Hellstrom's Hive Read Online Free Page B

there and the sun had moved several long notches toward the horizon.
    Perhaps another vantage point, he thought.
    The longer he stayed on the hill above the farm, the less he liked his cover story. Bird watcher, indeed! Why hadn’t Porter mentioned the absence of animal life? Insects, of course: the grass was alive with them, crawling, buzzing, flitting.
    Depeaux slid and crawled away from the crest, got to his knees. His back ached from all of the unnatural movement. Grass burrs had invaded his collar, under his belt, under his stocking, up his sleeves. He managed a smile, half grimace, at his own discomfort; he could almost hear Merrivale commenting, Part of the price you pay for engaging in this line of work, old bean .
    Son of a bitch!
    Porter’s careful reports had indicated no guards posted outside the farm’s perimeter, but that was just one man’s account. Depeaux asked himself how he felt about his position in the open under the oak. You stayed alive in this business by trusting only your own senses ultimately—and Porter was missing. That represented an important piece of information. It could be innocent or ominous, but it was safer to believe the worst. At the worst, Porter was dead and the people of Hellstrom’s farm were responsible. Merrivale believed this. He’d made that clear, and the secretive bastard could have information to confirm it without any of his agents being the wiser.
    â€œYou will proceed with the utmost caution, keeping in mind at every juncture our need to determine precisely what has happened to Porter.”
    The son of a bitch probably already knows, Depeaux told himself.
    Something about the emptiness of the region spoke of hidden dangers. Depeaux reminded himself that agents who leaned too heavily on the reports of others often ended up dead, sometimes in painful and ugly fashion. What was it about this place?
    He swept his gaze around his back trail, saw no sign of movement or watching eyes. A glance at his watch told him he had slightly more than two hours before sunset. Time to get to the head of the valley then and scan the length of it.
    Bending low at the waist, Depeaux got to his feet and, in a crouching trot, moved swiftly toward the south below the concealing ridge. His breathing deepened easily with the effort and he thought for a moment that he wasn’t in such bad condition for a man of fifty-one. Swimming and long walks weren’t the worst recipe in the world, and he wished he were swimming that instant. It was dry and hot under the ridge, the grass full of nose-tickling dust. Desire for a swim did not bother him greatly. Such wishes had come often in the sixteen years since he’d moved up from an office clerk in the Agency. He usually passed off the fleeting desire to be elsewhere as an unconscious recognition of danger, but sometimes it could be attributed to no more than bodily discomfort.
    When he’d been a mere clerk in the Baltimore office, Depeaux had enjoyed his daydreams about working as an agent. He’d filed final reports on agents “wasted in action” and had told himself that if he ever got to be an agent, he would be extremely cautious. That had not been a hard promise to keep. He was, by nature, careful and painstaking—“The perfect clerk,” some of his fellows carped. But it was painstaking care that hadled him to commit the farm and its surroundings to memory, to note possible cover (little enough of that!), and the game trails through the tall grass indicated on aerial photos.
    Game trails but no visible game sign, he reminded himself. What kind of game ran these paths? It was another note added to his increasing sense of caution.
    Depeaux had once overheard Merrivale commenting to another agent, “The trouble with Carlos is he plays for survival.”
    As though old Jolly vale didn’t do the same! Depeaux told himself. The man hadn’t reached his present eminence as operations