Donald Hamilton: The Wrecking Crew

Then they had me by the arms, and a couple more were shoving Sara Lundgren along the walk toward me.

THEY TOOK us back through the trees into the little clearing where there was some illumination from the gaudy phone booth, from the lights along the sea-wall promenade, and from the open sky that had the faint yellow glow that goes with any big city, anywhere in the world. The stars looked weak and far away. They'd been much closer, I remembered, back home in New Mexico.

I wasn't really scared, however. We were over the first hurdle. If killing had been on the program, I figured, I'd have been dead already. That had been the greatest risk, considering the circumstances, and it was past. Now we were playing games. All I had to do was keep the rules clearly in mind, and I'd be all right. Well, relatively all right. I don't suppose any normal man really enjoys being beat up.

The three of them went to work on me again. They were quite amateurish about it. I got pummeled here and there, I got a cut lip and that would probably turn into a black eye, and a hole in the knee of my slacks when I went down. I was glad I'd had the forethought to change from my good suit. Each one of my attackers was very careful to offer himself to me, wide open, every time he came in to take his swing. You had to hand it to them. They were brave men. They exposed themselves to kicks that would have maimed them for life, to blows that would have killed them-and every time I managed to break free I'd put my head down and charge in swinging like the hero of a TV saloon brawl, and they'd all pile on top of me, and we'd start all over again.

I caught glimpses of Sara between her two guards, first struggling and calling my name and pleading with them to stop, then standing breathless and defeated, and finally, woman-like, beginning to tuck herself in and button herself up and smooth herself down mechanically even as she continued to watch the proceedings with fear and horror. It took me a while to locate the sniper. Finally I caught a glimpse of him among the trees beyond the phone booth, a dark shadow holding a weapon that gleamed dully as he watched my performance, no doubt, with a critical eye.

It's a foregone conclusion that they're going to test you out carefully before they accept you as harmless, Mac had said, and now I was undergoing my entrance exams. The surprising, and encouraging, thing was that they'd still bother. Even if they'd had no evidence against me before, which wasn't likely, just catching me here with Sara, the local undercover representative of Uncle Sam, was enough to tell them all they needed to know about me. As a stupid free-lance photographer, I was totally unmasked. But it seemed as if I might still be able to do business as a stupid intelligence agent, a thing I'd barely dared hope for, although Mac had obviously had it in mind when he arranged my advance publicity. Apparently these people needed me for something. Otherwise, why hadn't they either killed me or simply ignored me?

But they checked me out thoroughly. That was, of course, why I'd been hauled out here where there was some light to see by-to shoot by, if necessary. I was to be knocked around, humiliated, goaded beyond endurance, in the hope that if I was putting on an act I could be made to lose my temper and reveal myself as something more dangerous than I seemed. In that case, presumably, my attackers would dive for cover and the man among the trees would take care of things permanently with the chopper he held.

They were treating me to choice insults in Swedish now, testing my linguistic abilities, as we milled around flailing at each other breathlessly. At least the words I recognized weren't very nice. However, you have to know a language very well to appreciate its more esoteric blasphemies. These weren't expressions I'd normally have encountered as a nice little boy in Minnesota, and they hadn't been on the vocabulary lists I'd had to memorize more recently, either, although you'd think a practical language course would give some attention to such details…

Suddenly it was over, and they were just hanging onto me. Dead game to the end, as the British would say, I threw myself around some more and tried to jerk my arms free and ignored an invitation to break the shin of the guy to my right with the hard heel of my shoe.

"You bastards," I gasped, "you yellow bastards, what the hell do you think you're doing, anyway? I'm an American citizen-" Well, you can fill in the rest of my angry monologue for yourself. I take no pride in it. At last my breath ran out and we all stood there panting.

The man among the trees spoke. "Fцrsфk med kvinna," he said.

I jerked around to look at him, as if aware of his presence for the first time. What he'd said was, "Try with the woman." It was time to toss them a bone, and I gasped, "You leave her alone, whoever you are! She's got nothing to do with-"

"With what, Mr. Helm? With taking innocent photographs for American publications?" The sniper laughed. "Please, Mr. Helm! Give us credit. We know who she is. And we know who you are, and why you're here… So you do understand some Swedish, after all?"

I said angrily, "You think you're pretty smart, don't you? So help me, if I get my hands on you-"

The man to my left hit me across the mouth. The man in the trees said, "Not likely, Mr. Helm. Not even though I understand you've come a long way to find me. I assure you, if you did get your clumsy hands on Caselius, it would do you very little good. Quite the contrary, in fact."

It was my cue to struggle madly to break free and reach him, although just what I expected to accomplish barehanded against his machine pistol wasn't quite clear. But it was good TV stuff and it went over big. Actually, I hadn't the slightest hope of getting near him tonight, and I didn't even intend to make a serious attempt. For one thing, I had no assurance that the man among the trees was really the man I wanted, and I wasn't going to get myself killed or badly hurt trying for a decoy.

"You wait!" I cried, allowing myself to be subdued. "You just wait, Mister Caselius! It's your trick tonight, but you'd better stop horsing around now and kill me, or some day when you haven't got that gun and an army to help you-"

One of them clipped me alongside the head. The sniper in the trees snapped an order in a language I didn't understand. One man detached himself from the group about me, leaving two holding me. The single man started toward Sara, who drew back apprehensively, but was seized again by the two men flanking her. As the lone man approached, the other two gave her a sudden shove, propelling her toward the third. He stepped quickly aside and thrust out a foot, so that she tripped and hit the grass full length, with a nice display of legs and lingerie. I shouted something incoherent and appropriate and, lunging free-they made it easy for me this time-charged in to protect her from further abuse. Two men came to meet me, offering the usual opportunities for scientific mayhem, which I ignored, sticking to my windmill, wild-western attack. I suppose there are people who can accomplish something with their fists-Joe Louis for one-but I'd as soon go into a brawl armed with nothing but a fresh-baked roll and a well-done hamburger. You can't do any real, disabling damage with a fist-at least I can't-and when you hit a guy with one, damn it, it hurts. But I was a red-blooded, fist-fighting American boy tonight, and we had a fine slugging match over and around the prostrate form of Sara Lundgren. In the middle of it she scrambled to her feet and tried to run, limping from the loss of one of her high-heeled pumps, only to be caught by a man waiting outside the melee.

They got me pinioned again-it took two of them to hold me; I was a real tiger that night-and Sara's captor sent her stumbling into the arms of the other two, who tossed her right back at him. He missed the catch, and she tripped on the edge of the walk and sat down hard on the unyielding pavement. They were laughing now, jeering at me and challenging me to come to her aid as they picked her up and passed her back and forth some more before dumping her again, sobbing and disheveled, at my feet.