Free Don't Ask by Donald E. Westlake

fairly grim and utilitarian set of rooms aboard the ship into a diplomat playboy's fantasy. (Previously, back in Novi Glad, capital of Votskojek, Hradec had found it possible to be of some small service to Harry Hochman, seeing to it that the bureaucratic snarls in which the representatives of Hilton, Marriott, and Sheraton found themselves enmeshed faded away somehow whenever the Harry Hochman representative appeared. One hand washes the other.) The apartment that had resulted from all this hand washing, here on the top deck of the Pride of Votskojek, was a sheer delight. Its living room was toward the stern, with large wraparound windows through which could be seen, unfortunately, the dead carcass of the former ferry building; but if one ignored that and looked up and beyond, all of Manhattan's skyline was spread out before one, magnificent by day, romantically beautiful by night.
    The bedroom was forward of this and rather large and pleasant now that the wall had been removed from between what had been two small and nasty cabins. The views from here were southward, toward the necklaces that were the bridges strung between Manhattan and Brooklyn.
    And at the forward end was the former bridge, now a sitting room with views eastward across the river at Brooklyn and Queens. Less of a view than the living room's under normal circumstances, but wonderful in stormy weather; ah, the lightning displays over Long Island City! When the sun shone, Hradec tended to ignore the bridge and the scenery beyond its windows, but today he just happened to be passing through, checking the apartment for general tidiness, since he expected to entertain a Hungarian ballerina this evening, after her work at Lincoln Center was completed, when he noticed the tugboat out there on the river.
    What attracted his attention first was the fact that one so rarely saw tugboats at all, and then they were never alone. Any tugboat one saw would be either pushing or pulling some larger and much more ungainly vessel. A tugboat at rest, or at play, was a diverting thing to see.
    Then there was his realization that this particular tugboat wasn't going anywhere. It merely bobbed along in more or less the same place, pointlessly. Was it adrift, lost by its owners? Was it out of fuel, or in some other way in trouble? As a fellow boat person--boat resident, as it were--should he phone someone, take some sort of action?
    He was still considering exactly what sort of action he might take, should he decide to take some sort of action, when the tugboat abruptly began to move. What a relief; no action would be needed.
    But then it became clear the tugboat was moving in this direction. It was coming here, to the old ferry slip, to the Votskojek mission, to Hradec Kralowc's happy home.
    For one mad instant, Hradec thought of the femur of St. Ferghana, locked away in the makeshift laboratory below. Could this be a nautical attack by the depraved Tsergovians, hoping to steal the relic to further their own miserable United Nations aspirations? But that was absurd. Wasn't it?
    Still, the tugboat was definitely steaming this way. There was at least one person up in the wheelhouse, and four more in back, on deck. Did they look Tsergovian? As a matter of fact, one of them did; huge and heavy, like a full oil drum.
    Should he call the guards, out at the gate? The walkie-talkie they'd given him, in case instant communication were ever required, was around here somewhere. True, he'd never used it, but how difficult could it be if the rather simple thugs employed by the security agency could routinely use the things?
    Hadn't he put the walkie-talkie somewhere in this very room, the former bridge, as being somehow a more philosophically correct location than any of the nonprofessional precincts farther back? Yes, he had; but the former bridge had retained more of its former decor than the rest of the suite, including the wheel itself and all the equipment for captaining the ship. (It was