Hamilton, Donald - Matt Helm 14 by The Intriguers (v1.1) Page A

can be hit-anybody can-but it'll take more than a
white-haired Washington glamour boy to do it. Leonard is ambitious and he may even be smart in
his own way, but his genius, if any, is political, not homicidal. Hell, he's
tried for me twice, or his boys have, and I'm still here. I suspect Mr. Leonard
is discovering the hard way that good men in this particular line of endeavor
are hard to find. Where's he going to recruit the necessary talent? He can't
afford to deal with the syndicate, that would be political suicide, and there's
only one government agency that really specializes in this type of work-and
that's the one he's trying to eliminate."
                Martha said sharply, "This type
of dirty work, you mean!"
                I grinned. "That's our girl.
Keep after us. Maybe someday we'll straighten up and fly right."
                "But it's . . . it's horrible!
These times, when civilization has at last turned the corner away from war and
violence, to think that a government organization run by my own father. She ran
out of breath and stopped.
                I looked at Lorna. "What times do
you think the kid is talking about? Have you seen us turning any corners
lately, Miss Holt?" I used the cover name I'd been told about.
                "Mrs. Holt, if you please, but
you may call me Helen," Lorna said graciously. "Well, the body count
in Vietnam was down just a little in the last newspaper I read at the ranch. And
those people in the Middle
East weren't
killing each other much on that particular day. And the police hadn't shot or
beat up any blacks or students within the previous few hours; and only one
policeman had got killed that I noticed. Maybe things did seem just a little
better, but I wouldn't say we'd actually turned a sharp and decisive corner,
no."
                Something she'd said screamed for
attention. I frowned, realized what it was, and asked,
                "The cop you said got shot.
Where did it happen?"
                "He wasn't really a cop, just a
sheriff's deputy. And I didn't say he was shot. Actually, he was garroted,
strangled to death. In Fort Adams , Oklahoma . That's where they had those student riots
recently, I believe. Apparently somebody's been giving extracurricular courses
in how to use the old piano-wire noose. Why?"
                I hesitated, and shook my head.
"Never mind."
                Martha, who'd been trying to speak,
broke in hotly:
                "You're so terribly, terribly
amusing, both of you! It's very easy to make fun of the little girl, isn't it?
The little girl who has the naïve and romantic notion that human life is
something valuable and . . . and kind of sacred. . .”
                I started to say something and
checked myself. Lorna made an odd little sound in her throat and turned to the
dresser and splashed more whiskey into her glass. She stood there for a moment
regarding her sunburned features in the mirror, without affection. She spoke
without turning her head.
                "Do they all live in a dream
world, Helm?" she asked softly. "Don't any of them ever wake
up?"
                I didn't say anything. Martha
stirred angrily and blurted, "I don't want to wake up! Not if being awake
will make me like you!"
                Lorna, still without looking around,
said, "Miss Borden, what is the one thing we have plenty of in this world?
What is the single material that is not in short supply these days?"
                "I don't know what you
mean!"
                The older woman said quietly,
"We're running out of clean air and water, are we not? And not only clean
water. I read in the same newspaper that in the capital city of New Mexico,
practically right next door, they are not watering their lawns or washing their
ears this summer because they have hardly any water, clean or dirty. We