The Vanishers (2 page)

“And I’m the man elected to do the hard looking?” I said. I grimaced at the phone. “Would I be looking for anything beyond the cause of her medical troubles, sir? Would I perhaps be looking for her husband, also?”

“Yes, as soon as Mrs. Watrous is released from the hospital, you will give her all the help you can in finding Dr. Watrous. And you will endeavor to keep her alive, and preferably healthy, in the process. If there should be other odd diseases going around.”

I said, “You’re obviously assuming that she’ll survive her present illness. What if she doesn’t recover from her attack of tachycardia, whatever that may be?”

“It’s very unlikely, barring complications. The condition is seldom life-threatening if treated in time; and Mrs. Watrous is making a good recovery. However, in the event that she should be lost to us for any reason, you will still make every effort to locate and liberate Dr. Alan August Watrous.”

I frowned at the inoffensive phone. There were more questions that needed answers. The one I asked was, “Can you give me a quick rundown on Mrs. Watrous’ mysterious disease?”

“The only mystery is how she managed to contract it,” Mac said. “There’s no mystery about the condition itself. You could call it the opposite of a heart attack. Instead of faltering or stopping, the heart begins to beat much too rapidly. Mrs. Watrous’ pulse was over two hundred when she reached the emergency room. The ailment is not uncommon. There are several drugs that will control it. One of them, curiously enough, is quinine, which is what she’s being given at present, quinidine to be exact. It seems to be doing the job. Her heartbeat is completely under control. There have been no more episodes; and she’s merely being retained in the hospital for observation, to make certain her condition is stable.”

I said, “As you say, sir, it’s quite a coincidence. The husband disappears. The wife acquires a sudden heart ailment which, I gather, she’s never shown any signs of previously. I presume that if she were to have another attack under conditions where help wasn’t available, she could die from it. That could be convenient for somebody. Particularly since, after this incident, it would undoubtedly go down as a natural death.”

“The thought had occurred to me, Eric.” His voice was dry; I was pointing out the obvious.

“Well, you’d better give me the priorities,” I said. “In case I have to make a choice, do I save the wife and let the husband go, or vice versa?”

Mac said calmly, “While we would, of course, prefer to have Mrs. Watrous preserved, she’s merely a means to an end.”

“I see,” I said. “And Dr. Watrous is the end?”

“No,” he said. “I am.”

I sat there for a moment listening to the traffic on the nearby freeway. “You’d better spell it out for me, sir,” I said carefully at last.

Mac said, “It’s quite simple. Dr. Watrous is not the only prominent citizen to vanish in the past year. Other important people—businessmen and politicians as well as scientists—have also disappeared, always with plausible reasons. To take just one example, a certain highly placed lady in the computer industry named Janet Beilstein, is supposed to have run off with a handsome young man and company funds, although the embezzlement angle seems to have been merely a vicious rumor. That’s pretty much the same story, you’ll note, that was circulated about Dr. Watrous. It’s been used, with variations, in other instances as well; but there have also been supposed nervous breakdowns and other explanations. I can’t give you the total number of cases, but it’s impressive, even if allowance is made for the fact that, in spite of the bureaucratic paperwork that rules our lives, surprisingly many people do manage to pull down the curtain each year and are never heard from again.” He hesitated, and went on: “In the time we’ve been on the case, we’ve come up with only two promising leads. Mrs. Watrous is one. I am the other.”

I frowned at the phone in my hand. “It’s one of my dull days. I’m still not following you.”

He spoke carefully: “Let us say, hypothetically, that there is an organization devoted to abducting selected citizens for purposes still unknown, always with a suitable cover story to minimize the resulting publicity.”

“Kidnapping doesn’t seem to be exactly what’s planned for Mrs. Watrous, if we’re right about her having been drugged with the idea of eventually making it permanent.”

“But Mrs. Watrous is not a principal in this affair, Eric. To these people, whoever they are, she is merely a peripheral nuisance. Unlike her husband, she’s not well known, and she carries in her brain no valuable scientific information. She is merely a threat, not a possible asset.”

“Then where do you come in, sir? I’d think you’d fall right into the same menace classification as Astrid Watrous.”

I heard him sigh sadly at the other end of the line. “A bitter thing it is to be unappreciated by one’s own associates! I’ve served as head of this agency for a good many years. I hope I have some value to my government; and I know I have accumulated knowledge that could be useful to somebody. To be sure, I was probably not considered a primary target; but when Mrs. Watrous involved me in the case, I came under observation. It was realized that, taking the lady seriously, I had to be eliminated before I learned enough to be a real threat. However, it would be wasteful to have me killed. Because of my position I could be quite valuable.”

“You seem to have a real pipeline into this abduction outfit, sir. An informant?”

“No, just a commonsense interpretation of certain things that have been happening around me.” Mac laughed shortly. “If you were going to cause me to vanish, what explanation would you leave behind to make it seem as if I’d disappeared voluntarily? At my age I’m not, I hope, a plausible candidate for amorous entanglements. Our operational funds are, unfortunately, quite limited, so I don’t have access to large sums of money. My doctor informs me that for a man in my position, I show few signs of stress; a sudden breakdown would hardly be convincing. So why would I choose to go missing?”

He waited for my answer. I hesitated, but it was no time to be tactful. I said, “Well, I can make a guess. Patriotism and loyalty are corny words these days. Patriots are out of fashion. Faith and trust are out, lie detectors are in. It’s the time of the fink and the snitch and the traitor, sir. If I were planning to vanish you, I’d first send some known Commies to see you, on one pretext or another. I’d plant a few bits of evidence here and there to establish your subversive associations. It doesn’t take much, these suspicious days. After that, when you went AWOL, nobody’d believe you hadn’t defected, even after a lifetime of patriotic service.” After a moment, when he didn’t speak at once, I said, “Well, nobody’d believe it except a few naive and trusting characters in this outfit, who’re also suckers for Santa Claus and the tooth fairy. It’s amazing how gullible some folks can be.”

“Thank you, Eric.” After a moment, he went on: “Your guess is quite correct. After certain rumors had come to my attention, I investigated discreetly and learned that I’m currently supposed to be very depressed and angry at the scanty recognition my work has received over the years and the way our organization is forever being slighted, financially and otherwise. Furthermore, some peculiar characters have presented themselves here for interviews in recent months, supposed journalists, informants, and job applicants. I’ve made a point of taking on a couple of the last-named in spite of their questionable records. Very incriminating, for me. I’ve sent them out to the Ranch for screening and indoctrination with, of course, the special cautionary code in their induction papers.”

The Ranch is our agent training, maintenance, and rehabilitation center in Arizona. It’s a fairly tough place, and I wouldn’t want to arrive there with that little watch-this-guy mark on my record.

Mac went on: “I’m afraid they won’t be made very happy, and there will have to be a couple of training accidents after this is over, very bad for our safety record. However, at the moment their presence reflects unfavorably on my judgment or, if you want to be suspicious, my loyalty—the fact that I’ve admitted such dubious individuals to a highly classified government training area under my control.” He paused, and went on: “Not to mention letting an obvious tap on my office telephone go unreported and unremoved.”

“That’s why we’re using this elaborate communications system?”

“Yes.”

“You’re planning to let yourself be defected, then?”

“Your grammar is still deplorable, but the answer to your question is yes. I have sent a good many agents down similar rabbit holes in the past. This time I am the logical ferret. You’ll point out that it’s a long time since I’ve operated in the field. Well, that leaves it up to Joel and you to look after your helpless superior, doesn’t it? You remember Joel; you worked with him once out West.”

“Yes, sir. I remember Joel.”

“I thought you would. A good man. I know you won’t mind working with him again.”

“No, sir.”

He was throwing it at me fast. The fact was that Joel wasn’t a very good man, in my opinion. While technically competent enough, he was one of those scheming characters, ambitious for preferment, who’d hog the credit for success any time he could manage and try to slip out from under the blame for failure. I can work with anybody I have to, and there had been no blowup to jeopardize the mission; but I’d let Mac know how I felt afterwards. For him to now tell me calmly that I wouldn’t mind working with Joel again was another clear signal: this line, too, was bugged, and we had an audience somewhere that we were trying to impress with the brotherly spirit pervading our undercover organization.

He went on: “Actually, the two of you will be operating independently. He will be covering me, rather carelessly of course. After he’s lost me, however, he’ll pull up his socks and do his best to find me. Maybe he’ll succeed. But in case he doesn’t, you’ll be working at it quietly from the Watrous angle. Let us hope that at least one of you picks up a reasonable trail leading to a place being used as a detention center for all these kidnapped people, soon to include me.”

I said dubiously, “You’re making some rather optimistic assumptions, aren’t you, sir? What makes you think all the kidnappees wind up in the same place and, if so, that it isn’t just a large grave with room for one more? You.”

He had an answer to that, of course. Once he’s got a plan made, he’s got answers to everything. He’d never admit that he was betting his life on a hunch. Well, he often plays his hunches, and often they’re very good; but I was glad it was his life he was gambling with, for a change, instead of mine.

A little later, picking up gas just off the freeway farther north, I called him openly from a pay phone, using the normal office number. I let him give me my Hagerstown directive officially, for the benefit of whoever had made arrangements to listen in on that phone, maybe the same snoopy character who’d bugged the other, maybe not. Life was getting very complicated. It happens any time you get near Washington, D.C.

Living at seven thousand feet, as I did for many years out in Santa Fe, New Mexico, you tend to get snobbish about your mountains. I mean, snowcapped two-mile-high peaks are a dime a dozen out there; and they kind of spoil you for appreciating the puny geological formations people like to call mountains east of the Big Miss. Still, I’ve always considered the Shenandoah Valley to be a pretty fair scenic experience, even if it’s on a somewhat smaller scale than what you get out West.

The weather was sunny and springlike. The Interstate was in pretty good shape, which was more than could be said for some I’d driven on during the past week. The traffic was moderate except for a bit of congestion near the Washington turnoff, which didn’t delay me greatly. I had plenty of time to let the little car drive itself on cruise control while I considered what I’d been told over the phone; and particularly what I hadn’t been told.

First there was the case of the two tapped telephones. Clearly Mac was playing one of his clever games, letting somebody know he’d discovered the bug on the office phone and set up an alternative contact number; but carefully giving them the impression that he thought the second number was still secure so the snoopers would believe what they overheard on that line. Just what information he wanted to feed them convincingly, and for what purpose, remained to be seen.

Then there was the interesting case of the lady named Janet Beilstein, which Mac had thrown at me, ostensibly, as just one instance of what we were up against—but why had he selected that particular disappearance as an example? After a good many years of interpreting his instructions, I knew that he didn’t often talk at random. What had he been trying to tell me here without tipping off whoever was listening in? Well, there was a clue of sorts: when a healthy gent of any age makes a point of informing you that he’s too elderly and decrepit to be a plausible candidate for amorous entanglements, that, as far as I’m concerned, is when you check to make certain the local maidens are all locked into well-fitting chastity belts…

I’d already, at a morning coffee stop, made the emergency call to Doug Barnett in St. Petersburg, Florida, to set the disaster routine into motion. Doug was supposedly retired and building a new boat in his palmy back yard to replace one he’d recently lost in the line of duty. The agency was paying for the replacement. In return Doug was supposed to hold himself available in times of real crisis. The fact is that nobody really retires from our outfit. There are quite a few old, scarred agency warhorses grazing in quiet pastures in various parts of the country, waiting, maybe even hoping, for the battle bugle to blow once more. Well, I was blowing it.

“Barnett here.”

Using his code name, and mine, to make it official, I said, “Abraham, this is Eric. A slight problem in Washington. Contact: 325-3376. Code: arrhythmia. Pass the word. Do you want a repeat?”

“A slight problem in Washington. Contact 325-3376. Code arrhythmia.”

“You’ve got it. Good luck, amigo.”

“Shit, I was just going to varnish the brightwork around the cockpit.”