When I didn't rise to the challenge, or come to the defense of our four-footed friends-even my own four-footed friend-she sighed and said in a different tone: "I was beginning to worry about you, darling. What kept you so long?"
"Why, Hank had a lot of business to attend to, after two days on shipboard," I said. "And then there was a slight accident down the road."
"An accident?" After a moment, she glanced at me quickly. There was an odd, savage, expectant little gleam in her eye that I'd seen before. As I've said, she wasn't the gentlest lady I'd ever slept with. She licked her lips. "That man you called Pete? I saw him waiting for you at that filling station as I drove by. Is he… is he dead?"
"I didn't stop to check," I said.
"What do you mean, you didn't stop to check?" Suddenly her voice was harsh. "You fool, if you made a try at him and he's still alive-" I said, "Sweetheart, you are the damndest girl for just wishing people dead. If you feel all that homicidal, why don't you get out and do a little murdering on your own?"
I grinned as I said it, but she didn't smile back. Her voice remained angry as she said, "But now that you've confirmed his suspicions by trying to get rid of him, he can ruin everything!"
It had been a mistake, after all, not to go back, or at least to tell her about it. I'd forgotten that this girl didn't know, as I did, that whether or not Pete's suspicions were confirmed didn't really matter, since he'd already communicated them to somebody else, who was acting on them or soon would be.
She didn't know, and I was not authorized to tell her, that this was just the way my assignment had been planned a long time ago-well, it seemed a long time ago. She was thinking of a different operation with a different objective, and I couldn't put her straight. That Mr. Smith and his people and his counterespionage mission were just a cover I was using for a totally different job wasn't information I could entrust to anybody, certainly not to a girl who claimed to be working for Smith.
To cover up, I had no recourse but to get nasty. I said, "With all due respect, Miss Meredith, I'm just a little tired of your trying to use me as a lethal weapon-and then complaining when I fail to pile up the corpses in large enough heaps to suit your bloodthirsty taste!"
She looked at me coldly. After a moment, without speaking, she rose from the dinette seat in a dignified manner-at least it would have been dignified if the camper had had about six inches more headroom. The crack on the head didn't improve her temper. She just glared at me and pushed past me and went out of there fast. I heard her, outside, running around the rig to her car. The forward window, giving a view ahead through the cab and windshield, showed me the Cadillac lurching away to join the diminishing line at the customs office.
I drew a long breath and turned back to the stove. After a little, I noted that she'd been checked through. Obviously still mad, she was out in the left lane, highballing it past the slower traffic before she was out of sight. Well, that might be all right on smooth U.S. pavement, but the Canadian roads up here, I'd been told, were very much unpaved and had to be treated with respect, particularly if you were driving a vehicle designed for glamour rather than durability.
But that was her problem. I really had no business worrying about it. It was time for me to remember once more the maxim of the profession: What happens in bed has absolutely no bearing on what happens elsewhere. No matter how nice the night had been, it was daytime now.
I sat down to eat. Afterward, I went through the border formalities and, alone on the road, headed toward the Alaska Highway a hundred miles away, thinking about Holz and just how he might be figuring to take care of me, now that he had me available in open, empty country instead of on a crowded ship.
At least that was what I was supposed to be thinking about.
25
INLAND, IT WAS A FANTASTIC country. The stuff along the coast was picturesque enough, but I was brought up on mountain scenery, and it takes a lot of rock to impress me. The real experience for me came when I climbed out of the coastal cliffs and canyons and topped out on the endless roof of the world, bright in fall colors. I'd seen something like it once before, in northern Europe at the same time of the year, but that kind of landscape doesn't grow old very fast.
The road was just as lousy as I'd been promised it would be, making the total impression even more memorable. There's something kind of insulating about asphalt and concrete. In order to appreciate a country fully, you've got to dodge the rocks, smash into the potholes, weave along the ruts, splash through the puddles, and taste the high-flung mud blown in through the open window…
My next-and last, thank God-pickup wasn't scheduled until early this evening, at the final border crossing at a small town called Beaver Creek, only some three hundred miles ahead. It was still early. I had plenty of time to make it if I didn't get in a hurry and break something, so I just cruised easily along the twisting gravel road- gravel, in that part of the world, means anything from chicken-gravel to head-sized boulders-across the gaudy tundra, if that's the proper term for the terrain I was viewing.
There was no human habitation and no traffic for a good many miles beyond the border. Then I passed a single car, a fellow straggler from the bunch off the morning's ferry, judging by the shiny paint and the California plates. It was a big new Lincoln carrying a middle-aged couple obviously reluctant to get their expensive sedan bent or dirty; the man was driving very cautiously, picking his way along the rugged road like a lady trying to cross a wet street late at night without ruining her party shoes.
Five miles farther on, I saw another vehicle approaching from ahead. As it drew closer, I realized that I knew it, even though it was going the wrong way and had got pretty muddy since I'd seen it last. It was the lab truck, as young Smith had called it. It was heading back toward Haines for some reason, and the boys weren't sparing it a thing the road could dish out. They were really coming, hammering over the washboards and sliding through the curves. As they neared me, I pulled over to give them plenty of room, since they didn't seem to have the situation altogether under control.
The man at the wheel-whichever one of them it was- flashed his headlights at me and slammed on his brakes. He skidded to a halt well beyond me as, in answer to his signal, I stopped my rig more sedately on the other side of the road. It seemed like a hell of a place for a conference, out in wide-open country where anybody within a five-mile radius could see us together; but it was their mission and their security, and if they wanted to blow it, it was their business. Actually, considering what Holz probably knew or guessed by this time, there wasn't much left to blow, but they weren't supposed to know that.
I got out. The driver of the panel job got out. I saw that it was Smith, Junior. He came running toward me across the muddy road. Something about his approach didn't strike me as friendly. I moved clear of the truck to give myself maneuvering room, and checked on the bearded partner I'd seen on shipboard. He was just coming around the pseudo-delivery-van, too far away to be an immediate threat. Young Smith ran up to me, breathless.
"You killed them!" he shouted wildly. "You damn crazy murderer, you killed them!"
He swung a fist at my face. I stepped back. As he started to bring the other fist into action, I kicked him between the legs, quite gently. Castrating him might not have been a bad idea, but it's not for me to say who should, and who should not, be permitted to perpetuate the race.