The Innocent Bystanders c-4 Page 7

  "You're not comfortable," he said. "Let me tuck you up properly."

  His hands stripped away the sheets, and Craig gabbled his seven words as the other man lifted the smock and looked at the marks on his body, the sweat soaking from him so that the bed sheets were wet.

  "My, my," said the man. "Somebody certainly didn't like you. Somebody certainly hurt you all right. You must be a very brave man. And strong too. I admire you, sport, I really do."

  The voice continued, softly, gently, and Craig saw him grow chubby again, fat and well meaning and anxious to help as he told Craig how brave he was, and asked him how he managed to withstand such terrible pain. Slowly, inevitably Craig listened, and answered, the seven words falling like pierced armor from his memory. The chubby man knew all about pain—and cared. On and on Craig talked, and gradually the chubby man's questions moved from Craig's agony to Laurie S. Fisher's, and Craig wept as he remembered what had been done to him.

  "And you really didn't see who did it, John?"

  "No," said Craig. "I thought it was the KGB, but-"

  "But what? Go on. You can tell me."

  "You're the KGB, aren't you?"

  "Just a research team, John. Asking questions about the problems of pain. Kaplan now. We heard there were two hoods in the Boldinis' apartment. Were they going to hurt Kaplan?"

  "They were going to kill him," said Craig. "Only I killed one of them instead."

  "And the other one got away, right? You should have killed him too, don't you think so?"

  "Noise," said Craig. "People." Suddenly he felt very weary.

  "Please, John," said the chubby man. "Don't go to sleep just yet."

  Craig said, "They weren't—executives. Not like the ones who got Fisher. They were your best people. The two I met were just hired guns. Not worth killing." "Or hurting, John?"

  Craig said, "I don't like hurting people. I don't like being hurt."

  "John," said the chubby man, "I think you're in the wrong business."

  "That too," said Craig, and slept.

  The tall man came out of the shadows and looked at Craig as the two orderlies left. "Well, well," he said. "The best in the business."

  "You take a blade, you sharpen it and sharpen it till it'll split a silk scarf drawn across it. Then one day you drop it on a stone floor. After that it'll still cut bread, but the silk scarves are safe. They stay in one piece."

  "Damn your parables," said the tall man. "What about Fisher?"

  "He didn't do that to Fisher. He couldn't. Anyway, he told us the truth. He found him." "And the girl too?"

  "And the girl. She was a Scandinavian type, just like he said. Mai Olsen. Fisher met her-"

  "I know all that," the tall man said, and turned back to Craig. "What do you think?"

  "Of John? He can still fight, still kill if he has to—but he can't cut silk scarves."

  The tall man turned away.

  "Get rid of him," he said.

  There were rats. He could hear them scuttering about the floor, running up the legs of the bed, ducking beneath the bedclothes every time he turned his head to see them. He'd never actually seen one, but they were there all right. He could feel them. From time to time they bit him in the arms. Not that it mattered. The bites didn't hurt; they were just reminders that the rats were there. And there was another one—probably a baby he thought—that hid behind the pillow and bit him behind the ear. A baby rat. Brown fur, naked tail, scrabbling paws. He could imagine it perfectly, but it didn't disgust him—only it was a nuisance. Biting like that. The trouble was he couldn't stop it, because his hands were tied. Better to sleep, if the rats would let him.

  Suddenly a bell sounded, deferential but insistent. A telephone, he thought, an American telephone. Only there weren't any telephones, not in that room where they'd talked about the pain. The ringing went on, and Craig woke, the rats disappeared, their scrabbling the hum of air conditioning, their bites the ache in his arms and head. As he woke he noticed that his arms and legs were stretched out as if he were still strapped down. Cautiously he reached for the telephone at his bedside, and pain stabbed behind his ear.

  "Noon, Mr. Craig," said the voice of the girl at the switchboard.

  "I beg your pardon?"

  "It's noon," said the voice again, acidly patient. "Twelve o'clock. You left word for a call."

  "Oh yes," said Craig. "Thank you."

  "You're welcome," said the girl. The words meant, "Jesus. Another lush."

  He rang room service for breakfast and a bowl of ice, and spent a long time bathing, showering, soaking the pain from his body. The mark of the thing they'd clipped to his arm was red and angry, but it would soon go. The one behind his ear was another matter: purple, exotic, and with a lot of life left. He'd have to tell absurd lies about backing into a shelf, or something. Then he remembered the gunman he'd slammed against the wall with the door. The he wasn't so absurd.

  The waiter came and he tipped him, wrapped ice in a towel, and put it on the bruise, then ate his breakfast. He found it strange that he could be so hungry, when his life was finished. He was no danger at all, so far as they were concerned. So much so that they hadn't even bothered to kill him. To them, he wasn't even a joke. Doggedly he tried to remember the questions they had asked, but all he could remember was pain, and Laurie S. Fisher, and a fat little man looking at where he too had been hurt. He also remembered a tall man, but that was all. Craig finished his coffee and began to dress and pack. If he really was finished, Loomis would have to know. He booked a seat on a plane for the next night, the first flight he could get, and went back to bed. No rats, no dreams, no arms and legs in a Saint Andrew's cross. When he woke up he felt better, remembering the man he'd hit in the stomach, the way he'd saved Kaplan's life. He remembered, too, the information Kaplan had given him, word for word. There might after all be some point in staying on, in order to find out who had decided that Craig was finished. In tracking them down. After all, the night clerk at the hotel should be able to give him some sort of a lead.

  But the night clerk, when he came on duty, knew nothing, except that Craig had come back very late with two friends, and he'd had a little—difficulty in getting up to bed. In fact the two friends had helped. That would be around six in the morning. Must have been some party, Mr. Craig. Sure he remembered the ambulance, but that had been for another guest, two floors below Craig. The way the clerk had heard it, he'd called a doctor, and the doctor had diagnosed a perforated appendix and called a hospital. He didn't know what hospital. No. But the ambulance looked classy. Craig thanked him and gave him ten dollars in hard currency, taxpayers' money, then went back to his problem. The Yellow Pages told him just how full of hospitals and nursing homes New York is. Moreover, there was Loomis to be considered. He'd got Kaplan's information, and Loomis would want to know about that, as well as the fact that he, Craig, was a failure. Craig ate dinner in the hotel and slept for twelve hours.

  Next morning he felt better than ever, and had found a way to solve his problem. He would call on Thaddeus Cooke, and have another fight. If he won, he would stay on. If he lost, he would report back to Loomis.

  Cooke beat him three times in seven minutes, and looked almost as horrified as Craig.

  "Mr. Craig," he said, "you must have got problems since I saw you last. Why, man, I tell you, they've even got down into your feet. You got to solve them, Mr. Craig, or you ain't goin' to be no good at this game any more. I tell you honest, the way you're doing now, you couldn't even lick Blossom. At least"—he thought it over, and made one concession—"not if Blossom was set for you. You go on home—get those problems licked. Or take up golf."

  Craig went. Not home, not immediately. There was plenty of time for the plane. But he had to see the Kaplans again. There was a good man looking after them, and there'd be others backing up and all that, but the Kaplans didn't know. It was true that Marcus Kaplan had seen a man killed in the Boldinis' apartment, but they didn't, either of them, know Fisher was dead, o
r what had been done to him before he died. It was up to Craig to tell them that these things happened; that people got hurt, or were even destroyed, and yet were allowed to go on living.

  The doorman was off duty when Craig arrived, but the apartment building seemed quiet enough, not at all the kind of place where a man had been killed. No cops, no spectators, no crowds of sightseers. Perhaps that was just the heat. (If Lady Godiva rode down Fifth Avenue in July nobody would watch, said Loomis. The sight of that poor horse sweating would kill them.) He went up to the Kaplans' floor. The Boldinis' door was unguarded, but Craig moved on more quickly and rang the Kaplans' bell. Nothing happened, so he kept on ringing, over and over. Hetherton wasn't going to keep him out.

  But it wasn't Hetherton who stood there. It was a girl. A small girl, long-legged, brown-eyed, swathed in the most enormous sable coat Craig had ever seen. Just to look at her made Craig melt in sweat, but she looked happy enough about it and hugged the coat to her body with her arms. What she was not happy about was Craig, whom she apparently cast as an intruder, maybe even a prowler.

  "I called to see Mr. Kaplan," said Craig. "My name's Craig."

  "I'm sorry," the girl said, "he's not at home right now."

  She made to close the door, and Craig did not try to stop her, but said quickly: "When will he be back?" The girl hesitated.

  "Three weeks—maybe a month," she said. "He and Aunt Ida are on a vacation trip." So that was all right. The CIA could move when they had to. They'd taken the Kaplans away.

  "Thanks," said Craig, and turned to leave. He'd taken three steps down the corridor when the girl called out: "Just a minute." He went back to her.

  "You've hurt yourself," the girl said. "Behind your ear."

  "Miss-?"

  "Loman," said the girl.

  "Miss Loman—I know it."

  "Sort of a crazy place to hurt yourself."

  "It happens," said Craig. "I stumbled and banged my head on a shelf."

  The brown eyes looked puzzled and faintly amused, nothing more.

  "You'd better come in for a minute," she said. "You look awful."

  She led the way to the Kaplans' living room and sat, still wearing the coat. The air conditioning wasn't on; Craig looked at her again, and began sweating seriously.

  "You know why I asked you in?" she asked. "I figured you couldn't be a prowler. You have a British accent. So it's okay. Can I get you something?"

  "No thanks," said Craig. "But I'd like to ask a question. Two questions."

  "Go ahead," the girl said.

  "Is Mrs. Kaplan your aunt?"

  "No," said the girl. "Just an old friend of the family— so I call her Aunt Ida. What's the other one?"

  "Why are you wearing a fur coat?"

  Miss Loman blushed a fierce, unpleasing pink. As Craig watched, she got up, looked in the mirror and brushed at her face with one hand, still clutching her coat with the other.

  "Oh, shoot," she said. "I hate doing that. You see, Mr. Craig—the Kaplans went away just this morning, and they asked me to close the apartment up for them. And Aunt Ida has the most fantastic furs, so when I found a new one-"

  "You just had to try it on," said Craig. "But aren't you hot?"

  "I'm dying," Miss Loman said. "If you'll excuse me, I'll hang it up."

  She rose, still clutching the coat, tripped over a footstool, and flung up her hands to steady herself, and the coat swung open. Beneath it she was quite naked, and very pretty. She whirled round from Craig, and he remembered another girl in swirling fur, a very bright girl, and pretty too. As pretty as this one. When Miss Loman had finished swirling she held the coat in place, one-handed. The other one held the telephone. Craig hadn't moved from his chair.

  "You're absolutely right," he said. "Much too hot to try on fur coats. How fortunate I'm not a prowler."

  Miss Loman laughed and put the telephone back on its cradle.

  "You British," she said. "How do you get to be so diplomatic?"

  "Practice, I suppose," said Craig, and got to his feet unhurriedly. "When you write to the Kaplans, tell them I said they should take care of themselves."

  "I will," she said, and followed him to the door. When he reached it, she called out:

  "What's your first name?"

  "John," he said.

  "Mine's Miriam. Tell me, John—did you think I was pretty?"

  "Delightful," said Craig. "Absolutely delightful."

  When he left she was blushing again.

  He went back to London on an Air India Boeing 707. Curry, and hostesses in saris, and breakfast served an hour before landing, and when the plane touched down it was lunchtime. He hadn't slept at aU and felt bone-weary. Passport control and customs were separate purgatories. His world was finished, and waiting for him now was Loomis, with a thousand questions, and after them one fact: Loomis could hardly just let him go. It was conceivable that Loomis would have him killed. But even so, he had to call him. Loomis would know he was back anyway. He took a taxi from the airport to a pub he knew. It was not a very nice pub, but it had one valuable asset: from it you could see Queen Anne's Gate. He bought a drink, and went to a phone booth. First he got Loomis's secretary, then the fat man came on.

  "That was quick. Get what you wanted?"

  "Most of it," said Craig. It was true enough.

  "What's that supposed to mean?" Loomis said.

  "I saw the Kaplans. And a young friend of theirs. A girl called Miriam Loman. Not Fisher. He was dead when I reached him."

  "Ah," said Loomis. "You better come and see me. Tomorrow morning." "Can't it be today?"

  "No. I got a lot on today. Tomorrow morning. Ten sharp."

  Loomis hung up. At six o'clock Joanna Benson left Department K. Ten minutes later, Royce left too.

  He went back to his flat, taking his time, but nobody was watching it. Craig, it seemed, was past all that. You just pointed him in whatever direction was necessary, wound him up, and off he went. When the job was over he just sat around waiting till the next time—or until he was thrown away. Craig discovered that he was very angry, and the anger surprised him. There was no fear in it; only rage. If Benson and Royce were so bloody marvelous, let them get on with it. He wasn't going to sit around while Loomis made up his mind whether he should live or not. And yet what else could he do? If he bolted, Loomis would be after him in earnest. For Loomis there was no such thing as an ex-agent, only a defector waiting for a new master. The new master might be offering money, or merely a cessation of pain, but sooner or later he would appear, Craig knew, if Loomis didn't act first. But Loomis always had acted first, in the five times it had happened, and Craig knew it well. He had executed one of them himself. The anger yielded to despair.

  The only logical way out was suicide, A lot of whisky and a massive dose of chloral hydrate, painfully hoarded over weeks of sleeplessness. That would be easy, painless, almost desirable. His life was finished anyway: his ability as an agent gone, his zest in women gone, the booze he despised his only pleasure. It was right that it should help to kill him. Even if Loomis let him live it would kill him anyway. He looked at the whisky decanter, then went into the kitchen and found a fresh bottle. The chloral hydrate tablets were in the bathroom. They could wait. . .

  When the phone rang the bottle was a quarter empty and Craig was in the bathroom, counting the tablets. Twenty-three, that was more than enough. He poured the tablets back into their bottle and noticed that his hand was still steady. The discovery didn't please him; he wanted to be really drunk before he swallowed the damn things, so drunk that he couldn't change his mind even if he wanted to. He put the tablets in his pocket and went back to the drawing room and the view of the park Benson had liked so much. The phone shrilled at him still. He picked up first his glass, then the phone.

  "Craig," he said, and swallowed.

  "Where you been?" said Loomis.

  "The loo," said Craig. "I'm allowed to. You gave me the night off."

  The words came out with the
right insolence, but he was terrified. t

  "You drinking?" Loomis asked. "I've had a couple."

  "Don't have any more. Come here instead. I want to talk to you." "But you said-"

  "I changed my mind," Loomis snarled. "I'm allowed to. I'm the boss."

  He hung up then, and Craig finished his drink reflex-ively, without thought, then realized what he had done and put the glass down, very deliberately, still looking at the park. Benson had really liked that view, he thought. But then she was young and healthy and quite sure she wasn't going to die; that kind could afford to like things. He went back to the bathroom, and noticed on the Way what a big mistake the last drink had been. He was staggering. He ran the water cold, stuck his head under it, and thought. The tablets were out now. If he took them, Loomis might send a man round—they'd find him and have him pumped out before they had a chance to work, and Craig had no intention of being as vulnerable as that to Loomis, if Loomis were going to let him live. He had to get away, have time to think—but in London Loomis was the master. There was nowhere to hide from him. And out of London? The seaports were watched, and the airports too. Always. And the men who watched them knew Craig. They'd know at once which ship, which plane—and at the other end Loomis's men would be waiting. Men who'd spot him at once, though he'd never seen them before.

  "Sods," Craig said aloud. "Bloody sods." And the words came out in the hard, flat accent of his childhood. And as he said them, he remembered. There was a way.

  Getting there involved two tubes, a taxi, and three buses, and time was important. But even more important was to know you weren't followed, and by the time he reached the boatyard he was sure. It was in Wapping, behind a dirty back wall and a sagging door that waited in crumbling patience for the demolition squad. But inside it was neat, tidy, craftsmanlike, filled with every kind of pleasure craft from dinghys to trimarans, and every one built with patient skill. Arthur Candlish did well out of sailing boats, and paid his taxes on them. His other incomes were all tax-free. He listened in silence, a slow, big-boned man of fifty, as Craig talked. Candlish's slowness was not stupidity, but it helped when others thought it was. Craig told him his life was in danger, and he had to get away.