Donald Hamilton: The Intriguers

He'd seen me going by, I figured; he'd seen me entering the bay once more and disappearing around the next point, steering purposefully in the direction of the sheltered yacht harbor inland. I knew he wouldn't worry about my reporting the shooting to the Mexican authorities. If he knew enough about me to want to kill me, he knew I wasn't the type of citizen who'd ask for police protection. The thing he wouldn't be quite sure about was whether or not I was really slinking ashore with my tail between my legs, satisfied-for the moment, at least-just to be alive, or whether I was being tricky and dangerous, with immediate and violent retaliation in mind.

He had a problem, all right, and it took him most of the day to solve it to his satisfaction. Meanwhile, I'd found the ideal spot in which to wait him out, holding my course until I was well out of his sight, and then swinging over to the north shore of the narrowing bay-his shore-and sneaking back cautiously through the shallows below the cliffs to a little rocky cove just around the promontory that blocked his view. Here I dropped the patent anchor overboard in eight feet of water.

It was, as I said, ideal. The surrounding rocks hid the boat from seaward, but from a standing position I could see over them, out towards the headland from which he'd done his target practice. I doubted that my face would be visible at that range, even through strong glasses. I broke out the bottom-fishing rig, stuck a dead sardine on the hook since by this time I had no bait left alive, threw it overboard, and set the rod into the starboard of the two holders near the stern. This made me, I hoped, as far as passing boats were concerned, just an innocent fisherman who'd been driven off the open gulf by the wind and was trying to find a little action inshore.

Then I opened the cushioned battery box that also served as helmsman's chair, storage bin, and toolchest, containing a little bit of everything from Band-Aids to emergency flares. I got out the waterproof packet of instruction books and other informative literature that had come with the boat. Something was bothering me, a discrepancy that I might have investigated earlier if I hadn't had the girl and her missionary attitudes to distract me: the fact that a craft that was, according to a plate attached to the seat, rated for a full ninety horsepower, should be so nervous at high speed with a mere eighty-five. Of course Chrysler, the manufacturer, specialized in fast automobiles. Maybe they just hadn't learned how to build fast boats yet, but it didn't seem likely.

I tipped up the motor so I could look it over carefully. A switch on the console did the job for me hydraulically, since the giant mill weighed over two hundred and fifty pounds. Aside from being larger than any outboard motor with which I'd ever associated, it looked perfectly normal. The horsepower was plainly marked on the cover; it also figured in the model number stamped on a plate attached to the mounting bracket.

Searching for a clue, I frowned down at the big three bladed propeller, just clear of the water. According to the factory literature I had available, this V-4 motor block came in several different standard configurations ranging from 85 to 125 horsepower, depending on bore and carburetion. The least powerful motor in the series, the one I was presumably looking at, normally turned a prop with a pitch of some fifteen to seventeen inches. The motor at the stratospheric top of the line swung a wheel with considerably more pitch-with that much extra power, you could drive a boat considerably farther with each turn of the screw.

It took some acrobatics to read the figures marked on my propeller without falling overboard, but when I saw them I had my answer. The pitch was a healthy twenty-one inches, enough to take a real bite of ocean. What was hanging on my transom was apparently not a normal 85-hp motor at all, since such a mild power plant couldn't possibly have got that steeply pitched wheel up to maximum rpm. Either I had a specially souped-up 85 on my hands or, more likely, somebody had simply taken a 125-hp model and switched covers and identification plates. No wonder the little boat had felt squirrely wide open, I reflected grimly, propelled by almost fifty percent more than her rated horsepower..

The wash of a passing vessel made me look up quickly, remembering what I was there for. Several boats were heading into the channel, but they were all larger craft, refugees from the offshore fishing grounds I'd deserted earlier. A fast runabout with some kids on board-a scow-shaped job with an inboard-outboard propulsion unit-came buzzing out from the yacht basin, stuck its blunt nose out into the rough stuff, turned quickly, and came back in again. Each boat that passed sent its wake across the narrows to rock my little vessel and break against the nearby shore.

I reeled in my line and found that something had stolen my sardine. I replaced it and tossed it out again. I lifted the cushion off the bench seat just forward of the steering console and procured beer and sandwiches from the built-in icebox underneath. All the comforts of home, I reflected wryly; all the comforts and conveniences including a reserve of sonic ten knots that nobody'd expect the little bucket to produce, looking at the markings on the motor-forty camouflaged horsepower that Mac had neglected to mention, describing the craft over the phone, when I'd called him from the hospital where I'd been sweating out the mild concussion I'd acquired in the line of duty.

"Guaymas, Eric?" he'd said, employing my code name as usual. My real name is Matthew Helm, but it doesn't get much use inside the organization. "What's so attractive about Guaymas, if I may ask?"

"Fish, I hope, sir," I said. "And a nice, warm, sunny beach."

"You can find good fishing and warm sunny beaches in this country. I should think you'd be a little tired of Mexico. You've been spending quite a bit of time there recently."

I frowned at the wall of the hospital room from which I was being evicted for being too healthy. Mac had promised me a month's convalescent leave, but he has a sneaky habit of trying to get a little government mileage out of our vacations by spotting us where we'll be handy in case he needs us.

I said, "Would you rather have me in California, sir? Or Texas, or Florida, or the Sea Islands of Georgia?" I mean, the only way to stop him when he starts getting subtle is by direct frontal attack. "Just name the spot, sir, and I'll be on my way. Of course, I'll expect to get my month's leave later, when you don't require my services any longer."

"Oh, no, you misunderstand me, Eric," he said hastily, two thousand miles away in Washington, D.C. I could visualize him sitting at his desk in front of the bright window he liked to make us squint at: a lean, gray-clad, gray-haired man with bushy black eyebrows. He went on, "No, indeed, I have no special place in mind. I was just curious about the fascination Mexico seems to hold for you. You say you plan to do sonic saltwater fishing'?"

"Yes, sir."

"Then you'll be needing a boat, won't you?"

"I was planning to rent one when I got down there."

"Rental boats are seldom very satisfactory. As it happens, we have a fairly expensive little fishing craft lying idle in Tucson, Arizona, not very far from where you are. We're going to have to dispose of it soon, since it has served its purpose. In the meantime, you might as well get some use out of it."

In one of the clumsy rented tubs from the marina, with a rusty old kicker on the stern, I'd have been a helpless target just now, I reminded myself. I'd had some luck, sure, but essentially it was the speed and maneuverability of my borrowed vessel that had saved me. It was an interesting coincidence. I didn't believe it for a moment.

I didn't even try to sell myself the foolish notion that, when an attempt was made to murder me, I'd just accidentally been sitting at the controls of a boat lent me by Mac that just accidentally happened to have the power and agility to get me away unharmed. Things like that just didn't happen accidentally when you were dealing with Mac. I didn't even put it past him-well, not very far past him-to have sent that sea lion to turn me off course at precisely the right moment to save me from a bullet, if he needed me alive and healthy for an impending mission.