The Terminators by Donald Hamilton Read Free Book Online Page A

But it had been a kind of left-handed reprimand, anyway. It had been Mac's way of making sure I remembered never again to trust my life, or anybody else's, to simple, stupid friendship. The hints of betrayal had been there, but I'd disregarded them Because they'd involved my good amigo and protege, Paul Denison. The message I was supposed to get, and got, was that the mistake had been mine and it was up to me to correct it, permanently.
    However, while I was preparing to carry out the assignment, and waiting for some hint of the location of my quarry, the whole thing had been called off. The word on Denison had been canceled, without explanation. Around that office, you don't ask questions, particularly about a critical and embarrassing subject like an agent gone bad. As the man responsible for a very recent disaster mission, I'd been in a particularly poor position to play detective. I'd kept my mouth shut, and the name Denison had simply disappeared from our vocabularies as if forgotten; but I should have known Mac hadn't forgotten.
    Neither, for that matter, had I. To hell with Frigg, Torbotten, and Ekofisk. To hell with a guy named Robbie, barely mentioned, whoever he might be or have been. To hell with the pirate petroleum-tycoon who liked to hear himself called Mister Kotko. To hell with an ex-university scientist called Elephantbone, now lucratively self-employed, and his daughter Greta, and his wife Irene, defunct. I'd had a bushel of names served up to me tonight, but there was only one that really counted: Denison. And the fact that Mac had sent me here, with help, meant that maybe, just maybe, some situation had changed enough, somewhere—or could be changed enough—so that I'd be allowed to do something about it.. . .
    Forward, the crew was securing the cargo boom. On the dock, a couple of men approached the gangplank m a purposeful way, obviously about to remove it. There was a shout from the deck just below me, and they stood back briefly to let a youthful male figure with a backpack hurry ashore. I stepped away from the rail above in case he should throw a last glance over his shoulder, but he didn't.
    A moment later the ship was swinging free of the dock. Normally, I'd have stayed to watch how the gold-braided gent on the bridge managed the job of getting the big vessel away—in this business, you never know. Once, I found myself several thousand feet up in the air in a small plane with a dead pilot. I won't say I got that flying machine down undamaged Because it wouldn't be true but what counted was that, having paid some attention to the landings I'd witnessed over the years, I managed to keep myself without damage while I was cracking it up. One day, somebody may hand me a freighter or an ocean liner without a book of instructions, and a few minutes spent watching a good shiphandler at work will pay off. But there'd presumably be other opportunities for observation up the coast; at the moment I was too cold to wait around.
    Two decks below, I knocked a certain way on the door of the cabin assigned to Mrs. Madeleine Barth. The voice of the new incumbent answered promptly. I stepped inside and looked at the hole in the end of the short barrel of my own .38 revolver.
    "Good girl," I said, closing the door behind me. "But just point it elsewhere now, please."
    Diana Lawrence laid the gun on the berth and rose, pulling uncomfortably at the jacket of her borrowed outfit. She was a deceptive girl in more ways than one, I reflected. Physically, she'd seemed about the same size as Evelyn Benson, if anything a little smaller; but apparently her colorless personality had fooled me. There was more girl there than I'd thought. The now damp and shapeless brown tweed pantsuit was-short and tight on her. If she hadn't been designed along very narrow lines, she'd never have got into it. She pushed some stringy hair out of her face, and regarded me warily. I had the impression that, waiting, she'd had some uneasy second