The Terminators by Donald Hamilton Read Free Book Online

don't take well to water except on the beach but it seemed to improve this one—or maybe it was the anticipation of becoming an honest-to-God, real-life Wonder Woman that had put a hint of pink into her normally colorless cheeks.
    She spoke to Priest: "We've got to do something if we're going to salvage anything from this mess. What Mr. Helm suggests seems to be, as they say, the only game in town. Please stop being paternal, Skipper, and give me those clothes. And turn your backs, both of you. . ."
    IV.
    THE only spot on the ship from which I could watch the boarding ramp unseen was the deck directly above: the upper passenger-deck outside the first-class lounge and dining room. It was one stage up from the level to which Evelyn Benson had been taken for her final dive, two from that of the cabin where her substitute now awaited me, protected, I hoped, by the gun I had lent her, with hasty instructions in its use.
    Leaning against the rail up there in a manner I hoped looked relaxed and casual, I wondered if the shipping line kept a doctor handy with a sure cure for galloping pneumonia—I hadn't taken time to change into dry clothes. I controlled the shakes with a heroic effort, and watched the last crates of cargo being swung aboard, forward. Beyond this scene of activity was the long, empty, lighted dock in the rain. At least it was empty when I first looked. . . .
    I suppose I'd been expecting him. At least, I wasn't really surprised when Denison stepped out into the light some fifty yards away. He did it very deliberately, coming into sight around the corner of one of the warehouses and stopping in the cone of illumination of one of the lamps over there, looking directly at me.
    He was a big man, bigger than I remembered, wearing a belted trenchcoat, dark across the shoulders with rain, and a hat with a brim wide enough to look slightly Wild West, at least in these effete European surroundings. Even at that distance, there was no doubt at all that he'd seen me on the ship's upper deck, and that he wanted me to see him. Now he raised his hand ia a kind of salute, or maybe it was a kind of challenge. I made an answering gesture and watched him turn without haste and go out of sight.
    Of course, I hadn't seen his face well enough under the wide hat brim to identify him in a court of law but I didn't need to see it. I'd worked with him often enough and long enough, after first breaking him in—on-the-job training, so to speak—to know him anywhere: Paul Denison, code name Luke, once a friend of mine, and the man who'd repaid me for the education I'd given him by teaching me a valuable lesson in return. He'd taught me it didn't pay to make friends in this business.
    He'd put his lesson across the hard way, by almost getting me killed. Two others had died. It had not been a very nice affair and the fact that he'd sold out for money hadn't helped. Fear, yes. You can forgive fear. You'd damned well better forgive it, unless you're brave enough to be sure it will never happen to you, and who is? But money?
    I reflected grimly that it was beginning to make sense, Mac's arranging for me to have all kinds of secret, expensive support on what had seemed on the surface to be just a simple matter of repaying a favor we owed his old fishing buddy, Hank Priest. It had made sense ever since I'd heard Denison's name on a dying girl's lips. Mac was not a forgiving person. He'd put out the word on Paul Denison, priority one, immediately after I'd made it home and reported what had happened—Denison, presumably, had hoped there would be no survivors, but he wasn't that good a Benedict Arnold then. I reminded myself he might be better now. He'd had a good many years to practice in, seven to be exact.
    As soon as I'd been more or less fit for duty once more,
    I'd been given the job of making the touch. I'd been the logical choice, of course, knowing more about our agent Luke—now our ex-agent Luke—than anyone else in the organization.