Hellstrom's Hive

“That sounded like an interesting conversation, what I could hear on this end,” Clovis Carr said.

Lincoln Kraft stared at her across his big flattop desk. He could see a corner of Steens Mountain out the window behind her head. The sounds of afternoon shopping were just beginning to pick up in the big commercial complex one floor down. There was a poster on the wall to his left giving detailed recommendations on how to prevent rustling. Random patrol of fences was the third item down, and his gaze kept returning to that number, seeking some magic in it. It was almost 3:00 P.M. He had received three telephone calls from the office in Lakeview thus far and each time had been told to “sit tight.”

Clovis Carr squirmed her tiny, wiry body into a more comfortable position on the hard wooden seat of her chair. Her deceptively young face tended to set into harsh aging lines when she relaxed. She had been with Kraft since shortly before 11:00 A.M., first at the motel where Peruge’s death had been reported by a tough-looking runt of a man who had identified himself to Kraft only as “Janvert.” Kraft had understood almost immediately that Janvert and this Clovis Carr were associates, and the pieces had begun to fall into place from there. The pair belonged to Peruge’s team. Kraft had played it very carefully from that point, for Hellstrom’s suspicions about the recent intruders were well known to everyone associated with Hive security. These two suspected him, Kraft soon realized. This female stuck to him like a burr on a bear.

The third call from Sheriff Lapham at the courthouse in Lakeview had been part of a pattern that had Kraft more nervous than he’d been since the summer the Hive had picked up a runaway toddler and an entire family had fanned out over the range around the farm hunting the lost child. That one had been turned off by a quickly hatched story that a child of the exact description had been seen being picked up by a couple in an old car only a block away from the place where the toddler had been last seen.

Lapham’s orders in this last call had been explicit. “You wait in your office until the FBI gets there, you hear, Line? This is a job for very delicate professional handling. Take my word on it.”

Kraft had been at a loss how to respond to this. He could act professionally insulted (and leave a political scar that the sheriff would never forget); he could obey like an obedient public servant; he could act the dumb, western hick for this dame; or he could appear to be knowledgeable and sophisticated. He didn’t know which response would give him the best leverage to probe and seek any clue to help the Hive. One way, they might mistakenly underestimate him, although he rather doubted this was possible now. Another way, he might gain valuable insights by what they did not do.

Such as not leaving him alone.

Kraft’s long conditioning to protect the Hive at all costs left him irritated and frustrated, all of his fears sharpened by the sense of danger; but the need to maintain his cover dominated every response that occurred to him. In the end, he did nothing except obey Sheriff Lapham—that and sit here like a lump waiting for the FBI.

The Carr female annoyed him. As long as she stayed there, watching, listening, he could not call Hellstrom. She knew he was nervous, too, and seemed to enjoy it. As though he couldn’t see how phony she was! Vacationer? That one?

Her skin was badly sunburned, and there was a hard and direct stare from cold gray eyes, a firm jaw, and a thin, unsmiling mouth. He suspected she was carrying a pistol in that big black canvas handbag in her lap. There was something about her faintly reminiscent of the models on TV commercials: a controlled and purposeful way of moving, a remoteness that no amount of surface glibness could conceal. She was one of those tiny women who would be skinny and energetic until the day they died. She was all fitted out for her western vacation: dungaree slacks, matching blouse, and brass-button jacket. The clothes still had a sheen of newness about them and looked as though they’d been picked by a wardrobe mistress according to a script adviser’s list. They didn’t suit her style. The blue bandanna over her long dark hair was the final unlikely touch. Her left hand held that black canvas purse in the casual-but-ready manner of a policewoman. Every time he looked at the purse, Kraft felt more certain she carried a gun in it. Although she had avoided showing Kraft her credentials, Sheriff Lapham had known her name on that first call and he’d treated her with the kind of deference that spoke of official clout, highly potent clout at that.

“That was the sheriff again, wasn’t it?” she asked, nodding at the telephone on Kraft’s desk.

Her voice carried unconcealed scorn, Clovis knew, but she had decided not to worry about that. She did not like this thick-nosed, beetle-browed deputy and it was a dislike that went deeper than her suspicions about his involvement in the deaths of her fellow agents. He was western and he showed an evident liking for outdoor life. Those two items alone would have done it. She preferred the nightclub circuit, just as Eddie Janvert did, and this was a damned hick assignment. The skin of her cheeks and nose felt tight and painful from sunburn, adding to her irritation.

“It was the sheriff,” Kraft admitted. Why deny it? His answers had signaled the questions and those questions could have originated only with the sheriff: “No, sir; the FBI hasn’t shown up yet. . . . Yes, sir; I haven’t been out of this here office.”

Clovis Carr sniffed. “What’ve they found out about Peruge’s murder? Anything on the autopsy yet?”

Kraft studied her a moment. There had been one closing item from the sheriff that had to be weighed carefully. When the FBI team arrived, the sheriff wanted Kraft to relay a message to the man in charge. The message sounded simple enough. The U.S. attorney still was not ready to deliver a firm opinion “on the legal basis for intervention.” Kraft was to tell the FBI, however, that the agents could proceed on the “presumptive assumption” that Hellstrom’s activities in interstate commerce would provide such a basis. According to the sheriff, the FBI team was due at Fosterville any minute and the sheriff wanted to know about it the minute they arrived. Rented cars had been sent to the airport and “Janvert’s people” were there to give a briefing.

As the sheriff had given this message, Kraft had written “presumptive assumption” on the notepad beside the telephone. He wondered now if it would lull suspicions if he shared the message with the Carr female. He knew he would have to deliver the message intact to the FBI, but that was another matter. Could any advantage be gained from it now?

“They haven’t reported on the autopsy yet,” Kraft said.

“You wrote ‘presumptive assumption’ on your notepad,” she said. “Is that about the U.S. attorney’s opinion?”

Kraft came to a negative decision about Carr. “I’d better let the FBI discuss that with you. Say, you never did tell me what your connection with this is.”

“No, I didn’t, did I,” she said. “You’re a very careful man, Mr. Kraft, aren’t you?”

He nodded. “Yes.” What did that mean?

A malicious smile twitched the corners of her mouth. “And you don’t like to be kept on the bench here.”

“I don’t like it,” he agreed. He wondered at her almost open hostility to him. Was it calculated provocation, or did it reflect something even more disastrous—a high-up decision to distrust the local deputy? He guessed it was distrust of him and wondered how to deal with it. Hellstrom and the Security Council had discussed with him contingency plans for such problems, but no plan had assumed a situation as complex as this one.

Clovis glanced over her shoulder out the window behind her chair. The office was hot and the hard wooden seat of the chair irritated her. She longed for an iced drink and a cool, shadowy lounge bar with soft chairs, Janvert beside her, warm and admiring. For a week now, she’d been playing the part of Janvert’s sister on this stupid western vacation. That mask had come off with the discovery of Peruge’s death. The cover relationship had been touchy at times. Janvert had not gone out of his way to keep things smooth with Nick Myerlie, who’d fronted as their father. And there’d been DT poking his nose in every time they’d turned around. Spying for the brass, no doubt of it. DT was so damned obvious it was ridiculous. Tight quarters in the damned van and an investigation whose pattern none of them liked had worn on them. There were times when they had chosen not to speak rather than risk a fight. All of that stored-up temper was coming out in her now, with Kraft as its focus. She realized this, but didn’t care to suppress it.

The cars of housewives doing their afternoon shopping were beginning to fill the parking lot below the window. Clovis scanned the cars, hoping to see the FBI team emerge from one of them. Nothing. She returned her attention to Kraft.

I could tell this stupid deputy that we’re prepared to put him six feet under in the most direct and sanitary way, she thought. It was a fantasy game she liked to play about people she disliked. Kraft would be shocked and alarmed, of course. He already showed signs of the twitches. Nobody was going to blast this son of a bitch, of course. Hardly likely. But Kraft was in trouble. The Chief had pulled strings in Washington which had reached out through the state capital to the sheriff in Lakeview. It was like a marionette system. Potent federal power was breathing down Kraft’s collar and he could feel it. He still wanted to see her identification, but he hadn’t asked straight out to see it in more than an hour. Lucky, too; she had only her cover identification. That said she was Clovis Myerlie and she’d already been introduced as Clovis Carr.

“This has been a very unusual way to handle a missing-persons case,” she said, swinging around to stare at the poster on the side wall. Cattle rustling, yet, and how to prevent same!

“An even more unusual way to handle an unexplained death in a motel,” Kraft said.

“Murder case,” she corrected him.

“I haven’t seen that tied down yet,” he said.

“You will.”

He kept his gaze on Carr’s sunburned face. They both knew that nothing about this case was usual. The sheriff’s words still rankled in Kraft’s memory. “Linc, we are just the country cousins in this case as of now. The governor himself is in the act. This is not routine, got that? Not routine. We will straighten this out between us later, but right now, I want you to lie doggo and let the FBI run the whole show. They can fight it out with the Alcohol Tax boys on who has jurisdiction, but our jurisdiction stops at the edge of the governor’s desk, got me? Don’t tell me we have rights and responsibilities. I know ’em as well as you do. Neither of us is going to mention them. Is that all clear?”

It had been very clear.

“Where’d you get that sunburn?” Kraft asked, staring at Carr’s face.

Sitting out in your goddamned western sunshine with a pair of binoculars, you son of a bitch! she thought. You know where I got it. But she shrugged and kept her voice nonchalant. “Oh, just hiking around your lovely countryside.”

Hiking around the Hive, Kraft thought with a pang of deep disquiet. He said, “None of this might’ve happened if your Mr. Peruge had gone through normal channels. He should’ve gone to the sheriff over in Lakeview first instead of coming to me or even to the state people. Sheriff Lapham’s a good—”

“A good politician,” she interrupted. “We thought we’d rather deal directly with someone who enjoyed a closer relationship with Dr. Hellstrom.”

Kraft licked his lips, his mouth suddenly dry. He held himself watchfully alert for any more revelations that touched on their suspicions. He didn’t like the way Carr cocked her head to one side to return his gaze.

“I don’t understand,” he said. “What’ve I to—”

“You understand,” she said.

“Damned if I do!”

“And damned if you don’t,” she said.

Kraft felt himself caught by the unleashed power behind her hostility. She was deliberately trying to provoke him. She really didn’t care how she treated him. He blurted, “Oh, I know what you are, all right. You’re from one of those secret government agencies. CIA, I’ll bet. You think you own the—”

“Thanks for the promotion,” she said, but she bent a more watchful gaze upon him. The conversation had taken an awkward turn that she did not like at all. Eddie had said the Chief wanted them to press the deputy, but not to frighten him off.

Kraft fidgeted in his chair. A painful silence settled over the room, deep and charged. He started casting around for excuses to get away to a telephone. He could excuse himself to go to the toilet, but this female would make sure he went to the toilet and there was no telephone there. The desire to call Hellstrom was losing its appeal, too. It could be very dangerous to call. Every line to the farm might carry a tap by now. What had caused them to link him with Hellstrom? There’d been those times he’d been taken sick on Outsider foods and been nursed back to health at the Hive. The cover was that he’d been a great good friend of old Trova (true), but she was long dead and in the vats. Why should that make these government people suspicious?

His mind went on this way for a time, following the trail of its own fears, worrying out bits of the past to wonder about. Was that suspicious, or what about this event, or the time he’d . . . It was a useless occupation and it made his palms sweaty.

The ringing of the telephone startled him out of his nervous reverie. He grabbed for the phone, knocked it from its cradle, had to recover it from a dangling position beside the desk. The voice on the line was anxious and loud when he got the receiver to his ear. “Hello? Hello?”

“This is Deputy Kraft,” he said.

“Is Clovis Carr there? They said she’d be there.”

“She’s here. Who is this?”

“Just put her on the line.”

“This is an official phone and I’d—”

“Goddamn it, this is an official call! You put her on this line!”

“Yes, well—”

“Do it now!” There was no mistaking the long history of expected obedience behind that barked command. Kraft felt the power in the voice.

He handed the phone across the desk to Carr. “It’s for you.”

She took the phone with a puzzled frown, spoke into it. “Yes?”

“Clovis?”

She recognized that voice: the Chief himself! For the love of all that was holy, the Chief calling here!

“Clovis here,” she said, her mouth dry.

“Do you know who this is?”

“Yes.”

“I have you identified from a voiceprint being played this instant. I want you to listen very carefully and do exactly what I tell you to do.”

“Yes, sir. What is it?” Something in the tone told her it was big trouble.

“Can that deputy hear this?” the Chief asked.

“I doubt it.”

“We’ll have to chance it. Now get this: that light aircraft with the FBI men and the Alcohol Tax team crashed somewhere in the Sisters. That’s a mountain north of you. All dead. It could have been an accident, but we are acting on the assumption that it was not. I’ve just been on to the director, and he is taking that same position, especially in view of what I could tell him about the situation. A new FBI team is on its way from Seattle, but it will be some time before they arrive.”

She gulped, glanced worriedly at Kraft. The deputy was leaning back, hands behind his head, staring at the ceiling.

“What do you want me to do?” she asked.

“I’ve been in radio contact with the other members of your team, all except Janvert. Is he still at the farm?”

“As far as I know, sir.”

“All right; no help for that. It might even be a plus. The others are coming down from the mountain to pick you up. You are to take the deputy with you. Use force if necessary. Take him with you, got that?”

“I’ve got it.” Her exploring fingers felt the outline of the revolver in her purse. She slipped her hand into the bag, took a firm grip on the gun. Involuntarily, her glance went to the big pistol in a holster at Kraft’s waist. The son of a bitch probably called that thing a hog leg.

“I’ve instructed DT on what I want done,” the Chief said. “You are to move onto that farm and take over there, subdue any opposition. The director concurs. Responsibility will be ours, however. We have been promised extraordinary cooperation by the FBI. Do you understand?”

“I understand.”

“I hope you do. You are not to take chances. You are to kill that deputy if he interferes. And anyone else who tries to block you. We will work out a sufficient justification later. I want that farm in our hands within the hour.”

“Yes, sir. Is DT to be in charge?”

“No. Until you get to the farm, you are in charge.”

“Me?”

“You. When you contact Janvert, he is to take over.”

Her mouth was dry as dust. God! She needed a drink and comforting, but she sensed why the Chief was putting her in charge until they reached Eddie. The Chief knew about her and Eddie. The Chief had a snake’s mind. He’d say to himself: She’s the one with the best motivation. She’ll want to rescue her boyfriend. Give her the reins.

She sensed there might be something else on the Chief’s mind, but she didn’t know how to ask. Was it something to do with Kraft? She pressed the phone tightly against her ear, pushed her chair back toward the window.

“Is that all?” she asked.

“No, you’d better know the worst. We stumbled onto something while talking to the sheriff. He gave it to us himself, very casual and unconcerned. It seems your deputy, whenever he gets sick, is in the habit of convalescing at Hellstrom’s farm. In our hunt for Hellstrom’s Washington connections, we found a congressman about whom we can say the same thing, and we have our suspicions about at least one senator. Got that?”

She nodded. “I see.”

“I think you do. This thing spreads wider every time you pry up another layer. Take no chances with that deputy whatsoever.”

“I won’t,” she said. “How bad was it—I mean, at the Sisters?”

“The plane burned. It was a twin Beech, chartered and recently checked out by the FAA. No reason for it to go down. We haven’t been able to examine the wreckage yet, but it was the fire that gave it away: it started a forest fire on the east slope, they say. Forest Service boys are there now, local police, and FAA. We’ll have a report as soon as possible.”

“What a mess,” she said and noted that Kraft was staring at her intently now, trying to listen. “Is there any chance at all that it was an accident?”

“Possible, but not likely. The pilot was former Air America from Vietnam, six thousand hours. Draw your own conclusions. Oh, tell Shorty he has Class-G authorization. Do you know what that is?”

“Yes—yes, sir.” My God! Kill and burn if necessary!

“I’ll get back to you by radio after you’ve taken over that farm,” the Chief said. “Within the hour. Good-bye and be thorough.”

She heard the receiver click, moved her chair closer to the desk, replaced the phone in its cradle. Using the edge of the desk as a cover, she slipped her revolver from the purse.

Kraft watched her, trying to piece together a version of that conversation from the only end he’d heard. His first inkling that things had changed for the worse came when he saw the silencer of Clovis Carr’s pistol raise itself like a steel snake over the far edge of the desk.

Clovis’s “working personality” was in full charge now and she put aside thoughts of Janvert’s arms around her or other desirable things.

“Keep your hands where I can see them,” she said. “I will kill you at the slightest provocation. Do not make any sudden movements for any reason. Get to your feet carefully, keeping your hands on the desk. Use extreme caution in everything you do, Mr. Kraft. I don’t want to shoot you in this office. It would be messy and difficult to explain, but I will do it if you force me.”