The Mammoth Book of Short Spy Novels (Mammoth Books) Read online

  “I found out yesterday that he’s alive, Clint. Alive and in prison.” She laughed, dangerously close to hysteria. “Not that it makes any difference. Now he will die.”

  He shook her hard but she could not stop laughing. He slapped her sharply, and she was able to stop. He walked her across the compound, unlocked a door, thrust her inside, turned on a light. The small room contained a chair, table, double bed, and bookshelf.

  “Please wait here,” he said gently. “I’ll be back in a few minutes with Dr. Cudahy. Handkerchiefs in that top drawer.”

  Cudahy and Clint Reese were with her for over an hour. Clint sat beside her on the bed, holding her hand, urging her on with the story when she stumbled. Cudahy paced endlessly back and forth, white-lipped, grim. When he interrupted her now and then to ask a question his voice was harsh.

  At last they knew all there was to know. Cudahy stopped in front of her. “And you, Mrs. Aintrell, were planning to give them the – ”

  “Please shut up, Doctor,” Clint said tiredly.

  Cudahy glared at him. “I’ll require some explanation for that comment, Mr. Reese.”

  Clint lit two cigarettes and gave Francie one, while Cudahy waited for the explanarlon. Clint said, “I don’t see how a tongue-lashing is going to help anything, Doctor. Forget your own motivations for a moment and think of hers. As far as this girl knows, she has just killed her husband – just as surely as if she had a gun to his head. I doubt, Dr. Cudahy, whether either you or I, under the same circumstances, would have that same quality of moral courage. I respect her for it. I respect her far too much to listen to you rant at her.”

  Cudahy let out a long breath. He turned a chair around and sat down. He gave Clint a sheepish glance and then said, “I’m sorry, Mrs. Aintrell. I got carried away with a sense of my own importance.”

  Francie said, tonelessly, “Bob told me once that they put him in a brown suit and made him expendable. I married him knowing that. And I guess my life can be as expendable as his. He said we had to be tough. I know they made him write that. He isn’t the kind of man who begs. I almost – did what they wanted me to do. It isn’t courage, I guess. I’m just – all mixed up.”

  “Francie,” Clint said, “Dr. Cudahy and I are amateurs in the spy department. This is a job for the experts. But I’m in on this, and I’m going to stay in. I’m going to make it certain that the experts don’t foul up your chances of getting your husband back. We’re going to make the Jacksons believe that you are cooperating. The experts can’t get here until tomorrow. Do you think you can handle it all right when they contact you tonight?”

  He looked at her steadily.

  “I – I think so. I can tell them that I didn’t do any transcriptions today.”

  “Don’t give them any reason to be suspicious.”

  “I’ll try not to.’’

  Clint Reese walked her to her car, stood with the door open after she had slid under the wheel. “Want me to come along?” he asked.

  “I’m all right now.”

  “The best of luck, Francie.”

  He shut the door. The guard opened the gates. She drove down the gravel road toward Lake Arthur.

  Betty Jackson, in ski pants and white cashmere sweater, was sitting on the bunk reading a magazine. The fire was burning. Her jacket was on a nearby chair.

  Betty tossed the magazine aside and smiled up at her. “Hope you don’t mind, hon. I nearly froze on the porch and I only had to make a tiny hole in the screen, just where the catch is.”

  Francie took off her coat, held her hands toward the flames. “It’s all right.”

  “Got a little present for us, dear?”

  “I couldn’t manage it today. I took a lot of dictation and then I was put to work filing routine correspondence.”

  Betty leaned back, her blond head against the pine wall, fingers laced across her stomach. “Stew was pretty anxious. This might alarm him a little, hon. He might worry about whether you’re cooperating or double-crossing. You know, he told me last night that lots of war widows got so depressed they killed themselves. I’m not threatening you. That’s just the way his mind works sometimes.”

  “I dropped J. Edgar Hoover a personal note,” Francie said bitterly. “It’s so much simpler than getting a divorce.”

  “You don’t have to be nasty, you know. This isn’t personal with us, dear. We take orders just as you do.”

  “Tell your husband, if he is your husband, that I’ll have something tomorrow.”

  After the woman left, Francie stood and bit at the inside of her lip until she tasted blood. “Forgive me, Bob,” she said silently. “Forgive me.” It had been done. Now nothing could save him.

  She found the lure on the shelf over the sink, at eye level. The body carved to resemble a frog. After she stopped trembling she forced herself to pick it up and throw it on the fire.

  The men arrived in mid-afternoon the very next day. Three of them. A slow-moving, dry-skinned sandy one with a farmer’s cross-hatched neck. He was called Luke Osborne and he was in charge. The names of the other two were not given. They were dark, well-scrubbed young men in gleaming white shirts, dark-toned suits. Cudahy and Clint Reese were present for the conference.

  Osborne looked to be half asleep as Francie told her story. He spoke only to bring out a more detailed description of the Jacksons.

  “New blood,” he said, “or some of the reserves. Go on.”

  She finished, produced the letter. Luke Osborne fingered it, and held it up to the light before reading it. He handed it to the nearest young man, who read it slowly and passed it on to the other young man.

  Osborne said, “You’re convinced your husband wrote that?”

  “Of course!” Francie said wonderingly. “I know his writing. I know the way he says things. And then there are those references – the housecoat, Willy.”

  “Who is Willy?”

  “We bought him in Kansas. He’s in storage now. A little porcelain figure of an elf. We had him on the mantel. Bob used to say he was our good – ”

  Suddenly she couldn’t go on. Osborne waited patiently until she had regained control.

  “ – our good luck charm,” she said, her voice calm.

  “It stinks,” Osborne said.

  They all looked at him.

  “What do you mean?” Reese demanded.

  “Oh, this girl is all right. I don’t mean that. I mean, the whole thing implies an extent of organization that I personally don’t believe they have. I just don’t believe that in a little over thirty days they could fix it so Mrs. Aintrell, here, is balanced on the razor’s edge. Three months, maybe. Not one.”

  “But Bob wrote that letter!” Francie said.

  “And believing that he wrote it, you opened up for Reese here?” Osborne asked.

  “I almost didn’t,” Francie told him.

  “But you did. That’s the point. You won’t get any medals. There are a lot of people not getting any medals these days.” Oshorne’s smile was an inverted U.

  “‘What are your plans?” Dr Cudahy demanded.

  The office was very still. At last Luke Osborne looked over at Francie. “I’m going to go on the assumption that your husband is alive, Mrs. Aintrell, and that he wrote this letter. At least, until we can prove differently.

  “Dr. Cudahy, have you got a file on some line of research that proved to be valueless? A nice, fat file?”

  Cudahy frowned. “Things are so inter-related here that even data on unsuccessful experimentation might give us a line on the other stuff.”

  “Pardon me, sir,” Clint Reese said. “How about that work Sherra was doing? And you couldn’t make him stop. Wasn’t that – ?”

  Cudahy thumped his palm with a chubby fist. “That should do it! I had to have progress files made to keep him happy. That work bore no relation to our other avenues of approach, Mr. Osborne.”

  “And if Mrs. Aintrell gives them Sherra’s work, a bit at a time, as though it were brand-new s
tuff, it won’t help them, eh?” He thought an instant, then asked: “But will it make them suspicious?”

  “Only,” said Cudahy, “if they know as much about what is going on here as I do.”

  “Reese, you turn that file over to Mrs. Aintrell. Mrs. Aintrell, copy enough each day to turn over to Jackson, so he won’t get suspicious. Better make six copies or so and give him the last one. Fold it up as though you smuggled it out of here. Can do?”

  “Yes,” Francie said quickly.

  “That should keep your husband alive, if he is alive. We have channels of communication into the likely areas where he’d be. It will take nearly two months to get any kind of a check on him, even if we started yesterday. The better way is to check through the Jacksons.” Luke Osborne was regarding her steadily.

  “What do you mean by that?” Francie demanded. “You can’t go to him and – ”

  Osborne held up his hand and gave a rare smile. “Settle down, Mrs. Aintrell. Even if your husband weren’t involved, we’d hardly go plunging through the shrubbery waving our credentials. They use their expendables on this sort of contact work, just the same as we do. We want the jokers who are buried three or four layers of communication back. I want Jackson to be given the dope, because I am anxious to see what he does with it, and who gets it.”

  “But – ”

  “Just trust us, Mrs. Aintrell.”

  Francie forced a smile. There was something about Luke Osborne that inspired trust. Yet she had no real confidence that he could match his cleverness with the Jacksons. Both Stewart and Betty seemed so supremely confident.

  “I’ll need your letters from your husband, Mrs. Aintrell. Every one of them.”

  Francie flushed. The overseas letters, since they had been subject to censorship, were written in a doubletalk understandable only to the two of them. But the letters he had sent her that had been mailed inside the country had been full of bold passages that had been meant for her eyes alone.

  “Do you have to have them?”

  “Please, Mrs. Aintrell. We will have them for a very short time Just long enough to make photostats for study. When this case is over our photostats will be burned.”

  “But I can’t imagine why – ”

  He smiled again. “Just call it a hunch. You have them at your cabin, I judge.”

  “Yes I do.”

  Clint Reese followed her home in his car at five-thirty that evening. They walked down the trail together. A fine, misty rain was falling and the rustic guard rail felt sodden under he hand.

  Francie unlocked the door and went in. She looked on the porch and turned to Clint. “Nobody here,” she said, relief in her voice.

  She took the candy box full of letters out of the bureau drawer and handed it to him. “You’ll be back at nine?”

  “Thereabout,” he said. He slipped the box into his jacket pocket. Then he put both hands on her shoulders. “Take care,” he whispered.

  “I will,” she said. She knew he wanted to kiss her, and also knew that he would not, that his sense of rightness would not permit him. He touched his lips lightly to her forehead, turned, and left.

  She turned on the gas under the hot water heater, and when the water was ready she took a shower. While she was under the water she heard someone call her.

  “In a minute,” she called back. She dressed in tailored wool slacks, a plaid shirt cut like a man’s. She walked out unsmiling. Betty sat on the bunk, one heel up, hands laced around her knee.

  Francie said, “I brought something this time.”

  Betty smiled. “We knew you would. Stew is on his way over now.”

  Francie sat down across the room from her. “Did you get Stewart into this sort of thing, or did he get you in?”

  “Clinical curiosity? We met while I was in college. We found out that we thought about things the same way. He had contacts and introduced me. After they started to trust me I kept needling Stew until he demanded a chance to do something active. They told us to stay under cover. No meetings. No cells. We did a little during the war, and a little bit last year in Canada. Satisfied?”

  Stewart came in the door, shivering. “Going to be a long winter,” he said.

  “Here’s what you want,” Francie said, taking the folded sheets from the pocket of her slacks.

  “Thank you, my dear,” Stew said blandly. He sat down on the bunk beside Betty and they both read through the sheets skimming them.

  “Dr. Sherra’s work, eh?” Stewart said. “Good man, Sherra. I think he was contacted once upon a time. Got stuffy about it though, and refused to play. He could have lived in Russia like a little tin king.”

  Jackson refolded the sheets, put them carefully in his wallet. “Did you have any trouble getting these out, Francie?”

  “Not a bit.”

  “Good!” Stewart said. He still held the billfold in his hand. He dipped into it, took out some money, walked over, and dropped it into her lap.

  Francie looked uncomprehendingly at the three twenty-dollar bills. “I’m not doing this for money.”

  He shrugged. “Keep it. It isn’t important. Buy something pretty with it.”

  Francie fingered the bills. She folded them once, put them in the top left pocket of her plaid shirt.

  “That’s better,” Stewart said. “Everybody gets paid for services rendered. Canada and London, Tennessee and Texas.”

  Francie remembered her instructions from Osborne. She leaned forward. “Please let them know right away that I’m cooperating. Bob’s letter said he was sick. I want to know that he’s being cared for.”

  Osborne had said to cry if she could. She found that it was no effort.

  Stewart patted her shoulder. “Now don’t fret, Francie. I was so certain of your cooperation that I already sent word that you’re playing ball with us in every way that you can. I’d say that by the end of this week, no later, Bob ought to be getting all the attention he can use.”

  “Thank you,” she said, meaning it completely. “Thank you so much.”

  Betty stood up, stretched like a plump kitten. “We’ll see you tomorrow night, huh? Come on, Stew.”

  “I’ll have more for you.”

  Francie stood up, too. She made herself stand quite still as Jackson patted her shoulder again. There was something about being touched by him that made her stomach turn over.

  She stood at the side window and watched their flashlights bob down the trail through the. trees. She made herself a light meal. Clint Reese arrived a little after nine. She took the box from him and put it back in the bureau drawer.

  Clint gave an exaggerated sigh. “Osborne’s orders. We got to go to the movies together. That gives me an excuse for coming down here, if they happen to be watching you. Ready to follow orders?”

  She shivered. “I – I know they’re watching me. I can feel it,” she whispered. “I do want to be out of here for a little while.”

  As they went out the door she stumbled on the wet boards. He caught her arm, held it tightly. They stood quite still for a few moments. It was a strange moment of tension between them, and she knew that he was as conscious of it as she was. The strain of the past few days, strain they had shared, had heightened an awareness of each other.

  “Francie!” he said, his voice deeper than usual.

  Shame was a rising red tide. Certainly her loyalty to Bob was sinking to a new low. To take the step that must lead to his death, and then take a silly pleasure in a strong male hand clasping her arm.

  She pulled away, almost too violently, and said with false gaiety, “But I buy my own ticket, Mister.”

  “Sure,” he said with no lift in his voice.

  When they were in the car Clint said, “I’m always grabbing hold of females. Sort of a reflex. Hope you don’t mind.”

  The car lights cut a bright tunnel through the wet night. “I didn’t mind that. It was the sultry tone of voice that got me.”

  “Look. Slap me down when I get out line. After the movies, t
o change the subject, we meet Osborne.”

  “It frightens me, having those people around. Suppose the Jacksons catch on.”

  “To everybody except you and me and Cudahy, they’re new personnel on the project. And they’re careful.”

  The movie was a dull musical. The crowd was very slim and no one sat within twenty feet of them.

  “I can’t help it, Francie,” he said suddenly blurting it out like a small boy. “I – ”

  “Clint, please listen to me. You told me once that you would never do anything to hurt me. This whole thing has torn me completely in half. I don’t know who I am or where I am. I’m attracted to you, Clint, and I don’t like that. I must ignore it, get over it. I have no other choice.”

  For a long time he did not answer. When he spoke again, the familiar light note had come back into his voice: “If you will permit me, madame, I shall finish my statement. Quote: I can’t help it, Francie. I’ve got to have some popcorn. End quote.”

  She touched his arm. “Much better.”

  “What’s better than popcorn?”

  The movie ended and they filed out with the others. As they walked toward the car a match flared startingly close, and the flame-light touched the high, hard cheekbones of the face of Stewart Jackson. Betty was a shadow beside him. Francie caught hard at Clint’s arm, stumbling a little, her breathing suddenly shallow.

  “Evening, Francie,” Stewart said, a mild, sly triumph in his tone.

  “Hello, Stewart. Hello Betty,” she forced herself to say, proud that her voice did not shake, knowing that the presence of Clint Reese had given her strength.

  Once they were in the car and had turned out of the small parking lot, she said, “Oh, Clint they were – ”

  “They just went to a movie. That’s all. And found a chance to rattle you.”

  Clint turned off the main road onto a narrower one, and turned off lights and motor and waited for a time. No car followed them. He drove slowly up the hill and parked in a graveled space near some picnic tables. He gave Francie a cigarette, and she rolled her window down a few inches to let the smoke out.

  When Osborne spoke, directly outside her window, he startled both of them: “Let me in before I freeze, kids.”