Alan E. Nourse & J. A. Meyer (25 page)

Bahr
stepped into the room, swung the door quietly shut behind him.
"Chard?
A job.
I need help.
Are you with me?"

A hand tapped his shoulder in a gesture of
reassurance. "In a minute,
soon's
I get dressed.
Say, honey, this is . . ."

"Better keep her out of it," Bahr
said.

"Oh."

The
man dressed quickly in the darkness, and soon he and Bahr were in the Volta,
picking their way through the apparently endless tiers of housing
developments, then out on a road strip and into the dark, hostile, run-down
fringe area, still dotted with last-century buildings, that had once been
Elizabeth.

"You've
worked with Stash
Kocek
before," Bahr said.
"The nervous one?
Yeah. But he makes me . . . you know

"I
hope he's in," Bahr said. "I didn't call ahead." He stopped the
Volta, motioned Chard to stay inside, and walked across the street to the
rooming house that was
Kocek's
current residence. He
went up two flights of stairs quietly, down the hall, and paused in front of
the door with the ribbon of light showing under it.

Bahr
tapped a pattern on the door and the light went out instantly. In a minute the
door opened a crack.
"Bahr?"

"Yes.
A job."

The
dimmer went up a little, and a thin, weasel face looked out at him, the eyes
dark-circled slits. "Jesus, Bahr

"You on that stuff again?"

Kocek
shrugged. "
What'U
I need?"

"A stunner.
Two.
Chard's
working with us."

There
was a flash of hostility on
Kocek's
face, then resignation.
"No stunner."

"What
do you mean?" Bahr said, sudden anger rising. "If you sold that
stunner . . ."

"I'll
get it back,
Jule
, I just hocked it today,
I'll
get it back. I needed some credits fast . . ."

Bahr
pushed into the room. On the drab iron bed someone ducked quickly under the
covers.

"Get your credits from him," Bahr
said in a harsh tone.

"I
didn't know, Julie, I didn't know you'd want me tonight. I'll get it
back." The high-pitched voice was whining, cowed. Bahr looked at the lump
on the bed again.
Kocek
had been booted from the
801st for that trouble; he had always been such a mixture of fear, viciousness,
guilt and hatred that Bahr could never have gotten him a rating to work as a
janitor in DIA.
Kocek
was a mess, but Bahr had enough
dossier on his sundry illegal addictions to get him
recooped
any hour of the day or night.
Kocek
lived in mortal
terror of

Bahr,
so Bahr could trust him. At least, he could trust him while he watched him.
"What have you got?
Burps?"

"No, a couple of
Wessons
.
With silencers.
And some concussion grenades.
You think we'll need them? I
only got a couple."

"Bring them," Bahr said. "And
step on it. I've got a Volta outside."

"Let's
go, let's go."
Kocek
grabbed a
trenchcoat
off the chair, zipped his tailored coveralls
with the flashy, overdone
jumptrooper
look. He picked
up his briefcase arsenal, and dimmed the light, ignoring the lump on the bed.

Outside
in the hall
Kocek
paused, in the habit of long
military discipline, to let Bahr go
ahsiad
,
then
remembered Bahr's aversion to letting people walk
behind him, and resignedly started down the stairs.

"Two
Wessons
and a stunner," Bahr growled disgustedly. "And God knows what they've
got!"

It
was two-forty, and Bahr rubbed the side of his face impatiently, looking out of
the phone booth at
Kocek
, who was sprawled
indifferently on one of the benches in the Red Bank Ground Terminal, and then
up at the clock.

Two-forty,
and there had been no sign of Carmine, nor of the double who was supposed to
have arrived at the terminal by monorail ten minutes before. Bahr wondered, in
sudden angry reflection, if his whole DIA organization had been infiltrated
and seduced into an anti-Bahr
putsch.
Unconsciously
his hand went to his stunner as he considered the prospects that even Chard
and
Kocek
might be part of the enemy. But the
motivation—that was the puzzle to him. He could not credit Carmine—small,
sad-faced, balding Carmine—with the drive, the personality, the political
ambition or the money to mount a secession against him.

It
didn't wash. Carmine was an order-taker, not an order-giver. Someone was behind
Carmine, someone with drive, money, and a ruthless desire to get him, Bahr, out
of the way.

He
saw Chard, across the lobby, throw down a cup of coffee at the vendor and hurry
across the nearly deserted station, his stocky body almost bouncing, heels
smacking down on the concrete floor.

"What's
wrong, Chief? I thought
Carm
was going to show."

"Something
got fouled. There should have been a mono in here ten minutes ago. Check with
the station officer and find out what went wrong."

Chard
hurried off. He returned a moment later, almost running. "Crackup,"
he panted. "The mono jumped off the L-ramp just north of the station, went
through a guard rail. Eighty foot fall. They haven't even put out the fire
yet."

So
that was the way it was, Bahr thought. And if he knew Carmine, he would be
right there in the throng of onlookers, waiting to make sure that Bahr had
really been on that train. "All right, fine," Bahr said. "It'll
take Carmine a while to get back to the DIA HQ here to smooth out an
alibi." He looked at Chard and
Kocek
.
"Carmine's got a surprise coming, I think."

Back
in the Volta, Bahr sat knotted in anger, boiling slowly while Chard drove.
"We may find they have a prisoner there," he said. "Keep him
alive. The rest are yours, except Carmine. He's mine."

Chard
nodded and swung the wheel harshly.
Kocek
was
half-smiling, his eyes shut, humming to himself, his mind obviously still back
in the rooming house. Finally Bahr turned and smashed him across the mouth with
the back of his hand. "Stop thinking about that stuff," he said as
Kocek
blinked, uncomprehending. "If you can't get your
mind on killing people, I'm better off without you."

Kocek's
face turned white with fear and rejection and hate, his thin lips trembling.
Behind the mask of anger Bahr felt a surge of bitter satisfaction.

Loyalty
was unpredictable, but fear and hate he knew how to handle.

Three
A.M., and from the cruising Volta, Bahr saw there were lights on the second
floor of the three-story building that housed the local DIA HQ. The first floor
was a launderette, a notoriously good group-gossip center, and also useful
for stoolies as a cover destination. The building was on a corner, but there
was an apartment building next to it one floor higher. The small dweller-town
was silent, partly obscured in the low wet mist the East wind brought in,
building eaves dripping, streets glistening under the dim streetlamps.

Chard
drove around behind the apartment so they could get in the service entrance.
Bahr checked his watch. "Wait for my signal,
then
get the wires," he said to Chard. He waited with
Kocek
until the Volta moved off into darkness. Then they started up the stairs for the
apartment roof.

Two
minutes later they had slid down the fire-escape poles onto the roof of the DIA
building, and with
Kocek's
skeleton key let
themselves into the roof kiosk.

It was dark and silent on the third floor.
Light came from the stairs at the end of the corridor;
downstaus
there were voices, talking in the clipped monotone of bored, sleepy underlings.
Bahr could pick out three voices. There was a certain amount of cover-noise: a
humming and clack-clack-clack that Bahr identified as one of the card machines
running a job. The noise of the
cardos
and the
sporadic rattle of the teletype seemed loud enough to have covered any noise
they might have made forcing the trap door.

But
then, suddenly, Bahr wasn't listening to the sounds below. It was a long
corridor, with doors opening off it on either side, and its familiarity slammed
into his mind with sledge-hammer force. He had never been in Red Bank before,
yet this hallway, lined with its closed, silent doors was familiar, horribly
familiar. A chill went through him; suddenly he felt sweat trickle down his
back, and the sound of his breathing was harsh in his ears. He clenched his
right hand with the still-bruised knuckles . . .

There should be something at the end of the
hall . . .

With
a violent effort of will he shrugged, trying to throw off the overpowering
feeling of fear. There was nothing. There was the present,
onhj
the present.
Somewhere below was Frank Carmine. He had to
kill Carmine.

But
something was screaming out in his mind that it was he, not Carmine, who was
being killed!

"Check
the rooms on that side," he whispered to
Kocek
,
his throat so tight his voice came in a croak.
Kocek
nodded and faded into one of the curious angular patches of shadow. Bahr,
crouching, moved to a door and put his hand softly on the knob.

He
whirled, stunner out, but the hall was empty. There was nothing behind him.

He
slid the stunner knob down, almost to the inactive point. At that level it
would not hit very hard, but the usual ripping sound was effectively muffled.
He did not want to alert the men downstairs if he had to shoot.

The
door opened silently, no click, no alarm jangling, the room dark, shades drawn.
Bahr stood absolutely still for two minutes, listening to hear if there were
any breathing sounds, letting his eyes adjust to the deeper unexplored darkness
of the room.

The
room was empty. There was a couch, a table and a few chairs.
Obviously
a sleeping room for DIA personnel on alert.
He turned on the power on
his
infrascope
, scanned the room with a fluid spot of
light.

His
ears had been right. The room
was
bare.
At the next room he was less tense, but his hands were still slimy with sweat
when he touched the knob. He was angry with himself, and puzzled. He had never
thought a-bout being afraid before. Even in Antarctica there had never been a
flicker of fear, just anger and a sense of necessity. He could find no single,
sensible reason why he should be afraid now; and yet his knees felt like jelly
and he wanted, uncontrollably, to urinate, and cold, unreasoning sweat ran down
his back and broke out on his palms and forehead.

He opened the door a crack, stood listening,
and faintly, almost inaudible over the sudden pounding of his pulse, was the
sound of someone breathing.

He
pushed the door, slid into the room. The breathing was still there, regular, a
little shallow. His eyes were adjusted to darkness now, and he made out a body
lying face up on the day couch. He moved across the room for a closer look,
relief flooding him as he realized that the body was alive, real,
human
.
Vulnerable.

The
eyes were open. Light glinted off them, made little bright spots in the face,
the dark featureless face that stared mummy-like at the ceiling. He listened
carefully. The respiration was faster, shallower. The body knew he was in the
room . . .
knew
. .
.
but the eyes did not move.

Please, tiger. Devour me,
gulp me down quickly.

Fear.
The
body was afraid to move. The immobility was a plea.

Please, tiger. Don't cat-mouse me.
One blow.
One smashing blow.
Kill
me. Please, tiger.