Donald Hamilton: The Ambushers

"End of recording on Jiminez and Avila," Mac said, and pressed the switch again. He looked up. "That brings us to the mysterious visitor in the sun helmet. We've finally managed to dig up some pictures for you." He pressed a button and spoke into the intercom; he was getting gadgety as hell, I reflected. He said, "Would you bring in the photographs, Ellen? And pick up a tape for transcription?"

We waited in silence, until a pretty girl came in with a manila envelope which she laid on the desk. She was wearing a blue dress and high-heeled blue pumps, and her pale blonde hair was soft and shiny. It wasn't fair of me to resent her. She was well trained, I knew-they all are in that office-and because she had access to certain information she carried a small capsule hidden somewhere on her person. One day she might have to take it, or worse, she might not have time to take it. That day just hadn't come yet, for her.

She smiled at us, extracted a small reel of tape from the recorder built into the desk, and went out without speaking. Mac opened the envelope and drew out a thick sheaf of photographs, holding them out to me. I took them and sat down to go through them. You wouldn't believe how many scarred Germanic characters there are in the world. We seemed to have pictures of most of them.

I was aware of Mac shifting positions in his chair as 1 approached the bottom of the pile. Then the man in the sun helmet was looking at me from a glossy print, with the stern, martial expression of any army officer posing for an official photograph, which this was. It was a German Army photo, and the man was wearing a general's uniform. The uniform brought it back.

"Von Sachs," I said without looking at the identifying caption. "Heinrich von Sachs." I looked quickly at Mac. "You knew?'

"I was fairly sure from your description. I wanted you to pick him out yourself. You remember him now?'

"Yes, sir. He's damn close to the top of the list, now they've got Eichmann, isn't he?'

"Very close. The difference is that Eichmann, when captured, was no longer actively dangerous. He was simply biding out, trying to preserve his life. Von Sachs is a different breed altogether."

"Sure." I looked at the scarred, rather handsome face in the photograph. The face I'd seen through the telescopic sight had been older and grimmer, but then, whose wasn't? I said, "I guess he called himself a patriot. Maybe he still does. Maybe he is one. He just had a nasty way of showing it. They had him running the slaughter pens for a while, to keep him in line, didn't they? But they had to give him back his command eventually. In a military way, he was a good guy to have around, I guess, if you didn't mind your victories liberally seasoned with atrocity. And that wasn't something that kept Hitler up nights, as I recall."

"We are not concerned with his atrocities except indirectly," Mac said rather reprovingly. I remembered that he had always worked on the theory that we were a practical organization-a tactical organization-and that the sword of retribution was not our weapon. He had never accepted an assignment that involved killing a man just because he was a louse, perhaps because once you get into that racket it's so hard to know where to stop. "Nevertheless," he said, "when you took that shot at von Sachs, it's too bad you missed."

I looked at him across the desk. I laid the pictures gently before him and rose and went to the window.

"My apologies, sir," I said. "It was an oversight. The next time I will mow down everybody in sight, just in case there's somebody on the premises somebody wants dead."

"Eric-"

"I will also," I said harshly, "be careful to carry enough explosive to blow up any installation of military value anybody might possibly want destroyed. I regret I did such a sloppy job, sir. I am terribly sorry I simply knocked off the guy I was sent to knock off. If you will give me another chance, sir, I promise it won't happen again."

He said, "Sit down, Eric."

"Just tell me one thing, sir," I said. "Is there anything or anybody else I carelessly neglected to destroy or assassinate down there? I like to get all my reprimands in one package."

"It was not a reprimand," Mac said. He watched me go back to the chair. What's the matter with your leg?"

"Nothing," I said. "It's still a little stiff, is all. That Jiminez set one hell of a pace going in; and then I helped carry the litter coming out. Like a damn fool rd got rid of everything else I was packing, so I was the logical candidate for one end of the thing. I've still got blisters on my hands. If it's not a reprimand, what is it?"

"I merely said it is too bad you missed," he said, "because I'm afraid I must ask you to repair the error. We've been asked to deal with von Sachs. I had another agent scheduled for the job, but he has never seen Heinrich in the flesh. You have, now."

I said, "It would have been nice if I'd known this when I had the guy in my sights. And I don't like being credited with an error, sir, when I'm only firing to make noise because somebody's asked me to."

He said, "You are very touchy today, Eric."

I said, "It was a good, clean operation. And ever since

I got back people have been climbing all over me because

I didn't do a lot of things that weren't in the orders." I grimaced. "Skip it. Von Sachs is the subject. Elaborate."

"We could hardly warn you to look out for him in Costa Verde, since we had no idea he was going there and still don't know why he went. It's rather peculiar, as a matter of fact. Politically, he couldn't have had much in common with General Santos; you might say he's at the other end of the political spectrum. He has been operating, according to our sketchy information, in northern Mexico and across the border in southwestern United States, trying to establish a variation of the usual Nazi-Fascist program that has gained some adherents farther south in this hemisphere, Argentina for instance."

"I'll bet his variation is a cute one," I said. "He was a great little hater back in the forties, and he's had lots of time to practice since. From what I saw, I'd say some kind of a Latin-American deal was being cooked up regardless; El Fuerte was giving him the VIP treatment. This leftist-rightist stuff doesn't keep the boys apart when there's a mutual advantage to be gained by getting together. Well, that particular axis never got established. Probably it's just as well."

"Probably." Mac frowned. "There is an added complication you had better know about. Von Sachs is still being sought by certain groups interested in bringing him to justice for his older crimes. We may sympathize with their objectives, but we do not approve of anybody's circumventing our extradition laws and treaties, or those of our neighbors, by extra-legal mean. That is what I meant when I said that his atrocities concern us indirectly."

"I see," I said. I looked at him for a moment. "What you mean, sir, is that nobody's going to embarrass anybody's government by putting the international snatch on a dead war criminal."

"Precisely," Mac said. "I want you to drive out to the ranch and have Dr. Stern, or his assistant, take a look at that leg. That will put you right in the area. The materials and instructions are not quite ready yet. I will have them sent out while you are en route."

Tun RANCH IS IN SOUTHERN ARIZONA. To get to it, you drive first to Tucson and check with a certain telephone number, after which you proceed out of town by a specified route, seldom twice the same. Presently you pass a man changing the tire of a pickup truck or filling the radiator of a jeep or just standing beside an out-of-state sedan to snap a picture. If the door of the vehicle has been left open, you can go ahead. If it's closed, that means somebody's tailing you, and you have to go back to Tucson and await instructions.