Free The Vanishers by Donald Hamilton

of her toy bottles of Scotch, J&B, if it matters, and poured them over the ice she provided, and drank gratefully. Cashews on the side. Back in the cheapo cabin, they probably had to settle for lower-class peanuts.
    “Why, you are frightened!”
    I glanced at the woman beside me, who’d gone to sleep, exhausted, immediately after having been led to her seat and helped with her seat belt. She’d slept through the inevitable preflight delays, and the taxiing, and the further waiting, and the takeoff, and the circling to the right course, and the climb to cruising altitude; but now her eyes were open. She’d obviously been watching me for a while.
    “Welcome back,” I said. “Would you care to have something to drink, too, or is that medically contraindicated?”
    She smiled. “I do not think it is contraindicated; at least the doctors said nothing about it. If that is Scotch, I will have some. Unless you have already drunk up all on board in your terrible panic.”
    “Oooh, what a sharp tongue it has when it’s conscious,” I said. “Whatever happened to sweet, supportive little girls who encourage their men in moments of weakness?”
    “But I am not very sweet, and you are not my man, are you, Mr. Helm?”
    I grinned, and got her table down for her, and wigwagged the attendant, who brought the drink promptly. Astrid raised her glass to me.
    “
Skål
,” she said, smiling at me. “I mean, we had better practice our Scandinavian customs, don’t you think?”
    “And our Scandinavian,” I said, “How are you on Norwegian?”
    She shook her head. “They have deliberately made their language impossible for other Scandinavians to understand. I do not think they understand it very well themselves. Years ago if one knew Swedish, one could communicate with the Norwegians, and even the crazy Danes a little, but no longer.”
    “Yes, I have heard that linguistic purification is the order of the day up there. But you do speak Swedish?”
    “And Finnish. Yes.”
    “You are hereby appointed official interpreter for the expedition, Mrs. Watrous.”
    She inclined her head in gracious acceptance. She’d been very close to collapse when I’d helped her aboard the plane, but the nap seemed to have revived her. I realized again that she was quite a striking woman. There’s always something offbeat and intriguing about a brown-eyed blonde—genuine or phony, I still hadn’t decided which I was dealing with here.
    In a small department store in the same shopping center that housed the friendly druggist who did me medical favors from time to time, I’d managed to pick up a couple of inexpensive suitcases and a very basic travel wardrobe for each of us, not because I’d been seriously concerned about how we looked, but because I’d wanted to have some luggage in which to check the guns through, hoping that airlines hadn’t got around to X-raying checked luggage yet, and that Scandinavian customs officers were still as relaxed as I remembered them. Since I hadn’t wanted Astrid to waste her limited strength on shopping, I didn’t even know that the clothes I’d bought her would fit, let alone that she’d consider them acceptable. However, her present costume was holding up well enough to get us across the ocean respectably, so my taste in ladies’ wear wouldn’t be put to the test at once, which was probably a good thing.
    She was regarding me curiously. “I should think a man like you, who risks his life in a job like yours, would not be disturbed by merely flying in an commercial airplane.”
    “That’s just the point,” I said. “I like to pick my risks; that’s how I stay alive. Here I’ve got no choice. I have to sit in this seat and take whatever dangers the flyboys up front choose to expose me to. Probably none, but how do I know? A Korean airliner got itself shot down a while ago, flying in the wrong place, remember?”
    “Yes, that was a terrible thing. They are dreadful people, those