Free The Infiltrators by Donald Hamilton Page A

shyly. “Matt, do you mind if I do a little theorizing aloud, just so you’ll know what I’m thinking?”
    “No, of course not.”
    “Well,” she said, choosing her words carefully, “well, there’s an obvious point that comes to mind. You must have been working on something important involving… well, involving CADRE , before you ever got that. mysterious phone call saying I was to be killed.”
    I frowned, “ CADRE ? Oh, the Center for Advanced Defense Research, where your husband was working. Okay, go on.”
    She said, “It doesn’t seem likely that a specialized government agency like yours would have concerned itself with a contract being put out on just any stray female being released from just any old federal penitentiary, or that your informant would have thought he was doing you a great big favor by telling you about it. My… my proposed murder had to be connected with something in which you were already interested, already involved. Otherwise you’d have dismissed it as mere nuisance information and passed it along to the proper authorities, wherever they might be.”
    I looked at her with respect. “That’s pretty good theorizing. It happens to be slightly wrong, but that’s my fault. I let you think the phone call saying you were to be killed came directly to us. It didn’t. It was the kind of gratitude deal I described, all right, but I can’t tell you what agency was involved because I simply don’t know. We were merely given the information, told how it had been obtained, and ordered to do something about it without asking any nosy questions about things we didn’t need to know about. That’s how our great government works, if you want to call it working.”
    “I see. But the organization that did receive the tip was presumably interested in CADRE , since otherwise why would they care whether I lived or died? The only thing about me that could possibly concern anybody in the U.S. government is the fact that I’d been—still am, officially, since he’s never been declared dead—married to Roy, who was employed there. And that I was supposed to have helped him carry out his nefarious espionage scheme. They must have thought I knew something important after all, that I’d kept to myself all these years. Or was in a position to learn it, now that I was being set free.”
    I said, “Obviously, somebody else thought so, too—thinks so, too—or they wouldn’t be trying to kill you.” I frowned. “You haven’t any idea what it might be?”
    She said rather stiffly, “I don’t expect you to believe me, but I really don’t.”
    I grinned. “You may be surprised at what I’ll believe. But let’s skip it for now. Maybe it will come to you, whatever it is, or we’ll be able to figure it out as we go along.”
    After a moment, she relaxed and gave me a reluctant little smile. “And in the meantime I’m a docile decoy, trying not to scream every time somebody slams a car door hard. Now get me some more coffee, please, and a little more jam for my toast, and tell me all about Program A, the favorite one I’ve managed to ruin for you somehow.”
    I passed her requests along to the waitress and said, “Program A was based upon the assumption that there was an evil lady serving a well-earned prison sentence, let’s call her Mrs. Mata Hari Ellershaw. This reprehensible female had conspired with her husband and another woman to steal documents that compromised the security of the United States of America in a very dangerous way. However, the plot went sour and she found herself deserted by her accomplices and left behind to take the rap. She spent, her prison term kicking herself for being such a sucker, but fear of eventual retaliation kept her silent about certain important things she’d learned. Also the fact that, disbarred and discredited and penniless, she was going to need help when she got out. But her wicked associates considered her too dangerous to be allowed to go free at