Donald Hamilton - The Shadowers

"Annoy," she breathed. Annoy!"

I jerked by hand toward the mailboxes. "There it is. The name is Darden, as you know. The number is 205." I looked at her for a moment longer. "In case I run into trouble, or something, that chess book you once lent me is in my suitcase."

Then I was out of there and driving away, hoping I hadn't sounded too much like an ancient Greek promising to come back with his shield or on it. I hadn't the slightest intention of committing suicide if I could help it; and if you can't help it, it isn't suicide. It was going to be tricky, of course. An old pro like Kroch is always tricky, even with a screw loose; and bringing them back alive isn't as easy as shooting them, whether you're talking about elephants or enemy agents. Under the circumstances I'd much rather have brought him back dead, but that was a luxury duty said I must forego.

There wasn't any traffic on the causeway. If people lived all year in the little beach community Olivia had said was on the island, they apparently had no business on the mainland at this time of night. I crossed the sound and made the right turn as instructed, and soon there was nothing but sand on either side, irregular low dunes of it, with dark water showing occasionally beyond. The road was black against the white sand.

I saw the little gatehouse in the headlights and drove right up to it. There was nothing to be gained by being clever. He was expecting me to be clever. He was expecting me to pull off the road out of sight and sneak around like an Indian, all loaded down with lethal hardware. Since that was what he was expecting, I just drove up beside the car already parked at the side of the gatehouse and stopped.

It took me a little while to figure out how to turn on the interior lights of the Renault: you just twist the little plastic light itself. I took from my pocket the flat drug case we're all issued. It contains a special hypo and three types of injections, two permanent and one temporary. It also contains the little death pill for the agent's own use, unless he's wearing it elsewhere. I wasn't wearing mine on this job, since I didn't know anything of interest to anybody.

I loaded the hypodermic with the full four-hour dose of the temporary injection C, and put the stuff back into my pocket. I switched off the lights of the Renault and got out and looked around. The other car seemed to be a light blue in color. It was one of the big Chryslers, a convertible. That made it Mooney's, by the description I'd been given. Where Kroch's own car was hidden was anybody's guess. I didn't even know what make it was. He'd never given me a look at it. I reminded myself not to underestimate the guy. He might act loco at times, but his basic techniques were still good.

I thought about puffing the distributor heads off both cars, or bogging the vehicles in the sand somehow, but that would have been meeting him on his own terms, and he'd still have one car staked out somewhere in working condition. Instead, I left the key in the Renault, to make it look as if I didn't care how much transportation was available.

I went over to the road, stepped over the long, sagging, padlocked chain, and marched on toward the western end of the island, still a mile or so distant if Olivia had briefed me correctly. My shoes made loud noises on the hard pavement. The island was wider here-no longer just a strip of sand-and there were trees and bushes on both sides. The Gulf of Mexico was darkly visible off to my left. To my right, the water of the mile-wide sound I'd crossed couldn't be seen for a patch of woods, except where the trees had been cut away to allow for a half-overgrown road down to what seemed to be a rotting old pier.

I saw an oddly symmetrical, long, low, shadowy high to the right of the main road and realized that it was manmade: a great structure of concrete covered with dirt and overgrown with grass and brush. It was close to a hundred yards long, with two black openings gaping seaward. There was a neat little state-park sign in front.

I went up and struck a match like a nocturnal sightseer, wondering where he was hiding and how eager his finger was on the trigger. Well, if he wanted to shoot, he'd shoot. If not, if he really wanted to talk first, as I guessed, he'd be puzzled by my unorthodox behavior, which was fair enough. I'd been puzzled by his.

Apparently he wanted to talk first. No bullets came. The sign indicated that I was looking at the site of a former battery of two twelve-inch guns placed en barbette, whatever that might mean, in 1916, and casemated, whatever that might mean, in 1942.

He gave me no sign of his presence, but I knew he was watching as I blew out the match and waited for my eyes to get used to the darkness again. He'd be checking off one opportunity missed. He'd be wondering if maybe he shouldn't have shot after all, and to hell with conversation.

There were small night sounds all around. I wondered about snakes. It looked like good country for snakes and they always scare me. I started back toward the road and stopped. The farther opening in the gun emplacement or casemate or whatever it was showed a hint of light that hadn't been there earlier.

I don't suppose he really expected me to go right for it like a moth to a flame. He probably expected me to scout the whole deserted fortification first, looking for a back door by which I could sneak in and catch him by surprise-only he knew all the entrances and exits better than I did. He'd had time to learn them. Wherever I came in, he'd be waiting, so why waste the time?

I went straight for the lighted opening, therefore, and almost broke my leg stumbling into a masonry circle set in the ground in front, maybe something to do with the traversing mechanism of the great coast-defense gun that once had defended this shore of Florida first from the Kaiser and then from Adolf Hitler. I couldn't help wondering if they'd ever found anything to shoot at from here-perhaps a periscope or two out in the Gulf, or what looked like a periscope to an excited draftee.

The concrete doorway behind the circle was the size of a railway-tunnel opening. The light was quite weak, apparently only a reflection from a side corridor in there. I went in. The tunnel went straight through the artificial hill. I could see the vague shape of a smaller back entrance with trees beyond. It was barred by a metal grill.

I came to the side corridor, a concrete passageway that presumably ran the whole length of the fortification, but I couldn't see much beyond the lighted doorway on the right, just a few yards from the corner.

When I stood still, there wasn't a sound in the place except the sound of my own breathing. When I turned and walked toward the light, my footsteps awoke echoes all through the man-made hill. I came to the doorway. The room beyond might have been living quarters once, or an ammunition storage space. Now it was just an empty, windowless concrete chamber-almost empty, that is.

A kerosene lantern tied to a ringbolt in the far wall threw a yellow light over the barren room. Two motionless shapes were sprawled on the floor to one side. Well, I'd predicted that.

I'd predicted it to Olivia, who hadn't wanted to believe me, but I stood quite still anyway, regarding the two bodies from the doorway. Mooney was in his slacks and tweedy sport coat. A snappy hat lay beside him. Toni was wearing a loose, heavy black sweater, tight black pants and little black shoes resembling ballet slippers. She could have been sleeping quietly with her face turned toward the wall, except that nobody normally goes to sleep fully dressed on the dusty, hard concrete floor of an abandoned fortification.

Even as I thought this, one of the figures moved.

Mooney struggled to a sitting position, so that I could see that his hands and feet were tied; a tight gag kept him from crying out. He tried, however. He stared at me with bulging eyes and made some choked, gurgling noises, pleading for release I suppose. To hell with Harold Mooney.