The Ravagers Read Online Free PDF Page B

repulsive though it may be,” I said. “We know a guy who hasn’t.”
    Elaine drew a long breath, and said, “The Moosehead Lodge. Room 14.”
    “Sure,” I said and went out without looking back. Walking down the hall to the elevator, I wanted to sock the wall with my fist—or with my head, to knock some sense into it. It was such an unnecessary damn complication. I mean, the girl wasn’t even particularly goodlooking.
    Anyway, there was no place here, I told myself sternly, for emotional involvement. I’d lied to her already, several times, and I was under orders to lie again and keep on lying—Mac had been quite specific on the point that other agencies could not be informed. And I wasn’t even sure that Elaine hadn’t lied to me, in return, or at least withheld part of the truth—a rather unpleasant part of the truth, that I was bound to investigate if I was going to do my job right. Everything would have been much simpler if I could have maintained an objective viewpoint. Well, that’s what I got for going to bed with people for the wrong reasons.
    Outside, it was a bleak morning with low, gray clouds. Sitting in the Volkswagen, I glanced through the newspaper I’d picked up in the hotel lobby, to bring myself up to date and also, I guess, to settle my thoughts before I got on the phone and made official conversation.
    Newswise, it had been a frantic twenty-four hours, I gathered, that I’d spent on the road and in bed. South of the border, in the U.S.A., a jet airliner had blown up in midair, the Air Force had misplaced a bomber on a training mission, the Navy had announced an atomic sub missing and presumed lost, and two ships had collided in some harbor. Still farther south, in Mexico, a bus had fallen off a mountain. The international political scene was as loused-up as ever. I couldn’t see that any of this was related to my mission, but it was a little early to tell, since I still didn’t know exactly what my mission was.
    Up here in Canada, things had been only a little quieter. A bush pilot was down in the brush somewhere to the north. A dynamite bomb had exploded in Montreal, in the province of Quebec, leading to speculations as to whether the French-speaking liberation movement was embarking on a new wave of terrorism. And closer to home—well, to the borrowed car in which I sat, that was as much home as I had—the penitentiary at Brandon had lost a couple of prisoners.
    I frowned at the last item thoughtfully. It was definitely related to my mission, since it meant that the highways would probably be full of Canadian cops of all kinds, looking for the escaped convicts. I hoped they’d find them fast. Whatever it was I was supposed to do up here, I’d do it a lot easier without the local law looking over my shoulder.
    There was a brief mention of a dead man found in a Regina motel—a United States citizen identified as Michael Green, of Napa, California. It was stated that, although death had apparently been caused by a selfadministered overdose of sedative, the authorities were not quite satisfied with certain features of the case, and the investigation was being continued.
    Nobody seemed to be interested in me sitting there. I drove off. Nobody seemed to be following me. I found a phone booth at the corner of a filling station that handled a brand of gasoline I’d never heard of before—White Rose, if it matters—and I stood inside the booth watching rain drip off the black VW while I talked.
    “Say five-two, sir,” I said. “Maybe a hundred and ten. Maybe twenty-five. Hair black. Eyes gray. Appendix scar. Small, crooked scar on right thigh that could have come from an old compound fracture. Maybe she fell out of a tree or something when she was a kid. She looks as if she’d have been the tree-climbing type.” I knew there was something I’d forgotten. The funny thing was, I had to think a moment to remember it. “Oh, yes. She apparently had smallpox as a kid. It shows on her