The Ravagers Read Online Free

as soon as look at you.
    She said, “You sound as if you’d come a long way fast, without taking time to stop and eat.”
    “I was down in South Dakota at noon today. Well, yesterday.”
    “What brought you up here?”
    “A phone call,” I said. “A phone call about a stupid jerk who might have got himself into trouble.” I had worked out some kind of a story, driving over here, utilizing as much of the truth as I safely could. “I was supposed to wipe his nose and send him home to daddy.”
    “Who and where is daddy?”
    I shook my head. “You want a lot for a roast beef sandwich, Miss Harms.”
    She persisted: “What was your connection with Mike?”
    I didn’t know what she’d been told by Greg. I gambled and said, “We were in the same line of business.”
    “He claimed to be an insurance man from Napa, California. He said he was on vacation, just a tourist.”
    I said, “I’ve got a card somewhere that says I sell insurance in Trinidad, Colorado. If you believe it, you’re dumber than I think. If you believed Mike, you’re dumber than I think.”
    “But you aren’t saying what you really do?” When I didn’t answer, she said, “We aren’t getting very far, are we?”
    “I’ve got no place to get,” I said. “I’m just here because I was invited.”
    She studied me thoughtfully. After a little, she said, “The redcoats are attacking Bunker Hill, Mr. Clevenger.”
    I don’t suppose that makes much sense to you, in the context, but it made a few things clear to me. It was her way of telling me who she was and asking me to identify myself similarly, if I could. From time to time somebody makes a hopeful attempt to correlate all the various undercover activities of our vast and unwieldy government, to make sure that they synchronize properly, and that nobody unwittingly sticks a thumb in a colleague’s eye. It doesn’t work out very well, for several reasons, one being that no cynical and experienced agent is going to be happy entrusting his life and mission to the irresponsible cretins working for some other department. Half the time we don’t even trust the people in our own outfit.
    This girl was not one of ours. Mac would have told me if there was someone around I could call upon for assistance. That made her a member of another agency, and now I was supposed to give her a brotherly kiss of recognition and say something about waiting till we saw the whites of their eyes—that isn’t the countersign we were actually using, of course; but the real one was on about the same level of corniness. They all are.
    According to official theory, Miss Harms and I would then sit down and compare notes about the Drilling operation in an atmosphere of mutual trust and confidence, and work out a plan for a joint campaign. You can see how the idea might appeal to a bunch of Washington efficiency experts who’d never been asked to stake their lives on some unknown character’s reliability, on the strength of a widely distributed phrase that could easily have been compromised.
    I said, “You’ve lost me, doll. Anyway, it was really Breed’s Hill, wasn’t it?”
    I won’t say whether, under other circumstances, I would have given the correct response. Normally, we’re told to cooperate within reason, but it’s left to the discretion of the agent on the spot and it’s always a ticklish diplomatic question. In this particular case, of course, I had my orders. Mac had put it quite plainly: Other agencies have not been informed of our participation, and are not to be informed.
    Elaine laughed quickly. “I’m sorry. I guess my mind was wandering.” She hesitated. “Well, would you mind just telling me what you’re doing here?”
    I said, “Sure I’d mind.” She started to speak, and I interrupted: “Now don’t go threatening me again with the Regina cops, Miss Harms. I bet you don’t want cops any more than I do. If you want to know about me and my business, tell me who’s asking. If you