Donald Hamilton - The Interlopers

"Take them to their tent and tie them up," Holz said. "I'll question them later… Oh, just a minute." He turned to face us. "Let me first make the situation quite plain. You will find your accommodations rather basic, I'm afraid: merely a roof over your head, and a canvas roof at that. You will have noticed that the afternoon is already growing cool; the temperature will probably drop well below freezing tonight. To combat the cold, it helps to be well fed. A ground cloth and blankets are also useful. Everything is available at a price. Do I make myself clear?"

I managed a grin. "And the price is information? That's pretty childish, isn't it, Mr. Wood?"

He shrugged. "I see that you are a strong man, probably accustomed to hardship. What does the lady think? Am I being childish, Miss Meredith?"

She stared at him dully, but didn't speak. She'd been ahead of me during the ride, and although I hadn't seen much of her face, I'd thought she was making it all right, but now I was shocked at the way she looked.

I don't mean just the fact that she was rather spectacularly wet and muddy; I was by this time no sartorial masterpiece myself. What disturbed me was something dark and ugly and broken I thought I could see in her eyes. I'd seen it before, in people driven beyond their personal limits of endurance. It's a hard thing to fake. I didn't like it.

I took her arm and helped her to the tent that Holz indicated with his pistol. It was, as he'd warned, no palace. The floor was bare, if you want to call it that; actually it was dirt, softly and damply carpeted with a mixture of old spruce needles, humus, and decaying leaves. While Holz covered us, Jack tied us up, and propelled us inside. I landed pretty hard. When I'd caught my breath, I heard an odd little whimpering sound beside me. Libby was crying helplessly.

There wasn't much I could do to comfort her with my hands tied. I said, "Take it easy. We're still alive."

"I… I'm sorry," she gasped. "I c-can't help it. It just isn't fair!"

"What isn't?"

"This wilderness kick. It's just not my thing, that's all! I'm very g-good in cars and bars and penthouses, but that goddamn lousy b-bastard of a horse… God, I've got blisters, darling! And then it has to rain on top of everything. I'm filthy and soaking wet and my nose is running and I'm cold clear through… Look, I don't intend to freeze to death in here, I'm warning you. I'm just not going to do it. I've had it. I'm through!" She sniffled. "I'm sorry, darling, b-but that's the way it is. For b-brave little frontier heroines, you'll have to apply elsewhere."

"Spell it out," I said. "Just exactly what are you through with, Libby."

"I mean it!" she said defiantly. "To hell with the old school tie and all that jazz. I'm copping out, darling. They just picked the wrong girl for this pioneer bit. Anything it takes to get some food and blankets I'll do, even if it means telling everything I know about everything. Even about you!"

It was, of course, exactly the line she'd take to put pressure on me to talk if she were working with Holz. I warned myself that, judging by past performance, she was a good enough actress that there was no reason whatever for me to believe in her words or her tears. Nevertheless, I was aware of a new feeling of uncertainty. There had been too many odd, unexplained bits of behavior. Suddenly the reasoning by which I'd proved, to my own satisfaction, her guilty liaison with Holz, didn't seem quite as convincing as it had back in Beaver Creek this morning.

However, it really made very little difference whether she was now going to spill her guts through weakness, or whether she'd already betrayed me to Holz because she was working for him or with him. In either case, the man knew or soon would know all he really needed to know about me: my name. It made me feel no better to remember that I'd supplied her with the information, at a time when it didn't seem particularly important.

So far Holz had given no sign that he recognized me, but that could be just part of the cat-and-mouse game they like to play. My dossier was in files to which he had access, I was quite sure. With the name, he'd be bound to make the connection, if he hadn't already. Knowing for whom I really worked, he'd know what I'd been sent here to do.

"All right. Up, you!" It was the man called Jack, sticking his head in the canvas doorway. He was addressing me.

I said, "Sure, if you tell me how."

He knelt to untie my ankles. "All right, come along and no funny business!"

The big tent to which he took me was warm and comfortable, with a fire crackling in the sheet-metal stove. The elderly Indian was busy cooking something that reminded me I hadn't eaten since early morning. At the rear of the tent, some planks had been laid across impromptu trestles to form a table. The chairs were just chunks sawed off an eighteen-inch log. Jack kicked one of these up to the table and wrestled me down on it with unnecessary force.

I was beginning not to like the man very much, but I had to admit that, despite the plump appearance I'd noted this morning, he was no weakling. Besides, he didn't look nearly as soft and flabby in the rough clothes he was wearing now. I decided that he wasn't as much plagued with incipient obesity as he was simply built round to start with.

Holz was sitting on the other side of the table, on another improvised stool, or chopping block. In front of him lay a number of exhibits: Grant Nystrom's.357 Magnum revolver and holster, the Buck knife I'd picked up in Prince Rupert, and two black dog collars. There was also some other gear, including a fine, scope-sighted, bolt-action rifle and a box of 7mm Remington Magnum cartridges. They're all Magnums these days, rifles and pistols both.

"Well, Mr. Nystrom?" Holz said.

"Is that a question?" I asked. "If so, rephrase it, and I'll decide whether or not to answer it."

Jack swung a hard fist to the side of my head and knocked me off the log. I picked myself up with some difficulty, since my hands were still tied. Jack slammed me back down on the primitive chair.

"Don't talk like that to Mr. Wood," Jack said mildly.

I didn't say anything. Holz waited a little; then said, "These are the collars we got from the dog and from the two boys in the delivery truck. They are worthless, as you doubtless know. Where is the real one?"

"I don't know," I said.

Jack knocked me off the log once more, and I went through the routine of getting up and being rammed back into my seat.

When he was through, I said again, "I don't know" Jack started to raise his fist. Holz shook his head. "No," he said, "that'll be all, Jack."

"But, Mr. Wood…"

"That'll be all."

Jack shuffled out reluctantly. The Indian at the stove continued his cooking, oblivious of the rest of us. I faced Holz across the table, remembering that he'd killed, among a lot of other people, a colleague of mine called Kingston-but I hadn't been fond enough of Kingston for it to matter here. Holz's soot-black hair and moustache looked phonier than ever. Then I realized they were supposed to look that way. It wasn't a question of deceiving anybody now, it was a matter of preventing anybody from recognizing him later.

Shave the toothbrush from the upper lip, wash the dye and stickum out of the slick, shiny hair, throw away the silly, gold-rimmed, schoolteacher glasses, and you'd have a different man, one nobody who'd seen him in Alaska would find even slightly familiar. He had the dead-white, coarse, rather thick-looking skin with large pores that often seems to grow in eastern Europe. His eyes were a slatey gray color. They watched me steadily across the table. Abruptly and surprisingly, he gave a little laugh.

"Well, Mr. Nystrom, are you satisfied?"

"Satisfied?"

"That was the type of interrogation you expected, was it not? I didn't want to disappoint you." When I said nothing, he went on, "Of course, we are no longer interested in the dog's missing collar. We know that all five studs contained nothing but substitute messages. Four substitutions were engineered by the young men in that very interesting mobile laboratory, and the last one by me. I, of course, took personal charge of the real information from the final drop. From the young men in question, I got the material from the previous drops. They'd kept it in an ingeniously hidden safe in their van, the location of which they were persuaded to disclose to me."