Last Gasp (32 page)

“So you see, we had no choice. We had to leave.” Boris reached across the table for his wife’s hand. “It’s, I am convinced, for the best.” Nina smiled hesitantly at Chase. Her English was poor and she had understood little of the conversation. She was delighted that Boris had so quickly encountered a friendly face, almost at the moment of arrival in America. The last forty-eight hours had been bewildering.

“Have you a place to go to?” Chase asked.

“Yes, I have friends at the Scripps Institution—but of course you know one of them—Theo’s daughter. I tried to tell her in a letter, but I had to be careful. Still the authorities were suspicious. If we hadn’t left when we did I think something would have happened. I knew too much about Project Arrow.” Even though he spoke softly, his words lost in the buzz of voices in the bar, Boris couldn’t help glancing nervously around. “Someone must be informed and I hope Cheryl can advise me. They must be told now, before it’s too late.”

“Is it going to happen soon?”

“A year, perhaps two. It cannot be far off.”

Chase felt a flutter of excitement. Was this the nugget he’d been seeking? But how would Boris feel about him publishing it? He said, “I still don’t see the logic in implementing the project before they have to. Isn’t the point of it to have it there, ready, as a deterrent against the United States? Surely if they go ahead it invalidates the reason for having it in the first place?”

“Who knows how they think?” Boris said gravely. “Can you—can any sane person understand how such minds function? Risking a global calamity in order to keep the balance of power—it’s futile to expect logic. At my age I thought I’d seen every kind of wickedness and stupidity, that nothing could shock me ever again, but this ...” He shook his head wearily. “It’s beyond reason, beyond humanity, beyond anything.”

Chase sipped his beer and said with a wry smile, “I wish you luck, Boris, but don’t expect to be welcomed with open arms. Cheryl has been fighting the same battle ever since Theo died.”

“I know that his warning went unheeded,” Boris said. “But they will have to listen to me. They must.”

There was nothing to be lost and a great deal to be gained. As Chase told him about his assignment and how he would like to use the information about Project Arrow in his series of articles, the Russian’s eyes took on a new light. But yes, yes, of course he was agreeable! For obvious reasons he had committed nothing to paper, but as soon as he was settled here he would set down everything he knew and send it to Chase in London. The more people who knew about it, the better.

Chase tore a page from his notebook and wrote down his address.

“Send it to me here. Naturally I won’t reveal the source, not even to my editor.”

“Thank you,” Boris said, pumping his hand warmly.

“It’s me who should thank you, Boris. You’re doing me the favor.” Chase looked at the time and said, “I have to go; my flight leaves shortly.” He turned and smiled at Nina. “Please tell your wife that I hope she is happy in her new life. You too, of course, Boris.” He held out his hand to her, but she didn’t take it. Her eyes had a glazed expression, fixed unblinkingly on the door to the transit lounge.

Boris asked her a question to which she replied in a rushed, barely audible voice, making him spin around in his chair. He turned back and grasped her by the wrist, his tone urgent, almost harsh. Nina nodded without taking her eyes off the entrance.

“What is it?”

Boris was crouched forward, his forearms flat on the table as if trying to make himself invisible. “We are being watched. A man has been observing us for the past few minutes. Nina is afraid he is KGB or someone from the Russian embassy.”

“Is she positive?”

“She thinks he has been taking pictures. He has a camera.”

When Chase looked toward the entrance he saw no one lurking there. He glanced quickly from husband to wife and back again. “Could they have found out you’re here? What about the people who helped you get away?”

“No, no,” Boris said. “From Copenhagen we flew to London. We told no one we were coming to America. If someone talked the KGB would have been waiting in London.”

“Perhaps they were. They could have seen you take the flight to New York and alerted their people here.”

Boris reached for a red TWA shoulder bag. “We’re booked on a flight to Los Angeles, leaving in two hours. We must get on it without being observed.”

“They can easily check the passenger lists of all outgoing flights,” Chase said, playing devil’s advocate.

“We have false papers.”

“If they traced you from London they’ll already know the name you’re traveling under.”

Boris slumped in his chair, clutching the red shoulder bag. He said something in Russian under his breath, which could have been an oath or an expression of defeat. On Nina’s face, a haunted look of despair. She was beginning to believe they were safe, free at last from prying eyes, starting life anew. Yet here they were, still dodging shadows. Nothing had changed.

Was there really a man watching them, Chase wondered, or had Nina been mistaken? Understandably she was on edge. It was conceivable that her mind was playing tricks, though her fear was real enough. He tried desperately to think of something. His own flight left in fifteen minutes and he had yet to pass through Customs and Passport Control. “Is your flight nonstop to Los Angeles?”

“Nonstop?” Boris frowned.

“Is it direct to Los Angeles or does it put down somewhere en route?” Boris took the tickets from his wallet. “We land at Chicago for thirty-five minutes,” he said, still mystified.

“All right. Now listen. Take the flight as if you didn’t suspect anything and leave the aircraft in Chicago. From there you can hire a car or take the train to Los Angeles. You have some money?”

“Yes, enough. Gavin, I don’t understand—what good will it do to leave the flight in Chicago?”

“There’s a chance it’ll throw them off your track.” A slender chance, Chase thought, but he couldn’t think of anything else. “When you don’t get off the plane at Los Angeles they might be fooled into believing you were heading for Chicago all along, and that you booked tickets to Los Angeles in order to confuse them. It could work, Boris. In any case it’s the only thing you can do.”

The Russian nodded slowly, considering. “The only thing ... yes, I think you are right.”

Chase stood up, briefcase in hand. More than anything he wanted to help, but what more could he do? Missing his own flight would accomplish nothing. He’d never known what it was to be harried and spied upon, to have somebody watching your every move. Thank God for that.

At the entrance to the bar he turned and gave a final wave. They looked utterly despondent. Boris was hugging the red shoulder bag as a frightened person holds on to a familiar object for comfort and protection. Beside him, Nina seemed small and sad and lost.

Chase hurried on, dodging through the idling crowd on his way to the escalator. From the illuminated display he saw that Flight D-049 was now boarding at gate 14. He had yet to pass through into the international departures lounge, though the formalities shouldn’t take more than a few minutes.

On the upward escalator he was suddenly conscious of the people close to him. What would a KGB agent look like? Obviously not the popular conception, if he was any good. More like an ordinary businessman, perhaps, or a tourist. He also became aware of men with cameras slung around their neck, and there were quite a few. See how easy it was to become paranoid?

As the escalator carried him over the final curve and leveled out, there were two things preying on his mind. One was acute anxiety about the fate of Boris and Nina; the other was the excruciating realization that his bladder was bursting.

Ten yards behind and fifteen feet below, almost halfway up the escalator, Sturges kept his head lowered, just in case Chase should think of glancing back. He didn’t, just stepped straight off.

Sturges tightened his mouth. He wasn’t used to failure. It made him angry, which was bad. Loss of emotional detachment. He knew that the next time would also be the last time. There was no possibility of following Chase beyond the international departures barrier because a ticket, which he didn’t have, would have to be shown. There was also the small matter of his box of tricks, which would upset the security officials.

So the next time
had
to be the last time.

Keeping his place in line, Sturges waited with icy control for the escalator to take him over the last curve, giving him a view along the length of the terrazzo concourse to the large green lettering
—INTERNATIONAL DEPARTURES—
sixty or so yards away. A line of people straggled between him and the barrier and Sturges had to stare hard to convince himself that Chase wasn’t among them.

He stood to one side of the people spilling off the escalator, feet planted apart, eyes slitted under the soft black brim of his hat. His victim had vanished, which logic said was impossible. Chase couldn’t have made it to the barrier in the few seconds he’d been out of sight, even at a sprint.

A moment later he had the answer as his restless gaze alighted on the nearby men’s room. Swiftly he moved to a window ledge, laid the case flat, raised the hasps, and lifted the lid. From the pouch he took the left glove and slipped it on, then carefully fitted his hand into the right one, his fingers closing around the hypodermic. The camera he had already reloaded, which gave him a choice of two methods: hypo or dart, it was all the same to him.

The attaché case in his left hand, his other hand splayed and stiff-fingered hanging free and ready by his side, Sturges crossed the terrazzo floor and pushed with his broad shoulder through the toilet door.

Chase washed his hands at the row of washbasins, shook the moisture off, and shuffled his briefcase to the hot-air dryer in the corner. He hardly felt at ease with it out of his grasp, never mind his sight. None of the other four or five men looked like a criminal, but you could never be sure. Airports bred distrust as moldy cheese did maggots.

As he held his hands beneath the jets of air and dried them, he looked absently into the mirror in front of him, which in this room of mirrors gave him a kaleidoscope of assorted views from different angles. In one of them a young man with lank black hair to his shoulders and an Asiatic cast to his features, wearing a creased and wrinkled leather jacket, was sidling up, hand outstretched, behind somebody drying his hands at one of the machines. Fascinated, Chase watched this performance. It was only when the young man straightened up, hefting a briefcase that was the spitting image of his own, that the light clicked on in his brain. Stupidly he looked down between his feet to confirm the fact that he’d been robbed.

Chase spun around. “Stop him, he’s got my briefcase!”

Heads turned, eyes glazed with surprise and alarm. But nobody moved.

By then the young Asian had reached the door, his hand clawing for the handle when the door was shouldered open by a big man in a black vinyl hat and a gray suit edged with a thin pink stripe. The two collided with considerable force. Instinctively the big man raised his gloved hand to take the brunt of the collision but was still thrown back by the impact, the door crashing against the wall, and a sharp metallic crack, as the handle smashed into the tiles, reverberated around the mirrored, tiled room.

Instantly the young Asian recovered and barged past and was gone, leaving Sturges with his back to the open door, momentarily stunned.

As Chase followed, his face contorted with an almost manic desperation, Sturges saw his chance.
This is it,
my friend. And as Chase tried to push through he brought up the glove with its stiffened fingers, his own fingers clutching the syringe inside, and jabbed it against the victim’s upper arm in a gesture that to an onlooker must have appeared as nothing more than a defensive reaction. Exerting the full pressure of his thumb on the plunger, Sturges wondered why it wasn’t moving— stuck, or what? Inexplicably the plunger had been rammed home already. He couldn’t believe it. Then he saw the tiny hole in the index finger of the glove where the needle should have been.

After the brief hindrance of the man at the door—he’d registered only a black-gloved hand and chunky gold jewelry on a hairy wrist— Chase raced for the escalator, scattering a knot of people who got in his way.

Damn! The bastard was already halfway down. Little wonder—for using the heavy briefcase like a scythe to clear a path he was laying waste to the downward escalator, leaving women screaming, people hanging on to the moving rubber hand support, and bodies sprawled on the serrated metal treads.

For Chase it was the old nightmare of being hampered and obstructed, unable to make headway, and with it came the sick despair of knowing he was in real and actual danger of losing his notebooks and tapes, two months of expensive, irreplaceable research, all gone because of a single stupid careless moment. Once the Asian reached the lower level he wouldn’t have a cat in hell’s chance of catching him.

An elderly man who’d received a nasty clout was swaying in the middle of the escalator, waving his hands feebly like someone struck blind. He grabbed hold of Chase’s jacket as he wormed past and Chase lost precious seconds in having to turn and disengage the amazingly strong grip before plunging recklessly on, leaping over bodies.

Even now the Asian was only strides away from the bottom of the escalator and almost certain escape in the milling crowd.

In those last few strides, however, something odd happened.

The Asian seemed to falter and his legs went rubbery as if drunk. He stumbled on, feet climbing an invisible hill in slow motion, his free hand raking the air like a swimmer battling against a fierce current. Then his legs gave way altogether and he fell headfirst with a hollow
clunk
, carried forward by his own momentum and sliding facedown across the scuffed marble floor of the transit lounge.

Panting heavily, Chase went for his first priority, the briefcase, which had landed on its side several feet away. He then knelt down by the motionless young man and was about to turn him over when a harsh, commanding voice rang out. “Hold it there! Don’t move!”