“I’m trying to carry out the order you gave me. Listen, would you mind clicking off? The little kid in the next seat is listening in.”
I clicked off. Well, at least he was on his way to kill Heller.
Somehow I sweated through the night. Somehow I managed to live through the next day. Tenseness and anxiety were my lot. By late that night, I was a rag.
My radio went live, startling me half out of my wits.
“I’m at the Italian naval base in Taranto,” said Raht.
“Have you done it?” I said.
“How can I have done it? He isn’t here.”
“Then what are you doing there, you idiot?”
“I’m calling you to report progress. Don’t you want reports? I assure you, it would be a great pleasure not to talk to you at all, Officer Gris.”
“Keep a civil tongue in your head. If he isn’t there, what are you doing there?”
Raht said, “I traced him down from Rome. I just missed him. He’s working with the airline company and the Italian government. He came down here to get them to take a naval tug and crane and divers to the site of the crash. They have to go around the heel of the boot of Italy and north up the Adriatic Sea. It’s a trip of about 300 miles. I just missed them.”
“Well, get after them!”
“That’s what I’m trying to do. I’ve got to go back to a town called Termoli on the Italian coast that’s near to the Palagruza Islands and rent a fish boat to get out there.”
“What weapons do you have?”
“Well, you can’t carry guns on a plane but I have a blastick.”
“That will do just fine. Get on it!”
“It’s about 160 miles to Termoli. I’ll have to drive all night.”
“Then drive all night!” I said angrily. “Radio me back when you have done it.”
He clicked off.
I tried to go to sleep. Heller was about 700 miles away. It was too close. I rolled and tossed and sweated.
I suffered through the next day. No word from Raht.
Krak’s activator-receiver had come in on the morning plane but for some reason wasn’t handed to me until near evening. Nervously, I set it up and turned it on.
For a moment, I didn’t know what I was looking at. It was simply a page of print.
Then I remembered that I had furnished Crobe a whole library in waterproof bookshelves to get him interested in psychology and psychiatry. I had also given him forty other books, a set entitled Voltar Confederacy Combined Compendium Complete, including Space Codes, Penal Codes, Domestic Codes, Royal Proclamations, Royal Orders, Royal Procedures, Royal Precedence, Royal Successions Complete with Tables and Biographies, Court Customs, Court History, Royal Land Grants, Rights of Aristocracy, Planetary Districts of One Hundred and Ten Planets, Local Laws, Local Customs, Aristocratic Privileges and Various Other Matters.
The Countess Krak had found these books, obviously.
I came out of my daze. I thought, well, it would do her plenty of good to study up on psychology and psychiatry. It would bring her into a realization of how wonderful they were.
The viewer was out of focus. I sharpened the image. I began to read what she seemed to be studying.
SECTION 835-932-N
PROCEDURES REGULATING TRIALS AND
EXECUTIONS OF GENERAL SERVICES
OFFICERS
A scream surged in my throat. I choked it back.
Her finger had appeared on the page. It was traveling down the fine print.
(1) Executions in the field
(a) By duly constituted conference of officers
(b) By a senior when it is not feasible to return culprit to a base for trial
(c) . . .
The viewer began to swim before my gaze. Her finger had gone back to (a). I had not realized that the officers of this base could put me on trial. I had always been a little shaky on these regulations and depended on the fact that nobody else knew them well either. If Faht Bey and officers here took it into their heads to try me, they could also execute me for such things as flagrant Code breaks.
She was now onto another part of the section.
OFFENSES CARRYING DEATH PENALTIES
(a) Capital Crimes under military statutes:
(1) Threatening to kill, murder or ordering the murder of a Royal officer.
(2) . . .
The room swam around me. Raht had mentioned it but I had thought he was just talking! There it was in the Penal Codes!
Her finger was traveling on:
(34) Kidnapping . . .
A scream rose in my throat and got out.
I reeled away from the viewer.
Gods, that woman was dangerous!
She was sitting in there trying to find legal ways to bring about my death!
I raced down to the hangar. I found the guard captain. “Don’t go near that prisoner in the special cell! Don’t even look in! She has a dreadful disease that blinds you if you even glance at her.”
“Oh, have you got a prisoner in there? You didn’t log her into the detention cells if you have. When you came back a few nights ago, you must have bypassed the guard office. That’s irregular, Officer Gris. What’s her name?”
“Incognito,” I blurted.
He was making a note. “Miss or Mrs.? I wish you wouldn’t keep messing up procedures. We can’t keep our files straight if you just keep rushing people into cells without logging them.”
Then I had an inspiration. “The person I put in there can’t be logged. She is a nonperson, executed years ago. She has no legal rights of any kind.”
“Oh, one of those,” he said. He lost interest. But I knew he would report it to Faht Bey.
I sighed, because my injured feet remained unhealed. I resented walking.
I went through the long tunnels and finally came into Faht Bey’s office. He looked up from his desk and flinched when he saw me. I resented being flinched at.
“The other night when I returned in the line-jumper,” I said, “I put a prisoner in the special cell. She is not to be looked at or communicated with. She is a nonperson without rights. She is actually a menace to the State.”
He grunted and made a note. “What about the other one you have locked up? He’s not a nonperson. I have his card here. He’s Forrest Closure of the Grabbe-Manhattan Bank.”
My pulse skipped several beats. “Have you talked to him?”
“No. Should I talk to him?”
“NO!” I said. Oh, Gods, if Faht Bey found out his whole base was mortgaged, maybe they would convene an officers’ conference on me!
“Why are you holding him?” said Faht Bey.
“Reasons of state!” I said emphatically. “I can’t tell you any more than that.”
“Are you sure?” said Faht Bey.
“Of course, I’m sure!”
“I think you’re up to something, Officer Gris. Raping women, blowing up mosques. We’re supposed to lie quietly here and do what we’re supposed to do. You know, of course, that heroin supplies continue to vanish. We inventoried two days after you came back, just to be careful. And we’re out a lot of kilos. If I had any proof, Officer Gris, I’d convene an officers’ conference on somebody I am looking at.”
“What would I do with heroin?” I yelled.
“Run a drug ring on the side,” said Faht Bey. “You seem to have quite a bit of money we didn’t give you.”
“Special funds came in on the Blixo,” I lied.
He raised his eyebrows and shifted in his chair. “This Forrest Closure,” said Faht Bey, “could be a messy thing. Grabbe-Manhattan is connected to IG Barben Pharmaceutical. They could cut off our amphetamines. I can’t make heads or tails of why you would order him put in a cell. In fact, I haven’t the least idea of what you are up to. I am responsible for this base. Now let me tell you this: If I find any evidence that you are cooking up another catastrophe for us, I will convene a conference on you and take my chances with authorities on Voltar. My guess is
that they are as sick of you as we are. Have I made myself clear?”
I limped out.
Things were pretty touch and go.
In just three or four days now, Grabbe-Manhattan was going to realize that Forrest Closure should be reporting back in. They would send somebody here and, of course, talk to Faht Bey, and the base commander would know he was dealing with the biggest threat this base had ever experienced.
What would Faht Bey do? He would tell them that I had no title to this base and he’d feed me to the Turkish authorities. And in addition to whatever the Turks did to me, I would also have a conference convened on me and be sentenced to death.
My only possible hope was Heller’s assassination.
And soon!
Only then could I make things come out all right.
PART SIXTY-ONE
Chapter 4
The following day, I was feeling pretty haggard. I was bolstered somewhat by the fact that I had Lombar’s order to kill Heller and so could not be tagged for that. But I had all these other things threatening me and if I also failed to nail Heller, then to the list of enemies I could also add Lombar.
Amongst other things, my feet had not healed. Walking around with cuts in goat droppings is not conducive to health of the heels. The wounds were festering.
I had Ters drive me to the hospital. Nurse Bildirjin, my third wife, passed me by without so much as a glance as I waited in the lobby.
I got tired of it. I found Prahd washing his hands after an operation.
“The free clinic is closed for the day,” he said.
“Hey, wait a minute,” I said. “I might die of blood poisoning. I can’t even wear boots.”
“Then you can’t kick anybody,” he said. And he would have walked out of the washroom.
I blocked his way. “You can’t treat me like this.”
“I’m not going to treat you at all, Officer Gris. You owe me an order starting my pay. You have not made arrangements for funds to start campaigns against prevalent diseases. And you have not paid the kaffarah to the villages of the wives you messed up. And your marriage-dowry bank order bounced. When you see fit to go up to Istanbul and straighten up your affairs with Mudur Zengin and keep your bargains, I might have time to talk to you.”
“How can I go to Istanbul with my feet rotting off?” I demanded.
“Steal some crutches,” he said. “Nobody around here would even lend you any.” And he simply walked out.
I was NOT going to Istanbul and face the rage of Mudur Zengin of the Piastre Bank. The way my luck was running in that direction, he would probably have me arrested for getting dirt on his floor.
Riding back home, I pondered this. It seemed quite logical that when I had killed Heller, getting back in Rockecenter’s good graces, I could do my future business with Grabbe-Manhattan. Until then, I would let it ride. To hells with those (bleeped) wives, anyway. And who cared if the riffraff had disease?
In my bathroom, I soaked my festering feet in Epsom salts and was hopeful it would help.
My radio went live. RAHT!
“Have you killed him?” I shouted.
“That’s what I’m trying to tell you,” said Raht.
“Then tell me!”
“That’s what I’m trying to do. Do you want this report or don’t you?”
I swallowed my rage. “Give me the report!”
“That’s better. An agent’s report should be precise, not rushed and all tangled up. You almost took my ear off. Now, let’s see, where was I? Yes. I arrived at Termoli but they didn’t have any fish boats. All available craft were out at the site of the crash. So I went up the coast to Pescara, a bigger town, and I got a boat.
“Pescara is about 120 miles from the Palagruza where the plane crashed, and it took us some time to get out there. The Adriatic is pretty stormy, lots of waves and tides.
“The plane went down in about a hundred feet of water. The Italian navy was trying to raise it with a tug and crane. It was pretty buried on the bottom in yellow mud and sand and lying upside down.
“A plane like that weighs forty or fifty tons and the crane they had just wasn’t up to it.
“The Royal officer was helping them. They tried to pump some kind of foam into it but it was so broken up the foam just floated away. So the Royal officer went down in scuba gear and they began to send up bodies.
“Did you know there were a lot of kids on that plane? Well, anyway, they had to get another craft up to take the bodies. They had a priest there making the sign of the cross as each one came up. I counted thirty-five. The airline people said there were forty-nine on the plane including crew. But the crash had opened the side of the ship up and fourteen of the bodies, they figured, must have floated away. They spent a lot of time trying to find them and couldn’t.
“The Royal officer had helicopters searching the sea and beaches, but they only found some bits of wreckage. So he went down again and they started passing up cabin hand baggage. They found a couple scarves identified as having been bought by the woman in the Rome airport and I think that was the first time he began to believe she had been aboard, because he started caving in.
“Finally the navy got some cutting tools up from Taranto and they opened up the baggage compartment and he found her suitcase. He seemed to lose interest after that.
“The authorities are trying to investigate the crash. The pilot recorder is missing . . .”
“(Bleep) you, Raht,” I snarled. “Did you kill him or didn’t you?”
“Now I know how you got poor Terb tortured and murdered. No planning. That place was completely swarming with Italian navy. If I had fired, I would have had to cross 120 miles of water in a slow boat with patrol craft on my tail. In order to do a job like this, you have to have the subject in some secluded place where nobody can witness it and you can get away.”
“So you didn’t kill him.”
“Not yet. I’m just giving you a report.”
I knew I would have to give firmer directions. “Where is he now?”
“Leaving the area. That’s why I’m giving you this report.”
“Raht, if you don’t do this job, you’re through. I’ll kill you myself! You missed your opportunity!”
“There WAS no opportunity!” he snapped.
“Are you going to kill him or aren’t you?”
“Of course, I’m going to kill him. I think he is heading back for New York and I’ll be right on his heels. The moment I get him alone, he’s dead. But I need help.”
“What kind?” I said suspiciously.
“When he’s back in New York he’ll be on your viewer again, right?”
“Right,” I said.
“The first moment you pick him up, you’ve got to tell me. And you’ve got to tell me, if you can, where he is going. All I have to have is just a few minutes in a secluded place. I shoot, he’s dead. And I can get away.”
Delays, delays. I couldn’t afford them. But there was hope. “I’ll help you,” I said.
He clicked off.
Then I cheered up a little. I had tried several times to get the Countess Krak and had failed. But now she was my prisoner and simply by dropping a couple gas pellets down her air chute, I could kill her.
I decided it would be the same with Heller. Even he couldn’t survive with me directing the assassin every step of the way, right up to the final fatal shot from a well-planned ambush.
PART SIXTY-ONE
Chapter 5
I could not be absolutely sure Heller had gone back to New York. Raht had said nothing about him getting on a New York plane. He might come here to Turkey instead.
Nervously, I wondered if I could do anything to prevent that catastrophe.
I went out and checked the alarm bell at the gate. Musef and Torgut were alert, armed and ready to gun down any intruder.
In my secret room, I ran a check on the floor tile which, if pressed, sounded a general alarm to the hangar and assembled the whole base in battle or
der. It was fine.
I checked Krak’s viewer. She was eating space emergency rations and studying the Voltar Confederacy Combined Compendium section on “Royal Proclamations.” I knew she was thinking about those two forged Royal documents I had foisted off on her. I wished I knew what she had done with them. But never mind, if she tried to present them they would execute her.