The Vanishers (6 page)

“Why… why, I am a United States citizen!” She sounded shocked that I would have to ask. “I was born here!”

“Very odd,” I said without expression. “Karin Segerby carries a Swedish passport, but she speaks English as well as you do, if not better. You claim to be a native-born American, but most of the time you sound like Greta Garbo vaahnting to be ahloane.”

She said stiffly, “I am not responsible for the fact that my parents were Finnish. Finnish immigrants. But I am very proud of it.”

I said, “Hell, everybody’s ancestors were immigrants around here, and that even goes for some of the Indian tribes. The Athabascans—Navajos and Apaches—immigrated to this continent from Asia not too long before Columbus started the big rush from the other direction. My parents came from Sweden and I’m proud of that, sure, but I like to kid myself that I can stumble along in English without sounding too much like a transplanted squarehead. Thanks to my folks, who made a point of not speaking Swedish around the ranch except, I suppose, when they were in bed together. Since they’d made the big switch, they wanted us all to be good Americans and talk good American. Of course they never got rid of the accent, but they made damned sure it didn’t rub off on me.”

Astrid Watrous shrugged. “Some people are proud of their ethnic heritage, and some aren’t.”

I said, “Sometimes I think the world would be a damn sight better off if we’d all forget this ethnic crap.” I grimaced. “Well, that’s an argument nobody ever wins. So you’re Finnish? I thought a Finn was a dark, mean gent who cast spells and conjured up storms at sea… The old square-riggers wouldn’t let a Finn aboard ship, if I remember right. He was considered very bad luck, a sure guarantee of adverse winds and vicious gales. But you don’t look like a black Finn sorceress.”

“A great many Swedes settled in Finland after the Crusades.”

“Crusades? You mean to the Holy Land?”

She said stiffly, “Apparently you don’t even know the history of the land your own people came from. There were other crusades, Mr. Helm. Your Swedish kings, having embraced Christianity and renounced Odin and Thor, then marched heroically into Finland and brought the Cross to the backward Finnish heathen. Three times, as a matter of fact. Each one was called a
korståg
, a crusade. Naturally, to be certain the conversion was permanent, the Swedes had to take over the benighted country. They stayed for seven hundred years. Some of them still remain, like my parents before they came to America, and consider themselves Finns.”

“I should think so,” I said. “I consider myself an American, and I barely managed to get myself conceived here. I should think seven centuries ought to qualify anybody for citizenship.” After a moment, I went on deliberately: “So that’s where the blonde Viking hair came from; but the mysterious cheekbones and the dark, haunting eyes are presumably gifts from an ancestral Finnish witch or warlock.”

She smiled slowly. “I could get hardened to your wicked insults. Mysterious cheekbones and haunting eyes. Very nice, Mr. Helm. So I will tell you a secret. I am not ashamed of my accent, but I do exaggerate it occasionally. I do not know why it is, but many American men seem to be taken by an attractive woman—if I may flatter myself—who speaks somewhat less than perfect English, if the accent is foreign. Some kind of snobbery, I suppose. They might not look at me twice if I spoke good Hoosier American.”

I grinned. “Now you want me to flatter you and tell you that you’re selling yourself short and they’d flock around even if you talked Brooklynese.” Astrid Watrous stuck out her tongue at me daintily, and we laughed, and I said, “Tell me about your relationship with Karin Segerby. How long have you known her, how and where did you meet her, and why did you have lunch with her if you hate her guts?”

“I do not hate her guts, I am merely bored by her,” Astrid said. “I have known her for several years, ever since Alan had to go to Washington on behalf of the Institute and I went with him…”

But at that moment the door opened and the doctor came in, the heart man to whom I’d spoken the day before named, if you’ll believe it, Hartman. It must have been something to learn to live with after he’d decided on his profession; and I remembered that he’d introduced himself with a wry grin that had had lots of practice. There was a nurse with him. He sent me out of the room while he did his stethoscope thing; then he emerged and came over to where I leaned against the corridor wall, waiting.

“She’s doing very well,” he said. “Of course it will take some time for her system to return to normal after two such shocks, the cardiac episode and the quinine reaction. I would like to keep her under observation until the weekend. After that, she should take it very easy for several weeks, preferably within reach of good medical facilities in case of an emergency. Not that I really anticipate any further trouble if her condition remains stable over the next few days.”

I said, “That’s the good news. Have you got any bad?”

Hartman regarded me for a moment without a great deal of liking. He took an envelope from the pocket of his white coat.

“With respect to the questions you asked,” he said, “I can see no easy way in which the quinine reaction could have been induced, under the circumstances. However, there are certain compounds which could have brought on the original symptoms of tachycardia, and I have listed them for you with notes as to their availability and the methods by which they could have been introduced into the patient’s system. I must say that I felt as if I were writing a mystery novel, and I hope you find it gripping; but let me advise you not to build too much on it. All our tests and analyses are consistent with a natural attack triggered by… Well, we simply don’t know what triggers these episodes naturally, Mr. Helm.” He looked past me. “Yes, Nurse?”

“Is this Mr. Helm? There’s a call for you in three-fifty-seven, Mr. Helm. From Washington.”

Unexpected calls from Washington are always hard on the nerves. I tried to tell myself that they’d just misplaced all the keys to the second-floor john and wanted mine so they could make duplicates, fully urgent.

“Thank you, Nurse,” I said. I took the envelope Dr. Hartman gave me, and said, “Thank you very much, Doctor.”

“You’re welcome,” he said, but I had a hunch that I wasn’t, very. He didn’t like my thinking that he could have overlooked a murder attempt, even if I were wrong; and I didn’t think he was as certain of that as he pretended.

I went back into the room, where Astrid Watrous held out the phone to me. I took it, and said, “Helm.”

The voice in the phone belonged to Doug Barnett. It said only three words. “Scramble. Repeat, scramble.”

“Scramble received,” I said and hung up. I looked at the woman in the bed. “Get your clothes on. The man says we’ve got to get out of here fast before the roof falls in.”

I’d hoped she’d just hauled on a pair of old jeans and a T-shirt when it hit her in the middle of the night and she dressed in a panicky hurry and stumbled off to the hospital with her heart going crazy in her chest. Not that I really approve of girls in jeans unless there’s a horse in the picture; but here I didn’t know how long it would be before we could find her a change of clothes. In a good pair of slacks, or a skirt, one day on the run and maybe a slight accident along the way with some Coca Cola or hamburger juice generally qualifies a lady for membership in the slob club; but nobody gives a damn how long she’s worn a pair of jeans, or how carelessly. In some quarters they aren’t even considered respectable until they’re thoroughly seasoned: what every well-dressed fugitive should wear.

However, even on such short acquaintance I should have known her better; she was not a dirty-denim girl. In the closet I found a pair of handsome brown flannel slacks, a brown blazer with brass buttons, a tan—well, call it beige—silk blouse, and a pair of brown sandals with heels high enough to be interesting. There was also a pair of short nylon stockings with elastic tops, and a pair of white nylon panties discreetly embroidered with little flowers. No brassiere. When I turned with the stuff in my hands, she was still sitting in the bed.

“Well, come on!” I snapped. “Let’s see some action, Watrous!”

The idea was to rush her into it. I was taking for granted that, given time to think she’d delay us with a lot of stupid questions and pitiful protests: why was I doing this to her, didn’t I know she was a poor invalid who couldn’t possibly be expected to leave her sickbed, it would kill her quite dead, and how could I even think of suggesting such an outrageous thing! But I’d misjudged her badly. There were no interrogations or objections. There was only a small practical obstacle about which she felt obliged to remind me.

“Somebody must pull it out,” she said calmly. “I am a bit of a sissy, Mr. Helm. I would rather it was you.”

“Oh.”

I laid her clothes on the bed and studied the needle in her arm. Having put in some hospital time myself, in the line of duty, I had a pretty good idea of how the withdrawal operation was performed. The supplies were readily available. I found a Band-Aid and laid it handy. I got some cotton ready. Steadying the needle, I yanked off the tape holding it in place. I held a wad of cotton at the point where the needle disappeared into the skin, slipped it out, wiped off the small amount of blood that appeared, and stuck on the Band-Aid.

“Well, what are you waiting for now?”

She was still sitting there. “Aren’t you going to turn your back like a gentleman?”

“After you sent a gun moll to visit me, what makes you think I trust you enough to turn my back on you?”

She studied me for a moment longer. I saw a faintly malicious smile touch her lips. She got out of the high bed. The modest next step, of course, was to pull on the panties under the hospital gown before removing the gown; but I’d challenged her and to hell with modesty. She caught the hem and made a slow and graceful production of pulling the gown off over her head. Clearly, she was confident that while her face displayed the haggardness of illness, there was nothing wrong with her body. She was quite right. It was a very nice, taut female body, moderately tall, adult but slender, lightly tanned except for very skimpy bikini-marks. Watching her unveil and dress it was a disturbing experience, just as she meant it to be.

“What did they tell you over the phone?” she asked as she zipped and buttoned herself up.

“Scramble. In our language, that means get the hell out of wherever you are, with whoever you care to preserve alive, because they’re coming for you with homicidal intentions
now.
”

“Who is coming?”

I shrugged. “How the hell would I know? I’ve had a little Japanese car tailing me, and a pretty blonde girl waving a pistol at me, and a handsome brown-eyed lady doing a reverse striptease for me. Things are tough all over. I’ll worry about who when I’m clear; right now all I want is out of here.”

“Well, you’d better fasten my shoes, then,” she said. “If I try to bend over that far, I’ll fall on my face.”

I knelt at her feet, where she obviously enjoyed having me. “Your heart pills,” I said. “Have you got any spares?”

“No, they just bring me one four times a day.”

“When’s the next one due?”

“Two hours from now, at ten o’clock. Then I take it at four, ten, four—that’s the ghastly early-morning one they’ve been waking me for—and ten again. They say it does no damage if I am a little over the time, or under, but I am not supposed to miss it by too much.”

“We’ll have to head for a drugstore I know where we can stock up, no questions asked. We should be there in time to keep you on schedule. You know the stuff you want?”

“Procan SR, five hundred milligrams.”

“Smart girl.”

She laughed rather grimly. “Would a smart girl let a strange man drag her out of the hospital half-dead on her feet?”

But she marched out of the room bravely enough, holding herself very straight, her high heels tapping crisply on the vinyl flooring; and nobody stopped us. I hated to make her take any detours, but it seemed inadvisable to use the front door. By the time we’d found our way to the rear of the hospital and used the stairs there and found an exit, she was sagging noticeably.

“Can you make a block and a half?” I asked. “I could leave you here and bring the car around, but—”

“I do not want to be left anywhere, please,” she said. “Not if you think people are planning to kill us.”

I had to steady her for the last half block. A stout lady who passed us thought it was disgusting, a nice-looking, nicely dressed young woman like that stumbling around drunk so early in the day. As we approached the place where I’d left the jazzy little Ford, I couldn’t spot it at once. I had a moment of panic, wondering whether I’d remembered the street and block incorrectly, or whether the police tow truck had been around. There was no way my rubber-legged companion was going to make it clear to the Holiday Inn, where her Buick was parked, under her own power. I preferred the mini-Ford anyway. It was smaller and peppier and less conspicuous; and I was used to the way it handled.

Then I saw it, hidden behind a blocky green van, exactly where I’d left it, without even a parking ticket on the windshield. I got the door open and helped Astrid inside after reclining the seat to make her more comfortable. She lay back against the headrest and closed her eyes, looking very pale and vulnerable. I made her a silent apology. For all her glamour-accent and femme-fatale manner, she seemed to be a brave, tough woman, fighting hard to meet my unreasonable demands in spite of her weakness. I was beginning to get quite attached to her in a protective way; but I warned myself it was just a normal attack of the broken-wing syndrome. This was no time to get mushy about a pretty, crippled birdie that wasn’t necessarily a harmless domestic pigeon.

We picked up I-70 just south of town and ran it as far as Frederick, Maryland, and let it continue east to Baltimore without us, while we turned southeast on I-270, the Washington Pike. Ceiling unlimited. Visibility unlimited. Passenger mostly asleep beside me. Escort: none. Apparently the hideout car had thrown them off, at least for the moment. Sloppy work. They should have known I’d arrived in something that had to be somewhere if it wasn’t at the motel. They should have found it. But maybe the Honda had belonged to Karin Segerby and she’d decided she had no more gun-business, or other business, to transact with me.