The Ambushers by Donald Hamilton Page A

sweet Nazi sounds to drive him crazy. I hadn’t really expected to find that she was a Heil-Hitler girl herself. Well, it’s always a mistake to theorize on insufficient data. I’d followed her lead, and this was where we’d got.
    I walked over to the shelf and picked up one of the empty record sleeves. It looked authentic enough, decorated with a slick photo montage of marching soldiers in various uniforms, but the recording company was one I’d never heard of. The title was “Music Men Have Died By”. It had the Marseillaise, Yankee Doodle, Dixie, and a bunch of national anthems. It also had the Internationale and the Horst Wessel Lied. Not a bad prop, I thought, just about as good as my fancy questionnaires.
    Her voice reached me. “Let us stop playing games, Mr. Evans. Why are you here?”
    I turned to look at her. It was a sensible question. I wished I had a plausible answer. Not having one, and not knowing exactly what was expected of me now, I resorted to doubletalk.
    I tapped the record sleeve and asked, “Didn’t you invite me, Miss Smith?”
    “Who are you?”
    “Who are you?” I asked. “And why are you keeping people awake nights with reactionary old songs played too loudly?”
    “People?” she murmured. “And have people complained, Mr. Evans? People named Head, perhaps?”
    “It could be,” I said, wondering how long I could get away with playing it cagy.
    “To you?” She watched me. “Then you must be a fairly important and influential person, Mr. Evans. If people can complain to you about minor annoyances and expect to have them attended to.”
    I said, snapping a fingernail against the record sleeve: “I wouldn’t say this annoyance was minor. It could cause a lot of trouble, if someone else in the neighborhood should happen to recognize it.”
    I was still on the beam; this was obviously an attitude she’d expected. She had her answer ready: “Bah, these Americans! They make no effort to learn about their enemies. They are afraid to, lest their friends think them subversive. They talk loudly about Communism, but how many of them recognize the Internationale when they hear it? They complain peevishly about Fascism, and Nazism, but not one in a thousand, or ten thousand, recognizes the Horst Wessel Lied.”
    “Still, it’s a risk,” I said. It seemed safe to bear down a little, and I went on: “I think it would be better if you did not play this record again.”
    “A threat, Mr. Evans?” She came forward and took the cardboard envelope from my hand. She turned to get the record from the spindle and slipped it inside. She put the record on the shelf. “So. Not because you frighten me. Just because it has served its purpose.”
    “Which is?”
    “To make contact,” she said. “To make contact with someone in authority here. Perhaps you?”
    “Perhaps,” I said.
    “I have credentials.”
    “Credentials?” I said. “What kind of credentials, and from whom?”
    “From Argentina,” she said. “From the Society for National Security, the SSN, of Argentina. Signed by—”
    I dredged out of my memory what I’d read about fascist movements in Argentina. I made an impatient gesture, interrupting her, and said, “Argentina is full of hotheaded, irresponsible, swastika-waving fools! The Tacuara and the Guardi a Whatsisname Nationale and now your SSN. Some of these idiots, I suppose, are capable of signing their names. To anything. In any case, credentials can be forged. To whom were you supposed to present these so-called credentials, Miss Smith.”
    “In the first place, to a man who is dead,” she said. “To a man who was to come here and take me to his superior. His, and I suppose, yours.”
    “Just like that,” I said scornfully. “You’d shake hands and stroll across the street together to meet this man, I suppose.”
    She shook her head. “No,” she said. “No, it was to be a difficult journey south to a secret destination in Mexico. I was warned to bring