"You… you're letting me go?"
"Yes, and I'll catch hell for it. But I'm damned if I'll do any more of Soo's dirty work for him. If he wants you dead, as he apparently does, he can shoot you himself. Go on. Get out of my hair, Bellman. You've got four people killed so far, five counting Nystrom. And one dog. Now see if you can keep yourself alive, just for a change of pace."
She hesitated, watching me. When she spoke, her voice had changed. "Thank you," she said quietly. "I… I promise I won't tell anybody. Anything."
"Like hell you won't," I said sourly. "If these espionage characters we're dealing with get you and question you, you'll spill your guts just like anybody else. That's the chance I'm taking."
"What about… what about Wally?"
"I'll have Wally taken care of. Just beat it. Here. Don't forget your jacket."
She took it and slipped past me in the narrow space, pausing at the door. "I really did have a Lab named Maudie once," she said.
"I figured you had," I said. "That's another reason I'm letting you go. That and because you swing a mean fish-pole. And I'll pay hell trying to explain that to my chief."
She paused, as if she had more to say, but she didn't say it, which was just as well. She went out, and a moment later I heard the Mustang start up and drive off, heading back inland, to the east. I looked at the pup on the seat, frowned, and moved him carefully to the floor where he couldn't fall, remembering that I still had sixty miles of road construction between me and the coast.
17
IT WASN'T A FANCY KNIFE. IT HAD plain wooden grips, brass caps, and a single heavy blade about four inches long, which is a little longer than I like for everyday pocket wear, although not as long as the scimitars the armaments experts in Washington would like us to lug around. It was a folding hunting knife of a well-known U.S. make, and it hadn't been used much, so that it was stiff and very hard to open. My old knife, the one I'd left a couple of hundred miles back along the road, you could flick open with a snap of the wrist.
"It is a very good knife, an American Buck knife," the storekeeper said hopefully. "I bought it from a boy just off the ferry who'd spent all his money up north and needed gasoline to get back to the States. I will let you have it for twelve dollars."
I bought it, and some supplies I needed, and went out into the sunshine and looked around at the town of Prince Rupert, B.C. It wasn't much to look at. I don't mean it was a bad little town; that was just the trouble, from the standpoint of a romantic tourist like me. A bad little town, a very bad little town, was what one expected and kind of hoped for up here in the big woods at the end of the pavement: something wicked and picturesque to bring home the fact that between this end of the Alaska Ferry system and the other, some four hundred miles to the north, civilization was represented only by a few scattered coastal communities that could be reached only by boat or plane. But instead of a ripsnorting frontier hell-hole, there was just a rather ordinary small town complete with motels and filling stations.
I went over to the truck, parked at the curb. Nobody in Prince Rupert seemed to be paying it any attention. Campers from the States, waiting to take the ferry up the coast, are a dime a dozen in that place.
I looked in on Hank, in back. He raised his head and thumped his tail on the floor when the door opened. He was going to be all right, but it had been a long night, first locating and awakening a local vet to give the appropriate shot, and then keeping the pup awake for several hours. A sixty-pound Labrador that wants to go to sleep on you gets pretty heavy toward morning. He looked kind of naked without his collar and I reached into my pocket, but took my hand out empty. Dopey as he still was, he might get hung up on something and be unable to get free; besides, in his present condition he couldn't be counted on to defend it properly.
"Okay, Stupid," I said. "That'll teach you to go taking handouts from strangers."
He grinned at me woozily, unimpressed. I closed the door, got into the cab, and drove over to the bus station and general transportation center that also, I'd been informed, sold ferry tickets. When I came out, I was in lawful possession of a one-way fare to Haines, Alaska. The sun was still shining, the weather still seemed too warm for that far north, and the town was still, at first glance, totally uninterested in me and my vehicle, but there was a difference.
On hazardous duty-and this job seemed well qualified for the title-I generally set a few telltales when I leave my transportation, to make sure there has been no tampering in my absence. Now I saw that those on the hood were undisturbed; the cab remained securely locked; but somebody had entered, or at least looked into, the camper. I drew a long breath. It had been quite a night and I wasn't really in the mood for monkey business.
I was tempted to simply yank open the door and see what, if anything, I had acquired back there. Whatever it was, it had to get along with a black dog, which made it either a man who was very good with dogs or one who'd made friends with this particular dog earlier. The only gents who qualified in the latter respect, who'd be likely to be up here in British Columbia, belonged to Mr. Smith- and why Mr. Smith's people would be jeopardizing my cover by hiding in my camper this morning, when I had a contact scheduled with them this afternoon, I couldn't guess. Well, the way to find out was obvious, but the middle of Prince Rupert wasn't the place to do it.
I got behind the wheel. Nothing showed in the rearview mirror, although the back window of the cab corresponded with a forward window in the camper that gave me a partial view of the interior. Whoever was back there, if anybody was, was keeping low. I started the truck and drove out of town the way I'd come, found a dirt road leading back into the woods, and took this to a clearing out of sight of the highway where I could get the long-wheelbase job turned around facing out.
I cut the switch, set the brake, walked back, and opened the camper door. A young man sitting in the dinette pointed a sawed-off revolver at me.
"Come in, Mr. Helm," he said. "I was sent to get the dog's collar, but he isn't wearing it. Where is it?"
I looked at him for a moment. The face and the voice were both familiar. The voice I'd heard most recently over the telephone in Pasco, complaining about grasshoppers. The face I'd seen the previous week down in San Francisco, one among many eager young faces I'd met there, all owning allegiance to Mr. Smith. I looked at the gun.
"Hank," I said. The pup was lying docilely on the floor, obviously feeling himself among friends. He looked at me questioningly. I snapped my fingers. "Hank, get out of here."
"Mr. Helm-"
I said. "On the double, pup! Easy now, watch that step, you stumblebum. Okay, go do your stuff, but stick around." Still watching the gun, I spoke to the man holding it. "We have a date this afternoon," I said. "Why not wait and get your collar then?"
"We want it now, Mr. Helm," he said.
I said, "That firearm. Put it away."
"The collar, Mr. Helm."
"Put it away," I said.
He shook his head, and gestured with the revolver. "Come inside. I have my instructions…"
I'd had enough of amateurs. I was sick of amateurs. I said, "To hell with your instructions. You have about five seconds to put that thing away. After that, you eat it."
"Mr. Helm, I am only carrying out my orders…
"Not around here, you're not." I drew a long breath. "Pee or get off the pot, Sonny, because here I come."
"But..
He was still saying something by way of protest as I stepped up into the camper, bending to clear the low doorway. I saw his eyes waver as I approached, and I knew I'd judged him correctly. No matter what kind of fancy training he'd had, he was still an amateur at heart and would always remain one. Training means nothing when applied to a certain kind of mentality. He was one of the new ones, brought up on togetherness and TV. He was one of the innocents who'd never learned, and probably would never learn, that the only thing you can do with a gun is shoot it.