Donald Hamilton: The Wrecking Crew

Her voice was disapproving. Obviously she didn't like flamboyant humorists.

I said, "Of course, he doesn't have to be Caselius. He could just have been working for the man and decided that things were getting too hot for him and it was time to run to the boss for shelter. But could he have carried it off for years without his wife's knowing about it?"

Sara said, "It seems unlikely, doesn't it? However, she was shot, apparently. We don't really know how well the Taylor family got along. Men have been known to get tired of their wives, particularly if the wives happened to learn too much about them."

"She's under the impression he saved her life," I said. "Or says she is, which may only mean that one of them is a hell of a good actor. Well, let's sum it up. We can take the Taylor article two ways. One, it's the straight dope, and Taylor just learned too much for his own good, somehow, and made the mistake of publishing it. So he was lured into a deadfall and killed to keep him from spilling whatever else he might have found out that he hadn't put in this article and might put in the next. His wife happened to survive, and was released after they'd observed her long enough to be pretty sure she didn't know enough to do any damage."

"Yes," Sara said. "It could be that way. In which case you're wasting your time with her."

I said, "She's a bright girl; I've wasted more time in worse company." The woman beside me stirred; perhaps she took the remark personally. I went on crisply: "The other possibility is that Taylor is either Caselius or is working for him, and the article was just a kind of smokescreen he threw out when it was decided that the time had come for the character of Harold Taylor, American journalist, to be dramatically withdrawn from circulation. In this case, of course, the article isn't worth the paper it's written on. What about the wife? Did he try to kill her to shut her up, or was there perhaps a lot of shooting to make his socalled death look plausible to her, in the midst of which she took a bullet accidentally? In that case, she's still innocent, and we're still wasting time playing with her. Or is she in cahoots with him, an accomplice sent back to serve some sinister purpose, now that he no longer dares show himself in his old haunts? In that case, explain her wound."

"Plastic surgery," Sara said.

"She'd have to love the guy a lot to let herself in for spending the rest of her life with a scarred neck and a baritone voice."

"Maybe the surgeons promised to make her as good as new when the job is done, whatever it is," Sara said. "Anyway, women do strange things for men."

"And men for women," I said, "and so endeth our philosophy lesson for the day, inconclusively. Are there any final remarks you'd care to add before we adjourn the meeting?"

She shook her head. "No," she said, and hesitated. "No, but… Helm?"

"Yes?"

"If you find Caselius…" Her voice trailed off.

"Yes?"

She drew a deep breath and turned to face me. "Before you… before I help you any further, I must know what you intend to do. Are you going to try to smuggle him back to the States as a prisoner, or will you just turn him over to the Swedish authorities?"

I glanced at her, a little surprised. "Honey," I said, "that's none of your damn business. I have my orders. Let it go at that." Then I frowned. "What do you care? Do you have a yen for this mystery man?"

She drew herself up haughtily. "Don't be vulgar! But-"

"Quite apart from his value to the other side," I said, "which I've heard estimated at a couple of armored di-visions or the equivalent in fully equipped missile bases, you said yourself he's responsible for several deaths among your colleagues, in addition to what may or may not have happened to Harold Taylor."

She said coldly, "I'm not responsible for Caselius' conscience, Helm. I am responsible for my own."

I said, "Okay, honey. Spell it out."

"You've been sent to kill him, haven't you? That's your job, to hunt down a human being like an animal and destroy him! And I'm supposed to… to assist you in accomplishing your mission!"

"Go on," I said, as she hesitated.

She said, "I'm in intelligence, Mr. Helm. I'm a spy, if you like, and it's not a very respectable profession, I'll admit, but my job is to collect and evaluate information. It is not to act as a hound dog for a hunter of men! Not that you look to me like a very efficient hunter, but that's neither here nor there. The fact is…" The ash from her cigarette dropped into her lap, and she brushed at it quickly, annoyed by the distraction, and returned her attention to me. "There's a man called Mac, isn't there? And there's an organization that hasn't got a name, but they call it the wrecking crew, or sometimes the M-group. The M stands for murder, Helm!"

I hadn't heard that one. Some smart-alec must have come up with it since my time. "You're telling it, honey," I said. "Keep it coming."

Her head came up sharply. "Damn you, don't call me honey! Do you know where I got this information? Not from our side, from theirs! For years we've been hearing sly propaganda about an American Mordgruppe-hearing it and laughing at it and combating it as best we could, thinking it was nothing but their clumsy effort to justify their own dirty assassination teams. I can remember, when I was stationed in Paris, laughing myself silly when somebody asked me in all seriousness about this fellow called Mac, in Washington, who points a finger and someone dies. 'My dear man,' I said, giggling, 'you can't really believe we operate like that!' But we do, don't we?"

I said, "Finish the story, Sara. Let's pass the rhetorical questions."

She said, "I knew there was something odd when we were notified you were coming… Helm, don't we stand for anything? Have they actually succeeded in dragging us down to their level? Is the world simply divided into two hostile camps, with no moral distinction between them? I had to have a look at you; that's why I went to Gothenburg this morning, even though it was terribly bad technique. I had to see what kind of a man… I'm not going to do it, Helm! I've given you all the help you're going to get. As a matter of fact-"

"As a matter of fact, what?"

"Never mind," she said. "You can protest through channels, of course. You can try to have me removed from my post."

"Don't worry," I said. I reached for the door handle. "Don't worry abOut a thing, Sara. Just go back to collecting and evaluating important information… Well, I'd better be getting back to the hotel, and I guess I'd better arrive on foot, since I left that way."

She said, "Helm, I-"

"What?"

"Don't sneer just because I-"

"No sneer was intended, honey. I respect all your finer feelings, every last little one of them."

"Can't you understand how I feel? Can't I make you see how wrong it is?"

My wife had asked me that, too. She'd wanted me to understand how she felt, and I'd understood perfectly. She'd wanted me to see how wrong it was, and I'd seen. They all see what's wrong with the world, and tell you all about it

– as if you'd never noticed it before-but none of them has any practical suggestions about how to fix it. One day we'll all live on chemicals and never kill a living thing. Meanwhile, we eat meat and take the world as it is. At least some of us do.

"Good night, Sara," I said, getting out of the car.

Walking away, I was aware of a quick, glowing arc at the corner of my vision as she ificked her cigarette away into the dark. The car door slammed shut behind me. The little Volkswagen motor in the tail of the Ghia started to turn over, and stopped abruptly. I heard her muffled cry. Then they were on top of me.

Lead with your right and take your licking like a man, Mac had said, but it was a good thing I'd taken the precaution of leaving the knife behind. It was a wonderful, tempting spot for it. There's nothing like a knife when you're outnumbered three to one and fighting in the dark. But I didn't have it, and I wasn't supposed to know judo or karate, and as far as I'm concerned fist fighting is for kids. I did get one of them lightly with my knee, hoping it would seem accidental, and I bruised my knuckles on the other two, swinging wildly.