A Separate War and Other Stories (29 page)

“Fine. I'll be here in my office.”

After a few minutes, Fred came back on the screen, worried and perplexed. “Sir, it's…it's
weird
. We tried to get his mother and patched into a funeral home. She died yesterday. My man's calling—wait—”

Fred looked to his left, evidently at another screen. “God. But they had orders…”

“Has it left…
arrived
! Check the roster for the connecting flight—right.”

He produced a handkerchief and passed it over his face. “Sir, if you ever get another flash…
listen
to it!

“His mother died and the
Institut
decided that he was stable enough to attend the funeral, take care of the arrangements. They sent him to the U.S., accompanied by an aide.

“The plane—God!—the plane landed twenty minutes ago, in New York…my man's checking their connecting flight; it's pretty close—”

He looked away again. “Shit!” Braxn was amused in spite of himself. Fred was always so cool. “The flight to Sioux City has loaded. They aren't aboard. I'll keep checking.”

“Okay. I'll keep worrying. Punch me as soon as anything happens.”

Split again:

“Fred! What is it?” He looked pale. “Haven't found Doyle…but the police found his aide, Herr Kramer, his…his throat cut with a razor blade, in a stall in the—”

“Sir, the shuttles out of Kennedy are fully automated, have been for two months. Not even a stewardess, just an automated drink tray. All we can do is watch at Dulles.”

“Okay, set it up. Better watch Friendship, too.”

“Right.” Fred punched off, and Braxn tried to concentrate on the thick report in front of him.
Just let them take care of it, what can one man do…

…to optimize all the ecological parameters, this committee decided to situate the experimental station first in a northern temperate rural region, then in a northern temperate urban region, then in…

“Mr. President?”

Braxn opened the line to his secretary. “Yes?”

“Your appointment with the secretary of the interior is in ten minutes. Do you want—”

“No, God, I haven't even finished reading the report. Look, Joyce, something has come up in Chicago, something important. I'm staying in touch with Mr. Aller, trying to keep on top of it. Cancel all of today's appointments, tell 'em I'm not in.” He stood up. “In fact, I won't
be
in. I'll be in my office downstairs.”

“All right, sir.”

Linda wasn't home; she was spending a few days in Wisconsin, visiting grandchildren. That simplified matters. Braxn told the guard at the door that he wasn't in, to anybody.

He poured a glass of wine and sat down at his desk, with the thick report unopened in front of him. He stared at the phone for a few seconds, then punched Fred.

“No word yet, sir.”

“Nothing?”

“No, sir…The New York State Police are doing a dragnet through Kennedy; all the airlines have his description. If he hasn't left Kennedy, we'll find him soon.”

“We? Or the police?”

“Sir?”

“If
they
catch him, they'll hold him for homicide. He's sure to shoot off his mouth. Headlines for a week.”

“God.” Fred slapped himself twice. “I'm not
thinking.
”

“That's all right, Fred. It was my idea to feed his description to them—what do you think the chances are, that he's still there?”

“Well, it gets more likely with every shuttle that lands without him. Another hour at the most, and we'll be able to say he definitely didn't—”

“Didn't take the shuttle to Washington or Baltimore. Could he have slipped on another automated flight, before his description went out?”

“Oh…it's possible, sure. The other shuttles are, let's see, Newark, Boston, Hartford, Philadelphia…might be one to Richmond, but I doubt—”

“Any way to check them?”

“Newark and Boston, at least, probably have a camera like the one at Kennedy, takes pictures of all the people debarking from the shuttle, because of smuggling. I'll check all of them.”

“Well, that's a start. Go ahead.”

Harry Doyle got off the shuttle in Boston and took a limousine to Cambridge. Knowing he couldn't buy a gun with Kramer's identification, he waited in a bar until he saw a man about his own age, height, and build. He followed the man home to his apartment, rang the bell and when the man came to the door he slashed out with the razor blade—a technique he had practiced mentally a thousand times in Switzerland—pushed the silently dying man inside, was grateful that he was alone, took the man's wallet and memorized his new date of birth and social security number, locked the door behind him, and went on down the street.

He called five sporting goods stores before he found one that had the Weatherby .658 Magnum, an elephant gun that was really overkill, even for elephants. He said he would be there in half an hour, and he was.

It took over half of Kramer's American money to buy the Weatherby and the scope and a box of shells, and shooter's mitts and a case. When it was all wrapped in brown paper and tied up in a bundle, it didn't look like a gun at all. He left it in a locker in the bus station and went to the public library and looked in Section B of the Sunday
Washington Post
and found the president's itinerary for the week. He would be present at the dedication of the new Peace Corps school in Columbia, just outside of Washington. So would Harry.

 

…our conclusions were that this type of EE station has an optimum balancing effect in areas on the periphery of an urban heat sink, but closer to the urban mass or more…

The phone chimed, and Braxn punched up visual.

“Well, sir, we got results from Newark and Hartford. The camera at Boston had been taken down for repairs. Nobody who looks like Doyle—”

“Is there any way to check Boston?”

“Ah…not after four hours, sir. Big town with efficient rapid transit in and out. If he slipped through the Boston shuttle while the camera was down—it's fixed now—then he could be anywhere on the East Coast.”

“That might make it easier…in a way, not to find him, but…I guess we can assume he's ‘crossed state lines pursuant to the commission of a—'”

“The CBI?”

“Yes. Might as well, we have more control over them than the—contact the CBI, tell them all you have that's, uh, safe…tell them that he's a murderer and is suspected of high treason, is armed and dangerous.”

“And to not risk trying to take him alive.”

Braxn chewed a nail, thoughtfully. “I think that would be best. Tell the director he can call me for verification. Patch him through your scrambler, though.”

“Sir, um, maybe you ought not to make any public appearances until we nail him. He is desperate and—”

“Yes, I had planned to curtail my…peregrinations—I'll keep the appointments, I think, that are in the Washington area…trust the Secret Service and the CBI. I've got two speeches in town this week, and that one out in Columbia. The rest I'll postpone or arrange for a substitute. (To look more like a traveler, Harry bought an old suitcase in a pawnshop and filled it with newspapers and a supply of sandwich material. Then he went to a trucking firm and traded a twenty-dollar bill for a lift to Baltimore on a big ground effect rig.)

“Joyce, who wrote this Peace Corps speech?”

Her image went off the screen for a second. “Philip O'Hara, that new boy from Yale.”

“Tell him I need a rewrite—the language is fine, continue in that vein, but I want more about ‘the administration's changing priorities'—and I want it worded so that young people will think the Peace Corps will be an alternative to the draft, but older people will see it as just a two-year deferment.”

“Uh, sir—do you know which it'll be?”

“Probably something in between. Certainly, someone who takes two consecutive tours will be too old for the draft when he gets out.”

“But you don't want that said explicitly.”

“God, no!” A chime rang. “Have to punch off, Joyce.” Braxn turned to the other phone. “What is it, Fred?”

“Just a progress report. Little enough progress—but we do have the CBI'S full cooperation: the director assigned a force of 122 men to the job.”

“Good.” Harriman had always been leery of the amount of power the CBI had accumulated—it had too much in the beginning, when they'd merged the old CIA and FBI—but now Braxn was glad to have it on his side. Most C-men came close to the public image of the remorseless, thorough, incorruptible automaton. There wasn't a man on earth who could elude 122 of them for any length of time.

(Harry got off at a trucker's stop just north of the outer Beltway, and hitched a ride to Towson. Five minutes after he left, two expressionless men in charcoal coveralls came into the truck stop with a description of him. Luckily, the waitress on duty didn't like cops.)

The week before, Braxn had approved a measure closing some loopholes in the Capital Gains Law. This week, he lived through a businessman fidgeting, worrying, waiting for his secretary to go to lunch, whereupon he opened a window, stepped out and jumped 1,236 feet into a busy Dallas intersection. An experienced skydiver, he aimed for a red convertible, and just missed.

(Harry rented a car in Towson and drove out in the country. At an old stone quarry, he paced off a hundred meters and fired twelve rounds, getting the scope zeroed in. The gun was awesomely loud. He was gone fifteen minutes before the Towson police came to investigate. They figured it was just some kids raising hell.)

“It was just an unfortunate coincidence,” Fred was saying. “The man was a dead ringer for Harry Doyle, and when the agent stopped him and identified himself, the fool tried to run.”

“And he burned him down on a busy corner in Philadelphia,” Braxn said.

“That's right, sir. We're lucky he was a good shot. An amateur with one of those pocket lasers would have killed a dozen innocent bystanders.”

“Instead of just one.”

(Harry drove to Columbia and located the new Peace Corps school. He noted the position of the bleachers and drove on by without stopping.

Tommy Tommy Tommy Tommy you wasn't doin' nothin' just walkin' down the street an' they shot you for doin' nothin'

“He look just like he sleepin'.”

 

(He parked the car in the lot behind an all-night drugstore and waited in the car until it got dark. Then he stepped inside briefly to puchase a small flashlight and a bottle of fingernail enamel. Outside, he painted the button lens of the flashlight with enamel, so it gave off a very faint red glow.

(Harry sneaked across a golf course to a water tower: naturally, the highest point around. He found a breach in the chain-link fence and wiggled through with rifle and lunch bag.

(Using his light sparingly, Harry found the steps that spiraled up the side of the tower and tiptoed up. At the top, there was a catwalk that went all the way around the tank. From one point, he could look down and see the pattern of light and shadow that was the new school and bleachers, not half a mile away.

(On the far side of the catwalk there was a small toolshed, unlocked. Harry went in, closed the door behind him, and lay down. So he'd carried the hacksaw blade all the way up there for nothing. Who would've guessed he could be so lucky?)