Donald Hamilton: The Shadowers

"Well, they should be just about ready for you below, sir," he said, and showed me to the door, or hatch, by which we'd come out. "Watch your head going down the ladder..

I couldn't tell you exactly where aboard the ship the little movie theater was, but it had obviously just seen use as a conference room, judging by the scattered paper, empty glasses, full ashtrays, and the smell of tired tobacco smoke. There were only two people in it now. One was a woman. The first impression she made on me can best be described by saying that after a brief glance to make sure I didn't recognize her, I looked at the man.

He was lean and gray-haired, with black eyebrows. He wore a charcoal-gray flannel suit, a neat white shirt, a conservative silk tie, and he may have looked like a well-preserved middle-aged banker or businessman to some people, but he'd never look like that to me. I happened to know he was one of the half-dozen most dangerous and ruthless men in the world.

I recognized him, all right. I should, having worked for him for well over fifteen years, off and on.

Mac said, "Thank you, Mr. Braithwaite. Wait next door, if you please."

"Yes, sir."

Mac watched the young lieutenant (jg) turn smartly and depart. He smiled briefly. "They train them well up there on the Severn, don't they?"

I wasn't particularly interested in Braithwaite's training, but if Mac wanted to apply the casual touch I'd play along, for a while at least.

"He's a good boy," I said. "He hasn't allowed himself to be human once, so far. And he drives a sports car like an artist. But he's going to sir me to death if he isn't careful."

Mac said, "I seem to recall another young officer who had a predilection for that word. He was a pretty good driver, too."

"Yes, sir," I said. "But, sir, I don't think you'll have as much luck getting this one to switch services, sir. He likes the Navy, sir."

Mac shrugged. "I'll make a note of his name nevertheless. There may come a time, world conditions being what they are, when personal preferences will again have to be disregarded. Not that you were hard to persuade, if I remember correctly."

I said, "I always was a bloodthirsty kid. I don't think this one's quite mean enough for you."

"Well, we'll see." He studied me appraisingly. "You look fit. The rest has done you good."

"Yes, sir."

"I was sorry to hear about the lady's accident."

I looked at him for a moment. He'd never approved of my interest in Gail Hendricks. He'd thought her a spoiled bitch, rich and unreliable, not at all the sort of dedicated, dutiful little girl he preferred to have his men associate with, if they couldn't be satisfied with professional entertainment. We have, of course, no real private life. All our attachments, amorous and otherwise, are a matter of record in the Washington office.

I said, "I'm sure you cried all the way to the filing cabinet to pull her card, sir."

He didn't call me down for disrespect. He just said, "Of course you took steps to determine that it was an accident."

"Yes, sir. She was upset, for personal reasons we don't have to go into here. She'd had too much to drink. She was driving much too fast. It was a long, sweeping curve and she swung out toward the edge a little too far and tried to come back. They think all they need are power brakes and power steering to make two tons of luxury machinery handle like a stripped-down racing Ferrari. At that speed, she'd be riding the damn curve right at the limit of tire adhesion for a car that big. When she hauled on the wheel, the Cad started to slide. She panicked and hit the brakes and everything broke loose and she went off into the trees. There was no evidence of sabotage or any other fancy monkey business. There were no bullet wounds, hypo marks, or unexplained bruises. Somebody could simply have pulled alongside and forced her over, of course, but there's no indication that anybody did."

Mac grimaced. "I don't like accidents involving our people. There's always a question. Well, I'll keep in touch in case they should turn up something, but we can't spend any more time on it now."

He glanced at the woman standing nearby, waiting. When he looked her way, she came forward to join us. At close range, I saw that I'd done her a slight injustice in dismissing her with a glance. It was the makeup, or lack of it, that had fooled me. There was also the straight, mousy, pulled-back hair and the horn-rimmed glasses.

She was moderately tall. Her bulky tweed suit made her figure hard to judge correctly. The straight, loosefitting jackets currently fashionable may come in handy to disguise an unwanted pregnancy-a problem this lady wasn't likely to have to face, I judged-but they can hardly be called flattering. Her sensible shoes did nothing for her legs and ankles. Still, she wasn't obese, emaciated, or deformed.

As for her face, it had a lot of forehead and chin, as well as a grim, unhappy mouth. I put her age between thirty and thirty-five, although it could have been less. I decided that I didn't like her. There's really no excuse for a potentially presentable female to deliberately go around looking like Lady Macbeth after a hard night with the knife. I mean, it's a kind of reverse vanity that implies a lot of real conceit somewhere.

While I was looking her over, she was giving me a thorough examination from hair to toenails. She turned to Mac and spoke without enthusiasm.

"This is your alternate candidate, Mr. McRae? Isn't he rather tall for an agent? I supposed they were all fairly inconspicuous people."

"This is Mr. Paul Corcoran," Mac said, passing over the personal comments. "Paul, Dr. Olivia Mariassy."

Dr. Olivia Mariassy barely acknowledged the introduction with a nod my way. "I suppose that's an alias," she said to Mac. "It's a poor choice. The man is obviously of Scandinavian descent, not Irish." Still speaking to Mac, she frowned at me: "Well, at least he doesn't have the slick, ivy-league look of the other prospect. I don't think I could stomach that crew cut and that button-down collar very long, not to mention the pipe. I think a pipe is nearly always an affectation, don't you? Do you smoke?"

The final question was thrown at me. "No, ma'am," I said. "Not unless my cover requires it."

"Cover?"

"Disguise."

"I see. Well, that's something," she said. "Only a fool would poison himself with coal tar and nicotine after all the evidence that has been published. Do you drink?"

"Yes, ma'am," I said. "I also run around with women. But I don't gamble. Honest."

That got me another long look through the hornrimmed glasses. "Well," she said, "a rudimentary sense of humor is better than none at all, I suppose."

Mac said, "Mr. Corcoran's training and experience-"

"Please! I'm not questioning the professional qualifications of either candidate. I'm sure they are both very rapid on the draw, if that's the proper phrase. I'm sure they're both capable and ruthless and perfectly horrible. Do you play chess?"

She'd aimed that one at me. "A little," I said.

Olivia Mariassy frowned thoughtfully. There was a brief silence. Her head came up. "Well, he'll have to do. The other was quite impossible. If I have to marry one of them, I'll take this one." She turned away and bent over a worn briefcase on one of the theater seats, took out a small black book and handed it to me. It was Capablanca's Chess Fundamentals. "You'd better study that, Mr. Corcoran," she said. "It will give us something to do on our honeymoon. Goodbye, Mr. McRae. I'll leave the arrangements to you. Just let me know what you want me to do."

We watched her walk out with her briefcase. Mac didn't speak and neither did I. 1 won't say I couldn't. I just didn't try.

DOWN inside the big ship where we were-wherever that was-there wasn't a thing to be heard except the steady, ever-present rumble of the heavy propulsion machinery. All the planes in the world could have been landing overhead or none at all. There was no way of telling.