"I want a car," I said. "They took the keys I grabbed, the ones to Holz's sedan over there, and I couldn't get it out of this traffic jam, anyway. Get me something to drive, quick. You can come along if you like."
"Where are we-" He changed his mind about asking questions. "All right, but if you're thinking of the Meredith woman, she's being taken care of."
I refrained from speaking my thought, which was that it would require a hell of a lot of boyscouts, young or old, to take care of the Meredith woman, however you wanted to interpret the phrase. I glanced at my watch again. Figuring roughly three miles per hour for men on horseback, as against two for a woman on foot, we might have only some forty minutes left.
"Maybe so," I said. "But I still want a car. Let's go."
It took us twenty minutes to reach The Antlers Lodge. There was no reason to think anybody would recognize the borrowed vehicle, but I took no chances and parked it out of sight. Then I led Davis into the brush at the side of the building, the same cover into which I'd charged incautiously the other day to help a howling dog.
The stuff ran down the hill to a point almost opposite the filling station rest rooms. We made our way there and lay down among the bushes on the damp moss and leaves that soon soaked through our clothes, but I'll have to hand it to my companion, he knew how to lie still. Occasionally, like now and when he'd fired instantly on command, back in the camp, he showed real promise. It was too bad he hadn't learned to follow instructions consistently, but that could be fixed..
Twenty minutes passed, and another twenty, and still another. She was behind schedule, but it had been a long, tough walk, and afterwards there would have been arrangements to make. She couldn't be blamed for being a bit slow. At last, when it was fully dark, she came.
The big car drew up to the gas pumps and she got out on the right-hand side and headed for the rest room. She didn't look good. She'd changed from the yellow-brown corduroy outfit, of course-it would have come out of the brush much too tattered and muddy to appear in public- but in spite of fresh clothes, pants and a heavy sweater, she looked tired and bedraggled. She needed a bath, a beauty parlor, and about twelve hours sleep. Nevertheless, despite the show of utter weakness she'd put on for me yesterday, complete with tears, she was by no means crippled or exhausted by her greater ordeal today. She'd eluded the posse sent out to capture her, she'd made contact with her principal somehow; and now she was completing her mission.
At least I hoped the driver was the principal for whom she was working. In the darkness, I couldn't see his face as he gave instructions to the filling station attendant and came around the car. He walked along the building to the door marked MEN. I still couldn't get a clear look at him in spite of the lights above both rest-room doors. He paused with his hand on the knob, stalling, until Libby came out of the adjacent room. She had the dog collar in her left hand, and she was shaking water off the other hand.
"Here you are, Mr. Soo," she said. Her voice reached us clearly. "Damn it, why do they make those cisterns so deep?" She started to squeeze the sleeve of her sweater, soaked at the wrist.
"You're sure these are the right ones? There seem to have been a lot of substitutions going on."
"I told you. Four of them are good. The fifth was probably never transferred-that man who called himself Wood most likely just passed a dummy at the last drop- so I wasn't able to get it. At least I don't think he'd use the real information as bait."
"Too bad. It would have been better if we could have had the complete set. But you have done well."
As the man turned, I saw the familiar Chinese features I'd known briefly in Hawaii. Everything was perfectly clear at last. Mr. Soo had hired the young interlopers for fifty thousand dollars to carry out the murder-and-impersonation job set up by the female agent, Libby, whom he'd planted in the Russian espionage cell in San Francisco. Apparently Libby's control over the real Nystrom hadn't been as great as she'd claimed, and she'd decided to have him killed and use a substitute courier instead.
But then she'd found a better substitute-me-in Seattle, and decided that she could gain my confidence and get the stuff from me when delivered. That had canceled the usefulness of Nystrom Three and Pat Bellman and their friends, who'd loused up their first rendezvous anyway. Libby, claiming revenge as a motive, had sent me out to get rid of them so they couldn't talk; and Mr. Soo had helped by giving them instructions that made it easy for me to wipe them out.
Davis stirred beside me as Libby and Mr. Soo walked back to their car.
"But aren't you going to…
"Stop them?" I whispered. "What the hell for?"
"She's a murderess!"
"She'll be taken care of," I said. "You know what's in the collar; you helped prepare it. Do you want it to go to waste? If we can't get it into Russian hands, what's wrong with letting the Chinese have it? And what do you think is going to happen to the lady when her superiors discover, belatedly, that they've been misled by a lot of phony information supplied by her?
Davis was silent. We watched the big car drive away. I remembered a woman in a Seattle motel room early one morning, reminding me how Moscow deals with failures. Peking's reaction would be no less violent, I hoped. Or did I?
The city of Anchorage was surprisingly large and civilized considering the amount of wilderness through which I'd had to pass to reach it. From my comfortable room high up in a very plush hotel named after the same Captain Cook I'd heard a lot about in Hawaii-that sailor really got around-I could look out upon miles of metropolis, as well as upon several empty blocks destroyed in the earthquake of some years back, now mostly converted into parking lots.
I said into the phone, "Very well, sir. I'll get right over there." I hesitated. "One question?"
"Yes, Eric."
"Now that we're through with this lousy friendship job of yours, sir, what the hell is NCS, anyway?"
Mac's voice was expressionless. "Do you have a need to know, Eric?"
I grimaced. It was the old security catch phrase, the idea being that even a fancy title and an astronomical security rating do not in themselves entitle a government employee to any classified information he does not actually require in the line of business. In some of those Washington buildings, they won't even tell you the way to the cafeteria if you can't demonstrate that you haven't eaten for six hours and really need a meal.
I said, "Go to hell, sir. I should have pried those damn disks open and used a magnifying glass."
Mac's dry laugh reached me across thousands of miles of wire. "I am merely giving you the answer that was given to me when I asked the question. I should also inform you that our late associates, while they approved of your results, felt obliged to inform me that they considered your methods deplorable. Somehow I got the impression that they will not require your services again."
"Golly," I said, "that makes me feel just terrible, sir."
"I thought it would. Well, take it easy. And if you, like the late Holz, ever start brooding about the lonely, desperate life of a secret agent, please let me know at once. You cut this one quite fine enough without that handicap."
"Yes, sir."
I made a face at the phone as I put it down. Then I told Hank to be good and took my hat and topcoat, feeling kind of strange and sawed-off in my civilized clothes and low-heeled shoes. Those cowboy boots are habit-forming. I had a taxi run me to the hospital on the edge of town-the camper rig had been returned intact, but it was being serviced after the long journey.
The nurse at the desk directed me to the room. Heading that way, I met Mr. Smith, Senior-I mean Mr. Ryerson. He was accompanied by Lester Davis.
Ryerson gave me a bleak, unhappy nod and kept on going. At the moment, he looked like a man who might have trouble handling one set of agents, let alone two at the same time. Davis stopped and said, "I'm sorry, Ronnie can't have any more visitors today, but he'll appreciate your coming."