Donald Hamilton: The Devastators

Mac said, "Maybe that was the mistake that betrayed him. As I told you, he was not one of ours, and I don't know how good a briefing he had, or how good an actor he was. He obviously blundered badly enough, somehow, to get himself caught and killed." Mac eyed me sharply. "And how do you know so much about the families of Scotland? You don't happen to have an ancestor who came from there?"

I shrugged. "I can probably scare one up if he's needed."

"I thought your family was strictly Scandinavian."

It was nice to catch him on something he didn't have in the files. "Whose family is strictly anything?" I asked. "Quite a few Scots migrated to Sweden at one time or another, sir. This was a guy named Glenmore. He had a claymore for hire and times were tough at home, so he went over a few hundred years back to swing his blade for a royal personage named Gustavus Adoiphus, who happened to have employment for gents handy with edged weapons. Apparently he married and stayed on after the wars were over. I don't remember the exact date or the place in Scotland he came from, but it's in a pile of stuff I'm paying storage charges on. My mother always claimed we were distantly related to some old Scottish dukes or barons."

"Modest people, the Scots," Mac said dryly. "I never met an Irishman yet who'd admit to being descended from anything less than a king. I want you to dig up as much family information as you can, Eric. It will give you an excuse for following Buchanan's trail through the wilderness of Scottish genealogy."

"Yes, sir," I said. "Let's hope my family tree grows up Ullapool way. If not, I suppose I'll have to bend it slightly. And then what?"

"By that time, 1 hope, you will have attracted enough attention from enough people to make the next move obvious. What form the attention will take is something we cannot predict. That is why Claire is being assigned to you."

"She's the backup man, or woman?"

"Precisely. She will be the featherheaded little blonde bride-naпve, ineffectual, and, we hope, ignored. This will give her an advantageous position from which to make her move when the time comes.

"You mean." I said, "when some natural causes try to make me dead like they did Buchanan?"

"That is more or less what I mean," Mac said slowly. "However, you must remember that Claire's job is not to serve you as bodyguard. The subject is her chief concern. Her assignment is to take care of him after you have, we hope, led him to reveal himself. She is under strict orders not to break cover-not under any circumstances-until she is certain that it will lead directly to the completion of the mission." He paused, looking at me steadily. "I hope I again make myself clear."

"Yes, sir," I said. "You always do, sir. In other words, as far as staying alive is concerned, I'm on my own. Claire will play helpless, letting the bodies fall where they may, until she sees the big break coming. Okay, I'm warned. I won't look to her for protection." I regarded him across the desk. "And now, sir, just what is the mission-or should I say, who is the mission? I've still heard no names and received no descriptions."

He said, as if in answer, "You've had all your shots?"

"Yes, sir. I'm immune to everything but the common cold. Any mosquito or tsetse fly that tries to stick germs into my hide is wasting his cotton-picking time. You'd think I was heading for a tropical-fever belt instead of the Scottish Highlands. I suppose there's a reason." I studied his face a moment longer. "Could it have some connection with the so-called natural causes that killed Buchanan?"

"It could," he said. "Don't count too much on those shots, Eric. Buchanan had had them, too."

"I see," I said. Again, it wasn't exactly true. "Perhaps you'd better tell me about it, sir," I said.

He did.

The information he gave me was very secret, so secret that it was known only to Washington and London, and maybe Moscow, Berlin, Paris, and Peking. Anyway, it was so highly classified that it hadn't been transmitted to Claire, in transit, because Mac didn't have authority to entrust it to an ordinary messenger. I was going to have to give her the final details after we'd met and found a secure place to talk.

Whether or not the dope I'd been given was actually as secret as its classification indicated-very few things are- it gave me plenty to think about on my flight from Washington to New York. I was still thinking about it as I climbed the stairs to the BOAC economy-class waiting room after going through the usual ticket-and-passport routine. I had the description, so I had no trouble spotting my bride. The world isn't exactly crowded with pretty little sunburned blondes, although it would be nice if it were. To clinch the identification, she was reading the current copy of House Beautiful, presumably boning up on how to furnish the split-level honeymoon cottage when we got home.

I stopped in front of her. She looked up from her magazine. It was a funny moment. She'd presumably been given as much information about me as I'd been given about her. We knew everything about each other that mattered professionally, and we didn't know each other at all, and now we were under orders to play man and wife-with all that implied-for days, maybe weeks, depending on how the job went.

There was an instant of wary appraisal. I got the impression she wasn't any happier about being told whom to share her bed and toothpaste with than I'd been. Then she went smoothly into her act. She jumped to her feet, letting the magazine fall unheeded to the floor.

"Matt, darling!" she cried, and threw her arms around my neck and kissed me hard, attracting some bored glances from our fellow travelers-to-be. "Oh, I was so afraid your plane was going to be late, dear!" she went on breathlessly. "How was Washington? Did you get your last-minute business all taken care of?"

I nibbled affectionately at her ear. "Sure," I said. "Did you have a nice visit with your folks, honey? I wish I could have gone with you and met them as we'd planned, but we'll stop by when we get back…

These histrionics were probably unnecessary, since there was no reason to think anybody would be watching us with more than casual interest until I made my first move to follow Buchanan's trail, in London. Still, somebody might check back this far later, and I always feel that if you're going to play a part, you might as well play it all the way, at least in public-and it's hard to tell what's public and what isn't, these electronic days. I was glad to see that Claire had the same professional attitude. I reminded myself that she was no longer Claire to me: she was Winifred Helm, my sweet little wife.

I looked her over and decided that I could have done worse. In fact, she was probably the cutest wife I'd ever had, for pretend or for real. I was married in earnest once, to a tall New England girl-I was a respectable, home-loving citizen for a number of years-but anybody who's been in this line of work is a poor matrimonial risk and it fizzled in the end. Now I had a pretty, phony little spouse, imported from the Orient, who had to stand on tiptoe to kiss me.

Her summer tan-well, it looked like a summer tan, however she'd got it-gave her an air of wholesomeness that was probably more convincing, for the role, than a pink Dresden-doll complexion would have been. That baby-face gag has been pulled a little too often. The warm dark skin also made an attractive contrast to her pale hair and clear blue eyes. She had just the right figure for her diminutive size, by no means sturdy and still not so fragile that you had to worry lest the first breeze carry her away. She was all done up for honeymoon purposes, to use Mac's terminology, in a little blue suit rather scanty in the skirt, a tricky white blouse, little white gloves, and one of those soft ruffled hats or bonnets, kind of resembling big fuzzy bathing caps, that seem to have taken the country by storm.