The Infiltrators by Donald Hamilton Read Free Book Online Page B

although sometimes I wish it wouldn’t. I nodded at the boy, reminding myself that Marty and I had worked together before and he’d done all right. Okay. It happens. Bringing them back alive isn’t all that easy. Back to the old drawing board.
    I said, “Well, find out who the hell he is and see if you can learn who’s been talking to him recently. If you can. I won’t hold my breath. Come on, Mrs. E. Let’s put it on the road.”
    But she avoided the hand with which I tried to lead her away and stood looking down at the dead man for a moment longer, her face impassive. I sensed that she was testing herself. Once she’d been a civilized young lady living in a kindly and protective environment, and the sight of a bloody corpse would have left her shattered for days; but since then she’d spent eight years in Fort Ames. Now her world was a dreadful, cruel, primitive place without light or hope, and the bullet-torn body on the ground was just another indication of how far she’d come from what she’d been. She wanted to learn how this new creature, this destroyed woman who had once been Madeleine Rustin Ellershaw, could cope with the sights she could expect to see in this living hell to which she’d been condemned.
    She turned without expression and walked beside me to the Mazda. She opened the door before I could do it for her and took out her brown flannel jacket, put it on, and buttoned it meticulously and unfashionably, top to bottom, before getting into the car. She didn’t speak another word to me the rest of the afternoon.

4
    After a silent and unsociable drive, with darkness falling, I spotted a chain motel that looked adequate. At this chilly time of year, accommodations were no problem, and I got us adjoining rooms, both doubles but to hell with it, Uncle Sam was footing the bill. I wasn’t going to have her on the far side of the building from me; on the other hand I wasn’t going to spoil her first night of freedom and privacy in eight years by forcing her to share a room, even platonically, with a strange man to whom she’d taken a dislike, for whatever reason.
    “Dinner in half an hour?” I said, carrying her little suitcase inside for her.
    “Whatever you say, Mr. Helm.” There was no warmth in her voice.
    “I have a bottle, if you’d care for a drink beforehand. I seem to recall that you used to like a cocktail before dinner. The motel restaurant doesn’t serve booze, and that bar up the road looks like a real dive.” When she didn’t speak at once, I went on; “If it’s just that you prefer not to associate with me unnecessarily, I’ll pass it through the connecting door. Give me a minute or two to scrounge up some ice.”
    She shook her head quickly. “No, we might as well be civilized about this. I’ll come as soon as I’ve changed out of these laddered panty hose and cleaned up a bit.” But when she knocked on the door between our rooms a few minutes later—actually two doors, for soundproofing, and so either party could lock the other out—I could see that she regretted her sociable impulse. When I moved a chair into a better, position for her, and brought her drink to her before sitting down myself, she said irritably, “Why do you keep it up, that solicitous-gentleman act? Now we both know what I am, and we both know what you are. Whom are you trying to impress?”
    I liked that super-correct, grammatical “whom”; she’d never have used that in prison. I said, “Why don’t you come out with it, Mrs. Ellershaw? What turned you off all of a sudden? Was it the fact that we set a trap for that hit man and killed him? I realize it wasn’t pretty, and I won’t claim we’re great humanitarians, but in this particular case his death was the last thing we wanted. We wanted to catch him alive so he could tell us who wants you dead. And, if possible, why.”
    She shook her head quickly. “Once I’d have been terribly shocked and revolted by seeing a man shot to death for