Donald Hamilton: The Poisoners

The afternoon paper on the bed contained practically the same news as the morning paper I'd appropriated on the plane. There was a front-page picture of a hillside giving way due to rain and depositing a movie star's house gently in the middle of the highway below. There was an interview with a seismologist who predicted that a violent earthquake, long overdue, would soon wipe California off the map. There was an editorial on water pollution, a smog warning, and an interview with a Mexican official who considered that the resumption of the U.S. anti-smuggling campaign along the border, with its harmful effect on the Mexican tourist business, was a clumsy and insulting way of putting pressure on his government to crack down on illicit Mexican growers of marihuana and opium poppies.

Still holding the phone, waiting, I flipped the pages one-handed, looking for the continuation of the story, but stopped at a short column headed: SCIENTIST MISSING. Dr. Osbert Sorenson, a meteorologist at the University of California, Los Angeles, had left his office at his usual time, one evening last week, but had never arrived home. Fearing kidnapping, his family had kept the news quiet until now, waiting for a ransom note that hadn't come. The police were reserving judgment, but an associate of Dr. Sorenson's was quoted as hinting darkly that the doctor had received threats from large business interests-very large business interests-opposed to his work for a better environment. It seemed that the doctor was president of the Abolish the Internal Combustion Engine Committee of California, also known as the AICEC, which I'd read something about earlier in the day.

I frowned at the newspaper page, thinking it was the most promising item I'd encountered. Weather, earthquakes, pollution, and drugs were kind of out of my line of work, but I'd had to do with several missing scientists with slight crackpot tendencies during the course of my undercover career.

It seemed unlikely that the theory of the disappearance hinted at by Dr. Sorenson's colleague was correct. To be sure, the big auto companies had run up a record of abysmal stupidity in dealing with real or imagined threats to their profits, but kidnapping or killing a respectable member of the UCLA faculty would be overdoing it, even for them. And if Ford, Chrysler, or General Motors hadn't got him, who had?

Anyway, it seemed like an interesting coincidence: a scientist missing in L.A. at roughly the same time an agent turned up dead. It would be a very long shot, I reflected, but if all other leads to Annette's murderer failed me, I might flip it and take a closer look at the Sorenson case, if only because I was intrigued by the notion of anybody having the nerve to try to abolish the conventional, petrol-powered automobile, particularly here in California where they practically take their beloved cars to bed with them.

A familiar voice on the phone interrupted my meditations. I said, "This is Matt, sir."

The use of my real name instead of my code name was supposed to let him know that we might not have the wire to ourselves.

"Who?" Mac asked, making sure it wasn't just a slip on my part.

"Matt Helm, in L.A. Can you hear me all right?"

"I hear you, Matt," he said, acknowledging the warning. "What's the situation out there?"

"Not good," I said. "Have you got your red pencil handy? Scratch Agent Ruby. Our brick-top just left us."

There was a little pause. "I'm sorry to hear it," Mac said at last. "She was a promising prospect. A little erratic and impulsive, but promising. We don't get too many of them these days."

"No, sir."

"The sincere peace-lovers and humanitarians have my respect, Matt-I'm in favor of peace and humanity myself-but I get weary of interviewing these warlike young candidates who'd just love to kill all communists by remote control, but wouldn't dream of getting real blood on their hands. As far as I'm concerned, they fall into the same category as the people who are happy to eat beef butchered by somebody else, but look with righteous horror at the man who goes out into the woods to shoot his own venison."

That was, I decided, a little homespun philosophy thrown in to make the conversation sound authentic to anyone listening.

"Yes, sir," I said.

"Did you get to the hospital in time to talk with her?" He put the question casually.

"Yes, sir," I said. "It wasn't much of a conversation, but she did tell me something. I don't know exactly what it means yet."

"What did she say?"

"I'm calling through the motel switchboard, sir."

"I see. Does anybody else know what you've got?"

"There was a doctor in the room. He was too far away to hear, but he was watching. A Dr. Freeberg."

"That's all right. He's good and he's safe."

"I questioned him a bit afterwards," I said. "As you probably know from the medical reports, she was shot twice: a bullet in the chest and what was supposed to be a finish-up shot in the back of the head. Dr. F. says that either bullet should have killed her instantly-they were 240-grain slugs from a.44 Magnum-but you know how it goes. One guy brushes up against a cholla cactus and dies of blood poisoning and the next fellow absorbs a full clip from an M-l rifle and is back on his feet in a month. She was tough and stubborn and Irish and she made a fight of it. The question is, sir, who do we know who makes a habit of using that much firearm?"

"I'll check it out. I can't think of anybody at the moment."

"Neither can I, sir. I remember just one man who lugged around a cannon that big," I said, "but he was pretty stupid and I know he's dead because I killed him. With a cute little.22 target pistol. But the.44 Maggie is not a common caliber in the profession, sir. It's a bear-hunter's gun-not that any one-hand weapon is adequate for really big game, but this one comes about as close as you can get. The last time I looked through a catalog, the smallest weapon made for the cartridge weighed over three pounds. Even with that much weight to hold it down, the.44's got a brutal recoil. It takes a masochist to shoot one, and he'd better be at least a two-hundred-pound masochist, if only just to lug the thing around."

"We'll feed it into the fancy new computer they insisted on giving us," Mac said. "I'll let you know what comes out. I understand there were signs that she'd been interrogated."

"Yes, sir. They'd worked her over a bit before they shot her. Was she carrying information somebody might be after?"

"Not as far as I know. I told you she was on leave, and she certainly had access to nothing of importance here before she departed-unless they wanted just general information about our latest training and operations procedures."

"Well, it could be," I said. "There's still a lot of curiosity about us in various foreign government bureaus. You said something about a reprimand, sir, but you didn't say what she'd done to earn it. It might be significant."

"I rather doubt it." He hesitated, and went on: "The details don't matter, but essentially she did something her own way instead of the way she'd been instructed to do it. Her way worked, as it happened, but it was much more risky and no more profitable." He waited for me to comment, but I remained silent. I'd never been a great one for following instructions to the letter, myself. He must have guessed what I was thinking, because he said, rather sharply: "When an agent has been with us long enough to develop some professional judgment, Matt, shortcuts are sometimes permitted or at least condoned; but first they have to learn to do what they're told in the way they're told to do it."

"Yes, sir," I said. "Whatever she did to get herself killed, she must have done it fast. She only left Washington yesterday."

"Did she have any relatives or friends in the Los Angeles area?"