Free The Detonators by Donald Hamilton Page A

talked:
Minister, Alfred M. Forty-four, five six, one eighty-five. Light Brown. Blue. Distinguishing marks: none known. Psychological characteristics: professionally obsessive, personally sadistic. No weapons training or experience. Expert explosives.
There was a long list of the man’s professional achievements ending with:
Buenos Aires 1981; Tel Aviv 1983.
The last, I remembered, was an El Al airliner that had been blown up right after takeoff by an ingenious pressure-sensitive device, killing all on board. The PLO had paid for the job and claimed credit for it, but the subsequent investigation turned up the fact that the actual work had been done by a certain Mr. Archibald Deacon.
    I frowned at the rear of the inoffensive car ahead. It wasn’t easy to accept the fact that this was the man with whom pretty little nonsmoking, nondrinking, nonswearing Amy Barnett was deeply involved: a middle-aged, balding butterball who liked to demolish people publicly and torment them privately.
    “And this outfit he’s working for now?” I’d asked Doug Barnett.
    “You won’t believe it,” he said. “After doing his last job for a bunch of wild Arabs, our explosive friend has now gotten himself hired by a supposedly respectable pacifist outfit called the People for Nuclear Peace.”
    “Weird,” I agreed. I hesitated. “Is Amy a member?”
    “Naturally,” he said. His voice was bitter. “If there’s any screwball save-the-world group around, my little girl will be on the list. Not that I’m opposed to saving the world in principle—we’re all working on that—it’s the half-baked way they go about it in practice.” He made a wry face. “The PNP is the brainchild of a wealthy Cincinnati dame named Georgina Williston who may or may not have all her marbles. We know she’s spent some time in an institution, but we don’t know what for. She’s got enough money to pull down the medical curtain and keep it pulled. We haven’t found a hole or a crack in it; and we can’t force it open officially, because we can’t afford to reveal our interest yet. The woman recruited Amy personally. Actually, the kid probably couldn’t have qualified otherwise in spite of her brilliant protest record. It’s a fairly restricted group of very wealthy citizens like the Williston dame. I guess they’re interested in preserving what they’ve got, since they’ve got such a lot of it. Well, you can hardly fault them for that. But when they hire a guy like Minister, you start to wonder.”
    I asked, “Is your theory that this rich dame deliberately got Amy into her PNP outfit for Minister’s benefit?”
    “It seems likely, doesn’t it? I mean, if they’re going to use the Preacher for something—God knows what—they’ve got to pick the ticks off him first, don’t they? Ticks like me. And now that I’m officially dead, ticks like you. After that brothers-in-arms act you put on, you’re the obvious candidate to replace me on the Minister job, aren’t you? And here’s the girl telling them you offered her your services in case of need; would they waste it? A spy in the enemy camp is always useful. If somebody else inherits the Minister assignment, tough. She thanks you for your help and goes home. But if you get it, there she is all tender and trembling, begging you not to leave her all alone in this big cruel world; you promised her poor dead daddy you’d look after her, didn’t you? And from then on she’ll stick to you so closely she’ll be able to report every move you make; and though she’s hardly qualified to take you out when it’s time for that, she’ll be in a good, trusted position to set you up for it. Shit!” He cleared his throat angrily. “I keep remembering her sitting on my lap when she was four years old. Cute as a button. And what’s that got to do with anything now?”
    I said, “You’re making quite a dragon lady out of this daughter you hadn’t seen for some seventeen years until