The Vanishers (21 page)

“You are trying to tell me that you are so hardened to this type of interrogation that you cannot be made to talk?”

I said, “Oh, for Christ’s sake, Stjernhjelm! I’m a pro, not a fucking hero. It’s only the lousy amateurs who’re supposed to be superhuman. And the armed forces: if captured tell only your name, rank, and serial number, that bullshit! Who’re they trying to kid? Our outfit is operated on the principle that people are practically all human, even our people. When the pressure really comes on, they’ll wiggle and scream and wet their pants, and cough up every last bit of information they own. Oh, there may be a few stoical supermen around, but I guarantee I’m not one of them. What do you want, the agency roster? You want some secret passwords? You want the boss’s middle name, highly classified information? You want our in-house cipher? Ask and it shall be yours as far as I can supply it from memory—I might have a little trouble with the cipher—with the blessings of Washington. If I were carrying critical information, I’d have had a kill-me capsule handy, and choked it down when I realized what that bitch had put into my drink, rather than wind up in a cook-in like this. Otherwise, we’re allowed to spill our guts to save ourselves; except that in this case I have no guts to spill. I don’t know what the hell Lysaniemi is all about. I haven’t any idea.”

“You’ll forgive me if I don’t believe you.”

That was stupid. I hadn’t the slightest intention of forgiving him if he carried out his painful intentions; but there’s never any sense in blowing off about all the terrible things you’re going to do to the sadistic creep by way of retaliation—the old
you’ll-be-sorry
routine the loudmouthed heroes are always pulling in the movies to show the audience what brave fellows they are. In real life, you don’t want to antagonize the guy unnecessarily, or give him the idea that, since you’re such a fanatic vengeance hound, maybe the only safe thing for him to do, when he’s through with you, is kill you.

I watched Olaf turn and pick up the smoking steel and come back to me. Well, I guess it was the plastic handle that was smoking a bit, with that acrid petrochemical stink, as the heat traveled up the metal to it. I told myself that I was a very stoical character, practically impervious to pain, and it was just another toast-fest like I’d endured before; but I quickly discovered that the nerve endings get no less sensitive with practice…

Only one thing helps. You don’t have to bluster about it, but you can think about it; and I concentrated on visualizing the scene when it was my turn. First I worked it out with a gun: smash the knee and elbow joints, shoot the fingers off one by one, blast the eardrums with the muzzle held close, and blow away the testicles. One thing you don’t want to do is blind the bastard. You want him to be able to watch you enjoying yourself. You want him to see and appreciate what’s happening to him. You want him to know he played his scorching tic-tac-toe on the wrong guy’s chest and got himself totally ruined; and then maybe you can afford to be nice and put one between the eyes to end it. Or maybe not. Okay. So what about a knife, let’s figure it with a knife. A knife is always good, and you can perform more delicately painful operations with a blade than you can with a bullet… Oh, Jesus, how long is the sonofabitch going to keep this up, anyway? How long does it take to convince the bastard I don’t
know
?

Or do I?

It came to me quite suddenly. After all, I’d worked with Mac a long time; I should by now have a pretty good idea of how his mind operated. I should have realized what he was trying to accomplish here. I should have understood that I hadn’t been told what Lysaniemi meant for the very simple reason that it didn’t mean anything. At least not yet. Not until the fish took the bait, the meaningless bait, and got itself hooked and netted and gutted, up there in the lonely wilderness above the Arctic Circle. But that was no help at the moment…

“Stop it, Olaf.” It was a woman’s voice. The kitchen door had opened. It was Astrid Watrous’ voice. All kinds of stray females were turning up here, live and dead, I reflected hazily; but I couldn’t deny the powerful sense of relief that hit me, and not merely because somebody was trying to put an end to the blister bash. She cried, “Please stop it now! I told you he doesn’t know. Haven’t you done enough to prove it? Can’t you
see
he doesn’t know?”

Hollywood has the right idea. A movie hero is allowed to have it tough, sartorially speaking. In an action drama he’s always losing the knees out of his pants, the elbows out of his jacket, and the buttons off his shirt, not to mention winding up covered with dirt and gore. A screen heroine, on the other hand, is seldom permitted to suffer anything more damaging to her appearance than some mildly mussed hair and a smudge alongside the nose, even in the most violent disaster epic. That’s as it should be. I mean, you want
somebody
in the cast looking reasonably attractive even through all the rough stuff, right?

But this was not a movie. The hero, if I qualified for the title, was in a normally heroic and bedraggled cinematic state, to be sure, bloody and burned; but no Hollywood heroine would ever have allowed herself to be filmed in Astrid’s condition. When she came around to where, still taped to my chair, I could get a good look at her, the first gory impression was shocking even to a gent, like me, who’s seen a reasonable number of casualties.

Two of my bullets seemed to have taken effect, one nicking her left ear and the other drilling through her left arm at the lower biceps, presumably missing the bone, since I doubted she was tough enough to be walking around with a shattered humerus, not even properly immobilized yet—she just had the hand tucked into her waistband for support. She was doing well to be upright at all. A gutsy lady.

But a distressingly beatup-looking one, like something off a battlefield. Both wounds had bled copiously, soaking the shoulder and sleeve of her jacket, and the collar and shoulder of her blouse, one sleeve of which had been ripped away to bare her wounded arm, and used to make a crude bandage knotted a few inches above the elbow. She was wearing the stained blazer over her shoulders for warmth; she was undoubtedly feeling chilly and shivery from reaction. The nicked ear had been patched with a Band-Aid, and blood was drying down the side of her neck, and on her exposed arm, as well as on her clothes; even her slacks were badly spattered.

We faced each other for a moment without speaking. I saw her note my damaged scalp and seared chest.

I made myself speak harshly: “Jeez, what lousy marksmanship! One miss. One graze. One flesh wound. The instructors back at the Ranch would have my hide. That must have been very sudden and potent stuff you dropped into my Scotch.”

She studied my face for a moment. She smiled faintly. “What, no remorse or apologies, darling?”

“I don’t see you weeping any big tears of sympathy for me,” I said. “Sure, I always regret fouling up a shooting chore. I’m supposed to be a specialist, remember?” I glanced at Olaf, who was watching us with interest. I said accusingly, “You let me think she was dead. Murdering swine, you called me. Yankee assassin.”

“Well, you are a Yankee assassin and a murdering swine, are you not? Even though you failed to kill in this instance.” Olaf smiled thinly. “The torture scene is always more effective if the torturer establishes a personal reason for hating his subject. It seemed advisable to let you believe that your bullets had been accurate, and that I was terribly distressed by the lady’s demise, relishing every minute of your suffering, and willing to prolong it indefinitely. Actually, I do not like these interrogations very much. But you are not the only professional in the game, Helm.”

I said, “It was a great performance, but all it got you was what I told you in the first place. I don’t have the slightest idea what’s awaiting me in Lysaniemi; I just assume I’m supposed to get up there and find out.”

He shook his head irritably. “You will go nowhere until we have completed our operation!”

I shrugged. “Okay, okay. You hold the cards, no need to get tough about it. I don’t suppose it’s any use asking you what this mysterious operation of yours is.”

“No use whatever… Yes, what is it, Karl?”

The blond boy who’d been sent off with the Mercedes must have entered the apartment while the kitchen door was closed and my attention was distracted by the hot iron. I hadn’t heard him arrive; but now he stood in the doorway. A little behind him I could see a wiry dark girl in jeans, attractive in an intense way, with good cheekbones and a generous mouth. That would be the so-far invisible Greta. She was wearing large glasses, but they did not hide the dedicated look in her otherwise fine brown eyes: another fanatic. No makeup, of course. Would Joan of Arc wear eye shadow to the bonfire?

I still couldn’t really follow what Karl was saying, except that in this case it concerned a doctor. The Swedes often use the same word, but spelled with a
k
instead of a
c
; however, Karl employed the equivalent term, “läkare,” meaning healer.

Astrid said to me, “The physician I have been waiting for, one we know who will not talk about bullet wounds, has just telephoned. He has been delayed by an emergency. He cannot come to me for some time. If I require immediate attention, I must go to him.” She straightened up, and winced, and glanced down at the. stained rag of silk around her arm. “It has been neglected too long already, so I will go. Fortunately his office is not too far, I am told. You might show a little concern, my dear. I am hurting rather badly.”

“Join the club,” I said unsympathetically. “Do I get a doctor, too?”

Olaf said, “All you require is a little lard and some aspirin, both available here.” He turned to Astrid. “Greta will drive you in the rental Golf in which you were brought here, Helm’s car… You watch this one, Karl, while I make the arrangements. Mr. Helm is supposed to be very tricky, although he has shown no evidence of it so far.”

“I watch,” said Karl in English, the first time I’d heard him use the language.

Astrid hesitated for a moment, still standing over me. “Good-bye for now, Matthew.”

“I’ll try to be here when you get back. Unless something important comes up.”

“I am sorry it must be this way. I am sorry we must be enemies and hurt each other.”

She hesitated, as if she wanted to say more; then she turned quickly and hurried out of the kitchen. Cousin Olaf turned off the stove and hung up the sharpening steel, discolored by flame and maybe, a little, by me. He gave a keep-your-eyes-open sign to Karl, and followed her, closing the door behind him. Waiting, we could hear sporadic activity and conversation out in the hall: I assumed that Greta was being sent to bring her car around so Astrid would not have so far to walk, not only to conserve her strength but because she wasn’t really presentable enough to appear in public. At last the front door slammed a final time.

There was a lengthy period of silence. I wondered if Olaf was resting, or holding a council of war with Karin Segerby; but I hadn’t got the impression that the girl was as important to this outfit as the family seemed to think. Perhaps it was prideful thinking: if a Stjernhjelm was involved in something wicked, she should at least be playing a starring role, not just a bit part. Or maybe Olaf was simply making love to her; I’d heard that inflicting pain was sexually stimulating to some people, as enduring it was to others. Well, it takes all kinds. I hate to admit it, but that hot iron had done nothing at all for me.

Karl apparently felt no need to talk. Neither did I. We waited in silence. At last the kitchen door opened and Olaf entered briskly, carrying an aspirin bottle and a tube of ointment.

“This is better than lard, I believe,” he said cheerfully, approaching my chair. “Anesthetic and antibiotic, says the label. Hold still now.”

“I’ve got a choice, the way I’m stuck to this chair?” I gritted my teeth as he smeared the stuff on my chest; but I had to give him credit, he was no rougher than he had to be. I said, “The time I got those other scars, I had a pretty girl to administer the first aid.”

He grinned. “Yes, I asked Karin if she would do the honors, guessing that you would prefer it; but she said that pain, hers or anybody else’s, made her sick. So you must endure my ministrations. A terrible hardship case, as I believe you Yankees call it.” He paused to look down at me. “You are a big fraud, my friend.”

“How so?”

“All that talk about screaming your head off; and the best—or worst—I could get out of you was a grunt.” He smiled faintly. “Yes, you are a professional. They always talk about what big cowards they are. It is the amateurs who must make brave sounds to give themselves courage… There, that should make it feel a little better. I will put the tube into your pocket; you can have more applied when the anesthetic effect wears off. Would you rather have your shirt buttoned or left open?”

“TV tells us that bare-chested men are all the rage these days. Let’s not have any unnecessary friction in the critical area.”

“To be sure. Here is the aspirin…”

He stopped as Karin opened the door. Her glance touched me for a moment, and found the burns on my chest. She looked away quickly, swallowing hard. Obviously the girl was in the wrong line of work: she couldn’t pull a trigger, and damaged people made her queasy.

“Yes?” Olaf said impatiently.

“There is another telephone call,” she said in Swedish. “A man, I do not know the voice. He must speak with you.”

Olaf said, “Swallow that, Helm… I will be back in a minute.”

“I can hardly wait,” I said.

He followed the small blonde girl out of the room. He was gone considerably longer than a minute. They build well over there, with solid walls and doors. At least they did when that old apartment house was constructed; and we could hear nothing of the phone conversation from the kitchen. At last the door opened again, and Olaf came in. The call he’d received seemed to have caused a drastic transformation in his personality: he was no longer the friendly, chatty jailer who’d treated my burns. His face was grim, and he carried the silenced pistol in his hand. He stood there for a moment, regarding me without expression; then he gestured with the gun.