Donald Hamilton - The Interlopers

After he'd gone, I checked the door to make sure that, this time, the lock was set and the latch had caught. I turned to face Libby Meredith.

"Now what?" I asked.

Then I saw that she was calmly unbuttoning her blouse. She looked amused at my expression. "It's what they expect, isn't it?" she murmured. "We wouldn't want to disappoint them, would we?"

We didn't.

1 AWOKE TO FIND MYSELF LYING in a big motel bed without any clothes on, with a naked woman for company. Morally speaking, it was no doubt very shocking, but we don't do much moral speaking in this line of work. I was more concerned with the professional aspects of the situation.

Ungrateful and unappreciative though it might seem, after the pleasant night we'd just spent together, I couldn't help wondering just what the glamorous Miss Meredith really wanted from me. I mean, it hadn't been essential for her to go to bed with me as part of the act-in fact it hadn't been necessary at all-and I've long since given up the notion that I'm so irresistible that any woman who meets me just naturally grabs at any excuse to get out of her clothes and into my arms. I've found it much safer to assume that ladies who act in this uninhibited manner probably have nasty, ulterior motives for their behavior.

"What's your name, darling?" Libby Meredith's voice interrupted my wandering, early-morning thoughts. "And I don't mean Grant Nystrom."

I turned my head to look at her. She was being very casual about security. I certainly don't make a fetish of it myself, but I am aware that there are such things as electronic eavesdropping gadgets that can easily be installed in motel rooms. She read my thoughts and laughed at me.

"Relax, darling. I'm a very important person in the organization. They still trust me implicitly; they don't suspect a thing. I'm sure they wouldn't bother to put a microphone in my room."

It was a naive little speech for anyone as deeply involved with a lot of unpleasant people as she seemed to be.

I said, "If by organization you mean this Russian west coast espionage outfit we're trying to trip up, this is the first I've heard of any Communist group having implicit faith in any of its members, particularly amateur help playing at intrigue just for kicks."

I was trying it for size. Apparently it fit well enough, or she wanted me to think it did, because she didn't get very mad. A truly dedicated idealist, whether radical or reactionary, will blow his stack violently if you accuse him of being a thrill-seeking political amateur. Miss Meredith merely narrowed her eyes slightly.

"Don't be obnoxious, darling. I helped you out of a lot of trouble last night. You might at least be grateful enough to be polite."

"Sorry, ma'am," I said. "I always take off my manners with my pants. And I'm grateful enough for the trouble you helped me out of, but that doesn't keep me from wondering about the trouble you're helping me into." I reached out thoughtfully and drew a finger across her breast, incompletely covered by the sheet. "I mean, Miss Meredith, it was a lovely evening. Now what am I expected to do to pay for it?"

Her eyes remained narrow a moment longer; then she laughed softly. "I think I'm going to like you," she murmured. "Grant was sweet but he wasn't very bright. A woman gets bored with a man who has implicit faith in her. Poor Grant."

"Sure," I said. "Poor Grant. Did you get bored enough with him to set him up for murder?"

Still she didn't get mad. "No," she said quietly, "no, just bored enough to con him into betraying his country. I mean-" She hesitated, and made a wry little face. "-I mean, when you get a man like that trailing you around with big sheepy eyes and offering to do anything in the world for you, the temptation to take him at his word is hard to resist. But I didn't know I was putting his life in danger. In fact, they promised me that, as a courier, he'd be running no real risk except, of course, of going to jail. And there wasn't even much chance of that, they said, if he used his head."

"And you believed them?"

"Why not? The whole business had turned out to be pretty much a drag, as far as I was concerned. I mean, I'd gone into it for excitement, mostly, but all it was a bunch of mousy little men and drab little women making a big deal of sneaking around snapping pictures of dull documents snitched from dusty files. No sex, no shooting, no nothing. I was about to ditch them and take up shoplifting or something for real kicks when… when Grant disappeared. And then a couple of government men were waiting for me, a day or two later, and they took me to see the poor damn guy and his poor damn dog…" She stopped. After a little, she said, "They just looked so damn dead! Do you know what I mean?"

"I know," I said. "So you decided to change sides and give the government boys a hand, by way of atonement."

"Atonement, hell!" she said. "Those lousy red bastards promised me he would be safe, didn't they? I'm going to wreck their lousy red spy ring, every crummy cell of it, clear up to Point Barrow, Alaska. Well, Anchorage. I don't think they've got anybody much north of there, this particular gang anyway. And I'm going to take care of anybody else who had anything to do with Grant's death! You still haven't told me your name."

The sudden change of subject caught me off balance. I stalled by asking, "Didn't they tell you in San Francisco?"

"Those government boy scouts? Everything was a big secret to them. All they'd say was that they'd picked somebody to take Grant's place, and that this somebody needed all the information about Grant and his route and his instructions that I could supply." She paused. "Oh, they did show me your picture after you'd had your hair bleached. They asked what I thought of the resemblance. I had to tell them I didn't think it was very close."

I grinned. "Well, that figures. They wouldn't tell me much about you, either. What little I got, I got the hard way, and it's a good thing I did. They've got a serious epidemic of professional lockjaw in that department."

"It isn't your department?"

"No, thank God," I said. "I'm just kind of out on loan to them temporarily."

"But you are a government man, too?"

"That's right."

She smiled. "This is a hell of a place for a public servant, darling, in bed with a female subversive-even if she's a reformed female subversive."

"Maybe I'm a hell of a public servant," I said. "And my name is Matthew Helm. Now you know it, you'd better forget it."

"I will, but thanks for trusting me with it. I get a little tired of everything being so goddamned classified." She hesitated. "If they hadn't told you I was helping them, why did you risk coming here with Stottman? How did you know I wouldn't reveal you as a phony the minute you put your face on the door?"

"I didn't," I said. "I was bluffing. Stottman suspected me. I had to back him down, somehow. I was hoping that, by the time we got here, you'd have taken off for parts unknown. Or fallen out a window, headfirst, onto a concrete sidewalk. Which brings up the point: why are you here in Seattle, anyway? Those omniscient lads in San Francisco told me I didn't have to know anything about you because there wasn't a chance of my running into you up here."

"I don't take orders from them," she said. "They may think I do, but they're wrong. How about a drink?"

I shuddered and glanced at my watch. "At seven-thirty in the morning? What are you, a dipso or something?"

"Right now I'm a girl who wants a drink at seven-thirty in the morning."

She got out of bed, quite unconcerned about her nakedness. Her figure was as trim and attractive without clothes as it had been with them, which isn't often the case except among the very young. She kicked around among the garments strewn about the carpet-hers and mine-to find the pants she'd discarded the evening before, and pulled them on without benefit of underwear. Then she unearthed her blouse from the same heap, made a face at its wilted appearance, and struggled into it. Wearing it open, like a thin, loose, ruffled jacket, she moved, still barefoot, to the dresser, where she peeled the paper sock off a motel glass and poured herself a healthy slug from a bottle standing nearby, tempering it with barely a splash of water from a pitcher.