The Infiltrators (4 page)

She shook her head, annoyed at my stupidity. “I thought you’d understand, after what you just said about that high priest calling you. When… when you love somebody, and they love you, there’s kind of a glow in the world, isn’t there? Call it the light of love if you want to be very corny, but it’s there, you must know it’s there, if you’ve ever truly loved anybody and had your love returned. Even when he… when the other person is away from you, it’s like a reassuring little night-light burning steadily in a private chamber in your mind, just knowing that he’s out there somewhere and you’ll have him back soon. Or maybe not so soon, but he’ll surely come back to you. But that night the light went out. There was nothing left in the world—my world—but darkness. So I knew he was dead and it was his scream I’d heard and he was never coming back.” Abruptly she shook her head in an angry way, glaring at me. “Hey, you’re good, aren’t you, you crummy confidence man! How the hell did you get me talking all this mystic bullshit, anyway? Forget it! It’s all a lot of stinking crap and we both know it!”

I looked at her sitting beside me, now staring straight ahead through the windshield; and despite the prison-ravaged flesh of her face I could see the sensitive profile of the girl I’d known for a day so many years ago—years that should have brought her success and happiness and instead had crushed and demolished her. Or had they?

It occurred to me that a woman who, after years of harsh imprisonment, could still speak earnestly of love lighting up the world might not be as badly damaged as she looked.

In that open, rolling, midwestern terrain we could see the big interstate ahead a couple of miles before we came to it. I drove through the underpass, made my turn, and accelerated hard up the sweeping on-ramp, liking the smooth thrust of the rotary engine and the way the low little car clung to the curve. We hit the four-lane highway above at a good clip and I took us up to seventy, since I’d learned on my way here from where I’d picked up my car—the R-and-R establishment in Arizona we call the Ranch, which is also our training center—that nobody took the limit too seriously in this part of the world. After a little I became aware of the tenseness of the woman beside me.

“Something wrong?” I asked.

“It’s very silly,” she said, “but the limit is still fifty-five, isn’t it? I do like driving fast after not having been in a car for so long, but…”

I was ashamed of my lack of consideration. “But you’re not in the mood to associate with policemen on your first day of freedom, right? Sorry, I’ll hold it down. I wasn’t thinking.”

“Thank you.” After a little, she asked, “Where are you taking me?”

“Santa Fe, New Mexico,” I said. “You said you wanted to see your folks’ lawyer, didn’t you? And there are other reasons for going there—I told you we needed your help. But we can talk about that later.”

She was startled. “But that’s hundreds of miles!”

“Actually, something over a thousand,” I said. “We should get there the day after tomorrow, even taking it easy.” I glanced at her. “You still don’t really believe me, do you? If you did, you wouldn’t be expecting me to dump you at the nearest bus station and wave goodbye as you ride off into the sunset trailing a cloud of diesel smoke and a covey of hired killers behind you.”

“It’s still rather hard to grasp, although after everything else that’s happened to me I suppose I shouldn’t be too surprised.” She hesitated. “Please tell me the truth, Mr. Helm. You’re being very nice, and I have no complaints about my treatment, but… am I under arrest or aren’t I?”

I looked at her, shocked. “Oh, Jesus, I’m doing this all wrong, aren’t I?”

“Well, you do have a badge of sorts; you showed it to me once, remember? You don’t seem to wave it around as much as some, but it’s there and, well, my experiences with men with badges haven’t been reassuring. Or women with badges, ugh!” She studied my face gravely and seemed to find her answer there. “Then… then I am free, really free?”

“Yes,” I said, “and when we get out of the car I’ll ask you to kick me for not making it absolutely clear. You’ve served your time, all of it, without parole, as your sentence stipulated, and nobody’s got any strings on you—not I, not anybody else. If you want to tell me to go to hell, you can. But I’m offering you a free ride to Santa Fe; and there is a contract out on you, as we hoodlums say. I can’t guarantee you’ll be safe if you stick with me. Nobody can. But at least I can make the guy very nervous while he’s murdering you.”

A little crooked smile, the first real smile I’d seen, touched her lips. “Well, you’re honest, if not reassuring. Are we being followed right now?”

“I haven’t been able to spot anybody, but there’s been quite a bit of traffic.” I was surprised that the lie came so hard; after years in the business you’d think I’d be a fairly accomplished prevaricator, but for some reason I found myself reluctant to be less than honest with the broken woman beside me. I glanced at the rearview mirror, at the little blue sedan that had been our shadow since we’d left Fort Ames, and said smoothly, “Anyway, I don’t think they’ll try any trick accidents. We’ve got too fast and agile a car, and it’s never surefire anyway, unless you can run the victim off a mountain road into a thousand-foot canyon. And this midwestern landscape is kind of short of mountains and canyons.” Well, at least that much was true. I glanced at her. “I await your instructions, ma’am. Santa Fe, New Mexico, or the nearest bus station or airport? Tell me which.”

“Would you really let me go and get killed?”

“I’d let you go. I have no right to stop you. And I’m sure you’ve had enough people telling you what to do for the past eight years without me getting into the act now that you’re free.” I grinned. “Anyway, if I try to get tough with you, you’ll just get mad at me, and as I told you, we need your cooperation. An angry dame is no use to us. Might as well let her go and get shot.”

Her smile was stronger this time. “More honesty. It’s very refreshing, Mr. Helm.” She was making me feel like a louse, and I wished she’d stop. “Would you sneak along behind me and try to protect me in spite of myself?”

I nodded. “At least until I could check with Washington and get new instructions. But they might decide to scrub Operation Ellershaw if the lady simply won’t play.”

This was largely bluff of course; but with a big unfamiliar world staring her in the face she was very vulnerable, and I didn’t think I was taking much of a chance.

“Oh, I’ll play.” Her voice was rueful. “I can’t afford not to, can I? Bus tickets cost money, and it’s a nice little car. And I don’t really know if I’m up to facing a bus or plane ride yet, after all these years, with all those free and cheerful people who’ve never seen the inside of a penitentiary.” Suddenly she was blinking her eyelids and turning away to hide the shiny wetness of her eyes. “Oh, God, there must be so many changes, so much to learn all over again, like Rip van Winkle! I’m a coward, Mr. Helm. If you really want to play nursemaid and… and lead the frightened lady gently back into the strange outside world, she’s happy to accept the offer.”

I nodded again. “The rules are very simple. First of all, here’s a telephone number.” I fished a piece of paper out of my coat pocket and gave it to her. “Memorize. If we should get separated, or I should be put out of action, or you should decide to go off on your own after all, and there’s any hint of trouble, try to get to a phone and call that number. Somebody’ll tell you what to do, and send help, although it may take a little time to get a man to you.”

She studied it; I saw her lips move as she imprinted the number on her mind. “It’s a Washington phone, isn’t it? Unless they’ve changed the area code.”

“Yes. Call collect and use my name. Next, instant obedience in any matter relating to your safety.”

Her voice held sudden bitterness: “For obedience, you’ve come to the right girl, mister. I’ve just spent eight years in obedience school, remember?”

“I won’t take advantage, I hope,” I said. “I won’t boss you around unnecessarily, but if I yell
down
, you flop, even if it’s in the middle of a mud puddle. If I yell
run
, you run like hell. If I tell you to scream, you call in all the rows from here to the Rockies. If I tell you to be quiet, you’re a mouse. Okay?”

She said wryly, “Oh, dear. If I’m going to have to take all those orders, I might as well have stayed in… in p-prison, hadn’t I?”

I could see that she’d had to make a big effort to joke about it—I’d already noticed that even the word, prison, was hard for her to speak—but she managed a smile as she said it that was a considerable improvement over her first two smiles of the day. With a little more practice she might learn to be quite good at it.

The mileage markers warned me when we got close; then I saw the signs for the rest area ahead. I slowed the little bomb, already rolling at a fairly sedate pace in deference to my passenger’s wishes, and turned in. There were tables and Johns, and a couple of big eighteen-wheelers parked in the truck area; but at this time of year there were no tourist vehicles in the passenger-car area. I parked and reached into the open luggage space behind the seats for the paper bag I’d prepared earlier.

“Coffee break,” I said, and went around to let her out, taking her hand to help her up from the low seat. “I don’t think you’ll want your coat. The sun’s getting almost hot. There’s the rest room if you need it.”

She gave me a real grin. “I thought you’d never ask.”

“We’ll use that table over by the trees.”

I went over there and got out the thermos and cups and doughnuts. Straightening up, I saw her coming from the john. She’d shed not only her coat but her suit jacket, too, and run a comb through her hair. Watching her walk towards me, I decided that she was not really bad-looking if you thought of her as a woman in her forties who hadn’t taken very good care of herself. It was the memory of what a slender, shining rapier of a girl she’d been that had made her present appearance such a shock when I’d first been exposed to it.

But I was getting used to it now, and realizing that she still had some possibilities. She wasn’t really fat, just a bit heavy and obviously in poor physical condition. A better-tailored and better-fitting skirt and perhaps a girdle, and enough confidence to hold herself erect, would have made a lot of difference, as would some careful makeup and a reasonable hairdo. The short-sleeved pink sweater, although hardly cashmere, was all right; but it did reveal the soft, pasty-white arms and the oddly bent wrist.

When she came up, I asked, “Do you have to do that? May I look?”

She started to protest, shrugged, and let me take her hand and turn it over to see the scars of the hesitation marks and of the final deep desperate cut that had done the real damage. I found it painful to think of her being driven to do this to herself. I had to remind myself firmly that her innocence was just a shaky theory of mine. It was quite possible that, with the help of her missing husband and his subversive female companion in exile, wherever that exile might be, she’d brought all these disasters on herself.

“Dumb,” I said.

Resentment showed in her eyes, as I hoped it would; the woman was coming back to life. Well, that was fine. Traitor or patriot, she was no use to me as a zombie.

“Is it dumb to want to die when there’s nothing left to live for?”

I shook my head. “As far as I’m concerned, copping out is anybody’s privilege. Overpopulation is our big problem. If you want to give up your place on earth to somebody else, be my guest. But that wrist routine is stupid, stupid, stupid, as any doctor will tell you. Oh, people have managed it, but mostly they just make a mess of themselves and keep right on living with crippled arms, which can hardly be considered an improvement over the previous state of affairs, no matter how lousy that may have been.” I bent the hand back and forth. “They did a good repair job on you, but you didn’t do your remedial exercises to stretch the damaged tendons, did you?”

“What was the point?” Her voice was sullen now.

I felt a strong need to shake her out of her defeatist attitude. I reached into my pocket and brought out a small penknife and opened the larger of the two blades.

“If that’s the way you really feel, you’d better have this, it’s good and sharp. But no more wrists.” I pointed the blade at the front of her skirt. “Down there… Here, I’ll show you on my own leg. The inside of the thigh, up here. Ram it in and dig around a bit and you’ll get the prettiest pumping red fountain you ever saw, the femoral artery, no lousy little bloody trickle like you probably managed. It won’t take more than a couple of minutes before you’re all bled out and as dead as you could wish. I’ll put it in your purse in case you get in the mood. There.”

She gave me that flat gray prison stare. “That’s pretty cruel, isn’t it?”

“Cruel?” I asked harshly. “I’ll tell you what would be cruel, or at least damned inconsiderate, and that is for me to work my ass off, and maybe risk my life, to keep you safe, and then have you crawl into a dark corner and start hacking stupid holes in yourself again. If you’re going to do it, please do it now. I’ll take a little walk if you’re shy about having a man see you bleeding all over your panty hose.”

We faced each other for a long moment. Then she did an odd thing. Tentatively, almost shyly, she reached out and touched my arm.

“Tough, aren’t you?” she murmured. “May I have that coffee before I open my veins and arteries, Mr. Helm?” Deliberately dismissing the subject, she turned to the picnic table. After a moment she said, pleased, “How did you know I loved glazed doughnuts,
pink
glazed doughnuts?”

“Sheer genius,” I said. “They had several kinds in the little bakery and I got two of each. They’re both yours. I’m a cinnamon man myself.”

The awkwardness between us faded gradually as we sat there eating our doughnuts and sipping our coffee. I saw it happening to her now, what I’d expected to see at the penitentiary gate. Relaxing on the wooden bench, she breathed deeply as she looked about the pleasant rest area with its trees, undoubtedly prettier in the summer with green leaves and grass, but obviously beautiful to her as she savored her freedom at last, forgetting for the moment the prison ugliness that lay behind her and the bleak ex-convict existence that probably lay ahead.