Donald Hamilton - The Intriguers

"What do you know about something called the Federal Information Center?"

"Just what everybody knows," she said. "FINC is the brainchild of a red-faced, white-haired, smoothie political type named Leonard, who's mounted a real slick takeover operation with powerful political support."

"What did you call it?"

She laughed. "Officially, it's abbreviated FTC, but everybody calls it FINC. What else would you call a national collection of snoops and spooks?" After a moment, she glanced at me. "Did you talk to… him? What did he say?"

I reported my conversation with Mac, practically verbatim, and said, "Apparently, we are now the Bureau of Public Safety, operating under said FINC."

"Well, we've got lots of company, Mr. Helm. The CIA's latest overseas booboo and J. Edgar's recent death made it relatively easy for Herbert Leonard. Obviously, it was time for a change, or Congress thought it was, and he's it. The whole ball of wax. All the nation's intelligence agencies wrapped up in one glorious unified package. You must have read about it."

I said, "Hell, I don't read the papers when I'm on leave. Particularly when I'm on leave in Mexico. I don't listen to the radio, either."

"No, all you do is make eyes at skinny blondes." Martha spoke without altering her voice or turning her head. "Tell me, was she really any good in bed? She was tall enough even for you, but it didn't seem to me there was enough of her, crosswise, to give a man any real satisfaction."

I said, "Hush your dirty mouth, Borden. What do you know about an agent of ours with the code name Carl?"

Martha hesitated. "Well," she said after a moment, "his real name is Anders Janssen. He's on the list. There are ten names, eleven including you. He is number six, if that matters, but you were supposed to find him in New Orleans, where he'd been sent to hide out until the right time came, and the right man, meaning you."

I said, "Only now he seems to have resigned and headed for Oklahoma on a private mission of his own. What happened recently in Fort Adams, Oklahoma, Borden?"

"You must have heard-"

"Why make me say it again? I haven't read a paper or listened to a radio for three weeks on purpose. Tell me."

"Well," she said, "well, it was another of those riots, at a small educational institution called Fort Adams State University. The police and deputies opened fire, and three students were killed."

"I see," I said slowly.

"Why did you want to know?" Martha asked curiously. "Has it got something to do with Carl?"

"It's got a lot to do with Carl. One of the kids who got shot was his and he's running amok. My current orders are to do something about it, immediately if not instantly." I frowned at the four-lane highway sliding towards me in the bright Arizona sunshine. "However, I think since we're so close to the ranch, we'd better go have a talk with Lorna first."

The ranch is supposed to be absolutely safe, a place where even the most unpopular agent, sought by platoons of professional rub-out men of assorted hostile nationalities, can relax and rest, secure in the knowledge that nobody can reach him. This means, of course, that you don't just drive up to the gate and blow your horn when you want in.

I stopped in Tucson to make the necessary phone call. I got the conditional all-clear, meaning that I could proceed along a specified route out of town, not necessarily in the right direction, until, at a certain specified point, I passed a parked ear. The car would indicate, by its open door, that my clearance had been confirmed and I was free to head for my destination in the desolate country west of town. If the door of the vehicle was closed, I'd have to spend a day trying to shake whoever had been spotted tailing me, and call again tomorrow.

When I reached it, it wasn't a car but a pickup truck, but that was a permissible variation. Its hood was up and the driver was performing an invisible and probably unnecessary operation on its insides. The door on the driver's side was open. 1 drove past and kept going.

At last Martha stirred uneasily and glanced at me. "This isn't the way to the ranch, is it?" she said. "I've never been there, but it's west of Tucson, isn't it? We're heading kind of south and east, aren't we?"

"That's right," I said. "Have you had any training, Borden?"

"Why… why, not very much, yet. Why do you ask?"

"There's a mirror on your door but you haven't even glanced at it once. We've had a tall since about twenty miles north of Nogales." When she started to turn her head to look back, I said, "That's pretty poor technique, too. Not that it matters here, you can't see out the rear window and they can't see in due to that junior-grade ocean liner we have rolling along behind, but it's best to get in the habit of doing things right. Use the mirror if you want to look."

"But who is it? Who'd want to follow us?"

"Who'd want to shoot at me yesterday?" I asked dryly. "All I know is that it's a white Ford Falcon with Arizona plates, kind of old and nondescript, the sort of car nobody looks at twice. Let's hope it's just what it seems, and nobody's stuffed any surprises under the hood. They probably haven't. They probably figure anything with four wheels and a rubber band can keep up with us, the load we're dragging. We hope."

"I… don't understand."

I glanced at her impatiently; she was really pretty slow. I said, "Look, doll, that pickup truck gave us the all-clear, right? He sent us on through to the ranch, in spite of the fact that we've got a tail on us nobody who was really looking could have missed!"

"I still don't understand!" she protested. "What are you driving at?"

"It smells," I said. "If you've got company trailing along behind, you just don't get cleared to that place. Hell, that's exactly what all the monkey business is supposed to prevent. But we were cleared, tail and all. 1 think we'd better go on the assumption that something's awfully wrong inside that fancy fence, out there west of Tucson, that's all wired up with bells and whistles and closed-circuit TV. I think we'd better figure that there's a reception committee waiting for us, and that it's not just a bunch of friendly doctors and nurses and trainers concerned with nothing but our welfare. And the boys astern, well, I think we'd better assume they're a pair of sheepdogs assigned to herd us into the right pen and make sure we don't go astray between here and there."

The girl beside me shook her head sharply. "You're imagining things; you must be! From what I've heard, the ranch is the last place in the world where anybody could-"

"The last," I said, "or the first. The one spot I might drive up to, dumb and happy and unprepared for trouble."

"You mean… you mean you really think somebody has gone so far as to take the place over, just to set a trap for you?" She shook her head once more, unbelievingly. "Aren't you getting delusions of grandeur? Why would anybody consider you that important?"

I said, "We don't know what came first, the takeover or the trap. Maybe they'd already moved in on the ranch for other reasons-maybe they were after Lorna-and when I called, they just decided to let me walk into their arms, a kind of bonus. As for my importance, a certain gent in Washington considered me important enough to send you to me with passwords and secret lists and stuff, remember? And somebody considers me important enough to be shot, and I've got a pair of very persistent shadows astern. Until I find out why all this is happening, I'm going to be the most paranoid character you ever met, seeing murderers amid conspirators behind every greasewood bush in Arizona..

"What is it?"

I was watching the left-hand mirror as I drove. I said, "It looks as if our friends back there figure I've gone far enough in the wrong direction. Obviously, I'm planning to pass up the opportunity to attend their ranch barbecue as the guest of honor. Now, since I'm being so unsociable, something drastic's got to be done about me and they're just the boys to do it. At least they seem to think they are." We were pretty far out of the city now, and you lose civilization fast in that part of the country. I looked approvingly at the endless, empty landscape studded with sinister-looking dark rocks and weirdly shaped cacti. I said, "Isn't that a lovely hunk of real estate, for people in our situation?"