The Annihilators by Donald Hamilton Page A

one.”
    I said, “Yes, you have to say that. Keep on saying it. But in the meantime let’s throw your friends—enemies—a couple of bones. First of all, they probably want to know if I’m armed. Well, you know I don’t have a gun in my clothes; you watched me getting undressed and dressed last night. And I’ll tell you I don’t have one in my luggage either; but of course that won’t do. So next time we’ll use my room, and you’ll put a sleeping pill in my drink, and search the place while I’m pounding my ear, afterward. That should impress them with your loyalty and obedience. Okay?”
    She licked her lips. “Sam, I don’t understand. Suppose… suppose I were the helpless female victim you think, being blackmailed into doing dreadful things by some sinister villains—which of course I’m not. Why would you want to help me?”
    I grinned. “Well, you can take your pick of motives. Either I’m a sucker for your lovely face, not to mention your lovely body…” I stopped. “May I ask an intimate question regarding your lovely body, Dr. Dillman?”
    She laughed abruptly. “Why no tan, you mean? My dear man, I spend endless hours in the glaring sun in the course of my work; lying on a beach getting broiled is no treat at all. Besides, medically speaking, it’s supposed to be bad for you. And your other possible motive for helping me, Mr. Felton?”
    “Maybe I, too, have sinister plans for making use of you, for my own wicked purposes. Your choice,
querida.”
The fact was that I simply didn’t know why I was doing it. I did like her, but affection is not supposed to figure in our calculations, as I had recently demonstrated, in my grim and well-disciplined way, in Chicago. I just had a hunch, the kind you get, that this was the way to play it. When she didn’t speak, I went on: “Next, your friends will want to know what fall-back story I have rigged for when my photojournalistic cover is blown. They may have their own ideas about why I’m heading for Costa Verde, but they’ll be interested in knowing what I put out for public consumption. We’ll have to work this carefully; but the basic idea is that, having fallen for you like a susceptible schoolboy, I couldn’t bear to keep on making love to you under false pretenses. I confessed guiltily that I really wasn’t Samuel Felton, boy photographer, although I’d worked with cameras in the past and there was a perfectly legitimate magazine connection set up to print the story, so that you and your institute will get your publicity. I told you I was a government agent on a mission, using your tour to slip into Costa Verde inconspicuously; but there was really nothing to worry about. If I were exposed, well, relations between the U.S. and Rael’s government are very close, and a word from Washington would clear things up immediately. You didn’t have to worry about my causing trouble for you or your charges.”
    “And your real mission in Costa Verde?”
    “I’m hunting a man named Bultman,” I said. I spelled it for her.
    “Bultman.” She tasted the name and didn’t like it. She looked at me across the table. “I never heard of him.”
    I said, “No reason you should, unless you have somebody you want dead and plenty of money,
plenty
of money, to pay for the job. This one is good, but he ran into a little bad luck recently, so now he has an artificial foot. He’s killed five people certainly, two more perhaps.”
    “A master assassin with a false foot.” Her voice was dry. “I suppose he calls himself Dr. Goldfoot or Professor Silvertoe or something. It sounds like a movie I’ve seen, a couple of movies I’ve seen. And what are you supposed to do with this criminal genius when you catch him?”
    “Well,” I said carefully, “certain people in Washington would be very happy to learn that Bultman was dead.”
    She nodded slowly. She licked her lips and said, “As a respectable professional woman, I find all this very confusing,