Free The Wrecking Crew by Donald Hamilton Page A

and used them to make a sucker of her. The other is a man who currently calls himself Jim Wellington. I have no evidence of a connection between him and Lundgren—he does know Taylor—but maybe you can find one. Watch out for him; he’s been through the mill.
    “He wasn’t one of ours, but he made a flight with me into France from our usual field, some time in late ’44 or early ’45. Some of those people went bad later, and some even changed sides. He might be one of them. I don’t know his outfit, but I’ll give you a description and Mac can find the date I made that flight and check the official records for my companion. Tell him it was that prison-break operation at St. Alice. My job was to take the commandant out of action with a scoped-up rifle five minutes before they blew the gates. I got the damn commandant, all right, but nobody else showed up, as in most of those lousy cooperative jobs, and I had a hell of a time getting clear...
    “Hell, I’m talking too much. I guess I’ve got a bit of a jag on. She wasn’t much, Vance. Just a pretty clothes horse with intellectual and moral pretensions that she didn’t have the brains to live up to—just the kind who’d be a patsy for a clever character with a humanitarian spiel. But I don’t like the way she died, amigo. I just don’t like the lousy way she died!”
    He said, “Take it easy, friend Eric. In our business, one does not work well if one lets oneself become emotionally involved.”
    I said, “I’ll get over it. I’m just a little shook-up tonight. Somebody held up a mirror, and I didn’t like the looks of the fellow inside the frame. As for that guy Caselius—”
    He said, “You had better get over it. You are going to have to restrain your vengeful impulses.”
    “What do you mean?”
    He was reaching in his coat pocket. He said, “This is ironical, Eric. It is really very ironical.”
    “Maybe,” I said. “I can see that it’s a lot of things, but I haven’t spotted much irony yet.”
    He said, “I had another reason for coming, a direct communication from the master of ceremonies himself.”
    “The master of—”
    He laughed. “MC,” he said. “Mac. It is a joke.”
    “I’m not up on all the jokes yet,” I said.
    “This is no joke, however,” he said. He gave me a folded sheet of paper. “Read it and you will see the irony, too. I could tell you the gist of it, but I will let you decipher it yourself so as not to miss the full flavor of Mac’s prose.”
    I looked at him, and at the paper; and I took the paper to the little writing table by the wall and went to work on it. Presently I had it lying before me in plain language. It had my code number and the usual transmission signals. The station of origin was Washington, D.C. The text read:
Representations from female agent Stockholm have led to serious case of cold feet locally. Temporarily, we hope, your orders are changed as follows: you are to make firm identification of subject if possible but do not, repeat do not, carry out remainder of original instructions. Find him, keep him in sight, but don’t hurt a hair of his cute little head. Realize difficulty of assignment, sympathize. Working hard to stiffen local backbones. Be ready for go-ahead signal, but under no circumstances take action unless you receive. Repeat, under no circumstances. This is an order. This is an order. Don’t get independent, damn you, or we’re all cooked. Love, Mac.

10
    Lou Taylor was waiting impatiently when I arrived at the field in a taxi, having slept too long, after my session with Vance, to catch the official airport bus.
    “I was beginning to think you weren’t going to make it,” she said, and gave me a second look. “My God, what happened to you?”
    My cut lip didn’t show up too badly, although it felt very conspicuous, and I’d hoped my sunglasses hid the shiner, but apparently not. “You won’t believe it,” I said, “but I ran into the closet door in the