Donald Hamilton: The Ravagers

It couldn't be permitted, of course. I mean, to put it bluntly, Jenny was expendable, but Muir wasn't. He had to, by God, run a boat, and he was going to need good eyesight to do it. I wasn't about to have him doused with acid, no matter what happened to anybody else. He'd given me the cue. He'd indicated that one could deliver the papers as well as two-if that one was Gaston Muir.

I tried to do it the easy way, however. I honestly tried. I aimed the Luger to disarm, not to kill. I just kind of forgot what it was Naomi was holding. She'd swung her weapon high and now she was bringing it down, cowboy-fashion. They all think they have to chop holes in the air to aim a gun, forgetting that this up-and-down business only made sense back in the old cap-and-ball days when you had a fired percussion cap to toss clear, between shots, so it wouldn't jam the action.

As once before on this job, I had a snap shot to make with a strange pistol, but Muir's gun was a nicely balanced piece that shot where it was pointed, and I made it. The little high-velocity 7.65 mm. bullet intercepted the kid's swinging hand in midair, and the acid-gun blew up six inches in front of her face. I mean, when a glass container full of liquid is hit by a bullet traveling that fast, things don't just shatter, they explode.

There was a moment of complete silence, broken only by a kind of trickling sound as dirt dribbled from the tunnel roof here and there, dislodged by the concussion of the Luger. Jenny stopped trying to tear Muir to pieces and he stopped trying to fight her off. Everybody seemed to be waiting for something. Then Naomi screamed.

IT WAS a fairly horrible sound in that underground tunnel; it seemed to fill the place with madly chattering and whimpering echoes. Naomi screamed again, and turned toward me blindly. One sleeve and shoulder of her dark cotton shirt was splashed with lighter stains where the acid was already taking out the color. She had both hands to her face. She didn't seem to know that one was bleeding, drilled through by the same bullet that had destroyed her weapon. She stumbled over the lantern and fell, and the light went out.

She was screaming steadily now, but that wasn't the sound that interested me. I mean, in the absence of water to wash the stuff off with, or morphine to kill the pain, there was really nothing to be done for her. She was just another carrier pigeon out of the running-maybe I should say flying-and l concentrated on the little undercurrent of noise that told me that Muir, like a sensible man who'd lost his gun, was getting the hell out of there. I prayed that nothing would get in his way, and that he'd be real careful and not break a leg, or something, getting down the slope to the Volkswagen, and that the car would start for him.

Naomi had got turned around somehow and was moving away, stumbling, falling, and screaming in a mechanical, keening way like a badly wounded animal. I heard her begin to crawl. She seemed to be heading downhill, farther underground. After a while I could no longer hear the scuffling sounds of her progress. After a while, the screaming, too, stopped. The silence that followed lasted several minutes. I was in no hurry to break it by moving. I wanted Muir to have all the time he needed to get away.

"Dave."

I had almost forgotten about Battling Jenny, my unwelcome savior. "Right here, Irish," I said.

"Do you… do you think she's dead?"

"That stuff doesn't kill," I said. "You just wish it would. Hold everything while I make a light."

I struck a match and found the overturned lantern, unbroken. Some kerosene had leaked out, but there was still plenty in the cistern. When I got it lit again, the yellow light seemed very bright compared with the utter darkness that had preceded it. There were dark splashes of liquid, and shards of broken glass, on the floor of the tunnel. Avoiding these, I made my way up to Jenny, who was sitting where the roof came down low. Her heroic battle for our lives and liberties had left her rather picturesquely disheveled, but at the moment her damage seemed relatively insignificant.

"Come on," I said, getting down to negotiate the low bridge.

"But… but you can't just leave her down here!" Jenny's voice was shocked.

I drew a long breath. It wasn't her fault, I told myself. She'd done what she thought best. Maybe I should have taken her into my confidence earlier, orders or no orders.

I said, "For reasons I'm not at liberty to divulge, Irish, I am more interested in our boy Muir right now. I hope he knows how to drive a Volks. If not, I suppose I'll have to show him."

The hell of it was, he didn't. When we emerged from the tunnel, the car was still down there and he was in it trying to figure out where the Black Forest elves had hidden reverse gear. Then he looked up and saw us and slammed the lever into low, ran the car up the steep slope a little way, and let gravity roll it back while he spun the steering wheel frantically. Another uphill charge and rollback, and he had the bug turned around far enough that he could make a jolting circle back into the forest road. I took out the Luger, aimed carefully well clear of him, and fired twice for effect. I wouldn't have wanted him to get the idea I wasn't real mad at him for stealing my car.

When I looked around, after setting the safety again and putting the gun away, Jenny was watching me with a curious, speculative expression on her dirty face.

"You… you wanted him to get away," she said uncertainly. "Didn't you?"

I regarded her for a moment. She was really pretty spectacular. "Turn around," I said.

She looked a little surprised, but turned. I went through the zipper-and-button routine for the third or fourth time-I guess by actual count the third-and she stripped off the trailing, grimy remnants of her blouse. She bent over to rip away some rags and loops of lingerie stuff hanging down below her dress while I fastened her up again. The linen jumper wasn't clean and it was kind of bare of top, but at least it was reasonably intact.

Straightening up, she said as if there had been no pause, "You did. And you let him capture you on purpose, didn't you? I wondered, when I woke up and saw you sitting there pretending not to hear him behind you… Who are you really, Dave? What are you trying to do?"

I said, "If you'd peel that nylon fuzz off your legs, you'd look almost respectable."

She said, "If it hadn't been for that government man you killed in Montreal, I'd still think you were one of them." She stopped. Her face turned a little pale under the dust and freckles. She said, "That's it, isn't it? You are one of them. I was right about you all along. I just didn't understand what you wanted. I thought you were all just setting an elaborate trap for Hans. But that's it! My God! You'd go that far to make it look… you wanted those papers to go out of the country. That's been your job all along. To get them out without anybody's knowing that… that they were supposed to go out. Oh, my God!"

I wasn't supposed to admit anything, but she sounded distressed and the stuff was on its way at last and I couldn't help saying, "What's the matter?"

She looked at me without speaking for a second or two. Then she said, "There's nothing in that envelope."

I stared at her. I remembered a warning she'd given me, and later more or less retracted. I wanted to grab her and shake her, but I managed to keep my hands to myself.

I heard myself say, "Come again, Irish?"

"There's nothing in it, I tell you! Nothing of any importance to anyone."

"But I saw-"

"You saw a top sheet with a big red stamp. That's all you saw. If you'd looked underneath, you'd have found nothing but some dull correspondence of my husband's. I warned you twice, Dave. Way back there in Montreal I told you I was a perfectly ordinary person. Not clever. Not sinister. Not the kind of person who'd betray her country. But you insisted on believing I was subtle and wicked. The only one I've ever betrayed, if you want to use the word, is Howard; and I wouldn't have done that if he'd just… well, never mind that!"