Americana. Matt Helm makes James Bond look like a powder-puff.

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DEATH OF A CITIZEN Donald Hamilton

CHAPTER 1

I WAS taking a Martini across the room to my wife, who was still chatting with our host, Amos Darrel, the physicist, when the front door of the house opened and a man came in to join the party. He meant nothing to me-but with him was the girl we'd called Tina during the war. I hadn't seen her for fifteen years, or thought about her for ten, except once in a great while when that time would come back to me like a hazy and violent dream, and I'd wonder how many of those I'd known and worked with had survived it, and what had happened to them afterwards. I'd also wonder, idly, the way you do, if I'd even recognize the girl, should I meet her again. After all, that particular job had taken only a week. We'd made our touch right on schedule, earning a commendation from Mac, who wasn't in the habit of passing them around like business cards-but it had been a tough assignment, and Mac knew it. He'd given us a week to rest up in London, afterwards, and we'd spent it together. That made a total of two weeks, fifteen years ago. I hadn't known her previously, and I'd never seen her again, until now. If anyone had asked me to guess, I'd have said she was still over in Europe, or just about anywhere in the world except here in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Nevertheless, I didn't have a moment of doubt. She was taller and older, better looking and much better dressed, than the fierce, bloodthirsty, shabby little waif I remembered. There was no longer the gauntness of hunger in her face or the brightness of hate in her eyes, and she probably no longer concealed a paratrooper's knife somewhere in her underwear. She looked as if she'd forgotten how to handle a machine pistol; she looked as if she wouldn't recognize a grenade if she saw one. She certainly no longer wore a capsule of poison taped to the nape of her neck, hidden by her hair. I was sure of this, because her hair was quite short now. But it was Tina, all right-expensive firs, cocktail dress, and hairdo notwithstanding. She looked at me for a moment without expression, across that room of chattering people, and I couldn't tell if she recognized me or not. After all, I'd changed a little, too. There was more meat on my bones and less hair on my head after fifteen years. There were the other changes that must have left visible traces for her to see: the wife and three kids, the four-bedroom house with the studio out back and the mortgage half paid up, the comfortable bank account and the sensible insurance program. There was Beth's shiny Buick station wagon in the driveway outside, and my beatup old Chevy pickup in the garage back home. And on the wall back home were my hunting rifle and shotgun, unfired since the war. I was an ardent fisherman these days-fish don't bleed much-but at the back of a desk drawer, kept locked so the kids couldn't get at it if they should get into the studio against orders, was a gun this girl would rem- bar, the little worn Colt Woodsman with the short barrel, and it was still loaded. And in my pants was the folding knife of Solingen steel that she'd recognize because she'd been present when I'd taken it from a dead man to replace the knife that he'd broken, dying. I still carried that, and sometimes I'd hold it in my hand- closed, of course-in my pocket as I walked home from a movie with my wife, and I'd walk straight at the groups of tough, dark kids that cluttered up the sidewalks of this old southwestern town at night, and they'd move aside to let us pass. "Don't look so belligerent, darling," Beth would say. "Anybody'd think you were trying to pick a fight with those Spanish-American boys." She'd laugh and press my arm, knowing that her husband was a quiet literary individual who wouldn't hurt a fly even if he did write stories bursting with violence and dripping with gore. "How do you ever think of these things?" she'd ask, wide-eyed, after reading a particularly gruesome passage about Comanche massacre or Apache torture, generally taken pretty straight from the sourcebooks, but sometimes embellished with some wartime experience of my own, set back a hundred years in time. "I declare, sometimes you frighten me, dear," my wife would say, and laugh, not frightened at all. "Matt is really quite harmless in spite of the dreadful things he puts in his books," she'd assure our friends happily. "He just has a morbid imagination, I guess. Why, he used to hunt before the war, before I knew him, but he's even given that up, because he hates to kill anything except on paper. . . I'd stopped in the middle of the room. For a moment, all the cocktail-party sounds had faded completely from my consciousness. I was looking at Tina. There was nothing in the world except the two of us, and I was back in a time when our world had been young and savage and alive, instead of being old and civilized and dead. For a moment it was as if I, myself, had been dead for fifteen years, and somebody had opened the lid of the coffin and let in light and air. Then I drew a long breath, and the illusion faded. I was a respectable married man once more. I'd just seen a ghost from my bachelor days, and it could make quite an awkward little situation if I didn't handle it right, which meant acting just as naturally as I could, walking right up to the girl and greeting her like a long-lost friend and wartime comrade, and hauling her over to meet Beth before any awkwardness could develop. I looked for a place to park the Martinis before starting over there. The man with Tina had removed his wide-brimmed hat. He was a big, blond man in a suede leather sport coat and a checked gingham shirt with one of those braided leather strings around the neck that Western males tend to wear instead of ties. But this man was a visitor-his outfit was too new and shiny, and he didn't look comfortable in it. He reached for Tina's wrap, and as she turned to give it to him her free hand lifted casually and gracefully to brush the short dark hair back from her ear. She wasn't looking at me now, not even facing my way, and the movement was wholly natural; but I hadn't quite forgotten those grim months of training before they sent me out, and I knew the gesture was meant for me. I was seeing again the sign we'd had that meant: I'll get in touch with you later. Stand by. It was a chilling thing. I'd almost broken the basic rule that had been drilled into all of us, never to mc- cognize anybody anywhere. It hadn't occurred to me that we could still be playing by those old rules, that Tina's presence here, after all these peacefuL years, could be due to anything but the wildest and most innocent coincidence. But the old stand-by signal meant business. It meant: Wipe that silly look off your face, Buster, before you louse up the works. You don 't know me, you fool. It meant that she was working again-perhaps, unlike me, she'd never stopped. It meant that she expected me to help her, after fifteen years.

CHAPTER 2

WHEN I reached Amos Darrel, on the other side of the room, he no longer had Beth for company. Instead, he was conversing politely with a young olive skinned girl with rather long dark hair. "Your wife deserted me to consult with a matronly female about P.T.A.," Amos reported. "Her refreshment needs have already been supplied, but I think Miss Herrera will take that extra Martini off your hands." He made a gesture of introducing us to each other "Miss Barbara Herrera, Mr. Matthew Helm." He glanced at me, and asked idly: "Who are those people who just came in, Matt?" I was passing the extra drink to the girl. My hand was quite steady. I didn't spill a drop. "I haven't any idea," I said. "Oh, I thought you looked as if you recognized them." Amos sighed. "Some of Fran's friends from New York, I suppose... . I couldn't persuade you to sneak back into my study for a game of chess?" I laughed. "Fran would never forgive me. Besides, you'd have to spot me a queen or a pair of rooks to make a game of it." "Oh, you're not that bad," he said tolerantly. "I'm not a mathematical genius, either," I said. He was a plump, balding little man with steel-rimmed glasses, behind which his eyes, at the moment, had a vague look that could have been mistaken for stupidity. Actually, in his own field, Amos was one of the least stupid men in the United States-perhaps in the world. This much I knew. Just precisely what his field was, I couldn't tell you. Even if I knew, I probably wouldn't be allowed to tell you; but I didn't know, and I hadn't the slightest desire to find out. I had enough secrets of my own without worrying about those belonging to Amos Darrel and the Atomic Energy Commission. All I knew was that the Darrels lived in Santa Fe because Fran Darrel liked it better than Los Alamos, which she considered an artificial little community fill of dull scientific people. She much preferred colorful characters like myself, who nibbled at the fringes of art, and Santa Fe is fill of them. Amos owned a hot Porsche Carrera coupe in which he commuted daily, summer and winter, the thirty-odd miles up to The Hill, as it's known locally. The souped-up little sports car didn't really go with his appearance or what I knew of his character, but then I don't claim to understand the vagaries of genius, particularly scientific genius. I did understand him well enough to realize that his present vague, glazed look didn't indicate stupidity, but simple boredom. Talking to us low-grade morons who don't know an isotope from a differential equation bores most of those big brains stiff. Now he yawned, making only a token effort to hide it, and said in a resigned voice: "Well, I'd better go over and greet the newcomers. Excuse me." We watched him move away. The girl beside me laughed ruefully. "Somehow, I don't have the feeling Dr. Darrel found me very entertaining," she murmured. "It's not your fault," I said. "You're just too big, that's all.,, She glanced up at me, smiling. "How am Ito take that remark?" "Not personally," I assured her. "What I mean is, Amos isn't really interested in anything much bigger than an atom. Oh, he might stretch a point and settle for a molecule now and then, but it would have to be a small molecule." She asked innocently, "Oh, are molecules bigger than atoms, Mr. Helm?" I said, "Molecules are made up of atoms. Now you have the sum total of my information upon that subject, Miss Herrera. Please address any further inquiries to your host." "Oh," she said, "I wouldn't dare!" I saw that Tina and her suede-jacketed escort were starting to work their way around the room through a barrage of introductions, under the inexorable Leadership of Fran Darrel, a small, dry, wisp of a woman with a passion for collecting interesting people. It was a pity, I thought, that Fran would never know what a jewel of interest she had in Tina. . I turned my attention back to the girl. She was quite a pretty girl, wearing a lot of Indian silver and one of the squaw dresses, also called fiesta dresses, the construction of which is a local industry. This one was all white, copiously trimmed with silver braid. As usual, it had a very full, pleated skirt supported by enough stiff petticoats to form a traffic hazard in the Darrels' crowded living room. I asked, "Do you live here in Santa Fe, Miss Herrera?" "No, I'm just here on a visit." She looked up at me. She had very nice eyes, dark-brown and lustrous, to go with the Spanish name. She said, "Dr. Darrel tells me you're a writer. What name do you write under, Mr. Helm?" I suppose I should be used to it by now, but I still can't help wondering why they do it and what they expect to gain by it. It must seem to them like a subtle social maneuver, a way of skillfully avoiding the dreadful admission that they never heard of a guy named Helm or read any of his works. The only trouble is, I've never used a pseudonym in my life-my literary life, that is. There was a time when I answered to the code name of Eric, but that's another matter. "I use my own name," I said, a little stiffly. "Most writers do, Miss Herrera, unless they're pretty damn prolific, or run into publication conflicts of some kind." "Oh," she said, "I'm sorry." It -occurred to me that I was being pompous, and I grinned. "I write Western stories, mostly," I said. "As a matter of fact, I'm leaving in the morning to get some material for a new one." I glanced at my Martini glass. "Assuming that I'm in condition to drive, that is." "Where are you going?" "Down the Pecos Valley first, and then through lbxas to San Antonio," I said. "After that I'll head north along one of the old cattle trails to Kansas, taking pictures along the way." "You're a photographer, too?" She was a cute kid, but she was overdoing the breathless-admiration routine. After all, it wasn't as if she were talking to Ernest Hemingway. "Well, I used to be a newspaperman of sorts," I said. "On a small paper you learn to do a little bit of everything. That was before the war. The fiction- came later." "It sounds perfectly fascinating," the girl said. "But I'm sorry to hear you're leaving. I kind of hoped, if you had a little time . . . I mean, there's something I wanted to ask you, a favor. When Dr. Darrel told me you were a real live author . ." She hesitated, and laughed in an embarrassed way, and I knew exactly what was coming. She said, "Well, I've been trying to write a little myself, and I do so want to talk to some- one who. . Then, providentially, Fran Darrel was upon us, with Tina and her boy friend, and we had to turn to meet them. Fran was dressed pretty much like my companion, except that her blue fiesta dress, her waist, her arms, and her neck were loaded even more heavily with Indian jewelry. Well, she could afford it. She had money of her own, apart from Amos' government salary. She introduced the newcomers and the girl, and it was my turn. ". . . and here's somebody I particularly want you to meet, my dear," Fran said to Tina in her high, breathless voice. "One of our local celebrities, Matt Helm. Matt, this is Madeleine Loris, from New York, and her husband . . . Hell, I've forgotten your first name." "Frank," the blond man said. Tina had already put out her hand for me to take. Slender and dark and lovely, she was a real pleasure to look at in her sleeveless black dress, and her little black hat that was mostly a scrap of veil, and her long black gloves. I mean, these regional costumes are all very well, but if a woman can look like that, why should she deck herself out to resemble a Navajo squaw? She extended her hand with a graciousness that made me want to click my heels, bow low, and raise her fingers to my lips-I remembered a time when I had, very briefly, been forced to impersonate a Prussian nobleman. All kinds of memories were coming back, and I could recall very clearly-although it seemed most improbable now-making love to this fashionable and gracious lady in a ditch in the rain, while uniformed men beat the dripping bushes all around us. I could also remember the week in London. . . . Looking into her face, I saw that she, too, was remembering. Then her little finger moved very slightly in my grasp, in a certain way. It was the recognition signal, the one that asserted authority and demanded obedience. I'd been expecting that. I looked straight into her eyes and made no answering signal, although I remembered the response perfectly. Her eyes narrowed very slightly, and she took back her hand. I turned to shake hands with Frank Loris, if that was his name, which it almost certainly wasn't. From his looks, I knew he was going to be a bone- crusher, and he was. At least he tried. When nothing snapped, he, too, tried the little-finger trick. He was a hell of a big man, not quite my height-very few are- but much wider and heavier with the craggy face of the professional muscleman. His nose had been broken many years ago. It could have happened in college football, but somehow I didn't think so. You get so you can recognize them. There's something tight about the mouth and eyes, something wary in the way they stand and move, something contemptuous and condescending that betrays them to one who knows. Even Tina, bathed and shampooed and perfumed, girdled and nyloned, had it. I could see that now. I'd had it once myself. I'd thought I'd lost it. Now I wasn't so certain. I looked at the big man, and, oddly enough, we hated each other on sight. I was a happily married man without a thought for any woman but my wife. And he was a professional doing a job-whatever it might be-with an assigned partner. But he would have been briefed before he came here, and he would know that I'd once done a job with the same partner. Whatever his success in extracurricular matters-and from the looks of him he'd be the lad to give it a try-he'd be wondering just how successful I'd been, under similar circumstances, fifteen years ago. And of course, although Tina was nothing to me any more, I couldn't help wondering just what her duties as Mrs. Loris involved. So we hated each other cordially as we shook hands and spoke the usual meaningless words, and I let him grind away at my knuckles and signal frantically, giving no sign that I felt a thing, until the handclasp had lasted long enough to satisfy the proprieties and he had to let me go. To hell with him. And to hell with her. And to hell with Mac, who'd sent them here after all these years to disinter the memories I'd thought safely buried. That is, if Mac was still running the show, and I thought he would be. It was impossible to think of the organization in the hands of anyone else, and who'd want the job?

CHAPTER 3

THE last time I saw Mac, he was sitting behind a desk in a shabby little office in Washington. - "Here's your war record," he said as I came up to the desk. He shoved some papers towards me. "Study it carefully. Here are some additional notes on people and places you're supposed to have known. Memorize and destroy. And here are the ribbons you're entitled to wear, should you ever be called back into uniform." I looked at them and grinned. "What, no Purple Heart?" I'd just spent three months in various hospitals. He didn't smile. "Don't take these discharge papers too seriously, Eric. You're out of the Army, to be sure, but don't let it go to your head." "Meaning what, sir?" "Meaning that there are going to be a lot of chaps"- like all of us, he'd picked up some British turns of speech overseas-' 'a lot of chaps impressing a lot of susceptible maidens with what brave, misunderstood fellows they were throughout the war, prevented by security from disclosing their heroic exploits to the world. There are also going to be a lot of hair-raising, revealing, and probably quite lucrative memoirs written." Mac looked up at me, as I stood before him. I had trouble seeing his face clearly, with that bright window behind him, but I could see his eyes. They were gray and cold. "I'm telling you this because your peacetime record shows certain literary tendencies. There'll be no such memoirs from this outfit. What we were, never was. What we did, never happened. Keep that in mind, Captain Helm." His use of my military title and real name marked the end of a part of my life. I was outside now. I said, "I had no intention of writing anything of the kind, sir." "Perhaps not. But you're to be married soon, I understand, to an attractive young lady you met at a local hospital. Congratulations. But remember what you were taught, Captain Helm. You do not confide in anyone, no matter how close to you. You do not even hint, if the question of wartime service is raised, that there are tales you could tell if you were only at liberty to do so. No matter what the stakes, Captain Helm, no matter what the cost to your pride or reputation or family life, no matter how trustworthy the person involved, you reveal nothing, not even that there's something to reveal." He gestured towards the papers on the desk. "Your cover isn't perfect, of course. No cover is. You may be caught in an inconsistency. You may even meet someone with whom you're supposed to have been closely associated during some part of the war, who, never having heard of you, calls you a liar and perhaps worse. We've done all we can to protect you against such a contingency, for our sakes as well as yours, but there's always the chance of a slip. If it happens, you'll stick to your story, no matter how awkward the situation becomes. You'll lie calmly and keep on lying. To everyone, even your wife. Don't tell her that you could explain everything if only you were free to speak. Don't ask her to trust you because things aren't what they seem. Just look her straight in the eye and lie." "I understand," I said. "May I ask a question?" "Yes." "No disrespect intended, sir, but how are you going to enforce all that, now?" I thought I saw him smile faintly, but that wasn't likely. He wasn't a smiling man. He said, "You've been discharged from the Army, Captain Helm. You've not been discharged from us. How can we give you a discharge, when we don't exist?" And that was all of it, except that as I started for the door with my papers under my arm he called me back. I turned snappily. "Yes, sir." "You're a good man, Eric. One of my best. Good luck." It was something, from Mac, and it pleased me, but as I went out and, from old habit, walked a couple of blocks away from the place, before taking a cab to where Beth was waiting, I knew that he need have no fear of my confiding in her against orders. I'd have told her the truth if it had been allowed, of course, to be honest with her; but my bride-to-be was a gentle and sensitive New England girl, and I wasn't unhappy to be relieved, by authority, of the necessity of telling her I'd been a good man in that line of business. CHAPTER 4

Now, in the Darrels' living room, I could hear Mac's voice again: How can we give you a discharge, when we don 't exist? That voice from the past held a mocking note, and the same mockery was in Tina's dark eyes as she allowed herself to be led away, accompanied by the Herrera girl, whom Fran had also taken in tow. I'd forgotten the color of Tina's eyes, not blue, not black. They were the deep violet shade you sometimes see in the evening sky just before the last light dies. The big man, Loris, gave me a sideways look as he followed the trio of women; it held a warning and a threat. I slipped my hand into my pocket and closed my fingers about the liberated German knife. I grinned at him, to let him know that any time was all right with me. Any time and any place. I might be a peaceful and home-loving citizen these days, a husband and a father. I might be gaining a waistline and losing my hair. I might barely have the strength to punch a typewriter key, but things would have to get a damn sight worse before I trembled at a scowl and a pair of bulging biceps. - Then I realized, startled, that this was just like the old days. We'd always been kind of a lone-wolf outfit, not noted for brotherhood and companionship and esprit de corps. I remembered Mac, once, saying that he made a point of keeping us dispersed as much as possible, to cut down on the casualties. Break it up, he'd say wearily, break it up, you damn overtrained gladiators, save it for the Nazis. I was falling right back into the old habits, just as if the chip had never left my shoulder. Perhaps it never had. "What's the matter, darling?" It was Beth's voice, behind me. "You look positively grim. Aren't you having a good time?" I turned to look at her, and she looked pretty enough to take your breath away. She was what you might describe as a tallish, willowy girl-well, after bearing three children I guess she was entitled to be called a woman, but she looked like a girl. She had light hair and clear blue eyes and a way of smiling at you-at me, anyway-that could make you feel seven feet tall instead of only six feet four. She was wearing the blue silk dress with the little bow on the behind that we'd bought for her in New York on our last trip East. That had been a year ago, but it still made a good-looking outfit, even if she was starting to refer to it as that obsolete old rag-a gambit any husband will recognize. Even after all this time in the land of blue jeans and squaw dresses, of bare brown legs and thong sandals, my wife still clung to certain Eastern standards of dress, which was all right with me. I like the impractical, fragile, feminine look of a woman in a skirt and stockings and high heels; and I can see no particular reason for a female to appear publicly in pants unless she's going to ride a horse. I'll even go so far as to say that the side-saddle and riding skirt made an attractive combination, and I regret that they passed before my time. Please don't think this means I'm prudish and consider it sinful for women to reveal themselves in trousers. Quite the contrary. I object on the grounds that it makes my life very dull. We all respond to different stimuli, and the fact is that I don't respond at all to pants, no matter who they may contain or how tight they may be. If Beth had turned out to be a slacks-and pajamas girl we might never have got around to populating a four-bedroom house. "What's the matter, Matt?" she asked again. I looked in the direction Tina and her gorilla had taken, and I rubbed my fingers and grimaced wryly. "Oh, those strong-arm guys just get my goat. The louse almost broke my hand. I don't know what he was trying to prove." "The girl is rather striking. Who is she?" "A kid named Herrera," I said easily. "She's writing the Great American Novel, or something, and would like a few pointers." "No," Beth said, "the older one, the slinky one with the black gloves. You looked quite continental, shaking hands with her; I thought you were going to kiss her fingertips. Had you met her somewhere before?" I glanced up quickly; and I was back again where I didn't want to be, back where I was watching myself every second to see how I was going over in the part I was playing, back where every word I spoke could be my death warrant. I was no longer working my facial muscles automatically; the manual control center had taken over. I signaled for a grin and it came. I thought it was pretty good. I'd always been a fair poker player as a boy, and I'd learned something about acting later, with my life at stake. I put my arm around Beth casually. "What's the matter, jealous?" I asked. "Can't I even be polite to a good-looking female. . . . No, I never saw Mrs. Loris before, but I sure wish I had." Lie, Mac had said, look her in the eye and lie. Why should I obey his orders, after all the bloodless years? But the words came smoothly and convincingly, and I squeezed her fondly, and let my hand slide down to give the little bow at her rear an affectionate pat, among all those chattering people. Briefly, I felt the warm tautness of her girdle through the silk of her dress and slip. "Matt, don't!" she whispered, shocked, stiffening in protest. I saw her throw an embarrassed glance around to see if anyone had noted the impropriety. She was a funny damn girl. I mean, you'd think that after more than a decade of marriage I could pat my wife on the fanny, among friends, without being made to feel as if I'd committed a serious breach of decency. Well, I'd lived with Beth's inhibitions for a long time, and normally I'd have thought it was just kind of cute and naive of her, and maybe I'd have given her an additional little pinch to tease her and make her blush, and she'd have wound up laughing at her own stuffiness, and everything would have been all right. But tonight I didn't have any concentration to spare for her psychological quirks. My own demanded my entire attention. "Sorry, Duchess," I said stiffly, withdrawing the offending hand. "Didn't mean to get familiar, ma'am. . . . Well, I'm going over for a refill. Can I get you one?" She shook her head. "I'm still doing fine with this one." She couldn't help glancing at my glass and saying, "Take it easy, darling. Remember, you've got a long drive tomorrow." "Maybe you'd better call Alcoholics Anonymous," I said, more irritably than I'd intended. As I turned away, I saw Tina watching us from across the room. For some reason, I found myself remembering the wet woods at Kronheim, and the German officer whose knife was in my pocket, and the way the blade of my own knife had snapped off short as he flung himself convulsively sideways at the thrust. As he opened his mouth to cry out, Tina, a bedraggled fury in her French tart's getup, had grabbed his Schmeisser and smashed it over his head, silencing him but bending the gun to hell and gone. .

CHAPTER 5

A SHORT, dark individual in an immaculate white jacket was presiding over the refreshment table with the grace, dignity and relaxed assurance of an old family retainer,' although I knew he was hired for the occasion as I'd been meeting him at Santa Fe parties for years. "Vodka?" he was saying. "No, no, I will not do it, se�orita! A Martini is a Martini and you are a guest in this house. Por favor, do not ask me to serve a guest of the Darrels the fermented squeezings of potato peelings and other garbage!" Barbara Herrera answered the man laughingly in Spanish, and they tossed it back and forth, and she agreed to settle for another honest, capitalist cocktail instead of switching to the bastard variety from the land of Communism. After he'd filled her glass, I stuck mine out to be replenished from the same shaker. The girl glanced around, smiled, and swung about to face me with a clink of bracelets and a swish of petticoats. I gestured towards her costume. "Santa Fe is grateful to you for patronizing local industry, Miss Herrera." She laughed. "Do I look too much like a walking junk shop? I didn't have anything else to do this afternoon, and the stores just fascinated me. I lost my head, I guess." "Where are you from?" I asked. "California," she said. "That's a big state," I said, "and you can keep all of it." She smiled. "Now, that isn't nice." "I've spent a few months in Hollywood from time to time," I said. "I couldn't take it. I'm used to breathing air." She laughed. "Now you're boasting, Mr. Helm. At least we get a little oxygen with our smog. That's more than you can say up here at seven thousand feet. I lay awake all last night gasping for breath." With her warm dark skin and wide cheekbones, she looked better in her squaw dress than most. I looked down at her, and sighed inwardly, and braced myself to do my duty as an elder statesman of the writing profession. I said in kindly tones, "You say you've been doing some writing, Miss Herrera?" Her face lighted up. "Why, yes, and I've been wanting to talk to somebody about . . . It's at my motel, Mr. Helm. There's a rather pleasant bar next door. I know you're leaving in the morning, but if you and your wife could just stop on your way home and have a drink while I run over and get it. . . It's just a short story, it wouldn't take you more than a few minutes, and I'd appreciate it so much if you'd just glance through it and tell me . . .'' New York is full of editors who are paid to -read stories. All it takes to get their reaction is the postage. But these kids keep shoving the products of their sweat and imagination under the noses of friends, relatives, neighbors, and anybody they can track down who ever published three lines of lousy verse. I don't get it. Maybe I'm just a hardened cynic, but when I was breaking into the racket I sure as hell didn't waste time and effort showing my work to anybody who didn't have the dough to buy and the presses to print it on-not even my wife. Being an unpublished writer is ridiculous enough; why make it worse by showing the stuff around? I tried to tell the girl this; I tried to tell her that even if I liked her story, there was nothing I could do about it, and if I didn't like it, what difference did it make? I wasn't the guy who was going to buy it. But she was persistent, and before I got rid of her I'd consumed two more Martinis and promised to drop by and have a look at her little masterpiece in the morning, if I had time. As I was planning to leave before daybreak, I didn't really expect to have time, and she probably knew it; but I wasn't going to spoil my last evening at home reading her manuscript or anybody else's. She left me at last, heading across the room to say goodbye to her host and hostess. It took me a while to locate Beth in one of the rear sitting rooms of the big, sprawling house. We've got plenty of space in this southwestern country, and few houses, no matter how large, are more than one story high, which is just as well. You wouldn't want to have to climb stairs at our altitude. When I found my wife, she was talking to Tina. I paused in the doorway to look at them. Two goodlooking and well behaved and smartly dressed party guests, holding their drinks like talismans, they were chatting away in the bright manner of women who've just met and already don't like each other very well. "Yes, he was in Army Public Relations during the war," I heard Beth say as I came forward. "A jeep turned over on him while he was out on assignment, near Paris I think, and injured him quite badly. I was doing USO in Washington when he came there for treatment. That's how we met. Hello, darling, we're talking about you." She looked nice, and kind of young and innocent, even in her Fifth Avenue cocktail outfit. I found that I wasn't annoyed with her any more; and apparently she'd forgiven me, also. Looking at her, I was very glad I'd had the good sense to marry her when I had the chance, but there was a feeling of guilt, too. There always had been, but it was stronger tonight. I'd really had no business marrying anybody. Tina had turned to smile at me. "I was just asking your wife what you were a celebrity at, Mr. Helm." Beth laughed. "Don't ask him what name he writes under, Mrs. Loris, or he won't be fit to live with the rest of the evening." Tina was still smiling, watching me. "So you with in public relations during the war. That must have been quite interesting, but wasn't it a bit risky at times?" Her eyes were laughing at me. I said, "Those jeeps we ran around in caused more casualties than enemy action, in our branch of service, Mrs. Loris. I still shudder when I see one. Combat fatigue, you know." "And after the war you just started to write?" Her eyes did not stop laughing at me. She'd undoubtedly been supplied with my complete dossier when she received her orders. She probably knew more about me than I knew about myself. But it amused her to make me read off my lines in front of my wife. I said, "Why, I'd done some newspaper work before I went into the service; it had got me interested in southwestern history. After what I saw during the war, even if I never got into combat . . . Well, I decided that men fighting mud and rain and Nazis couldn't be so very different from men fighting dust and wind and Apaches. Anyway, I went back to my job on the paper and started turning out fiction in my spare time. Beth had a job, too. After a couple of years, my stuff just started to sell, that's all." Tina said, "I think you're a very lucky man, Mr. Helm, to have such a helpful and understanding wife." She turned her smile on Beth. "Not every struggling author has that advantage." It was the old behind-every-man-there's-a-woman line that we get all the time, and Beth winked at me as she said something suitably modest in reply, but I didn't find it funny tonight. There was that patronizing arrogance in Tina's voice and bearing that I knew very well: she was the hawk among the chickens, the wolf among the sheep. Then there was a movement behind me, and Loris appeared, carrying his big hat and Tina's fur wrap. "Sorry to break this up," he said, "but we're having dinner with some people across town. Ready, dear?" "Yes," she said, "I'm ready, as soon as I say goodnight to the Darrels." "Well, do it quick," he said. "We're late now." He was obviously trying to tell her that something urgent required their attention; and she got the message, all right, but she spent just a moment longer adjusting her furs and giving us a pleasant smile, like any woman who's damn well not going to let herself be hurried by an impatient husband. Then they were going off together, and Beth took my arm. "I don't like her," Beth said, "but did you pipe the minks?" "I offered you mink the last time we were flush," I said. "You said you'd rather put the money into a new car." "I don't like him, either," she said. "I think he hates small children and pulls wings off flies." Sometimes my wife, for all her naive and girlish looks, can be as bright as anybody. As we walked together towards the front of the house, past little groups of people grimly determined to keep the party going no matter what time it was or who went home, I wondered what had happened to send Tina and her partner rushing off into the night. Well, it wasn't my problem. I hoped I could keep it that way. CHAPTER 6

FRAN Darrel kissed me goodnight at the door. Amos kissed Beth. It's an old Spanish custom which Beth detests. Just about the time she outgrew the unpleasant chore of kissing her New England aunts and grandmothers, and could get a little selective in her osculation, she married me and moved to New Mexico, where, she discovered to her horror, it was her social duty to take on all corners. Amos, to do him justice, was one of the less objectionable male kissers of our acquaintance, satisfied with a token peck on the cheek. I think he made that much of a concession to local custom only because Fran had told him that he might hurt the feelings of some of her friends if he didn't. In a11 social matters Amos took his cue from Fran, since it didn't mean a thing to him, anyway. Afterwards, he stood there with his vague, bored look while the women went through their goodbye chatter; and I stood there, and found myself suddenly wishing he'd get the hell back inside and out of the light. A guy of his scientific importance ought to have more sense than to hang around in a lighted doorway below a ridge full of desert cedars that could conceal a regiment of expert riflemen. It was a melodramatic idea, but Tina and Loris had started my mind working in that direction. Not that Mac's people were any threat to Amos, but their presence meant trouble, and once there's trouble around, anybody's apt to find a piece of it coming his way. "It was sweet of you to come," Fran was saying. "I do wish you wouldn't rush off. Mart, you have a nice trip, hear?" "The same to you," Beth said. "Oh, we'll see you again before we leave." "Well, if you don't, I hope you have a wonderful tune. I'm green with envy," Beth said. "Good night." Then the Darrels were turning away and entering the house together, and nothing whatever had happened to either of them, and we were walking towards Beth's big maroon station wagon where it stood gleaming with approximately four thousand dollars worth of gleam in the darkness. I asked, "Where are they going?" "Why, they're going to Washington next week," Beth said. "I thought you knew." - I said, "Hell, Amos was in Washington only two months back." "I know, but something important has come up at the lab, apparently, and he's got to make a special report. He's taking Fran along, and they're going to visit her family in Virginia and then have some fun in New York before they come back here." - Beth's voice was wistful. To her, real civilization still ended somewhere well east of the Mississippi. She always had a wonderful time in New York, although the place always gives me claustrophobia. I like towns you can get out of in a hurry. "Well, we'll try to make New York some time this winter, if things go well," I said. "Meanwhile we'd better settle on a place to eat tonight. If we take our time, maybe Mrs. Garcia will have the kids in bed when we get home." We had dinner at La Placita, which is a joint on the narrow, winding, dusty street sometimes known as Artists' Row by people who don't know much about art. There were checked tablecloths and live music. Afterwards we got back into Beth's shining twenty-foot chariot. If Beth had married a New York broker and settled in a conventional suburb in her native Connecticut, I'm sure she'd have become an enthusiastic Volkswagen booster. It would have been her protest against the conformity around her. In Santa Fe, where they never heard of the word conformity, and with a screwball author for a husband, she needed the Buick to keep her sense of proportion. It was a symbol of security. She glanced at me quickly as I drove past our street without turning in. "Give them a little more time to go to sleep," I said. "Don't you ever put gas in this bus?" "There's plenty," she said, leaning against me sleepily. "Where are we going?" I shrugged. I didn't know. I just knew I didn't want to go home. I could still see Tina's black-gloved hand gracefully giving me the old stand-by signal. If I went home, I'd be expected to make myself available, somehow-take a walk around the house to find the cat, have a midnight burst of inspiration and dash out to the studio to get it down on paper. I was supposed to place myself alone so they could reach me, and I didn't want to be alone. I didn't want to be reached. I took us through the city through the sparse evening traffic and sent the chrome plated beast snarling up the long grade out of town on the road to Taos, sixty miles north. There should have been a release of sorts in turning loose all that horsepower, but all it did was remind me of the big black Mercedes I'd stolen outside Loewenstadt-it was the assignment after I'd kissed Tina goodbye and lost track of her-with a six-cylinder bomb under the hood, a four-speed transmission as smooth as silk, and a suspension as taut and sure as a stalking tiger. When I'd glanced at the speedometer-on a dirt road, yet-the needle was flickering past a hundred and eighty kilometers per hour, which translates to a hundred mph and some change. And I'd thought I was kind of babying the heap along. - It almost scared me to death, but for the rest of that job I was known as Hot Rod, and all driving chores that came up were left to me without argument, although I could get an argument from that bunch of prima donnas on just about any other subject. . . . Well, I never saw any of them again, and some of them hated my guts and ~ wasn't very fond of theirs, but we moved our sniper into position and made our touch on schedule, so I guess it was a pretty good team while it lasted. Mac didn't believe in letting them last very long. One or two assignments, and then he'd break up the group and shift the men around or send them out to lone-wolf it for a while. Men-even our kind of men-had a perverse habit of getting friendly if they worked together too long; and you couldn't risk jeopardizing an operation because, despite standing orders, some sentimental jerk refused to leave behind another jerk who'd been fool enough to stop a bullet or break a leg. I remembered solving that little problem the hard way, the one time it came up in a group of mine. After all, nobody's going to hang around in enemy territory to watch over a dead body, no matter how much he liked the guy alive. I'd had to watch my back for the rest of the trip, of course, but I always did that, anyway. "Matt," Beth said quietly, "Matt, what's the matter?" I shook my head, and spun the wheel to put us onto the unpaved lane that feeds into the highway at the top of the hill. The big station wagon was no Mercedes. The rear end broke loose as we hit the gravel, and I almost lost the heap completely-power brakes, power steering, and all. For a moment I had Buick all over the road. It gave me something to fight, and I straightened it out savagely; the rear wheels sprayed gravel as they dug in. I took us up on the ridge, with those soft baby-carriage springs hitting bottom on the bumps, and swung in among the pinons and stopped. Beth gave a little sigh, and reached up to pat her hair back into place. "Sorry," I said. "Lousy driving. Too many Martinis, I guess. I don't think I hurt the car." Below us were the lights of Santa Fe, and beyond was the whole dark sweep of the Rio Grande valley; and across the valley were the twinkling lights of Los Alamos, in case you were interested, which, unlike Amos Darrel, I was not. They no longer make so many loud disturbing noises over there, but I'd liked the place better when it was just a pinon forest and a private school for boys. Whatever it was Amos had turned up in his lab, and was rushing to Washington to make his report on, I had a hunch it was something I could have lived quite happily without. Looking the other way, you could see the shadowy Sangre de Cristo peaks against the dark sky. They'd

already had a sprinkle of snow up there this fall; it showed up ghostly in the night. Beth said softly, "Darling, can't you tell me?" It had been a mistake to come up here. There was nothing I could tell her; and she didn't belong to the catch-as-catch-can school of marital relations. In my wife's book, there was a time and a place for everything, even love. And the place wasn't the front seat of a car parked a few feet off a busy highway. I couldn't talk to her, and I wasn't in a mood for anything as mild and frustrating as necking, so there wasn't a damn thing to do but back out of there and head for home.

CHAPTER 7 -

MRS. Garcia was a plump, pretty woman who lived only a few blocks away, so that, except in bad weather or very late at night, she did not have to be driven home. I paid her, thanked her, saw her to the door, and stood in the doorway watching her walk along the concrete path to the gate in our front wall. Like many Santa Fe residences, ours is fortified against invasions of our privacy by six feet of adobe wall ten inches thick. After she'd gone, closing the gate behind her, it seemed very quiet. I listened to Mrs. Garcia's receding footsteps and to the sound of a lone car going past outside the wall. There was no sound inside and no movement except for our large gray tomcat-named Tiger by the children despite a total lack of stripes-who made a quick, silent pass at the door, hoping to slip inside unnoticed. I closed the screen in his face, locked the door, and reached for the switch to turn out the yard lights. They could be controlled from the front door, the kitchen, the studio, and the garage, and they had cost a pretty sum to install. Beth could never understand why we'd had to spend the money. She'd never lived in such a way as to consider it a luxury, at night, to be able to hit a single switch and determine, at a glance, that there was no enemy inside the walls. I let my hand fall from the switch without pressing it. Why should I make life easy for Tina and her friend? When I turned away, Beth was watching me from the arch of the hallway that led back to the children's bedrooms. After a moment, she said, without mentioning the lights, "All present and accounted for. Where's the cat?" If not exiled at night, the beast will hide under the furniture until we've retired, and then jump in bed with one of the kids. They don't mind in the least, not even the baby, but it seems unsanitary. "Tiger's all right. He's outside," I said. She watched me cross the room to her without smiling or speaking. The light was soft on her upturned face. There's something very nice about a pretty woman at the end of a party evening when, you might say, she's well broken in. She no longer looks and smells like a new car just off the salesroom floor. Her nose is maybe just a little shiny now, her hair is no longer too smooth to caress or her lipstick too even to kiss, and her clothes

have imperceptibly begun to fit her body instead of fitting some mad flight of the designer's fancy. And in her mind, you can hope, she's begun to feel like a woman again, instead of like a self-conscious work of art. I pulled her to me abruptly and kissed her hard, trying to forget Tina, trying not to wonder what Mac wanted with me after all these years. Whatever it was, it wouldn't be nice. It never had been. I heard Beth's breath catch at my roughness; then she laughed and threw her arms around my neck and kissed me back just as hard, playfully wanton, coming against me shamelessly and fitting her mouth to mine with deliberate disregard for whatever lipstick she had left. It was a game we sometimes played, pretending to be real wicked, uninhibited people. "That's better," she whispered a little breathlessly. "You've been looking like a thunderstorm all evening. Now let me go and . . . Matt, don't!" It was a game, and I was supposed to know the moment to take time out and let her escape to the bedroom and make a quick change into a pretty nightie, but I couldn't seem to make myself abide by the ground rules tonight. I heard her gasp with surprise and apprehension as I swung her around and let her down on the nearby sofa, following her down and lying against her. But her lips were soft and unresponsive now. Her breast was remote behind layers of clothing. "Please, darling," she whispered, turning her face from me, "please, Matt, my dress . . There are times when a husband can't help remembering that he's a fairly large man and his wife's a relatively small girl and that if he really wants to . . . I put the thought aside. I mean, hell, you can't go around raping people you love and respect. I got up slowly and took out my handkerchief and scrubbed my mouth. I walked to the front door and stood looking out through the glass at the lighted yard, hearing her rise behind me and go quickly out of the room. Presently I heard the bathroom door close. I turned and walked into the empty bedroom and started to pull off my tie, but changed my mind. My suitcase was already packed, standing by the foot of my bed. Like most old southwestern houses, ours was built with a complete lack of closet space and we've never quite made up the deficiency; in consequence, such things as camping clothes and equipment have to be stored out in the garage and studio. Part of what I needed had already been loaded in the pickup, the rest was ready and waiting for me. By morning I could be in Texas. Normally, I have a good New Mexican's aversion to that loudmouthed state and all its residents, but at the moment it seemed like a fine place to be. I carried the suitcase to the kitchen door, deposited it there, and stepped down the hail to look in on the baby. Further down the hall there was Matt, Jr., aged eleven, and Warren, aged nine, but they were getting a little too big to get mushy about at night. But you never quite get used to the sight of your own babies, I guess; they always seem like a cross between a practical joke and a miracle from heaven. Our youngest, Betsy, sound asleep, had wispy blonde baby-hair and a square, pretty little face that was lengthening out now as she got her first teeth. She was not quite two. Her head still looked too big for her body, and her feet looked too small for anything human. I heard a sound behind me as I covered her up, and turned to face Beth. I said, "Shouldn't she have a sleeper on?" When you've nothing whatever to say to your wife as man to woman, you can always fall back on acting like a parent. "There aren't any; she wet the last pair," Beth said. "Mrs. Garcia washed it out, but it isn't dry yet." I said, "I think I'll throw my gear into the truck and take off. I can be halfway to San Antonio by morning." She hesitated. "Should you? After all those Martinis?" This wasn't, I suspected, exactly what she wanted to say, but it was what came out. "I'll take it easy. If I get sleepy, I can always pull off the road and take a nap in back." It wasn't precisely what I wanted to say, either, but we seemed to have lost the knack of accurate communication. We looked at each other for a moment. She was wearing something filmy and pale blue with a negligee of the same stuff, and she looked like an angel, but the moment was past, and I could work up no real interest in nylon angels, not even when I kissed her lightly on the lips. "So long," I said. "I'll call you tomorrow night if I can, but don't worry if you don't hear from me. I may be camping out." "Matt . . ." she said, and then, quickly, "never mind. Just drive carefully. And send some cards to the boys; they love to get mail from you." Crossing the rear patio in the glare of the lights, I unlocked and pushed wide the big gates that open into the alley that runs alongside our property. In Santa Fe, you're apt to find alleys anywhere. Before we bought the place, the studio was rented as a separate apartment, and the tenant, who didn't have garage privileges, parked his car in the alley. I carried the suitcase into the garage and threw it into the bed of the pickup, which is covered by a metal canopy with small windows at front and sides and a door facing aft. Upon the door, for all following drivers to see, my oldest son had pasted a sticker reading: DON'T LAUGH, IT'S PAID FOR. I opened the garage doors, drove out into the alley, closed up the garage, returned to the truck, and backed it in through the big gate and up to the studio door. Leaving the motor running to warm it up thoroughly, I went into the studio, which is an L-shaped building at the rear corner of the lot, with thick adobe walls like the main house. One wing of the L serves me as a kind of sitting and reading room, with a studio couch that becomes a bed in emergencies. Around the corner are my files and typewriter. The little cubicle next to the bathroom, which used to be the apartment kitchen, is now my darkroom. I changed into jeans, a wool shirt, wool socks, and a pair of the light-colored, low-heeled, pull-on boots with the rough side of the leather showing that are sometimes known locally as fruit-boots, being the preferred footgear of a few gentlemen whose virility is subject to question. The appellation is doubtless unfair to a lot of very masculine engineers, not to mention, I hope, one writer-photographer. Dressed, I hauled my bedroll out to the truck, and then loaded the camera cases, as well as the little tripod for the Leicas and the big tripod for the 5x7 view camera. This last I probably wouldn't use once in three thousand miles, but it sometimes came in handy, and driving alone I had plenty of room. Having been a newspaper photographer before the war puts me in the pleasant position of being able to work both sides of the street. I planned to use the projected trip first for an illustrated article, after which I'd turn around and put the material into a book of fiction. I wasn't thinking about much of anything, now, except getting packed and away before something happened to stop me. I looked around to see what I'd forgotten, and went around the corner to my desk and reached for my keys to unlock the drawer that held the short-barreled Colt Woodsman .22. I might be a peaceful citizen now, but the little automatic pistol had been my traveling companion too long to be left behind. Starting to put the key into the lock, I saw that the drawer was already open a quarter of an inch. I stood looking at it for perhaps a minute. Then I put the keys away and pulled the drawer fully open. There was, of course, no longer any pistol inside. Standing there, I pivoted slowly, searching the room with my eyes. Nothing else seemed to've changed since I'd left the place that afternoon. The other guns were still undisturbed in their locked wall rack. I took a step to the side so that I could look back into the sitting and-reading area. This, too, seemed unchanged. There were the usual sheaves of yellow copy paper cluttering up the furniture: I'd spent the day kicking around some story ideas I thought might fit what I expected to see in Texas. There was a Manila envelope on the arm of my big reading chair. The place is always lousy with those, too, but it occurred to me now that I hadn't seen this particular one before. I walked over and picked it up. It was unlabeled and unmarked. I pulled out the contents: a stapled-together manuscript of about twenty-five pages. At the top of the first painfully neat page was the title and the author's name: MOUNTAIN FLOWER, by Barbara Herrera. I laid down the manuscript, and walked over to the darkroom door, turned on the light, and looked inside. She wasn't there. I found her in the bathroom. She was sitting in the tub, which was empty of water but filled instead, with the voluminous pleated skirt and frothy petticoats of her white fiesta costume. Her brown eyes, wide open and oddly dull, stared unblinkingly at the chromium faucet handles on the tiled wall before her. She was quite dead.

CHAPTER 8

IN A way, I'll admit, it was kind of a relief. I don't mean to sound callous, but I'd been waiting for something unpleasant to happen ever since Tina gave me the sign in the Darrels' doorway. Now, at least, the game was open and I was getting to look at the cards. It was tough about the girl-still hoping to get me to read her damn little story, she must have slipped in here and interrupted something or somebody she shouldn't have-but I'd had people die I'd known longer and liked better. If she'd wanted to stay healthy, she should have stayed home. Already I had readjusted. It had happened that quickly. Three hours ago I'd been a peaceful citizen and a happily married man zipping my wife's cocktail dress up the back and giving her a little pat on the rear to let her know I found her attractive and liked being married to her. At that time, the death of a girl-particularly a pretty girl I'd met and talked with-would have been cause for horror and dismay. Now it was just a minor nuisance. She was a white chip in a no-limits game. She was dead, and we'd never had much time for the dead. There were living people around who worried me a lot more. Mac, I reflected, must really have been playing for high stakes, if they were authorized to knock off any casual innocent who might interfere. When necessary, we'd done it over in Europe, of course, but those had been enemy civilians in wartime. This was peace, and our own people. It seemed a little rough, even for Mac. I frowned at the dead girl for a moment longer, fueling, in spite of everything, a certain sense of loss. She'd seemed like a nice kid, and there aren't so many good looking girls around you can afford to waste any. I sighed and turned away, and went out of the bathroom, crossed the big room to the gun rack on the wall, unlocked it, and took down my old twelve-gauge pump shotgun. It bore the dust of years. I blew it clean, checked the bore for obstructions, unlocked the ammunition drawer below the rack, took out three buckshot shells, and fed them into magazine and chamber. The gun had a muzzle device, one of those adjustable choke gadgets that let you use the same gun for everything from quail at twenty yards to geese at sixty. I set the thing to maximum dispersion, which was still not wide enough to prevent it from putting the full load of nine buckshot into a man's chest-or a woman's-across the room. It had been a long time since I'd seen Mac, and his people were still, it appeared, playing for keeps. For all I knew, they considered me an outsider nowadays, in spite of the confidential signals that had been passed. It wasn't exactly a friendly gesture, leaving dead bodies in my bathtub. If I was to have visitors before long, as seemed likely, I thought I'd feel a lot happier celebrating auld lang syne with something lethal in my fists. I went back into the bathroom, set the shotgun by the door, rolled up my shirt sleeves, and bent over Barbara Herrera. It was time to get rid of some of the finer and more sensitive feelings I'd developed since the war. I wanted to know precisely how she'd died; from the front she showed no marks of violence. I found a swelling at the side of her head, and a bullet-hole in back; her long hair and the back of her white dress were bboodsoaked. It wasn't hard to read the signs. She'd been taken by surprise, knocked out and carried into the bathroom, placed in the tub where the mess could easily be cleaned up later, and shot to death with a small-caliber pistol, the sound of which would have been barely audible through the thick adobe walls. I thought I knew whose pistol had been used, and my guess was confirmed when I saw a little .22 caliber shell under the lavatory. It almost had to be from my gun; Tina went in for those little European pocket pistols with the calibers expressed in millimeters, and Frank Loris didn't look like a precision marksman to me. If he carried a gun at all, it would be something that would knock you down and walk all over you, like a .357 or .44 Magnum. It looked as if they were setting me up for something very pretty, or at least making quite certain of my cooperation, I reflected; and then, as I eased the dead girl gently back to her former position, I felt something between her shoulders, something hard and businesslike and unbelievable beneath the stained material of her dress. Very much surprised, I checked my discovery. The outline was unmistakable, although I'd only met a rig like that once before. I didn't bother to pull the bloody dress down to get at it. I knew by feel what I'd find. It would be a flat little sheath holding a flat little knife with a kind of pear-shaped symmetrical blade and maybe a couple of thin pieces of fiber-board riveted on to form a crude handle. The point and edges would be honed, but not very sharp, because you don't make throwing knives of highly tempered steel unless you want them to shatter on impact. It wouldn't be much of a weapon-a quick man could duck it and a heavy coat would stop it-but it would be right there when someone pointed a gun at you and ordered you to raise your hands or, even better, clasp them at the back of your neck. Slide a hand down inside the neckline of your dress, under that long, black, convenient hair, and you were armed again. And there can be situations when even as little as five inches of not very sharp steel flickering through the air can make all the difference in the world. Well, it hadn't worked this time. I straightened up slowly and went to the lavatory to wash my hands, meanwhile allowing my estimate of Barbara Herrera to undergo considerable revision. "I apologize, kid," I said, turning. "So you weren't just a white chip, after all?" I looked at her thoughtfully while I dried my hands. Then I searched her thoroughly. In addition to the knife, she carried a little clip holster above the knee-one reason, I suppose, for the squaw dress with its big skirt. The holster was empty. I looked at the dead, pretty face. "Sorry, kid," I said. "I could have told you how it would turn out if you'd asked me. You just went up against the wrong people. You were cute and smart, but anybody could tell by looking at you that you didn't have enough tiger in your blood. But you had me fooled, I'll grant you that." There was a ghost of a knock at the studio door. I picked up the shotgun and went to answer it.

CHAPTER 9

SHE made a slender, trumpet-shaped silhouette in the doorway, in her narrow, straight black dress that flared briefly at the hem, as was the current fashion- well, one of the current fashions. I can't keep up with all of them. She stepped inside quickly, and reached back a black-gloved hand to press the door gently closed behind her. She was still dressed as she had left the Darrels', mink and all. I took a step backward to leave a strategic amount of room between us. Tina looked at my face and at the shotgun in my hands. It wasn't pointed at her-when I aim a loaded firearm at someone, I like to pull the trigger-but it wasn't pointed too far away. Deliberately, she slipped the glossy fur stole from her shoulder, folded it once, and draped it over her arm, from which a small black bag already hung by a golden chain.

"Why didn't you turn off those stupid lights?" she asked. I said, "I was hoping you'd find them inconvenient." She smiled slowly. "But what a way to greet an old friend? We are friends, are we not, ch�ri?" She'd had no accent at the Darrels', and she wasn't really French, anyway. I'd never learned what she was. We didn't ask that kind of question back in those days. I said, "I doubt it. We were a lot of things to each other in a very short time, Tina, but I don't think friends was ever one of them." She smiled again, shrugged her shoulders gracefully, glanced again at the shotgun, and waited for my move. I knew it had better be good. You can stand only so long threatening with a gun someone you don't intend to shoot before the situation becomes ridiculous-the situation, and you, too. I couldn't afford to become ridiculous. I couldn't afford to be the fat old saddle horse, long retired to pasture, now summoned, almost as a favor, for one last, brisk trot through the woods before the final, merciful trip to the fish-hatchery. I was good for something besides fish-food yet, or at least I hoped I was. I'd run my own shows during the war, almost from the start. Even the one on which I'd met Tina had been mine after I joined her, in the sense that I carried and gave the orders. Mac or no Mac, if I had to be in this one-and the dead girl in the bathroom didn't leave me much choice- I was going to run it, too. But looking at Tina, I knew it would take doing. She'd come a long way since the rainy afternoon I'd first made contact with her in a bar, pub, bierstube, or bistro-take your choice according to nationality-in the little town of Kronheim, which is French despite its Teutonic-sounding name. To look at her then, she was just another of the shabby little female opportunists who were living well as the mistresses of German officers while their countrymen starved. I remembered the thin young body in the tight satin dress, the thin straight legs in black silk stockings, and the ridiculously high heels. I remembered the big red mouth, the pale skin, and the thin, strong cheekbones; and I remembered best the big violet eyes, at first sight as dead and dull as those with which Barbara Herrera was now contemplating the bathroom fixtures. I remembered how those seemingly lifeless eyes had shown me a flash of something fierce and wild and exciting as they caught my signal across the dark and smoky room that was filled with German voices and German laughter, the loud, overbearing laughter of the conquerors. . That had been fifteen years ago. We'd been a couple of cunning, savage kids, I only a little older than she. Now she made an elegant, adult shape against the rough-plastered wall of my studio. She had more shape and color, she was older and healthier and more attractive-and much more experienced and dangerous. She looked at the shotgun and said, "Well, Eric?" I made a little gesture of defeat and set the piece against the wall. Phase one was over. I wondered how it would have gone if she'd found me unarmed. She smiled. "Eric, Liebchen," she said, "I am glad to see you." Now the endearments were coming through in German. "I can't say the same." She laughed and stepped forward, took my face in her gloved hands, and kissed me on the mouth. She smelled a lot better than she had in Kronheim, or even in London, later, back when soap and hot water had been expensive rarities. What her next move would have been I never found out, because as she stepped back I caught her wrist, and a moment later I'd levered her right arm up between her shoulder blades in a good old fashioned hammerlock, and I wasn't gentle about it, either. "All right," I said. "On the floor with it, querida!" She wasn't the only one who could make with the languages. "Dump the weasels, kid. Herurnten mit der mink!" She tried for me with a thin spike heel, but I was ready for that and the latest in cocktail fashions didn't give her much leg-room. I tightened the lock until she moaned a little through her teeth and bent forward to relieve the strain. It put her right into position, and I brought my knee up smartly, hard enough to rattle her vertebrae, against her smoothly elasticized posterior- another writer, more clever than 1, has discovered a relic of Victorian modesty in the fact that, while women nowadays may admit to the ownership of two legs, upon formal occasions, at least, they must still seem to possess only a single buttock. "I'll break your arm, darling," I said softly. "I'll kick your behind right up between your ears. This is Eric, my little turtledove, and Eric doesn't like dead girls in his bathtub. But he can get used to the idea, and it's a good sized tub. Now shed the pelts!" She made no sound of assent, but the fur stole dropped to the floor, not with the slithering sound you'd expect, but with a solid, if muffled, thump. Apparently there was a pocket somewhere in that furrier's masterpiece, and it wasn't empty. This hardly came as a surprise to me. "Now the purse, kiddo," I said. "But gently, gently. The bones take so long to knit, and casts are so unbecoming." The little black bag dropped on top of the furs, but even this cushion didn't prevent the impact from being noticeable. "That's two," I said. "Let's say mine and the Herrern's, for the sake of argument. Now how about putting your personal hardware on display for an old friend?" She shook her head quickly. "Oh, yes, indeed, you've got one somewhere. Say the little Belgian Browning, or one of those pretty toy Berettas they've been advertising She shook her head again, and I slid my left hand up her back and hooked my fingers into the high neck of her dress. I put some tension on it, enough to cut off her wind a bit. We heard a stitch pop somewhere. I said, "I've no serious objection to naked women, chiquita. Don't make me peel you to look for it.'' "All right, damn you!" she gasped. "Stop choking me!" I released the dress, but not her wrist. There was a coy little slit in the front of the garment, through which a hint of white skin was supposed to show intriguingly as she moved. She slipped her free hand inside, brought out a tiny automatic pistol, and dropped it on top of the other stuff on the floor. I swung her away from the pile of armaments and let her go. She wheeled to face me angrily, rubbing her wrist; then she reached back with both hands to massage her bruised bottom; suddenly she was laughing. "Ah, Eric, Eric," she breathed. "I was so afraid, when I saw you . . "What were you afraid of?" "You looked so changed. Slacks, tweed jacket, a pretty little wife. And the well-fed stomach. . . . You should watch out. You will be a human mountain, tall as you are, if you let yourself get fat. And the eyes like a steer in the pen, waiting for the butcher. I said to myself, he will not even know me, this man. But you did. You remembered." She was feeling for her little veiled hat as she spoke, patting her hair, pulling up her gloves and smoothing her dress; she bent over, turning half away as a woman will when her stockings need attention-then she was pivoting sharply, and there was a shining blade in her hand. I took one step back, brought my hand from my pocket, and flicked open the Solingen knife with a snap of my wrist. It's not necessarily the most efficient way to get that type of cutlery into action when you've both hands free, but it looks impressive. We faced each other, knives ready. She held hers as if she was about to chip ice for a highball; I remembered that it had been strictly an emergency weapon with her. As for me, as a kid I'd been interested in all kinds of weapons, but particularly in the edged ones. I guess it's the Viking in me. Guns are fine, but I'm an old sword-and-dagger man at heart. Anyway, with my reach, I could have carved her like a Christmas turkey, almost regardless of our relative skills. She didn't have a chance, and she knew it. I said, "Yes, Tina, I remembered." She laughed, straightening up. "I was just testing you, my sweet. I had to know if you could still be relied upon."

"A test like that could get your throat cut," I said. "Now put the shiv away and let's stop horsing around." I watched her retract the sliding blade of the parachutist's knife and tuck it into the top of her stocking. "Must be hard on the nylons," I said. "Now tell me all about the kid in the john, with her cute little neck knife and her trick knee holster." Tina let her dress fall into place and stood looking at me in a measuring and weighing manner. I'd passed the entrance exam, but I could see that she wasn't quite sure of me yet, after all the years of soft living. I'd been looked at like that before. I could still remember, very distinctly, the pep talk we'd got from Mac, each one of us new recruits, the first time we actually saw him. At least I suppose the others all got it, too. Each candidate was handled and trained individually up to a point, so that if he didn't make the grade he could be turned back to his former branch of the service without too much interesting information in his head. So I can't really speak for anyone but myself, but I remember the shabby little office-like all the subsequent shabby little offices in which I was to make my reports and receive my orders-and the compact, gray-haired man with the cold gray eyes, and the speech he gave while I stood before him at attention. He was in civvies, and he hadn't called for any military courtesies. I didn't know his rank if he had any, but I wasn't taking any chances. Somehow, I already knew this outfit was for me if they'd have me; and I wasn't too proud to take what advantage I could get from a good stiff back and liberal use of the word "sir." I'd already been in the Army long enough to know that they'd practically give the joint to anybody who could shoot, salute, and say "sir." And anyway, when you're six feet four, even if kind of skinny and bony, the word doesn't sound humble, merely nice and respectful. "Yes, sir," I said, "I wouldn't mind learning why I've been assigned here, sir, if it's time for me to know." He said, "You've got a good record, Helm. Handy with weapons. Westerner, aren't you?" "Yes, sir." "Hunter?" "Yes, sir." "Upland game?" "Yes, sir." "Waterfowl?" "Yes, sir." "Big game?" "Yes, sir.'' "Deer?" "Yes, sir.'' "Elk?" ''Yes, sir." "Bear?" "Yes, sir." "Dress them out yourself?" "Yes, sir. When I can't get somebody to help me." "That's fine," he said. "For this job we need a man who isn't scared of getting his hands bloody." He was looking at me in that same measuring and weighing manner as he went into his talk. As he explained it, it was merely a matter of degree. I was in the Army anyway. If the enemy attacked my unit, I'd shoot back, wouldn't I? And when the orders came through for us to attack, I'd jump up and do my damnedest to kill some more. I'd be dealing with them in the mass under these conditions; but I was known to be pretty good with a rifle, so in spite of my commission it wasn't beyond the realm of possibility that one day I'd find myself squinting through a telescopic sight, waiting for some individual poor dope to expose himself four or five hundred yards away. But I'd still just be selecting my victims by blind chance. What if I was offered the opportunity to serve my country in a less haphazard way? - Mac paused here, long enough to indicate that I was supposed to say something. I said "You mean, go over and stalk them in their native habitat, sir?"

CHAPTER 10