The Innocent Bystanders c-4 Page 6

  "That's right," said Kaplan, and looked up at Craig. His eyes were bright, alert, and, Craig thought, wary.

  "I've got a message for you," Craig said. "From Aaron."

  The wariness in the eyes intensified.

  "You better come in," he said without enthusiasm.

  Another crowded elevator, fast, air-conditioned, careful not to let the stomach lag. Kaplan got out at the nineteenth floor. (No New Yorker lives lower than the seventeenth floor, Loomis had said. They only have sex when there's a power cut.) Kaplan stood by the elevator and looked down the carpeted corridor. There was no one else there.

  "What's Aaron's full name?" he asked.

  "Aaron Israel Kaplan. Last heard of in Volochanka."

  "Okay," Kaplan said, less enthusiastically than ever. "We'll go to my apartment."

  He led, Craig a half step behind him, and almost too late Craig remembered his trade.

  "Mr. Kaplan," he said, "are any of these apartments to let?"

  "No," Kaplan said at once. "There's a waiting list. Very desirable apartments." He frowned. "Maybe you're thinking of the Boldinis."

  "Am I?" said Craig.

  "Number 37," Kaplan said. "But they're in Maine. They go there every summer. Lucky-"

  By this time they had reached Number 33, and Kaplan thought that Craig had gone mad, for the deferential but very strong Britisher promptly knocked him down, a deft, efficient trip, and leaped over his body, hit the door of Number 37 just as it had begun to open. There was a sound like that of a large, wet sack hit with a paddle, and Craig was through the door. Kaplan, bewildered but courageous, groaned himself upright and followed. Inside the Boldinis' apartment Craig was grappling with a man who held a gun. As Kaplan entered the gun went off, and Kaplan observed a vase he had detested for years shatter to fragments inches from his hand, but instead of the dull boom of the explosion there was a small, soft plop. Craig struck at the gunman and he groaned. Kaplan moved into the room, noting that Craig was gathering his strength to finish the fight. It was suddenly important that he observe just how this was done. He moved clumsily, and Craig saw him, his concentration weakened. The gunman wriggled from Craig's arms and through a window, then leaped crazily down the stairs of the fire escape. Kaplan still watched attentively as Craig scooped up the gun and ran to the window. From below came the fading sounds of shoe leather on metal.

  "I'm sorry," Kaplan said.

  Craig leaned in from the window and turned.

  "It's all right," he said.

  "I didn't think I would put you off—"

  "You wouldn't have," said Craig, "except that there's another one behind you—and it's you they came for, after all."

  Kaplan spun round. There was a man lying on the floor, and he had a gun in his hand. Right there in the Boldinis' apartment, a gunman lay flat on his back, automatic in hand, and he, Kaplan, stood amid the ruins of that damn ugly vase. That was as fantastic as the gunman. The Boldinis had worshipped that vase. Paid over a hundred dollars to have it shipped from Hong Kong, and now here was this Englishman crunching over it, bending down to look at this—gangster I guess you'd call him. Craig's face told him nothing at all—but when he turned the gunman over, suddenly Kaplan knew he was dead, even before he looked up and saw the set of teak shelves near the door, with their hard, sharp edges, one of them just the height of a standing man, and that one covered in what looked like jam. Kaplan turned away.

  "Well, well," said Craig. "How very careless of him."

  He went quickly through the man's pockets. Money, a packet of Marlboros, book matches, a dirty and much-used handkerchief. And on the floor a Browning Hi-

  Power automatic with a silencer. Thirteen shot. His unlucky day.

  "You killed him," said Kaplan. There was amazement rather than accusation in his voice.

  "That's right," said Craig. He unscrewed the silencer from the gun he'd picked up, then stuffed the silencer into his pocket, the gun into his pants' waistband, and opened the door, using his fingernails only. The corridor was still empty.

  "At least you haven't got nosy neighbors," said Craig. "Did you touch anything?"

  Kaplan shook his head. Craig jerked his head at the door and Kaplan left, Craig followed, still a little behind, and to the right. The way the bodyguards walk on television, thought Kaplan. The only crazy thing was he still wasn't scared. He still couldn't believe it was happening.

  Inside Kaplan's door the manservant waited to take Kaplan's hat and tell him that Madam was having a cocktail in the drawing room. Craig looked the man over. The voice was phoney, but a splendid phoney; rich and plummy as fruitcake. The man himself, lean and rangy in his white mess jacket, with cold, expressionless eyes that noticed the bulge at Craig's middle, and became more expressionless than ever.

  "Cocktail?" said Kaplan. "Sounds like a good idea. We'll have one too."

  He led the way and Craig found himself shaking hands with a plump and hennaed matron who took one look at her lord, and blamed it all, whatever it was, on Craig.

  She thinks I've had him out drinking, thought Craig, and waited for the introductions.

  "This is Mr. Craig, honey," said Kaplan. So he knew I was on my way here.

  "How d'you do?" said Mrs. Kaplan, uncaring. "Hether-ton, mix the drinks will you?"

  Craig looked over his shoulder. Hetherton had exchanged the mess jacket for a swallowtail coat that fitted badly on the left-hand side. Craig asked for Scotch on the rocks, and Hetherton mixed it and passed it to Craig with his left hand. When Craig took it with his right, Hetherton began to look happy. Kaplan accepted a modest vodka martini and at once said, "Business, Ida. I'll take Mr. Craig to the study." This was the merest routine, and yet, Craig thought, she still hates me. She knows there's something wrong.

  "Will you be needing me, sir?" Hetherton said. His right hand, Craig noticed, was adjusting an already impeccable tie, six inches away from his gun butt.

  "No, no," said Kaplan. "Mr. Craig and I are old friends. We'll look after ourselves."

  Hetherton bowed and relaxed still further. Craig assumed he had the place bugged.

  The study was small, untidy, and masculine, more den than study, full of small cups that Marcus and Ida Kaplan had won at bridge tournaments, and larger cups that Marcus Kaplan had won at skeet shooting. There were also two huge and highly functional lamps. Kaplan tossed off his martini and promptly refilled it from a bottle in the base of one of them.

  "Scotch is in that one," said Kaplan, pointing. "Help yourself."

  Craig twisted the base and pulled, as Kaplan had done. Inside the lamp was a bottle of Red Hackle. He freshened his drink.

  "The trouble with Ida is she worries too much," he said, then began to shake as the fear hit him, and from his mouth came a travesty of laughter. "No, that's not right— is it Mr. Craig? The trouble with Ida is she doesn't worry half enough." The laughter resumed then, shrill and crazy. Craig leaned forward politely. "You can stop if you want to," he said, but the laughter went on. Craig reached out and his fingers touched, very lightly, Kaplan's forearm, found the place he needed, and pressed. Pain seared across Kaplan's arm, terrible pain that stopped at once as his laughter died.

  "You see?" said Craig.

  Kaplan said, "I see, all right." His body still shook, but his voice was steady. "You really got a message from Aaron?"

  "Mr. Kaplan, you know I haven't," said Craig. "I've come for your information."

  "Again?" said Kaplan. Somehow Craig's body stayed immobile.

  "Again," he said.

  "But I gave it to the other two."

  "Which other two, Mr. Kaplan?"

  "Mr. Royce," said Kaplan. "And that nice Miss Benson. They took me on a trip in a motor launch. Taped the whole thing."

  "So they did," said Craig. "Now tell it all to me."

  Kaplan told it and Craig listened, and remembered. When he had done, Craig said:

  "Thank you. You've been very helpful."

  Kaplan said. "Helpful. Yeah. Is it
going to find my brother?"

  "It's possible," said Craig.

  "I'm fifty-nine," said Kaplan. "I haven't seen him since I was twelve years old—and he was seven. But he's my brother. I want him found."

  Craig said, "So do a lot of people. Friends and enemies. If the friends find him first—you'll see him." Before Kaplan could speak, Craig said, "Do you know a man called Laurie S. Fisher?"

  "Sure," said Kaplan. "He's the guy who got me into this thing—whatever it is. Flew me out to his ranch in Arizona. And that reminds me—what in hell are we going to do about the Bol-"

  Craig's voice cut across his. "Mr. Kaplan, I met you on your doorstep, you invited me in, and we talked. I'm grateful for the time you spared me, but that's all that happened."

  Kaplan looked down at the arm Craig had touched, where the memory of pain still throbbed.

  "Jesus," he said. "You're a cold-blooded bastard."

  "If I'm to find your brother I'll have to be." Craig put down his glass. "Thanks for the drink," he said. "I never drank from a table lamp before. It was delicious."

  "Okay," said Kaplan. "I get it. Keep my mouth shut or you'll tell Ida."

  "Is it really so important?" said Craig.

  "It is to me," said Kaplan. "And to her too. Looking after me—all that. You don't care about all that crap. Right?"

  Craig said, "You've had a shock, and I handled you roughly. I'm sorry."

  "Where I was brought up we used to have a saying," said Kaplan. "With you for a friend, who needs enemies?"

  "Not you, Mr. Kaplan," said Craig. "You already got them."

  He left quietly. Sounds from another room told him that Thaddeus Cooke's corps de ballet were performing on television, and that Mrs. Kaplan approved. Craig kept on going and met Hetherton in the hall without surprise.

  "How long have you been with him?" Craig asked.

  "Three weeks, sir," said Hetherton. "May I ask-"

  "Department K," said Craig. "M-16."

  "Ah," said Hetherton.

  "Ah, is right," said Craig. "Stay on a while, Hethers, old top. He needs you."

  Hetherton said in quite a different voice, "There's been nothing out of line so far."

  "Number 37," said Craig. "The Boldinis. They're away in Maine. Somebody broke in and smashed a vase. Then somebody else broke in and smashed somebody's head. And somebody had a gun. With a silencer. Like this." His hand dipped into his pocket, showed the silencer, replaced it. "It's a good silencer, and Kaplan's a hell of a target. If I were you, old top, I'd put him on a diet."

  He went back to his hotel room, and wrote down what Kaplan had told him. He was hungry and tired, but that didn't matter. The hunger sharpened his memory and the tiredness could be ignored. It was all a matter of will. When he'd finished he read it through three times, then repeated it back to himself. Twice his memory failed him, so he read it three times more. When he'd got it right he lay down on the bed and slept at once, waking two hours later as he'd willed himself to do. Again he repeated Kaplan's message. It came back word-perfect. The only thing wrong with it was it didn't tell him enough. One picture postcard sent from Kutsk, in Turkey, and a message about a rabbi they'd both known as children. And Kaplan had lost the postcard. Craig screwed the paper into a twist, set fire to it, and dropped the pieces into a metal trash can. When they had burned out he flushed the pieces down the toilet and went out to eat.

  By now it was close to midnight and New York was much too quiet. (If Cinderella had lost her glass slipper in New York, Loomis had said, her foot would have been in it at the time.) He found a place that sold him clams, steak, and beer, and a piece of apple pie that reminded him of Tyneside. When he asked for coffee with caffein in it, the waiter reacted as if he were a junkie. He walked back through the silent canyons, glittering with light, their only occupants in pools of shadows, men, always in groups, waiting, watching, men inhibited by his size and the way he walked, the suggestion of power to be used at once and to the limit if they tried to hurt him.

  Craig went back to his hotel room and remembered that Loomis, detestable as he was, was invariably right. The thought reminded him of the equipment that hadn't been supplied, and Benson and Royce's visit to Kaplan. But he'd got equipment anyway, a Smith and Wesson and four rounds, and a Browning Hi -Power. And Benson and Royce were problems he could do nothing about . . . Craig slept.

  CHAPTER 5

  They came for him at four in the morning, the dead hour when reactions are slowest and sleep at its most profound. They were good men, there were enough of them, and they didn't get too close. Craig, worn out as he was, heard them just three seconds too late. By then they were in his bedroom and one of them had flicked on a torch, its brilliant bar of light hitting him full in the eyes. Craig flung up one arm, and in the dazzling silence heard the click of a safety catch. A voice said, "You know what I'm holding, Mr. Craig?" He nodded. "Just keep looking this way and maybe I won't use it."

  He looked into the light. Behind him someone was moving very softly, someone poised for a blow. At the last possible second Craig swerved round. The hand shielding his face shot out in a fist strike. He felt muscle and flesh give under his hand, then a second man struck, a single blow behind the ear with a life preserver of plaited leather, and Craig collapsed at once. The lights went on then, and three men dressed as ambulance attendants set up a stretcher, loaded him on to it. A fourth man clung to the bedrail, his fingers solicitous where Craig's fist had smashed into his belly. He was a young, strong, fit man. Had one of those prerequisites been missing, Craig's blow would have crippled him or killed him. When Craig was on the stretcher, one of the men gave him an injection of paraldehyde. It was vital that he shouldn't move for twenty minutes. After that, two of them carried out Craig; the third supported the one he had struck. It would be an hour at least before he could walk by himself.

  Craig woke up in a bed that was five feet from the floor, a hard bed on an iron frame that was the only thing in the room except for a chair. He wore a nightshirt of some kind of coarse linen, his wrists and feet were tied to the bed by canvas straps, and there was a bandage round his forearm. His head ached vilely, the drug made his stomach heave, and his wrists and ankles were already sore. He had no doubt that shortly he would regard his present position as one of luxury, and shut his eyes at once, trying to buy time, to prepare his body and mind to resist what was going to be done to him. That he would tell what he knew eventually was inevitable; any man can be broken, and if you've been broken once before it's that much easier the second time. But it was Craig's business to escape if he could, and hold out if escape were impossible. Desperately he tried to drive his mind and body away from what was coming, but the memory of Laurie S. Fisher was too strong. Beneath the bandage gauges recorded the sudden spurt of his pulse, the increase of perspiration, and in the next room a doctor saw these things recorded on instrument dials, and nodded to the man beside him. Craig was ready.

  The man who came into Craig's room was tall and lean. His clothes were elegant, his face at once weatherbeaten and scholarly. He stood looking down at Craig for twenty seconds, and Craig remained immobile, though the dials in the next room leaped as he waited.

  The tall man said at last, "I think we should have a talk, Mr. Craig."

  Craig opened his eyes then and looked at him: perhaps the most difficult thing he had ever done.

  The tall man said, "I think we can dispense with the formalities of outraged innocence, don't you? Your name is John Craig, you work for Loomis in Department K of M-16, and you're here to find out about a man called Kaplan."

  Craig said, "My name is John Craig—yes, but I'm an account executive for Baldwin-Hicks. I'm here on advertising business. I never heard of Department K. Or Kaplan."

  Believe your cover story all the way, they had taught him. Know it. Feel it. Belong to it. Even when they begin to hurt you. Especially then. Even if the other side knows you're lying, it'll help you to hold out.

  "Yes of course," said the tal
l man. "And you didn't go to see Kaplan's brother today?"

  "Of course not," said Craig. "I never heard of Kaplan."

  The tall man pressed a buzzer and two other men came into the room. They wore the white smocks of hospital orderlies, but Craig knew them at once for what they were. In the next room, the dials on the instrument panel moved up further.

  "You went to an apartment block on West 95th Street," said the tall man. "Kaplan lives there. Don't waste our time, Mr. Craig. We know"

  "I went to see an advertising man," said Craig.

  The two men in white moved closer to the bed.

  "And did you go to the Graydon to see another advertising man?" the tall man asked.

  Craig said, "I don't know what you're talking about. I don't know what you're doing here."

  One of the men in white took his arm, held it firmly, and the other moved up close. Something flashed in the room's hard light, and Craig whimpered at a brief stab of pain, before his mind told him they had injected him again. Pentathol, he thought. Truth serum. The only way was to blank out your mind, think of nothing that would make sense to your questioners. Methodically he began to recite the days of the week in Arabic, over and over again, saying them harder and harder as the tall man's questions came. It would be so easy to answer the questions, and such a pleasure to talk about the terrible thing he had seen. But his business was to recite the days of the week in Arabic. He went on doing so.

  Suddenly the tall man had gone, and in his place was another, chubby and benign, with hexagonal rimless glasses that made him look like a cherubic gnome.

  "Hi," he said. The seven words went on and on in Craig's mind. He said nothing.

  "What you doing?" said the chubby man, and settled down in the chair. The dials had told him all he needed to know. This one was terrified. "Counting sheep? Reciting poetry? French irregular verbs? They try all kinds," the chubby man said, then rose suddenly and stood over Craig, the chubbiness gone, and in its place a squat power, as he noticed the tension in Craig's hands.