I followed him down the ladders and then turned and gave the guard captain loading orders for the passengers and the necessary stamps.
“I’ll be glad to see that girl go,” said the guard captain. “She’s sitting in her cell swearing like a pirate, demanding we give her one phone call. The adjectives she’s using on your name would melt the stone! You want to see her and calm her down?”
“Gods, no! Tell her to open up one of her trunks and have a nice smoke! What about the man?”
“The Madison fellow? He’s no trouble. He’s just sitting there saying he knew it would come to this. And that crazy Crobe hasn’t said anything at all.”
“Well, get them shipped,” I said. “I’m supposed to see a courier.”
“He’s right over there. He didn’t even arrive in irons this time.”
Twolah, nicknamed Too-Too, was cowering by a ladder. He had a bag. I beckoned for him to follow me and took him into an empty cell.
Too-Too wasn’t so much beaten down as bursting with secrets he was afraid the wrong people would get out of him.
He leaned close to my ear. His perfume hit me in a wave.
“He’s done it,” said Too-Too.
“Who has done what?” I said impatiently.
“Lombar. He has totally subverted the Grand Council with drugs. The court physicians helped him. They’ve got everybody hooked and Lombar controls all the supplies.” He drew back and gazed around to make sure he was not being overheard. He leaned forward: “He has even hooked His Majesty, Cling the Lofty!”
My eyes flared. Oh, what news this was!
“He’s going on to hook the population,” whispered Too-Too. “In all but name, Lombar Hisst is in virtual control of all Voltar.”
It was electric news. I suddenly realized that shortly I would become the Chief of the Apparatus!
“He said to give you this,” said Too-Too.
He slid a paper into my hands. I unfolded it. It was made of words and letters cut from newssheets and pasted on a page.
It said:
KILL THE (blEepArd)!
I looked at Too-Too. “What about Captain Tars Roke? Heller had the communication line to him.”
“Captain Tars Roke has been dismissed as the King’s Own Astrographer. He has been ordered to join the Fleet on distant Calabar. Forget him.”
A surge of absolute joy raced through me!
“The rest of the message,” said Too-Too, “is to be sure the opium and heroin and amphetamines keep coming and that means to do nothing that would disturb IG Barben.”
That meant nothing must dislodge Rockecenter!
My joy took a little sag. I thought of my present relationship there. My problems were not all solved.
This was going to be tight!
I stamped the papers he had brought.
My mind was on other things.
“Don’t I get my reward?” he said. “You know, the big guard and the fat woman . . .”
I pushed this loathsome catamite from me. “You’ll get your reward when I am Chief of the Apparatus,” I snarled.
I had other things to think about.
I had to work out how to handle these matters. I had to solve the problems which were hammering at me. And I had to solve them fast.
PART SIXTY
Chapter 5
In my secret room I tensely crouched over a sheet of paper. I had to make a plan. I was well aware that what I determined might well alter the course of billions of lives. I could not make a mistake: they had to lose, not me.
Black Jowl.
I wrote his name down.
What was I going to do with him?
Then I had it!
I would kill Heller. Then blow up Chryster Motors in Detroit. Then blast Ochokeechokee, Florida, off the face of the map, thus solving Miami not buying fuel. Then kill Izzy Epstein and Bang-Bang Rimbombo by blowing up the Empire State Building. I listed them. I did not want to overlook any.
Then I would call Bury and I would say, “See? Madison was going too slowly. But now I have eradicated the fuel man and all his works.” I would add modestly, “I’m sure you’ve read it in the papers.” Then I would say, “So please get my rating restored as a Rockecenter family spi, for I have done my job and then some.” And he would say, “Inkswitch, how proud we are of you. Of course, your rating is restored.”
Then I would go to Black Jowl in his cell and I’d say, “On your feet, buster. You’re talking to a Rockecenter family spi and you only got to phone your office to verify it.” And he, of course, in a whipped sort of way, would tear up his mortgage on the Earth base.
I’d let him cringe a little before I booted him off the property. Yes, that would be nice, so I added it to the list.
I sat back proudly to eye my masterpiece.
Then my eye caught a flick of movement on the viewer. A knife was being drawn through a piece of meat.
THE COUNTESS KRAK.
I shuddered.
I looked back at the plan before me. I sheltered it so it could not be visible from the viewer. There was a flaw in my master plan.
The moment anyone drew a bead on Heller, he himself would be in the telescopic sight of a sniper rifle in the hands of the Countess Krak!
I thought about this for a time. Yes, it was a definite flaw.
In order to successfully gun down Heller, it was vitally necessary to get rid of that witch.
I thought and thought. I paced back and forth. I had been unsuccessful in this before. I must not be unsuccessful now.
Suddenly a basket caught my eye. There were many communications in it, untouched, unread, an accumulation of my long absence. The germ of an idea began to penetrate my mind.
I went to the basket. Right on top was a card from Widow Tayl.
Yoo-hoo, wherever you are.
Why don’t you write?
I can feel him kick. He’s almost ready to arrive.
Looking forward to a happy marriage.
Pratia
To hells with her. When I was Chief of the Apparatus, I’d have her exterminated. I threw the card on the floor.
There were some overdue Voltar bills. I threw those on the floor.
The next one made my hair rise. It was deep in the pile but the date stamp on it was not two hours old! It was from the unknown assassin Lombar had assigned to kill me if I failed! It said:
KILL OR BE KILLED
IS THE LAW.
It was signed with a blood-dripping dagger.
It made me very nervous. I had long since ceased to try to figure out who this must be. But it did look like it was connected with the Blixo for that time-date was an hour after its arrival.
How cruel it would be if, just as I was on the verge of total success, almost ready to become the head of the whole deadly organization, this assassin might make some kind of a clown blunder and kill me in error!
Oh, I had better look very busy indeed!
What I was looking for wasn’t in there. My eye strayed. THERE IT WAS!
A messenger had slipped it under the door, probably in the last few minutes. HELLER’S CABLE!
He said that he was sending it. Yes, there were two other cables, much older, lying there in the dust.
I opened the last one:
SULTAN BEY, ROMAN VILLA,
AFYON, TKY
PLEASE EXPEDITE REPLACEMENT
OF BOX NUMBER FIVE.
IT IS DELAYING THE MISSION
COMPLETION. JH
The other two older cables said much the same thing. But I did not want to know what they said; I wanted to be sure he knew and she knew that they had been sent.
I knew I had this thing solved now.
But I only needed one thing. I did not have it yet.
I went to bed and rolled and tossed restlessly. I rose early and puttered about, cleaning guns.
When they got up in New York, I sat tensely at the viewers, watching, listening, lying in wait.
I prayed for luck. I did not have al
l that much time.
I loaded both viewers with the strips I had run out of in New York. I must be able to backtrack in case, while I was eating, they said the thing I was looking for.
Evening came. The Blixo took off.
I spent another feverish night. I paced through another wasted morning. I had only a week or so before someone noticed Black Jowl was gone. Heller and Krak were just delaying so as to spite me. I needed just a few magic words.
My afternoon came and they got up.
And then at their breakfast I GOT MY KEY MESSAGE.
Heller and Krak were at a breakfast table on the condo terrace surrounded by greenery.
“Dear,” said Heller, “I’m sorry to have to be running about so much, but this afternoon Izzy wants me to go with him to Washington. Wonderful Oil for Maysabongo is going to take options on every drop of fuel in the United States, all reserves. Izzy doesn’t know how to calculate capacities and I am pretty close to the Maysabongo ambassador from last fall.”
“ALL the fuel?” said the Countess Krak. “Where will you put it?”
“We don’t have to put it anywhere,” said Heller. “You can buy options to buy anything. If we have the option to buy it at a certain price, then, if we do buy it, they have to sell it to us at that price. So we’re purchasing a six months’ option. The companies are so money-hungry and the option sellers so eager that it is no trick. They don’t think we’ll ever complete the purchase and they’ll just be in pocket half a billion for the options and still have their oil. Anyway, we’re going down there and brief the ambassador. And then we’re going to fly over to Detroit tomorrow afternoon and I’m going to test drive one of the new gasless cars to give it an okay for the production line. I’ll try to be home about midnight tomorrow night and if not then, certainly by the next morning.”
“No women in Washington,” said the Countess Krak.
They both laughed.
“I’m leaving on the one o’clock plane,” said Heller.
My prayers had been answered. This time I would not miss!
I reached for the two-way-response radio. I called Raht. He was at the New York office.
“At 2:30 this afternoon,” I said, “you are to make a phone call.” And I gave him the number.
“That’s the Royal officer’s condo,” he said.
“Precisely,” I said. “But he won’t be there. His woman will have returned from the airport. I want you to say that you have an urgent personal message from Officer Gris. Then you are to give it to her. The message follows: ‘I cannot possibly send you the replacement for Box 5 as I am afraid Jettero might hurt himself with them.’”
“Is that all?”
“That’s all,” I said.
“Wait a minute,” said Raht. “That message sounds fishy to me.”
“It will make sense to her. Do what you’re told!”
“Listen,” he said, “I know how your mind runs. I’ve seen that female. She must be one of the most beautiful women in the Confederacy. She compares to Hightee Heller, the dream girl of poor Terb. Are you absolutely sure that this isn’t going to hurt her in any way?”
“No, no,” I said easily. “Of course not. It’s just a sort of code message and she’ll be delighted to have it.”
“I hope so,” he said. He clicked off.
Who the hells cared what he thought. He was paid to do his duty just like I was.
At 9:30 PM, my time, I was glued back to that viewer. She had seen Heller off at La Guardia Airport and at 2:00 PM, her time, had returned home to the condo.
At 2:30 the butler Balmor came into her study where she was grading student papers and said, “Madame, there is an urgent phone call for you. I have switched it to your line there.”
In a panic, maybe thinking something had happened to Heller, she picked the instrument up.
Raht gave her the message flawlessly.
“Who is this?” she demanded.
But Raht had hung up.
She rose. And then she said the very thing I knew she would. “Heavens, what have I done?”
I laughed with glee. It was working. She thought the hypnotic suggestion she had given me was still in place and that it was blocking my shipment of Box 5.
She walked back and forth a couple of times. Then she reached for the phone. I couldn’t believe my luck. She was falling for it. She believed, of course, that the only way she could handle that was with another hypnotic session. And the only way she could deliver that . . .
“Give me Airline Central Reservations,” she said. She got it. “What is your next direct connection to Istanbul?” They told her there was no direct connection. Due to schedule changes, the best they could do for a reservation left at ten o’clock tonight and had a six-hour layover in Rome.
“I’ll take it,” she said. “Make the reservations on through to Afyon, Turkey. The name is Heavenly Joy Krackle.”
They gave her the flight numbers. I hastily wrote them down.
I was really laughing. She hadn’t used the Squeeza credit card, saying she would pay cash.
Then she said, “Please make the ticket round trip.”
I grinned with glee from ear to ear. That was one round trip that wouldn’t be used.
The Countess Krak was never going back!
PART SIXTY
Chapter 6
She wrote a brief note to Heller and gave it to Balmor. She gave instructions about the cat. And then she began to pack.
Suddenly, I got to worrying. Supposing the assassin missed on Heller?
If the Countess was killed outright, I would have no bargaining power.
Suddenly, INSPIRATION!
I knew exactly what I had to do and I did not have much time.
I rushed through the tunnel door, across the hangar and to the room of Captain Stabb.
“How fast can you get the line-jumper in the air?” I said.
“Ten minutes,” he said. “What’s up?”
I realized I would have to be very clever to get this pirate to cooperate.
“We’re laying the stage to rob a chain of banks,” I said.
“Well, it’s about time,” said Captain Stabb.
“Now, on this planet, bank robbers have to have hostages.”
“Really?” he said.
“Yes, sir,” I said. “They have to have hostages. But I’ve got a new wrinkle. We’re going to take the hostage in advance.”
“Hey,” he said. “That saves trying to find somebody alive after you’ve picked up the whole building.”
“Right,” I said. “So we’re going to take a hostage who is connected to billions. And then we are going to do a series of actions that will make us all rich beyond belief.”
“Hey, wonderful,” he said. “It’s been pretty dull around here. Without you to order it, that Faht Bey wouldn’t let us take off.”
“Well, he will now. Tell me quick, which one of your men can best impersonate an Earthman?”
“Jeeb, the second engineer.”
“And he has no compunctions about stabbing somebody in the back?”
“Let’s not make jokes,” said Captain Stabb. “Piracy is a serious business. Of course, he can do a little thing like that.”
“Then get aloft at once,” I said, “put him down just north of the international airport in Rome, have him buy a ticket and, without fail, be on this flight.”
I gave Stabb the rest of the instructions. I gave him the necessary money and equipment the man would take.
“When you have done that,” I said, “come back here for me. We will leave again tomorrow night. So, on your way!”
I called Faht Bey and told him it was at the orders of Lombar Hisst. They cleared the line-jumper out and it was gone through the mountaintop illusion and into the night sky.
I went back to the viewer.
There must be no mistakes!
I watched her as she finished packing her grip.
COUNTESS KRAK, I’VE REALLY GOT YOU THIS TIME!
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