The Terrorizers Read Free Page B

preparation for landing. Even so, a dozen people had been injured and three of these had died, including a well-known Canadian politician of whom I’d never heard, who’d stayed in his car to work on a campaign speech to be delivered in Vancouver. His name had been Andrew McNair, and he’d been the head of the Reform Movement, whatever that might be, known in Canadian political shorthand as Reformo.
    Quick work by the ferry’s crew had contained the fires that had been started on the car deck. The captain had managed to dock the damaged vessel and disembark the passengers in orderly fashion. However, the continuing threat of fire, and the possibility of exploding gas tanks, had made it imperative to get everyone ashore immediately, without waiting for the police. In the confusion some people had got away from the landing area before it could be blocked off—among them, apparently, whoever had driven the van aboard, presumably in a car driven by confederates.
    There was a description of the damage, as far as it had been determined at press time. The idea that the bomb could have been planted by enemies of McNair, apparently a somewhat controversial figure, was rejected on the grounds that the police had discovered in one of the restrooms, aerosol-sprayed on the wall of a booth, a known terrorist symbol, the letters PPP. The newspaper didn’t mention whether the plumbing facilities involved were designed for masculine or feminine patronage. It did state, however, that the same initials had been found in a restroom after the San Francisco bus station blast last year that had taken seven lives. What they stood for was still not known, or if it was, nobody was saying. The reporter finished his piece with a summary of all recent bombings of presumably terrorist origin: the La Guardia airport explosion, the Toronto railroad bang, and several others. He didn’t say that the unknown PPP organization was responsible for all of them, but he didn’t say it wasn’t…
    Somebody knocked on the door of my room. Nurses and other hospital functionaries either don’t knock at all or knock and walk right in. I waited, but nobody appeared. The knock came again. I drew a long breath. It was probably either the Mounties or the Ministry of Transport. I wondered a bit uneasily what the hell they wanted now.
    “Come in,” I called, and the door opened.
    The girl who entered looked much too small to be a Mountie, and she didn’t resemble any investigator I’d encountered to date. I told myself I’d never seen her before in my life.
    “Hello, Paul,” she said.
    Obviously I’d told myself wrong.

3
    She came forward rather hesitantly. She was small and slender, with heavy black hair cut short about her face, which was delicately pretty in an Oriental way. You had to hand it to Mr. Madden I reflected. Whether or not he really existed, he certainly knew how to pick them, even if his tastes did run to girls so slim they hardly cast shadows. Or maybe the choices had been Helm’s, whoever he might be.
    The girl was wearing a very neat, very tailored, very occidental tweed suit with a skirt, not pants. The rare, precious sight of a pair of nice girl-legs in nylons was almost too much for me to bear in my weakened condition. She wore little plastic boots to protect her high-heeled shoes from the rain, and carried a big purse and a red raincoat.
    It was time for me to say something. “Hi,” I said.
    She stopped by the bed and looked at the paper I still held. “Isn’t it terrible?” she said. “That ferry, I mean. I read about it on the plane coming up from Vancouver; one of the boys had a delivery to make near here.”
    “Terrible,” I agreed.
    My visitor looked down at me for a moment. “I don’t mean to intrude, Paul,” she said. “You once made your feelings about clinging females quite clear, and I’m most certainly not trying to… Well, never mind that. But I just couldn’t bear to think you might be lying up here