Free The Wrecking Crew by Donald Hamilton Page B

dark.”
    She laughed. “You were right the first time. I don’t believe it.”
    I grinned. “All right, I’ll tell you the truth. I couldn’t sleep last night, so I took a walk around town, and three big bruisers came out of an alley and attacked me for no good reason. Of course, being a right-living American boy, I beat hell out of all three of them, but one got through with a lucky punch.”
    “A likely story!” she said. “Well, you’d better get this paraphernalia checked in; there’s not much time left before takeoff. Here, I’ll give you a hand.”
    “Take it easy with that camera bag,” I said. “Drop that and we’re out of business.”
    They don’t let you take pictures from an airplane over Sweden, so I guess all the security nuts in the world don’t live in New Mexico, although sometimes when I’m home it seems that way. I took the seat by the window, nevertheless; Lou said it didn’t matter to her. All scenery looks just about the same from a plane, she said, and she’d already seen it twice getting the dope for her story, going and coming.
    Presently the stewardess announced in Swedish and English that we were flying at nine hundred meters and would reach Luleå—pronounced Lulie-oh—in two and a half hours. Lou informed me that the reported altitude was equivalent to approximately twenty-seven hundred feet since, she said, a meter is only a little longer than a yard—thirty-nine and four-tenths inches, to be exact.
    Already there were forests below us, and open fields, red roofs, plenty of lakes and streams, and more forests. I had a funny feeling of having seen it all before, although I’d never been closer to it than Britain and the continent of Europe. It was just something my romantic imagination was making up from knowing that my forebears had lived in this country a long time. I suppose a guy named Kelly would feel the same way flying over Ireland.
    Then we swung out over the Gulf of Bothnia, that long finger of the Baltic that separates Sweden from Finland, and soon there was nothing to look at but water, roughened by a brisk cross wind. I turned to my companion and found that she was asleep. She looked all right that way, but at twenty-six, her age of record, she wasn’t quite young enough to get sentimental about, sleeping. Only the truly young look really good asleep. They get a kind of innocence about them, no matter what kind of juvenile monsters they may be when they’re awake. The rest of us haven’t that much innocence left. We can be thankful if we manage to sleep with our mouths closed and don’t snore.
    She was wearing a brown wool skirt—kind of a pleasant rusty color—and a matching sweater with a neck high enough to cover the scar on her throat. The sweater was good wool but not cashmere; she wasn’t a kid who blew her roll on clothes. Her shoes had set her back something, though. They were strong British walking shoes with sturdy soles. Although I had to respect her good sense, I must say I prefer my women in high heels. Well, at least she’d had the decency to wear nylons. If there’s anything that turns my stomach, it’s a grown woman in bobby sox.
    I lay back in my seat beside the sleeping girl and listened to the sound of the plane’s motors and let my thoughts wander. Mac’s little sentence had been a classic of its kind, I reflected: Realize difficulty of assignment, sympathize. In effect, I was being asked to locate, identify, and keep an eye on a man-eating tiger—but under no circumstances to shoot the beast. Repeat, under no circumstances. This is an order. This is an order. Clearly Mac was scared stiff I might try to be clever and rig up something resembling self-defense. He was in political trouble of some kind, and he didn’t want any dead bodies whatever cluttering up the landscape until he got things straightened out.
    Sara Lundgren had hinted that she was doing more than merely refusing to help me. What she’d meant, apparently, was that