"Not crash, Mrs. Lujan, ditch. I will put the aircraft down on the water in the shelter of a certain deserted little island down there. A boat is waiting to pick us up. There is no danger. The Plane will float for several minutes. Miss Decker and I will disembark first, then you two from the rear. And, Mr. Helm, please remember that while we have adequate time to get out, if we work quickly, we do not have time for any foolishness. Don't be clever, unless you want to accompany the plane down into fairly deep water. Drowning is not a pleasant death, I am told. Now the life preservers, if you please."
We put them on awkwardly, in the limited space, and settled ourselves to wait some more. The sky was getting light to the left, now, and looking down I could make out that we were flying over water, presumably the same Gulf of California we'd known at Puerto Peflasco. I could see some ghostly islands far ahead, one kind of crescent-shaped; and near it was a small speck that might have been a boat. I leaned over to get a better look.
"Sit still!" Priscilla said sharply. "Harsek will do the navigating. Your assistance is not needed, Helm."
I grinned at her, and glanced at Carol, whose face looked pale and strained in the growing light.
I said, "Anyway, your question is answered, Carol." She seemed startled at being addressed. "My question?"
"Back there you kind of asked if the lady was a real American agent working for a real American agency. The answer is: she isn't."
Priscilla laughed. "But I am! I am a very highly regarded operative of a fine new department run by the coming man of U.S. intelligence-an arrogant, handsome, ambitious, pompous nincompoop who knows nothing about our kind of work whatever. That is the great American fallacy, that there is such a thing as an administrator, per se, and that what he chooses to administrate is unimportant. Your schools are run by educators who know nothing of what is taught; your government is run by politicians who know nothing of governing; and now you commit the final absurdity of entrusting the delicate task of international intelligence to a pipsqueak who only knows how to outmaneuver other pipsqueaks for positions of administrative importance."
I grinned as she paused for breath. "Don't look to me for an argument. I don't like the guy, either."
Priscilla went on: "Planting a few agents on such a man, when he was building his organization, was ridiculously simple; and guiding him to the proper attitudes and actions was no more difficult, since he had no real grasp of what he was supposed to be doing." She laughed again. "Of course, I am telling this only to you, because you will not be repeating it to anyone. As far as the world is concerned, this vicious U.S. Air Force crime against Mexican sovereignty was only made possible by the ground activities of disciplined agents obeying the sinister orders of a fiendishly clever American spymaster."
I said, "Sure. Our undercover genius, Herbert Leonard. Well, it couldn't happen to a nicer fellow. I suppose some of those disciplined U.S. agents are going to get themselves captured by the Mexicans when the smoke has cleared, so they can spill the international beans."
"They will be captured or perhaps, driven by their consciences, they will defect in the next day or two after seeing the flaming horrors for which they have been responsible. And while you will disown them, as is the custom, you will not be able to do it very convincingly, since it will be well known in Washington that they were actually employed by an American agency."
I would have liked to ask more about the flaming horrors that were being planned for the next day or so – a mass catastrophe, she'd called it earlier-but she would probably have refused to answer a direct question on the subject, and I didn't want to stop our little chat while it was still producing valuable information.
"And friend Harsek, here?" I asked. "What function does he perform?"
Priscilla smiled. "Why, he is the communist menace against whom we, as Mr. Leonard's operatives, have been struggling. There had to be some obvious and conspicuous adversary, did there not? If there had been no visible enemy, even Mr. Leonard, stupid as he is, might eventually have begun to wonder suspiciously why things were forever going wrong with his brilliant plans. But with the great Harsek opposing us, we raw U.S. recruits could be excused for a few failures-the great Harsek and the equally well-known Vadya."
"I see," I said. "Very ingenious."
Priscilla said, "Of course, where Vadya was concerned, there was a further motive: the people back home had been somewhat concerned about Vadya lately. Her continuing relationship with a certain U.S. agent had caused a few doubts about her reliability. We were asked to investigate. We found the doubts to be justified and took action accordingly-first selling it to Mr. Leonard, of course, as necessary retaliation for her murder of one of his agents in Acapulco. We persuaded him that his 'image'-a word he loves-that his image and that of his agency would be forever tarnished if the woman were permitted to live, and he gave the appropriate orders."
I asked, "And just exactly what did Vadya do to justify those doubts of her reliability?"
Priscilla laughed maliciously. "Need you ask? Are you going to pretend, at this late date, that there was nothing between you? I saw the way you greeted each other, remember? I was following when she took you for a cozy evening tour of Mazatlбn, including a certain area that should not have been called to your attention. I saw you afterwards speaking together very seriously in the restaurant where you had dinner, the place with the odd name: The Glass of Milk. Obviously she was negotiating with you, her lover, for sanctuary in the United States. What was she offering and what price did she ask?" Priscilla shrugged. "It does not matter. I saw enough to confirm that she had to be eliminated. I had already made the arrangements; one likes to be prepared. It was only a question of carrying them out."
I felt Carol stir uneasily beside me, listening to these details of my secret life, but for the moment she didn't count. I was thinking of another woman I'd known, and of the fact that there are always people, on both sides, who have a thing about fraternizing with the enemy, even when it's done with the most patriotic motives. So Vadya, without a thought of betraying her country, had died at the hands of her own people because a vicious, suspicious girl had misconstrued her behavior. Well, it wasn't exactly a new idea. The possibility had occurred to me before, when I'd had time to think about what had happened. Harsek spoke suddenly: "There is the island, below us. And there is the boat, on schedule."
I looked down and saw the crescent-shaped island below, and a black power cruiser of reasonable size, the kind with a cockpit large enough to hold a couple of fishing chairs.
Harsek was still speaking: "Have no fear, Mrs. Lujan. You will be picked up almost before you have time to get wet."
He was a little too reassuring, a little too soothing; and Priscilla was watching me too closely. There was something in her eyes that I did not understand; I could think of no personal, private reason for her to show so much hatred and triumph. Between agents, even agents of hostile nations, it was an unprofessional display of emotion.
She said, "Of course, it was not expected that Laura would die because of your trigger-happy behavior. I am not forgetting that, Helm! You killed her and you will pay for it. Very soon now you will pay!"
She was quite a pretty girl, but I saw again the funny dry look in her face that I'd once taken for unawakened virginity, but which I now realized was something quite different. I remembered a red-haired girl saying casually: come to that, I'm not really sure she likes boys. If true, it explained a number of things about Priscilla Decker, including the fact that her sexy getup had never seemed quite convincing, even when she was presumably luring me to her room for purposes of seduction.