The Wrecking Crew (2 page)

My room turned out to be big and pleasant, overlooking one of the wide, picturesque estuaries that seemed to be just about everywhere you went in Stockholm—my taxi ride had confirmed my first impression that the city was half water and bridges. I got rid of the bellboy and looked at my watch. Eventually I’d have to report my arrival, as a matter of interdepartmental courtesy, to certain fellow-citizens on the spot, but this was a little detail I could postpone without a qualm of conscience. The less I had to do with professional diplomats and intelligence people, the better I liked it.

However, I also had an appointment of sorts directly connected with the job, and the train had made me later than I’d expected. I picked up the phone.

“I’d like to speak with Mrs. Taylor,” I said. “I believe she’s staying here. Mrs. Louise Taylor?”

“Mrs. Taylor?” The desk clerk’s voice, speaking English, had a strong British accent with Swedish overtones. It made an odd combination. “Righto,” he said. “Room 311. I’ll connect you, sir.”

Standing there, waiting for the call to be put through, I became aware that someone had stepped out of the closet behind me.

A canny secret-agent type would, of course, have looked the place over carefully before turning his back on the closet and bathroom doors. Under other circumstances, I might even have done so myself, but I was playing a part, and my script didn’t call for any displays of professional vigilance. Mac had been emphatic on this point.

“You’ve now been given a thorough refresher course of training, courtesy of Uncle Sam,” he said at my final briefing. “It’s possible that Uncle, being a peaceful sort, wouldn’t approve of everything in the curriculum, but what Uncle doesn’t know won’t hurt him. Security has its advantages, and we’re very top-secret here. We’re supposed to be developing some kind of a mystery weapon, I believe. Well, one might call it that. After all, the greatest mystery on earth, and the most dangerous weapon, is man himself.”

Having delivered himself of this weighty philosophy, he looked at me expectantly across the desk. I said, “Yes, sir.”

Mac grimaced. “I have your record here. It’s quite outstanding. I haven’t seen a worse one in a long time. Your reflexes and reaction times are lousy. Your score with a pistol, on all courses of fire, is pitiful. With a rifle you’re a little better, but then, practically anybody can shoot a rifle. With a knife, thanks to your long arms, you almost reached adequacy, it says here, once you stopped falling over your big feet. At unarmed combat, thanks again to your ridiculous height and reach, you finally succeeded in scaling the highest peaks of mediocrity. Your physical condition was deplorable when we got you, and it’s still nothing to cheer about. You’ve lost fifteen pounds, and could dispense with another ten without missing an ounce. What the devil have you been doing with yourself all these years, just sitting around on your rear elevation?”

“That’s about it, sir,” I said.

I’d been about to protest that my record couldn’t possibly be as bad as he claimed. As a matter of fact, for a man coming back to the organization after a fifteen-year layoff, I thought I’d done fairly well. About to say as much, I’d changed my mind, realizing that he wasn’t asking me, he was telling me. Regardless of what scores I’d actually made, this was what was going into the files, just in case somebody came snooping. He was being clever again. For some reason he considered it advantageous for me to seem practically helpless.

“The recommendation of the staff was unanimous,” Mac went on, poker-faced. “Not one of them would take the responsibility of clearing you for a dangerous mission.” He shoved the papers away from him. “They’re a bunch of fools,” he said. “I told them my reasons for wanting you, and still they send me this! We’ve got so much red tape, it’s a wonder we get anything done. Nowadays everybody’s supposed to have a signed certificate from a doctor, a psychologist, and six coaches and trainers, before he’s permitted to cross the street to fetch the evening paper. Remember the time I sent you across the Channel with a man we called Vance? You had a half-healed bullet hole in your chest, and he had his arm in a sling. It made your impersonations of German soldiers on convalescent leave much more convincing, and there’s no evidence that it affected your performances adversely. I don’t put much stock in physical condition. A man’s mental condition is what counts.”

“Yes, sir,” I said. He was getting wordy in his old age. He’d never talked this much during the war.

He frowned at me for a moment. “Vance is still with us, incidentally,” he said. “If you’ve forgotten what he looks like—we’ve all changed a bit since those days— you can identify him by the scar just above the elbow where the bone came out through the skin. Keep that in mind. He’ll be your direct contact with me, if for any reason you should find it inadvisable to use the regular channels of communication you’ve been told about.” He pursed his lips. “Of course, other departments have much greater facilities for transmitting messages than we have, and they give us wonderful cooperation, but you might just feel like sending something meant for my eyes alone. Or I might want to send something for yours. Vance will pass it on, either way. He’s operating on the continent, but the plane service is excellent, if you should need assistance.”

“Yes, sir,” I said.

He glanced at the training-course records again. “As for this stuff,” he said, “whether or not it’s precisely accurate doesn’t matter, since the first thing I want you to do, when you leave this room, is forget everything you’ve just been taught. If I’d thought this job required a man trained to razor-edge perfection, I wouldn’t have picked one well along in his thirties, a man who’s been outside the organization, wielding nothing more lethal than camera and typewriter, for fifteen years. Do you understand what I’m trying to tell you?”

“Not completely, sir,” I said. “You’ll have to spell it out for me.”

He said, “I had you put through the mill for your own sake. I couldn’t in good conscience send you out so rusty and out of condition you’d get yourself killed. Besides, we’ve developed some new techniques since your time, which I thought you’d like to know about. But in many ways you’d have been better prepared for the job at hand if you’d spent the past month in a hotel room with a bottle and a blonde. Now you’ll have to use restraint. Don’t betray yourself by showing off any of the pretty tricks you’ve just learned. If somebody wants to follow you, let them follow; you don’t even know they’re there. What’s more, you don’t care. If they want to search your belongings, don’t set any traps for them. If you should get involved in a fight-—God forbid—forget about weapons except in a clear and desperate emergency. And don’t give any unnecessary judo demonstrations, either. Just lead with your right and take your licking like a man. Do I make myself clear?”

“Well, I begin to see daylight through the mists, sir.”

He said, “I was sorry to hear that your wife has left you, but this project ought to take your mind off your marital troubles for a while.” He glanced at me sharply. “I suppose that’s why you suddenly changed your mind about coming back to work, after turning me down twice.”

“Yes, sir,” I said.

He frowned at me. “It’s been a long time, hasn’t it? I don’t mind saying that I’m glad to have you. You may be a trifle soft in the body, but you can’t possibly be as bad as the youngsters we get nowadays, who are practically all soft in the head… You’ll be taking considerable risk, of course,” he went on more briskly. “I feel that the risk will be lessened by a deliberate show of ineptness, but this means that you’ll be a sitting duck for anybody who really wants you out of the way. You’ll have to give the other fellow all the breaks. But it’s a foregone conclusion that they’re going to test you out carefully before they accept you as harmless, and you don’t want to scare them off. We’ve got a good cover for you, but one clever, professional move on your part will blow it instantly. You don’t know anything like that, except what you’ve seen in the movies. You’re just a hick free-lance photographer on his first assignment for a big New York magazine, aching to make good. That’s all you are. Don’t forget it for a minute. The job, and maybe even your life, may depend on it.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Your target,” Mac said, “is a man named Caselius. At least that’s the only name he uses that seems to be known. He undoubtedly has others. He’s apparently a pretty good man in his line, which is espionage. He’s bothering our earnest counter-intelligence people no end, so that they’ve finally overcome their humanitarian scruples and put in a request for us to take action. The fact that the man seems to be dangerous may have influenced them slightly. They’ve lost a number of agents who got too close to this mysterious fellow; and there was an incident last year involving a magazine writer, a chap named Harold Taylor, who published a popular article on Soviet espionage in general and Mister Caselius in particular. It was the first time, to our knowledge, that the name had appeared in print.

“Shortly thereafter Taylor and his wife were accidentally sprinkled with a full clip of submachine-gun bullets while stopped at a road block in the wrong part of Germany. A careless sentry and a mechanical malfunction was the official explanation. There seems to be little doubt among our people that Caselius was responsible. Apparently Taylor had learned too much, somehow. This is the angle you’re supposed to exploit.”

“Exploit how?” I asked. “It’s been a long time since I’ve used a ouija board, sir.”

Mac ignored my feeble attempt at witticism. “Taylor was killed instantly, according to the reports. His wife, however, was only wounded, and survived. She was returned to our side of the so-called curtain after considerable delay, for which medical reasons were given. There were many official apologies and expressions of regret, of course. She is now in Stockholm, Sweden, ostensibly trying to continue her late husband’s writing career on her own hook. She has turned out a magazine article on iron mining in northern Sweden that requires photographic illustrations. I have arranged for you to be the man assigned by the magazine in question to take the pictures.

“Our intelligence people over there seem to think there’s something fishy about the accident to her husband, about her long detention in the East German hospital, and even about her sudden decision to take up article writing. In any case, you are to use her as a starting point. Guilty or innocent, she may lead you, somehow, to Caselius. Or you may have to figure out another angle. How you do it is your business. When you’ve made your touch, report back to me.”

The word seemed to bring a slight chill into the office. The Russians prefer the word liquidate. The syndicate boys call it making a hit. But we’d always referred to it as a touch, for no reason anybody’d ever figured out.

“Yes, sir,” I said.

“Eric,” he said, using my code name, as was our practice.

“Sir?”

“A little of that sirring goes a long way, Eric. We’re not in the army now.”

“No, sir,” I said. It was an old running joke between us, dating back to the time I’d first come to the outfit as an overeager young second lieutenant, happy to be singled out for special duty, even though I didn’t know what it was or why I’d been chosen. “I’ll certainly remember that, sir,” I said with a straight face.

He gave me a glimpse of his rare, wintry smile. “Just a few more things before you go,” he said. “You haven’t had many dealings with these people. Just remember that they’re as tough as the Nazis ever were and maybe even a shade smarter; at least they don’t go around claiming to be supermen. Remember that you aren’t quite as young as you were when we used to send you over into occupied France. And, finally, remember that you could get by with certain things in wartime that won’t pass in time of peace. This is a friendly country you’ll be visiting. You not only have to find your man and make the touch, you have to make it look good. You can’t shoot it out with their police and run for the border, if you make a mistake.” He hesitated. “Eric.”

“Sir?”

“About your wife. Would it help if I were to speak with her?”

“I doubt it,” I said. “All you could do would be to tell her the truth about the kind of work we did during the war, and that’s just what she’s recently discovered for herself. She can’t make herself forget it. It got so she couldn’t stand to have me come near her.” I shrugged my shoulders. “Well, it was bound to happen. I just tried to kid myself I could get away from it for good. I really had no business getting married and having a family. But thanks for the offer.”

He said, “If you get into trouble, we’ll do what we can unofficially, but officially we never heard of you. Good luck.”

All of this, some of it quite beside the point, went through my mind as I stood there holding the phone. The person behind me had made no real sound, but I knew quite well that I had company. I didn’t turn, but casually stretched out a foot, hooked a chair within reach, and sat down, as a woman’s voice came over the wire.

“Yes?”

“Mrs. Taylor?” I said.

“Yes, this is Mrs. Taylor.”

Well, it wasn’t the woman with the blue hair. This was a much deeper voice than the one I’d heard at the railroad station. I got an impression of a brusque and businesslike female who didn’t approve of wasting time with idle amenities. Perhaps I was prejudiced by my knowledge that Louise Taylor had been a journalist’s wife and had done some writing herself. On the whole, my experience with literary ladies hasn’t been encouraging.

“This is Matt Helm, Mrs. Taylor,” I said.

“Oh, yes, the photographer,” she said. “I’ve been expecting you. Where are you now?”

“Right in the hotel,” I said. “The train was late; I just got in. If you have some time to spare, Mrs. Taylor, I’d like to discuss the article with you before I fly north to do the pix.”

She hesitated, as if I’d said something surprising. Then she said, “Why don’t you come to my room, and well talk about it over a drink? But I must warn you, Mr. Helm, if you’re a bourbon man, you’ll have to bring your own. I’m hoarding my last bottle. They never heard of the stuff over here. I’ve got plenty of Scotch, though.”