The Devastators (16 page)

“Yes, that is your man who was found right up here near Ullapool.”

“Correct. There’s something funny about that. If they really have their headquarters in this vicinity, you wouldn’t think they’d call attention to it by leaving dead bodies lying around.”

“They have left other dead bodies around. With warning signs on their bodies. Not to mention people who have disappeared and never been found. There have been quite a number of those.”

“But there wasn’t any warning sign on Buchanan’s body,” I said. “That’s my point. If he hadn’t been found by a tweedy doctor type on vacation, who didn’t like the medical aspects of what he saw, McRow’s super-plague might already be loose in the land. And those other cases all happened back while McRow and his patrons were still showing us what they could do, and while their operation was small and handy enough that it could easily be moved whenever anybody got close. But I have a feeling this Scottish station is the last stop on the line. I think they’re now set up for production rather than research, and they want to defend their privacy at any cost until they’ve stockpiled all the stuff they need to force the world to pay up, if that’s really what they’re after.”

Vadya glanced at me sharply. “You do not think that is what they are after, Matthew?”

“Well, it’s a hell of a big deal for just a spot of blackmail,” I said. “They could just be spreading that notion around to keep us and McRow quiet, thinking that we know what’s coming, and that we’ll have plenty of time to answer their demands when they’re made.” I shrugged. “I don’t know. In any case, if this is the critical stage of their operation, they wouldn’t have let Buchanan be found anywhere close if they could have helped it. I think he just got away from them, which is encouraging. If one man can get in and out of the joint, another can. Maybe even without contracting a fatal disease.” I hesitated. “There’s one thing that bothers me, though. If this is Madame Ling’s baby, why didn’t she just haul McRow back to the land of the dragon for the final step. They’d all have been safe there.”

“Safe?” Vadya laughed shortly. “That is not our information. We are told that your crazy scientist’s process is not really safe anywhere. And if something should go wrong with a thing like this, Madame Ling’s superiors would undoubtedly rather have it go wrong half a world away from their own sacred personages.”

“Well, that makes sense,” I said. There was something familiar about the scene. I seemed to be forever holding serious war councils in bed, with women I’d just made love to. Well, I couldn’t think of pleasanter circumstances. I went on: “But it must be pretty tricky if they don’t even want it brewing in Outer Mongolia.”

Vadya said, “They are probably very much aware that they are really the last people in the world who should be meddling with biological weapons. After all, the best targets for disease in the modern world are the crowded and underprivileged populations of Asia.” She frowned at the ceiling. “Brossach? It is a strange name. Where is it, darling?”

I grinned at her. “Hell, if I knew that, sweetheart, I wouldn’t be confiding in you.”

Her eyes narrowed quickly, and she turned her head to look at me. She started to speak, changed her mind, threw back the covers, got out of bed, and switched on the light. I watched her walk over to my coat, hanging on a straight chair. She took the maps from the inside pocket and, as an afterthought, threw the coat over her shoulders since the room was cold and she had nothing on. The effect was quite intriguing, but she made no attempt to capitalize on it. She just got the slip of paper and glanced at it to make sure I had quoted Walling’s message correctly; then she spread the right map on the unused bed and started scanning it carefully.

I said, “You’re wasting your time. It isn’t there. I’ve looked. Furthermore, our research people can’t seem to find it. I called them from London the other evening when I talked with Stark—you remember—and I checked with them again tonight, but they had nothing for me.” That was true enough, even though it implied better communications than I’d actually been able to establish. I went on, “If they haven’t been able to find it in twenty-four hours, God only knows how long it will take them. I’m guessing it’s a specialized local reference of some kind, too ancient or insignificant to appear in the usual atlases or histories.”

“Walling knew it,” she said without looking up from her examination of the Bartholomew map.

“Walling was a trained and experienced genealogist. It’s possible that if we went through his library carefully, we’d find it mentioned in some beat-up old edition of some obscure and privately printed little genealogical monograph that Washington never heard of—” I stopped. Vadya had turned away to the overnight case we’d bought. She was pulling out a pair of new black pants and a new black jersey. “Where are you going?” I asked.

“To the telephone. I will get our people on it.”

I said, “To hell with that. That’s just more time wasted.”

“What do you mean?”

I said, “Give us a little credit, Vadya. If an American research unit can’t track down an old Scottish name, what makes you think a bunch of your Russian experts can?”

“We have a very good organization,” she said stiffly.

“Sure. So do we. So do the British. And if we’re going to go the research route, our best bet is to get Colonel Stark on it. After all, it’s in his back yard, he’s undoubtedly got people who know Scotland intimately, and furthermore he’s got access to Walling’s place. Since the murder, there’s probably a cop at the door, so none of our people—yours or mine—can get in without shooting their way in, which won’t give them time for much library work afterward, before more cops arrive.”

She hesitated. “I am not authorized to cooperate with the British.”

“I didn’t think you were. And I’ll admit we don’t quite see eye to eye with them, either.” I grimaced. “If you’re going to put those clothes on, for God’s sake put them on. The suspense is killing me.”

She laughed in a preoccupied way, and climbed into the trousers, squirmed into the jersey, and came over to me pulling it down about her hips. Without Madame Dumaire’s artistically padded foundation garment, now part of a careless heap of clothes on the other bed, her figure was considerably less voluptuous than it had been, but she still wasn’t really constructed to be at her best in pants. But then, no woman is.

“Turn around,” I said, and I picked a price tag off her rear. “Fifteen shillings, sixpence? For a strong healthy girl with good teeth, it’s a bargain.”

She didn’t smile. “I am getting the impression you brought me along for a purpose, Matthew. What is it?”

“What a silly question,” I said.

“Stop it. Our love is a beautiful thing, no doubt, but it could have been consummated just as readily in London. Be serious, darling.”

“Sure,” I said. “Sex apart, I did kind of figure I might have some use for you up here. I hoped our research people could get me the necessary information. That would have been the easy way. Now we’ve got to do it the hard way.”

“Tell me.”

“Well, it occurred to me that you’re a lousy Red Communist agent, Vadya. And Madame Ling is a lousy Red Communist agent. And that gives you two lovely ladies something in common. I would say the differences between you aren’t insurmountable. Are you following me?”

She was silent for several seconds. Then she said, “Yes, I think so. Go on.”

“Madame Ling,” I said, “is probably sitting in Inverness right now, acting like a rich foreign tourist waiting for her car to be fixed. After being caught off base, so to speak, she won’t dare rush back to HQ, wherever it is—call it Brossach—without first making foolproof arrangements to make sure she won’t be followed. Well, there can’t be too many hotels in a little town like Inverness good enough for Madame Ling; she looked like a fastidious sort of person. You shouldn’t have a great deal of trouble reaching her by phone.”

Vadya said carefully, “I killed one of her men in London. At least I suppose he was one of hers, although he wasn’t Chinese.”

“I never heard of Peking getting particularly upset over the loss of a little low-class manpower. You did it to protect yourself, and to gain my confidence, of course.”

“I helped put her car in the ditch.”

“But you didn’t shoot to kill. Not when you saw who was in the car. It was unfortunate, but you’re not obliged to let yourself be wrecked, even by a fellow-believer in the doctrines of the great god Marx.”

She said quietly, “You are not being very polite, darling. I do not sneer at George Washington in your presence.”

It was no time to laugh, and maybe old George was as good a patron saint as any. I could certainly use all the help I could get, and he’d been a pretty competent guy in his time.

“My apologies,” I said. “Strike it off the record.”’

“What do you want me to tell Madame Ling?”

“Tell her?” I said. “Hell, that you’re ready to sell me out, what else?”

There was a little silence. Then she said, “Go on.”

“Why else would you have gone to the trouble of gaining the confidence of, and pretending to cooperate with, a nasty bourgeois type like me? You’ve been keeping an eye on me to make sure I did no harm to the great common cause—also, admittedly, you’ve been trying to find out for your superiors in Moscow just what their good friends to the east are up to. But now you figure it’s time for all good proletarians to join forces and, as a first step, to wrap me up and put me in the deep freeze before I have a chance to get really troublesome. Of course, you expect a little information in return for your help, maybe even a guided tour, so you can make your report to the home office look good.”

She hesitated and said dubiously, “Matthew, I—”

I said, “It’s a cinch. You get the drop on me convincingly, and turn me over to them. If you work it right, they’ll take us both inside, me as a prisoner, you as a trusted—well, more or less—ally. When the time comes, you help me get free and we go after McRow together, just the way we worked it in Mexico. Remember?”

“Yes,” she said. “Yes, I remember.” She picked up the map and started to fold it thoughtfully; then she looked back at me, having made up her mind. “You will have to trust me, darling,” she said.

It was as good a tipoff as a flashing red light and a warning rocket. Whenever they start talking about trust, they’re going to double-cross you. Well, I’d thought she’d see the possibilities, all of them.

In the morning, when we came outside for breakfast, the sun was shining. A few spectacular white clouds still hung over the mountains that edged the high valley or bowl in which the hotel was located, but elsewhere the sky was as blue as you could wish.

The sunshine turned the treeless moorland scenery from bleak to beautiful. It was really a hell of a fine, wild-looking country, and I wished I could go hunting in it, or even fishing, although I haven’t got quite enough sadism in me to really enjoy fishing. I can rationalize killing a living creature quickly, with one well-placed shot—after all, we connive at death every time we order steak—but letting it fight its heart out against a nylon leader, and then boasting about its game, despairing struggles over a beer afterwards, is a little too specialized a form of amusement for my simple soul.

Vadya said, “Someone has been in the car, Matthew.”

We had, of course, arranged the usual system of telltales to let us know if our transportation had been tampered with. I stopped admiring the view and checked the trunk and hood. Neither had been opened. The wheels had not been moved or lifted. Since it was a very low-slung little car, this made it reasonably safe to assume that nothing fancy had been hung on us underneath. But the left-hand door had definitely been opened.

I said, “Maybe Stark’s boys came to get their beeper.” That would explain its disappearance, if Vadya should notice.

She frowned. “Or maybe somebody has arranged to blow us up as we get in. After my phone call last night, Madame Ling knows where we are, and I don’t have a great deal of faith in that little yellow slut.”

“What a way to refer to a fellow-believer!” I said. “And I thought you people were always reproaching us for our racial prejudices… Well, it’s easy enough to check, in a roadster.”

I unsnapped and unhooked various fastenings and managed to work the cloth top free without disturbing either door. Sports car tops do not come down hydraulically at the touch of a button. They have to be dismantled piece by piece, folded, and put away by hand. At least this is true of the tops of inexpensive British sports cars. Having uncovered the cockpit, I examined the interior, and found nothing. I grasped the handle bravely and pulled open the suspect door. No explosion resulted.

I grinned at Vadya, who’d instinctively stepped back. “Well, now we’ve got it off, on this lovely morning, we might as well leave it off,” I said, and I stowed the framework in the trunk and folded the top carefully so as not to further damage the plastic rear window, which already displayed a bullethole as a reminder of yesterday’s adventures. “What are you doing?” I asked.

Vadya was kneeling on the seat. There was a narrow luggage space behind. At the back of this was a removable panel leading to the gas tank compartment, which also served to hold the folded tonneau cover, and any other small items you cared to tuck out of sight. She had the compartment open before I could distract her.

“Just checking,” she said. “No, they didn’t get it.”

“Who didn’t get what?”

“Stark’s boys didn’t get their beeper. It’s still here.”

She picked it off the metal to which it clung magnetically, and showed it to me on her palm. It was the tiny British homing device, all right, identical with the one I’d sneaked out of there yesterday and left in the trunk of Madame Ling’s wrecked Mercedes.

I managed to conceal my surprise. For a moment I wondered if Vadya, or Madame Ling, was being very tricky; then I realized that I had simply underestimated Colonel Stark. The man had brains after all, and even a sense of humor. He’d found the beeper in the Mercedes, and then he’d had it—or another just like it—put back in my car in exactly the same place as before. This got me off the hook if Vadya should investigate, as she’d just done; it also told me that my message had been received and appropriate action was being taken.