“I’ve got it.” Her exploring fingers felt the outline of the revolver in her purse. She slipped her hand into the bag, took a firm grip on the gun. Involuntarily, her glance went to the big pistol in a holster at Kraft’s waist. The son of a bitch probably called that thing a hog leg.
“I’ve instructed DT on what I want done,” the Chief said. “You are to move onto that farm and take over there, subdue any opposition. The director concurs. Responsibility will be ours, however. We have been promised extraordinary cooperation by the FBI. Do you understand?”
“I understand.”
“I hope you do. You are not to take chances. You are to kill that deputy if he interferes. And anyone else who tries to block you. We will work out a sufficient justification later. I want that farm in our hands within the hour.”
“Yes, sir. Is DT to be in charge?”
“No. Until you get to the farm, you are in charge.”
“Me?”
“You. When you contact Janvert, he is to take over.”
Her mouth was dry as dust. God! She needed a drink and comforting, but she sensed why the Chief was putting her in charge until they reached Eddie. The Chief knew about her and Eddie. The Chief had a snake’s mind. He’d say to himself: She’s the one with the best motivation. She’ll want to rescue her boyfriend. Give her the reins.
She sensed there might be something else on the Chief’s mind, but she didn’t know how to ask. Was it something to do with Kraft? She pressed the phone tightly against her ear, pushed her chair back toward the window.
“Is that all?” she asked.
“No, you’d better know the worst. We stumbled onto something while talking to the sheriff. He gave it to us himself, very casual and unconcerned. It seems your deputy, whenever he gets sick, is in the habit of convalescing at Hellstrom’s farm. In our hunt for Hellstrom’s Washington connections, we found a congressman about whom we can say the same thing, and we have our suspicions about at least one senator. Got that?”
She nodded. “I see.”
“I think you do. This thing spreads wider every time you pry up another layer. Take no chances with that deputy whatsoever.”
“I won’t,” she said. “How bad was it – I mean, at the Sisters?”
“The plane burned. It was a twin Beech, chartered and recently checked out by the FAA. No reason for it to go down. We haven’t been able to examine the wreckage yet, but it was the fire that gave it away: it started a forest fire on the east slope, they say. Forest Service boys are there now, local police, and FAA. We’ll have a report as soon as possible.”
“What a mess,” she said and noted that Kraft was staring at her intently now, trying to listen. “Is there any chance at all that it was an accident?”
“Possible, but not likely. The pilot was former Air America from Vietnam, six thousand hours. Draw your own conclusions. Oh, tell Shorty he has Class-G authorization. Do you know what that is?”
“Yes – yes, sir.” My God! Kill and burn if necessary!
“I’ll get back to you by radio after you’ve taken over that farm,” the Chief said. “Within the hour. Good-bye and be thorough.”
She heard the receiver click, moved her chair closer to the desk, replaced the phone in its cradle. Using the edge of the desk as a cover, she slipped her revolver from the purse.
Kraft watched her, trying to piece together a version of that conversation from the only end he’d heard. His first inkling that things had changed for the worse came when he saw the silencer of Clovis Carr’s pistol raise itself like a steel snake over the far edge of the desk.
Clovis’s “working personality” was in full charge now and she put aside thoughts of Janvert’s arms around her or other desirable things.
“Keep your hands where I can see them,” she said. “I will kill you at the slightest provocation. Do not make any sudden movements for any reason. Get to your feet carefully, keeping your hands on the desk. Use extreme caution in everything you do, Mr. Kraft. I don’t want to shoot you in this office. It would be messy and difficult to explain, but I will do it if you force me.”
From the preliminary oral report on the autopsy of Dzule Peruge.
The bruised area on the arm gave indications of an inept injection with a hypodermic. We cannot say at this time what may have been injected, but the biopsies are not yet completed. Other indications on the cadaver indicate what we call among ourselves a “motel death.” The syndrome is rather common with males past the age of thirty-five where death occurs under the circumstances described here. The immediate cause of death was what you would call a massive heart failure. We’ll send along the technical details later. Whether this remains the proximate cause depends on the biopsies. From the other indications, we can say the subject had engaged in sexual intercourse at a time very close to the time of death – perhaps no more than four hours earlier. Yes, that’s what we mean. It’s a very clear pattern: older man, younger woman (presumed from your account), and too much sex. All the evidence is consistent with this diagnosis. Bluntly, he fucked himself to death.
“Mr. Janvert, we have some things to discuss,” Hellstrom said. He leaned toward Janvert across the table.
Janvert, having finished his lunch, sat with his right elbow on the table, chin resting on his hand. He felt lost in thought, bemused by the whole situation: the present company, the Agency, the call from the Chief, this assignment, his former fears . . . Vaguely, he felt that he still ought to be alert and perhaps concerned about Hellstrom and the woman, but this did not seem worth the effort.
“It’s time we discussed our mutual problems,” Hellstrom said.
Janvert nodded on his supporting hand, chuckled as his chin started to slip from the hand. Discuss problems. Certainly.
Something about this rustic farm setting, the excellent meal, something about these people at table with him – somewhere in all this was good and sufficient reason for the transformed mood he now felt. He had fought long enough against liking Hellstrom. Perhaps it wasn’t wise to place complete trust in Hellstrom yet, but it was all right to like him. There was a difference between trust and liking. Hellstrom could not be held responsible for the trapped life of a nobody named Eddie Janvert.
Watching the transformation, Hellstrom thought: He’s taking it quite well. The dosages were relatively large. Janvert’s body was now processing numerous identifier chemicals. Very shortly, he would be accepted by any Hive worker as belonging to the Hive. This was double edged: Janvert would accept the Hive workers, too – any of them. His procreative drive had been suppressed, as had much of his critical ability. If the chemical metamorphosis worked, he would become quite tractable presently.
Hellstrom signaled to Mimeca to observe the changes.
She smiled. Janvert’s odors were becoming acceptable.
It’s this farm, Janvert told himself. He moved only his eyes to stare out the window beyond the foot of the table. The golden afternoon appeared warm and inviting.
He and Clovis had talked about such a place many times. “Our own place, preferably an old farm. We’ll grow a few things, raise some animals. Our kids can help with that when they’re old enough.” It was a fantasy they could share before making love. The poignancy of the unattainable made the present ever more sweet.
“Are you ready for a little discussion yet?” Hellstrom asked.
Discussion, yes. “Sure,” Janvert said. He sounded relatively alert, but Hellstrom detected the changes of tone.
The subtle chemistry of fellowship was doing its work. It was a dangerous thing because Janvert might walk openly through any area of the Hive now. No worker would challenge him and haul him summarily off to the nearest vat point. But it meant also that Janvert would respond openly to Hellstrom or any other Hive security interrogator.
Provided this technique worked well on an Outsider. That remained to be tested.
“Your law is a little late arriving,” Hellstrom said. “Shouldn’t you call and try to find out why
?”
Late? Janvert looked up at the clock behind Hellstrom. Almost two o’clock. Where had the time gone? He seemed to recall chatting with Hellstrom and the woman – Fancy was her name. Sweet little thing. But someone was late.
“Are you sure you haven’t made a mistake about the FBI and the others?” Hellstrom asked. “Are they coming?”
“I don’t think I’ve made a mistake,” Janvert said. He sounded sad. The sadness brought a small surge of anger and adrenaline. Nobody made mistakes in this business! God, what a shitty business. All because he’d stumbled over that damned Agency file. No – that had been only a single step. The trap was far more complex than that. Eddie Janvert had been conditioned to accept everything the Agency represented. That conditioning had happened much earlier. Without all this, he might not have met Clovis, either. Lovely Clovis. Much prettier than this little Fancy person beside him. He felt that there ought to be other comparisons between Clovis and Fancy, too, but these eluded him. The Agency – Agency – Agency – Agency. It was a bad business. He could sense the leering presence of the hidden oligarchs whose influence could be felt all through the Agency. That was it! The Agency was a bad business.
“I was just thinking,” Hellstrom said, “that under other circumstances we might have been very close friends.”
Friends. Janvert nodded and his head almost slipped from his supporting hand. They were friends. This Hellstrom was really a very nice guy. He served a good meal. And it was sweet the way he said grace before eating.
The idea of friendship with Hellstrom fanned a tiny core of worry in Janvert, though. He began to wonder about his reactions. It was – Peruge! That was it: Peruge. Old Peruge had said something important – ohhh, way back there somewhere. He’d said Hellstrom and friends had some kind of – some kind of-injection! That was it, an injection. It turned a man into a sex-mad stud. Peruge had said it. Eighteen times in one night. Janvert smiled happily to himself. When you thought about it, that was really very friendly. It was much more friendly than the damned Agency where they watched like cats to find out who you cared for – the way he and Clovis cared for each other – and then used that against you. That’s what the Agency did. With a little reflection, friendship with Hellstrom became easily explained. The whole blasted Agency had finally become too much for one Eddie Janvert. Wait’ll he told Clovis about this. Eighteen times in one night: that was very friendly.
Mimeca, taking her cue from Hellstrom, touched Janvert’s arm. She had a nice, friendly little hand. “I thought the same thing,” she said. “We really should be friends.”
Janvert straightened jerkily, patted her hand on his arm. That was the friendly thing to do. Again, he wondered at himself. He felt he could almost trust this pair. Was that natural? Well, why not? They couldn’t have put anything in his food. That was an odd thought, he told himself. In his food. He recalled taking Hellstrom’s plate. Yes. Hellstrom had relinquished his very own plate of good food. Now, that was friendly. You didn’t hide unfriendly things in plain actions. Did you? He stared at the woman beside him, wondering idly why his mind was working at such a crawling pace. Peruge! Something in his food was out of the question. No injection, either. He continued to stare at the woman, wondering why he did it. Sex. He was not lusting after this pneumatic little woman with the friendly hands and melting eyes. Maybe Peruge had been wrong. Had Peruge lied? The unfriendly bastard was capable of it.
There could be perfectly natural explanations for this whole thing, Janvert told himself. What could he possibly have against Hellstrom except what the Agency dictated that he have against the poor man? He didn’t even know what that was! Project 40. Yes – there’d been something about – papers. Project 40. But that was Hellstrom’s project. It must be friendly. It wasn’t like the damned Agency. They just told you to obey orders.
Janvert felt a sudden need to move around. He pushed his chair back, almost fell over backward, but the pretty woman helped him recover his balance. He patted her hand. Windows. He wanted to look out the windows. Weaving very little, Janvert guided himself down the length of the table to the bay windows. A short stretch of water with no visible flow could be seen in the creekbed. The faint afternoon breeze swayed the tree shadows on the water then and provided an illusion of movement. The silence in the dining room carried a similar illusion. Casually, he wondered how his senses reported reality. It was a very friendly scene, friendly place. There was movement.
Why did he have this little niggling worry wa-a-ay down inside? That was the only irritating thing left in this whole situation.
Situation. What situation?
Janvert shook his head from side to side like a wounded animal. Everything was so damned confusing.
Leaning back in his chair, Hellstrom frowned. Hive chemistry was not working on Janvert in quite the way it would have on one of their own. Hive humans remained close enough genetically to the Outsiders for interbreeding. The divergence was only about three hundred years old. Chemical affinity was not surprising. It was to be expected, in fact. But Janvert was not responding with full and open friendliness. It was as though he fought a deep inner battle. Chemistry was not enough, then. That was to be expected, too. The human was much more than flesh. Some holdout place in Janvert’s intellect retained a concept of Hellstrom as threat.
Mimeca had followed Janvert to the window, stood now just behind him. “We really mean you no harm,” she murmured.
He nodded. Of course they meant him no harm. What a thought. Janvert put a hand in his jacket pocket, felt the gun there. He recognized it. A gun was an unfriendly thing.
“Why can’t we be friends?” Mimeca asked.
Tears began to flow from Janvert’s eyes, rolling slowly down his cheeks. It was so sad. The gun, this place, Clovis, the Agency, Peruge, everything. So sad. He pulled the gun from his pocket, turned to reveal his tear-stained face, handed the gun to Mimeca. She accepted it, held it awkwardly: one of those awful flesh-destroying Outsider weapons.
“Throw it away,” Janvert whispered. “Please, throw that damned thing away.”
From a news story, dateline Washington, D.C.
…and it was noted that Altman’s death was not the first such suicide of a highly placed government official. Washington observers immediately recalled the death on May 22, 1949, of Defense Secretary James Forrestal, who shocked family and associates by leaping from a hospital window.
Altman’s death also revived the recurrent Washington rumor that he was in fact the chief of a secret and highly sensitive investigative agency operating under the government’s executive arm. One of Altman’s senior associates, Joseph Merrivale, issued an angry denial of the rumor, demanding, “Is that bloody gabble still going around?”
All in all, it had been a highly successful afternoon in spite of the earlier alarms, Hellstrom told himself. He stood in the barn aerie, staring out the louvered windows to the north. Vehicles were stirring up dust in the distance, but he felt no threat from the Outsiders at the moment. Reports from Washington and the nearby town indicated an easing of pressure.
Janvert had answered all of their questions with only the most gentle of persuasion. It saddened Hellstrom to think about this, comparing it with their previous procedure. So much pain could have been spared the other captives. When you thought about it, this technique was so obvious. Fancy had done the Hive a truly great service.
Saldo walked up beside Hellstrom with cat-footed grace and said, “Station six says that dust out there is three heavy vehicles approaching our lower road.”
“I think Janvert’s ‘law’ is almost here,” Hellstrom said. “Are we ready for them?”
“As ready as we can be. Mimeca is down in the farmhouse prepared to play Fancy to the hilt. Injured innocence, the whole thing. She’s never even heard of Depeaux, that agency, a bicycle – nothing.”
“Good. Where did you put Janvert?”
“In an empty cell on level forty-two. Everything is on emergency alert.”
&
nbsp; With renewed misgivings, Hellstrom thought about what that meant. Emergency alert: time lost from essential supportive tasks; workers detailed to man the system that could block off long sections of the access galleries with solidifying liquid mucilage; masses of hyped-up workers arrayed behind secret exits and armed with stunwands and the few Outsider weapons the Hive could muster.
“They’re coming on very fast,” Saldo said, nodding toward the dust cloud from the approaching vehicles.
“They’re late,” Hellstrom said. “Something delayed them and they’re trying to make up for lost time. Are we all ready to clear out this aerie?”
“I’d better give the word,” Saldo said.
“In a moment,” Hellstrom said. “We can delay them at the gate. Were you able to reach Linc?”
“Nobody answers his phone. You know, when this is over, I think we should provide him with a better Outside cover – a wife, another phone at his home tied to the office line.”
“Good idea,” Hellstrom said. He pointed out the window. “Those are big van-campers. Could they be the ones that were on the mountain?”
“They might – Nils, they’re moving much too fast. They’re almost at the fence. Maybe we should –”
He broke off in shocked alarm as the first of the big vans crashed through the north gate and swerved aside to block off the flat pillbox of the disguised ventilator outlet. Two figures leaped from the van as it skidded to a stop. One of them carried what appeared to be a black satchel. The other vans roared right past the stopped one, coming straight for the house and barn.
“They’re attacking!” Saldo yelled.
A shattering explosion at the ventilator outlet punctuated his warning and was followed immediately by a second, louder explosion. The first truck had been blown onto its side and was burning.