The Silencers (16 page)

“In this locality?” I said. “What’s so important about this locality? The project they’re interested in is clear across the valley.”

She shook her head to indicate that she didn’t know. There was a sound of triumph from Naldi. He had the boot heel off and was shaking the little capsule out of the hollow space inside. I looked at Gail standing before me soberly, not triumphant but not remorseful, either.

“You take your vengeance seriously, glamor girl,” I said. “It must have cost you something to deal with Gunther, the man who made a renegade of your sister and probably had her killed.”

“You’re only saying that!” she retorted. “I asked your chief who killed her—remember?—and why. He didn’t know.” She didn’t want to believe it, I saw; it would be inconvenient. “You haven’t any proof! Anyway, no matter what Sam’s done, what you’re after is murder, just plain, brutal murder, you can’t deny that! I don’t feel much guilt for interfering, if that’s what you’re driving at.”

“And what about the other thing you’re interfering with?” I asked, with a gesture towards Naldi and Wegmann. “I don’t know exactly what they have in mind, but the general idea seems to be that they’re going to try, somehow, to sabotage an important government project. What about the help you’re giving them?”

She laughed shortly. “Frankly, darling,” she said, “those atom bombs always did give me the creeps, and I don’t blame anybody for being upset about them and trying to stop them. The hell with whether or not it helps the Russians. All that fall-out poisoning the very air we breathe—”

“Very dramatic,” I said, “but you ought to check your facts. It just so happens that there’s no fall-out or atmospheric contamination from an underground burst.”

“Well, there’s something else,” she said. “Dr. Naldi says—” She paused, as if slightly embarrassed.

“What does Naldi say?”

“Well, it sounds kind of farfetched, I’ll admit. Something about continuing harmonic vibrations set up by the recent Russian tests that have caused a massive instability—I think he said massive instability—like when a regiment of soldiers walk in step across a bridge. They can make the birdge start to swing and eventually wreck it.”

I said, “You wouldn’t know a massive instability if one came walking down the street, Gail.”

“Well, Naldi would, and he says there’s danger, real danger, if this test is allowed to proceed before the amplitude of the induced waves has diminished below the critical... Well, anyway, I think that’s what he said. He was talking pretty fast, and I didn’t understand all the long words.”

“Sure,” I said. “Danger of what?”

“Why,” she said, “of earthquakes, naturally! Worldwide earthquakes!”

I stared at her and started to laugh, but a hand on my shoulder swung me around abruptly. It was Gunther, of course; he was another one of those who can’t keep his fingers to himself. Dr. Naldi was there, too, his face grim and angry—Wegmann had moved in a little with his gun.

“Where is it?” Gunther demanded.

“Where’s what?” I asked innocently.

Dr. Naldi thrust the empty halves of the capsule under my nose. “Where are the films, Mr. Helm?”

I had a choice to make. I could tell them the films were in Washington, but they might believe me. If they did, having no further use for me, they might shoot me through the head or simply tie me up and leave me there. So I smiled mysteriously, shook my head stubbornly and got a slap from Gunther for my pains. After that he proceeded awkwardly to beat me, over Gail’s protests. “You promised!” she cried.

Dr. Naldi took her by the arm and pulled her back a ways, and Gunther went to work in earnest. He had the right instincts, but he’d had no training. Besides, he was afraid of damaging his hands. It wasn’t so bad. Wegmann stood back all the while with his gun, covering the situation and watching tolerantly, like an adult observing children at play. Presently he made an impatient sound and stepped forward.

“We’re wasting time,” he said. “Let him get dressed. We can continue this elsewhere if we must. Dr. Naldi, you’ve done a lot of driving in this country with all kinds of vehicles. Can we get his half-ton truck up the mountain? I don’t want to leave it here.”

Naldi looked at the empty capsule bitterly and flung it aside. “I would say yes, particularly if there’s a set of tire chains to fit... What about it, Mrs. Hendricks?”

Gail said, “There are chains, you-all ought to know that.”

Naldi frowned. “Why should we know that?”

“Well, after all, Wegmann took them off for us, down in Carrizozo, and besides, we had them on when one of your men tried to run us off the road in San Agustin Pass; that’s why he failed.”

“I have no knowledge of any such attempt,” Naldi said. “Wegmann?”

The man with the gun shook his head. “I haven’t been over that pass in months, nor sent anybody.”

“Gunther?”

“Not me. I’ve been laying low since that trouble in Juarez; I’ve had no contact with anybody. Hell, I just crossed the border a few hours ago, and almost got caught in a dragnet at that!”

Naldi said, “Describe the incident, Mrs. Hendricks.”

“Well, a man in a big gray car followed us from El Paso and... what’s the matter?”

Wegmann had laughed. “A big gray car? An Oldsmobile, perhaps?”

“Why, yes. An Oldsmobile with Texas license plates.” Wegmann was grinning. “It’s all right,” he said. “I know about that car. As a matter of fact, I buried it myself.” He stopped grinning and became businesslike. “Gunther, you drive our four-wheel-drive job and lead the way. Keep an eye on the mirror in case we need help. Dr. Naldi, you can handle the pickup better than a gun, I think. You drive the truck and I’ll ride in back with the prisoners... What is it now, Mrs. Hendricks?”

I felt kind of sorry for her, standing there looking startled and indignant. For a sophisticated woman, she was very naive in some ways. She’d really expected they wouldn’t hurt me, I guess. She’d even expected that they would let her go.

It was cold, lying in the back of the truck, face down, tied hand and foot. The fact that the piled-up duffel bags, suitcases, and supplies at the side of the narrow space barely left room for the two of us on the mattress didn’t add to our comfort, although it did keep us from rolling around too much as the truck bounced and swayed.

Behind us, at the corner where the tailgate joined the side, Wegmann had made a blanket-padded nest for himself. He sat there, a dim shape in the darkness. My revolver, which he’d taken from Gail, rested on his knee. This made sense, professionally speaking. It was a nice, powerful little gun; and if you have to shoot a guy, it leaves less evidence if you can manage to do it with his own weapon.

I could feel Gail shivering beside me. She’d said nothing since we left the lodge. When you came right down to it, there wasn’t a lot she could say—she’d pulled a double cross and it had backfired. The laugh, if any, was on her. For some reason I didn’t feel very much like laughing. I managed to get a grip on the sleeping bag lying nearby, but when I tried to work it over us, for warmth, Wegmann reached forward and jerked it away.

“None of that,” he said. “No covers. I want to see every knot clearly, Mr. Helm.”

“Hell,” I said, “you can’t see anything in here, man.” This wasn’t strictly true. The windows of the canopy, coated as they were with frost, were beginning to show a faint gray dawn as we jolted up the unknown road to an unknown destination—unknown, at least, to me. Dr. Naldi, I noted, was an artist with the gears. It seemed like a strange skill for a learned Ph.D. to have picked up. A chain link had broken and was clanking rhythmically against the right rear fender. Well, those chains had seen me through several winters already.

“I can see enough,” Wegmann said. “I can see if you move.”

I was glad to have him talking at last. There were a couple of theories about him I wanted to check.

I said, “You’re a pro, aren’t you? Your name isn’t Wegmann. I’ve seen your face in the files somewhere. The name was something Slavic.” That was a guess, from the shape of his features. I hadn’t seen his face in any file, or I’d have recognized him, but it would be useful to know if it was there to be found. He didn’t speak; he wasn’t giving anything away. I went on: “That dumb, flat-faced, country-boy look must come in handy in your line of work. But what are you doing here with a bunch of dressed-up amateurs and save-the-world-from-destruction crackpots?”

He hesitated; then I guess he decided it wouldn’t hurt to relax and be himself for a little. Any cover is a strain to keep up, no matter how long you’ve been at it.

“Somebody must mind the store,” he said, “while the children play their happy, destructive little games. Come to that, what are you doing here, Mr. Helm? If what the lady says is true, why would anybody send a good man after a flunky like Gunther? I know you’re a pretty good man. That’s why I let him have a little fun with you back there, I wanted the chance to size you up.”

“Thanks,” I said, “for the compliment, if nothing else. As for the question, do you get to ask why in your outfit? That’s not the way I heard it.”

“It is a point,” he said. “But it is not an answer.”

“Maybe they don’t know he’s a flunky,” I said, choosing my words carefully. “Maybe they think he’s the big wheel, the head man for this area, the fellow known as Cowboy. I told my chief he didn’t have the weight for it. My chief said it wasn’t our job to put him on the scales. Heavy or light, the word from Washington was Gunther.”

“That is very interesting,” Wegmann said. “That’s very reassuring. That’s what I hoped you would say, Mr. Helm. So they think he is this Cowboy they have hunted so long? Well, I worked hard enough to create that impression. I selected Mr. Gunther and trained him carefully, just for this purpose—of course, I did get some useful work out of him down in Juarez, but just between us, he doesn’t make a very efficient operative. He has a tendency to lose his head. I allowed him to attract official attention gradually. Fortunately, he is a very stupid and conceited man who can’t conceive of anybody being more clever than he is. Also, he is very hungry for money. And of course he does wear very conspicuous clothes.”

“And Naldi?”

“Oh, Dr. Naldi is what you would call the inside man, the mad professor, you might say, who betrayed his country because of a wild theory. And stupid Hank Wegmann, the conscientious man at the filling station, was merely a convenient dupe for these smart people. He will escape, of course, but nobody will be very concerned about that, because he is not really important... You know, of course, why I am speaking to you frankly.”

I laughed shortly. “I think I’ve been in the business as long as you, Wegmann. I know, all right.”

“It is the only way,” he said. “You understand. There is nothing personal.”

“Sure,” I said. “I’d do it myself, if the orders were to break clean and leave no witnesses.”

“I am glad you understand.”

Beside me, Gail stirred slightly, listening to this. A little intake of breath said she was about to speak, to ask a question, then she sighed and was still again. The truck jolted to an abrupt halt and somebody flung open the rear. Next there was the business of untying our feet and getting us unloaded, but I didn’t pay too much attention to the details. Even if there was a break, I wasn’t ready to take advantage of it yet. Besides, I was looking at the contraption they had installed in the church steeple.

Maybe it was a funny place to find a church, high on the side of the mountain, but that country is full of deserted mining camps and old ghost towns, and while many of the early settlers were pretty rough hombres, many were religious folk, too. Often the church was the best-built structure in the community—the last to fall down after the population moved elsewhere.

I’d guessed we were up on the Sierra Blanca somewhere, but we weren’t quite as high as I’d thought. It had seemed, riding in back all trussed up, that we’d done enough climbing to be well above timber line, but there were still heavy stands of pine around us. The little forgotten town was wedged into a fold in the mountainside which opened to the west. There were some board shacks still standing, weathered silvery gray. A couple of stone huts remained almost intact, sturdily built of irregular pieces of local rock laid up carefully, Indian fashion, with mud mortar or no mortar at all. Roofless shells and stumps of walls, half buried in the snow, showed where other houses had been. Up the hillside, above the pines, was at least one mine shaft; there were probably others.

The squat little church was of stone, and parts of it had fallen into rubble, but sections of the roof remained, and most of the bell tower. Up there, camouflaged from air observation by the remnants of the wooden belfry, was the gadget. Actually, it was a kind of parabolic antenna which I associated with radar. You see similar rigs around most military installations, turning nervously, listening like great headless ears.

To be perfectly honest, I can’t guarantee such rigs are concerned with radar; that’s just what somebody told me once. Electronics isn’t my field at all, any more than atomics. I won’t even guarantee that this dingus was parabolical. It could have been hyperbolical or spherical, but it’s my impression that the electronics boys have more fun with parabolas, for mathematical reasons we won’t go into here.

Anyway, it was a bowl-shaped contrivance of rods and wires several feet in diameter. It was aimed in a general westerly direction—out towards the great open valley below—and it was searching busily, swiveling back and forth and up and down in an intricate pattern. There was a man up in the belfry with it. I didn’t envy him his job. For one thing, it must have been cold, just sitting there, and for another, that old stonework hadn’t been designed to support a lot of heavy, vibrating machinery.

Wegmann was standing beside me. “Well, Mr. Helm?” he said. “What do you think?”

I asked, “What does it do, catch flies and small birds?”

“Not small birds, Mr. Helm,” he said. “Not small birds—large ones.”

High in the old church, a hundred and fifty yards across the little gulch from where we had stopped at the edge of the pines, the radar-like gizmo continued to trace out its complex search pattern, looking more alive and intelligent and energetic than the few half-frozen people in the place. From one of the old stone huts came the incongruous putt-putt noises of an internal combustion engine, probably a diesel or gasoline generator. I stamped my feet to bring back circulation, wishing I could perform a similar favor for my hands, which were still tied behind me.