Donald Hamilton - Murderers Row

I had to shake her a couple of times before she'd let me help her to her feet. She looked out the porthole and listened. "We're heading straight down wind," she said. "I think we're about to jibe."

"Isn't that dangerous?"

I'd seen it happen on a small scale, years ago, when one of our group had accidentally jibed a twenty-five-footer in training. The guy had been careless, the wind had got behind the mainsail, and the boom-a toothpick compared to the Freya's massive spar-had slashed across the cockpit like a scythe; in an instant, the boat had been lying flat on its side, half full of water.

Teddy laughed at me. She seemed to be feeling better, suddenly; perhaps because the motion had lessened, now that we were running straight before the wind.

"Oh, an uncontrolled jibe could dismast the ship, but with that woman at the wheel and Nick to handle the main sheet and backstays-"

"What's a sheet? I forget."

She glanced at me over her shoulder. "You don't really know very much, do you?"

I said, "I haven't been puking all over the damn boat, either, small stuff. Let's not get into a comparison of our seagoing abilities, huh? What's a sheet?"

"The main sheet is the line-rope to you-controlling the mainsail." Her voice was stiff. "To jibe under control, or wear ship as they used to call it, Nick's got to get the sail sheeted flat aft so it can't swing, and the starboard backstay set up taut; then Mrs. Rosten will bring the stern through the wind… There!"

There was a lurch, and I felt the schooner heel over to the left-excuse me, to port. Above us, blocks squealed and spars creaked; the whole ship seemed to sigh, taking the strain of the masts and rigging a different way.

"Now we're on the starboard track," the kid said. "Nick's cast off the port backstay and is slacking off on the mainsheet… You didn't have to say that!"

"Say what?"

She turned to face me. I could see her vaguely in the yellow glow from the bathroom, where the light was still on. She had a pale, rumpled, wrung-outlook; but she was focusing again. Her voice was shrill.

"Just because I don't have the stomach of a goat, like some people!"

"Easy, kid," I said. "I didn't mean-"

"Don't call me kid," she gasped. "I'm twenty-two years old and I'm not a kid and I know you think I'm an absolute fool, the way I've behaved. Theodora the Terrible, the ruthless murderess who can't bear the thought of blood, the irresistible siren who doesn't really want to be touched, the nautical expert who can't even keep her lunch down when it blows. Well, how would you like to be a cute little female Tom Thumb all your life? I'm not a toy, damn it, I'm a person; but try to make people believe it! Just try!" She drew a long, ragged breath. "Here we go again!"

There was again that odd stillness as the schooner came dead before the wind, and the lurch as the sails swung across and filled on the new tack.

"We must be maneuvering inshore," Teddy said. Her voice was suddenly calm again. She looked out. "I can't see anything. I bet they're sweating up there, just the two of them, working a boat this size in shallow water. I hope that woman knows what she's doing. If she puts us aground in this wind, she'll break the ship in two. We'd drown in here before anybody-Matt," she whispered, turning. "Matt, I'm sorry. Be nice to me. I'm so damn scared!"

It was the moment for me to take her into my arms and smooth the matted fair hair back from her small face and kiss her and tell her everything was going to be all right, even if I didn't mean it. It was what she wanted me to do, and I was damned if I'd do it. She at least could have stayed sick; she didn't have to get up and explain her lousy little psyche to me, as if I cared.

Abruptly, the schooner turned left for what seemed an hour, leaning over hard; then it came upright. The sound of flapping canvas reached us from above. I looked at Teddy.

"We've rounded up into the wind," she said. Her voice was strained. "They must be-taking somebody on board."

Something thumped against the side of the ship. We heard footsteps overhead. Suddenly Robin Rosten's voice was speaking in the passageway.

"Straight ahead. Not in there, that's the head-bathroom to you. It's the cabin to starboard. No, no, on your right, you lubber. Throw him in and let's get topside and give Nick a hand before we drift onto the shoals."

The man who opened the door had a seamed, whiskery face and a meaty nose. Remove the whiskers, and it was a face i'd seen in the files, but I couldn't recall the name that went with it. Well, I'd figured he'd be somebody reasonably familiar. Robin had got my code name from the conversation I'd had with Jean; but the name Matthew Helm hadn't been mentioned in that hotel room. She had to have got that from somebody who knew the two names went together.

He'd seen my face somewhere, too, and he was glad to see it again. "Mister Helm," he said. "How nice to make your acquaintance. I have been looking forward to it. You are not as pretty as the lady we were expecting, the one with such a deplorable fondness for liquor, but I'm sure my superiors will not complain

"Stow it, Loeffler," Robin said, behind him, "Never mind the corny dialogue. Just shove in the doctor and secure the door."

"Secure? Ah, you mean fasten-"

The man called Loeffler-which wasn't the name we had him filed under-got a grip on the sagging figure supported between him and Robin, and propelled him forward for me to catch. The door closed, and I was standing there with Dr. Norman Michaelis in my arms, the man I'd come to silence. I remembered Mac's words clearly: How to achieve this result is left entirely to the discretion of the agent on the spot. Do you understand?

I'd understood perfectly then, and I understood just as well now. It was a moment of triumph, in a way. I'd broken discipline and disobeyed orders to get here. I'd played gangster and let myself be drugged and imprisoned. I might never get out alive, but at least my job was finished. Jean's job was finished. I was here, and so was the subject I'd come to find. The rest, for a man of my training, was just a technical detail.

"Is HE-GOING to be all right?"

That was Teddy, behind me, trying to get a look at her parent as I put him into the bunk beside Louis. It was a damn fool question. Probably none of us were going to be all right. Certainly Dr. Norman Michaelis wasn't, not if I could help it.

He looked about as you'd expect a man to look after being imprisoned for a lengthy interval in a ruined cellar. He seemed to be wearing slacks, a sport shirt, and rubber-soled shoes. I remembered that he'd vanished while out sailing. The mechanics of it had never been explained to me, and didn't really matter. I wasn't about to wake him up to ask him.

The clothes were filthy, his hair was long and tangled, and he had a beard like a hermit. He looked half-starved to boot. He was out cold.

"What's the matter with him?" Teddy wailed. "Why doesn't he wake up?"

I said, "They've got him under drugs. It's the lazy man's way of keeping a prisoner quiet. Besides, the right drugs used long enough affect the will to resist. I guess they were softening him up for the interrogation experts."

My voice sounded dry and pedantic and far away. It would have been such an easy job if I'd been alone with him; it would have been over already. He was drugged, weakened by exposure and hunger; it would have been no more trouble than blowing Out a candle.

His lips moved. "AUDAP? I don't know anything about-no, no, I won't tell-you can't make me tell!"

He was wrong. They could make him tell. They could make almost any man tell almost anything-unless the man were dead. I thought of the odd-looking nuclear submarines with their incredible loads of destruction upon which, Mac had been told by the Navy, depended the safety of the nation and the peace of the world. Even if the picture was a little exaggerated-I'd never yet met a military man who was entirely objective about the importance of his own service-the decision wasn't mine to make. I had my orders.