”Straight ahead. Not in there, that’s the head-bathroom to you. It’s the cabin to starboard. No, no, on your right, you lubber. Throw him in and let’s get topside and give Nick a hand before we drift onto the shoals.“
The man who opened the door had a seamed, whiskery face and a meaty nose. Remove the whiskers, and it was a face i’d seen in the files, but I couldn’t recall the name that went with it. Well, I’d figured he’d be somebody reasonably familiar. Robin had got my code name from the conversation I’d had with Jean; but the name Matthew Helm hadn’t been mentioned in that hotel room. She had to have got that from somebody who knew the two names went together.
He’d seen my face somewhere, too, and he was glad to see it again. ”Mister Helm,“ he said. ”How nice to make your acquaintance. I have been looking forward to it. You are not as pretty as the lady we were expecting, the one with such a deplorable fondness for liquor, but I’m sure my superiors will not complain
“Stow it, Loeffler,” Robin said, behind him, “Never mind the corny dialogue. Just shove in the doctor and secure the door.”
“Secure? Ah, you mean fasten-”
The man called Loeffler-which wasn’t the name we had him filed under-got a grip on the sagging figure supported between him and Robin, and propelled him forward for me to catch. The door closed, and I was standing there with Dr. Norman Michaelis in my arms, the man I’d come to silence. I remembered Mac’s words clearly: How to achieve this result is left entirely to the discretion of the agent on the spot. Do you understand?
I’d understood perfectly then, and I understood just as well now. It was a moment of triumph, in a way. I’d broken discipline and disobeyed orders to get here. I’d played gangster and let myself be drugged and imprisoned. I might never get out alive, but at least my job was finished. Jean’s job was finished. I was here, and so was the subject I’d come to find. The rest, for a man of my training, was just a technical detail.
TWENTY ONE
“Is HE-GOING to be all right?”
That was Teddy, behind me, trying to get a look at her parent as I put him into the bunk beside Louis. It was a damn fool question. Probably none of us were going to be all right. Certainly Dr. Norman Michaelis wasn’t, not if I could help it.
He looked about as you’d expect a man to look after being imprisoned for a lengthy interval in a ruined cellar. He seemed to be wearing slacks, a sport shirt, and rubber-soled shoes. I remembered that he’d vanished while out sailing. The mechanics of it had never been explained to me, and didn’t really matter. I wasn’t about to wake him up to ask him.
The clothes were filthy, his hair was long and tangled, and he had a beard like a hermit. He looked half-starved to boot. He was out cold.
“What’s the matter with him?” Teddy wailed. “Why doesn’t he wake up?”
I said, “They’ve got him under drugs. It’s the lazy man’s way of keeping a prisoner quiet. Besides, the right drugs used long enough affect the will to resist. I guess they were softening him up for the interrogation experts.”
My voice sounded dry and pedantic and far away. It would have been such an easy job if I’d been alone with him; it would have been over already. He was drugged, weakened by exposure and hunger; it would have been no more trouble than blowing Out a candle.
His lips moved. “AUDAP? I don’t know anything about-no, no, I won’t tell-you can’t make me tell!”
He was wrong. They could make him tell. They could make almost any man tell almost anything-unless the man were dead. I thought of the odd-looking nuclear submarines with their incredible loads of destruction upon which, Mac had been told by the Navy, depended the safety of the nation and the peace of the world. Even if the picture was a little exaggerated-I’d never yet met a military man who was entirely objective about the importance of his own service-the decision wasn’t mine to make. I had my orders.
I stuck my elbow into the kid crowding against me. “Get over by the porthole, Teddy. Tell me if you can see anything. Brief me.”
“But-”
“Snap into it. I’ll look after him.” I’d look after him, all right.
She moved away reluctantly. I was aware of her leaning forward to wipe at the glass-and there was my chance. The little death pill was in my hand. I hated to part with it, I might need it myself pretty soon, but it was the best way. All I had to do was slip it into his mouth and make him swallow. She’d never know. He’d simply have died in his drugged sleep, as far as she was concerned.
Her voice hit me like a sonic boom. “We’ve turned back north; we’ve got the island off the starboard. We’re close-hauled, beating out of Mendenhall Bay. We’ll have to tack as soon as we’re clear of the island to make open water. I hope that woman’s got her bearings straight. We can’t have much room to play around in here, in a boat this size.”
My voice still came from far away. “Why would Mrs. Rosten come clear in here, in the first place, instead of picking them up on the seaward side of the island, where we had plenty of room and couldn’t be seen from shore?”
“Don’t be silly, she had to get in the lee to bring them aboard. They’d never have been able to get a rubber boat out to us seaward, not against this wind. There must be a mile of breakers on that side tonight.” Teddy leaned forward. “We’re still holding on; we’ve got a ways to go yet before we can come about and clear the island on the port tack…”
I looked at the man on the bunk. Stop stalling, you spineless jerk! I told myself. I leaned forward and made a show of drawing back the eyelid to look at the eye, like a TV doctor. I picked up the wrist to check the pulse. I dropped the wrist and leaned forward again to put my hand to his mouth. Teddy spoke behind me.
“What are you doing, Matt? What are you giving him?” I didn’t even jump. I guess I’d known it wouldn’t work out right. Maybe I hadn’t even wanted it to work out right. But it was all of a pattern, I thought grimly: the woman who’d died when she wasn’t supposed to and the man who was alive five minutes after he should have been dead. I should, of course, have done it the instant they threw him into my arms, as I’d planned, and to hell with who saw what. I might even have got away with it, then.
I turned my head slowly. “Benzedrine,” I said. “To bring him around.”
She was frowning at me. I don’t put much stock in feminine intuition; she’d have been a real dope if she hadn’t sensed something, after the fumble-witted stalling I’d done.
“Let me see it,” she said in an odd little voice, and I showed it to her on the palm of my hand. She asked, “How do you happen to have-”
“Hell, we always carry bennies to keep us awake on a tough job.”
“But are you sure that’s the right thing to give him?”
Her voice had an absent sound, as if she wasn’t really interested in the question she was asking. She was still frowning, not at the pill, but at me. Her blue eyes were narrow and wondering. She knew that something was wrong, terribly wrong, but the idea that had come into her mind was too far-out to put into words… She did it without a hint of warning. She just grabbed the pill out of my hand and started bringing it to her mouth; and I swung without thinking, slapping it away before it reached her lips. I guess I’d have done the same thing even if I’d had time to think.
The pill rolled away across the teak floor, and then came back towards us as the Freya heeled over. It reminded me, somehow, of one of the pearls from Jean’s broken necklace. I got up and picked it up. I went into the john, dropped it into the toilet, and pumped it out of sight. When I came back, she was still standing stiffly by the bed.
“No!” she said breathlessly. “Stay away! Don’t come near him!”
She was staring at me as if she had never seen me before. Perhaps she hadn’t. “You-were going to kill him!” she whispered.