Pattern for Panic (20 page)

Without her seeing me, I took the acid away, pulled over the other mixture of gasoline and water, picked it up in my hand. “I will, Monique.” I held the bowl over her face, rolled her onto her back. There was only faint illumination now, but she could see the bowl above her.

“Shell, take it away. My God, Shell, you couldn't do it—"

“Then tell me the truth."

She didn't speak. I tilted my hand and let the liquid spill. She started to scream even before it hit her face. She screamed in horror, rolling, trying to get away as I held her with my other hand. The liquid hit her cheek, splashed against her eyes. And all the time she screamed.

“My eyes, my God, my eyes!
Stop it! Shell!"

“Will you tell me?"

“Yes. Just stop it, Shell!"

I put the hubcap aside, wiped her face with my handkerchief, pressed it across her eyes.

She was sobbing, crying. “Will it blind me, Shell? Oh, will it?"

“No,” I said. “It's all right now.” I felt as if I'd done something evil and unclean, and perhaps I had. It was her voice, the sob in her voice when she asked me if she'd be blind that got me most of all. To me, Monique was still the girl I'd held last night, and whispered to, and kissed. I hadn't had time yet to adjust to the other, stranger part of her, the evil in Monique.

She started talking. I didn't have to threaten her again. I just listened while she talked, and finally I had it all.

And when I did know all of it, I stopped feeling quite so sorry for Monique.

Chapter Fifteen

I understood most of the mess after Monique finished. When Doctor Buffington had accidentally stumbled on what I now thought of as his nerve gas, at first there hadn't seemed any need for secrecy. Consequently, most of the others at the Southwest Medical Institute understood vaguely what was going on; most of them considered the episode merely another failure on the difficult, experimental road to success. But at the Institute, as at virtually every other place where important or secret work is conducted, a handful of Communists also were employed, and the Communist mind is different from the free mind. The Communists there, one of them at least, saw the doctor's failure as, possibly, a success—in that it had killed. Killed horribly.

That one, a Doctor Philip Cranston, was a concealed Communist of long standing, and leader of the five-member Communist group at the Institute. He kept an eye on Buffington's experiments, coming to see in them, as they progressed, a potential military weapon of the utmost efficiency—and the visits by the Army men who had talked with Buffington increased Cranston's interest. If the doctor's discovery should turn out to be suitable as a weapon, that weapon, naturally, should be shared with the peace-loving Soviet Union. He passed the word along to his superior and was instructed to steal or photograph any and all of the doctor's pertinent notes and records. But then, before Cranston could get started, Buffington destroyed all of the notes and abandoned that particular line of research.

The plan to kidnap Doctor Buffington had started then, two months ago, because though the notes were destroyed the facts were still in the Doctor's mind. To the men in the Kremlin, from whom the order came, the solution was simple: snatch Buffington and force him to continue the work he had abandoned. Monique, who had been well trained at open and legal Communist schools in New York, and at other secret CP schools in the States, was assigned to get next to the Doc and Buff, worm her way into their confidence. She'd been able to accomplish that goal with ease, and had learned how thoroughly the Doctor was devoted to his peace-at-any-price doctrines, and that he was scheduled to make his ILP address in Mexico City in September.

Mexico had seemed an ideal place for the abduction to come off; everything could be well planned by then. The Doctor would be in a land strange to him, without his friends around him, and it would be nearly impossible to determine who had kidnapped him—or even that he actually had been abducted. Perhaps equally important was the fact that Culebra, a high-ranking Communist, was here at the Center, which would be a good spot to hide the Doctor. So the Commies started making their plans, which included fixing up a completely equipped laboratory at the Center, following Cranston's suggestions and the suggestions of others, and after the Doc's ILP address they grabbed him—and later grabbed Buff—and took them to the headquarters.

That was what I was interested in—the fact that both of them were now held prisoners at the Center, the gray building I'd seen momentarily, just before the driver and Monique had jumped me. It was about half a mile from here and Culebra was there. Culebra—Antonio Villamantes.

Monique had been at the Center for an hour during the afternoon and knew what was going on in there. Dr. Buffington was being forced to work in the laboratory by the threat of torture or death not only for himself but for his daughter. Buff was his Achilles' heel, and Monique had known it; she had told Villamantes he could most easily force the Doctor to work by torturing Buff. So the Doctor was working. I'd seen the evidence of his success: Amador.

A Commie working under Villamantes had sapped Amador, carefully crushed a tiny sealed vial of the Doc's liquid on the floor near the unconscious Amador's head, then got out, fast. In a way it was crude, but in another way it had been clever enough: Amador's murderer would be far away when Captain Emilio visited the body, got the medical report and passed it on to Monique. And it had worked; Amador was dead.

It had worked on me, too, though to a lesser degree. When, on my hands and knees I had stared at those glittering bits of glass on Amador's carpet, there still had been enough of the gas remaining near the floor so that I'd inhaled a trace of it. Not much—but enough so I knew a little of what Amador must have felt before he'd died.

At this point in the experiments, what Villamantes was mainly interested in was knowing that the stuff would kill not an ape, but a man, quickly, efficiently; and that the Doctor was cooperating. If it appeared the gas was really effective, a potential weapon that the Russians could mass produce, the Doctor would eventually disappear completely—somewhere in Russia, like so many others before him. I knew from Dr. Buffington himself that the gas would make a terrible weapon, a monster. And I knew too, that he was “cooperating."

I asked Monique, “Why pick on Amador? Why him?"

“It didn't have to be him. It might have been General Lopez or one of many others."

“Yeah. Including me, I imagine."

She didn't answer for a while. Then, “We knew Amador was responsible for getting you out of jail, and that led to much trouble for us. I had to phone him for you, otherwise you might have learned I hadn't, and become suspicious. But I didn't think there was the slightest chance he could help you. We knew that if you were released from jail, and learned Dr. Buffington was missing, you'd look for him, try to find him—and whoever might be involved in his disappearance. We couldn't allow that. Then, when you got out, we knew you must be working for General Lopez' wife, and of course we knew why. That was also very important to us. Obviously it was extremely important that you be—removed."

“Then you recognized Señora Lopez at the jail?"

“Of course."

She kept talking and cleared up one other thing that had puzzled me—after Amador helped spring me, one of Monique's chums had watched Amador's apartment, spotted me entering and leaving it shortly after the first attempt to kill me, and had tailed me to El Golpe, picking up three more bruisers for help.

She added, about Amador's death, “We couldn't be sure how much he knew of Señora Lopez' difficulties, and we couldn't take any chances. Anyway, the test was up to Villamantes."

“A test. Amador the guinea pig. Or whoever else was handy."

“We had to know if the Doctor was betraying us or not; it had to be tried on a man."

I could barely see the outline of her face now. “Monique, I guess I'm lucky you didn't get word to your pals last night. It would have been me instead of Amador then, wouldn't it?"

She hesitated. “I—couldn't tell them, Shell, not—not after that, last night."

“The hell. If you could have gotten to a phone without my tumbling, I'd be dead now. You weren't thinking of last night an hour ago.” I thought of something. “When were you supposed to deliver this stuff—the medical report—to Villamantes?"

“By seven o'clock, at the latest."

I squinted at my watch, lit a match to be sure. It was seven p.m. already. I started to mention the time, then stopped. I said, “It's almost six-thirty now. What happens if you don't get there by seven?"

“I'm—not sure. God knows what he'd do. He's almost crazy sometimes. He'd know something was wrong, he might think the Doctor had only pretended to cooperate, made something harmless—I don't know."

“What would he do to the Doctor? He wouldn't kill him."

“No, not till Villamantes is sure he has the formula. There is another man there, a chemist who duplicates the Doctor's experiments. But—Villamantes whipped Buff before, to make the Doctor cooperate. He might do anything to her. He doesn't like—opposition to his plans. He gets very angry when things go wrong."

“It's after seven,” I said.

She started to laugh suddenly. She stopped and said, “I was telling the truth about him. He'll be furious, crazy. I know him. He won't hurt the Doctor. Not at first.” She laughed again.

I stood up. I didn't know what the hell I could do alone. If I could get in touch with the General, get his help—but he was too far away. It would take me too long to reach him and get back here. And there was no place where I could phone. Perhaps near the last village we'd passed through, where there'd been a Pemex gas station. But even if I phoned it would take the General too long to reach here with any help he might scrape up. And I didn't even have time to go back to that village.

I talked to Monique for two or three more minutes and learned how the Center was set up, where the Doctor and Buff were. The Center had once been a church, but it had been abandoned for many years. Then Villamantes took it over, acting for the Party. The Doctor was inaccessible in the lab. Buff was in a room at the northwest corner of the building. An armed guard stayed in the yard outside her room; another patrolled the grounds, which were behind a ten-foot stone wall that enclosed the building. About twenty people, mostly men, were out there now.

I made up my mind. “Monique, I'll have to leave you here. If something happens to me, and I don't get back to you, you can thank your friends."

“You
can't
leave me here alone."

“I have to. I can't take you with me. I don't owe you anything now, Monique."

“My face. Will my face be all right?"

“Yeah. It was only some gasoline and water, nothing to worry about.” I paused. “It wasn't really acid, Monique; it was enough that you believed it was acid."

She was quiet for a minute, then she said, “Don't—don't leave me here with that."

“I'll get rid of it.” I hoisted the dead man to my shoulders, carried him fifty feet away and dumped him. At the Plymouth I rumbled in the trunk again, got the rest of the fine wire, bent one end of it and made a noose, then climbed behind the wheel. Monique called after me. I started the car and drove toward the Center.

She had told me how to get there and I turned off on a narrow, rutted dirt road angling to the right. As I drove, I tore up the reports Villamantes was to have received and tossed them out into the rain. Lightning still flickered occasionally.

After almost half a mile I turned off the lights and was forced to crawl along at less than twenty miles an hour. It was nearly seven-fifteen. Villamantes would have been worried when Monique hadn't arrived by seven; he'd be getting frantic now. I still felt weak, but the dizziness, the cold perspiration, were almost gone. Maybe the effects of that whiff of gas I'd gotten at Amador's apartment were wearing off. I hoped to hell they were. The car swerved in muddy ruts lighted once in a while by lightning. I knew I must be close now and slowed the car's speed even more.

I almost missed the curve in the road, blackness looming ahead of me as the earth slipped downward; how far or how precipitous a drop I didn't know. I jerked the wheel and swung to my right, skidding slightly—and then I saw it, saw the Center.

At first it was only a dark mass below me at the end of the narrow road, perhaps a hundred yards away. I stopped, the car engine idling, windshield wipers swishing back and forth. Then lightning trembled momentarily, like glowing nerves in the sky, and for that fraction of a moment I saw the building clearly before darkness fell upon it again.

I knew that evil lived here in this lonely spot, and perhaps that was much of the reason for the chill that touched my spine when I saw the Center clearly. But I think at any time I would have felt some dread seeing that walled building alone, far from any other life. It was crouched in the hollow of the earth beneath me, squat, ugly, a great gray pile of stone enclosed by the high square wall. It made me think of the House of Usher, haunting, brooding, gray and ghostlike in the cold, drizzling rain, like El Greco's
View of Toledo
or a tomb erected over a buried giant.

I drove forward another fifty yards, then carefully turned around in the road and left the car parked facing back the way I had come. I took out the car's back seat and carried it with me as I walked toward the building, feet squishing and slipping in the mud. The dead man's .45 and my own .38 were in my coat pockets. I carried the wire noose in one hand. I reached the wall towering four feet above my head. A great wooden gate, closed, was in the wall at the dirt road's end. I walked to my left another twenty yards and stopped. Buff's room should be inside here, across the grounds beyond the wall; the guards somewhere nearby.

I had seen, during brief lightning flashes, the glitter of reflections on the wall's top where sharp, jagged parts of broken bottles were imbedded in the cement. I put the guns in my hip pockets and took off my trenchcoat, folded it into a two-foot-square bundle, then leaned the car seat on its side against the wall and in a few more seconds I stood on the top of the seat and placed my folded coat across the shards of glass.