Donald Hamilton - The Poisoners

Mac was, as always, conservatively dressed in a gray suit, like a banker, but his eyes were not a banker's eyes beneath the black eyebrows that contrasted strikingly with the steely gray of his hair. They were the eyes of a man who dealt, not in money, but in human lives.

"How are you, Eric?" he asked.

"It's too early to tell from this end," I said. My voice came out kind of creaking and rusty. "What's the medical opinion? My head hurts like hell. Where am I?"

He raised his eyebrows slightly, but said, "I believe this is the Hidalgo County General Hospital, twenty-five beds, at 13th and Animas Streets, Lordsburg, New Mexico. You don't remember?"

"I remember dealing with Willy," I said. "The film ends there. Incidentally, you can get out your red pencil and scratch one Nicholas. He was Nicholas."

"You're sure?"

"Yes, sir."

"Very good, Eric," Mac said. "In that case, I commend you for a satisfactory job."

"Thank you, sir."

"However," he went on deliberately, "I would like to point out that your assignment ended with Nicholas. We do not encourage suicide missions beyond the call of duty, Eric. Trained men are hard to replace."

"Yes, sir," I said. "What suicide mission?"

He did not answer directly. Instead he said, "Furthermore, certain people in Washington feel that the total destruction of the Sorenson Generator was not necessary. They would have liked to examine the machine more or less intact."

I grinned. "No matter what we do, or how we do it, they never like it, do they, sir? There's always something much better we could have done, by much more satisfactory means. Just how did I destroy the damn thing, anyway?"

"You rammed the truck carrying it. as it was coming down the mountain. The rig went off into the canyon, caught fire, and exploded. Apparently you jumped from your station wagon before the collision, but hit your head on a rock and knocked yourself out. I think a visit to the ranch is indicated, Eric. An operative should be able to unload from a moving car without sustaining even a mild concussion of the brain. You'd better do a little practicing under controlled conditions."

The ranch is the grim and businesslike place in Arizona where he sends us for rest and rehabilitation between jobs if we can't manage to talk him out of it, but this didn't seem like the right moment to try. Nor did it seem diplomatic to point out that he could logically chide me for embarking on a suicide mission, or for being clumsy in surviving it, but not both.

"What about Mr. Soo?" I asked.

Mac's eyes narrowed slightly. "So it was Soo. Not having heard from you, we had no way of knowing, although certain evidence indicated the Chinaman might be involved."

"I gather he wasn't caught."

"No. When the police arrived at the scene, they found the truck burning down in the canyon. They also found that your station wagon-"

"I don't suppose it matters, but the heap wasn't exactly mine," I interrupted.

He said, "The station wagon you were driving, having been knocked crosswise to block the road, had then been struck by a patrol car for which the police were searching, which had apparently been following the truck too closely to avoid becoming involved. The officer assigned to the car was found in the rear, dead from a bullet wound. You were lying unconscious at the side of the road. Later, the half-consumed bodies of two men were removed from the cab of the burned-out truck. However, the man who was driving the police car at the time of impact, and his passengers if any, have not been found."

"Well, Mr. Soo was probably the passenger," I said. "The driver was most likely a lean gent who looked as if he might know this country: a tanned, outdoors type called Jason, who seems to be a sign painter by vocation or avocation. Mr. Soo isn't really built for hiking, but Jason could have led him to safety somehow."

"There are indications that the Chinaman either reached a telephone or was in position to give some orders in person," Mac said. "A mysterious explosion, thought by one of our associated agencies to be connected with the case, has been reported back in the wild country of the Jornada del Muerte, if I've got my pronunciation correct-"

"Actually, it's pronounced Hornada, sir."

"To be sure. Perhaps you can throw some light on this subject. Our associates are highly interested in any information you can supply."

I said, "Well, Mr. Soo had a cache of the catalyst and fuel for his generator-"

"Oh, don't tell me about it, Eric." Mac's voice was dry. "This demolition project upon which you embarked without orders is no concern of mine. There will be some people in to question you about it, doubtless, at great length. Save your strength for them." He frowned. "Eric?"

"Yes, sir."

"One thing puzzles me. This is the third time you have encountered the Chinaman, is it not?"

"Yes, sir."

"Each time you've got the best of him, if I remember correctly. Yet, finding you unconscious and helpless by the roadside-according to the police, he couldn't possibly have missed you-he walked off and left you alive, the man responsible, once more, for wrecking all his elaborate plans. Doesn't that seem a trifle odd to you?"

I said, without conviction, "Well, I did save his life after a fashion, the first time we met."

"Soo is a professional. I do not think gratitude figures largely among his motives."

"I know," I said. As usual, Mac had put his finger on the sour spot in the performance; the thing that had been bothering me, also. "It's puzzled me, too," I admitted. "Willy wanted to kill me for old times' sake-he still carried a grudge about that Mexican operation I loused up for him a year or so back-but the Chinaman fought him off me like a she-bear defending her cub. I wonder-"

"What, Eric?"

I hesitated. It was a wild idea, but I had to ask the question, anyway. "Just how effective was the damn generator?" I asked. "Just how much damage did it actually do in Los Angeles?"

"I don't have the exact figures, but apparently it was quite a serious smog attack, serious enough to warrant a second alert."

"Second out of how many?"

"The third is the one that calls for full emergency measures."

"Then the second wouldn't indicate a major catastrophe?"

"I would say not."

I drew a long breath. "Suppose the generator didn't work nearly as well as Sorenson had claimed it would, sir. You know these scientists, they always oversell their discoveries. Suppose the damn thing was actually, a great disappointment to Mr. Soc."

Mac frowned thoughtfully. "Go on, Eric."

"Suppose Mr. Soo and his people originally thought they'd got their hands on a hell of a murderous weapon, sure death on heavily populated targets; and then suppose they learned that all it could really produce for them was a few additional cases of asthma and a lousy second alert. Suppose Mr. Soo decided, after analyzing his Los Angeles figures, that the Albuquerque show just wasn't worth putting on; that as a matter of fact it should definitely be aborted, because it might tip us off that the Sorenson generator wasn't nearly as dangerous as had been thought."

"It is an interesting idea, Eric. Continue."

"He left me alive. He went to a lot of trouble to keep me alive, when it would have been much simpler to let Willy have me. Why? Could it be that he planned to turn me loose eventually, to beat the drum for this terrible weapon I'd seen the Chinese testing? Testing! Who tips off the enemy by testing a weapon like that-a pilot model, he claimed-in the enemy's own territory? I don't think it was a pilot model. I think it was the real thing, and I think Mr. Soo was trying to stage a real, deadly, double attack, meant to throw us into a real panic. Only it fizzled. And then the Chinaman had to figure out some way of salvaging something from his investment, so he decided to fill me full of misleading and terrifying information. That would explain why everybody kept telling me stuff about that generator, making it sound like a real doomsday device, when there was no need to tell me anything at all."