The Terrorizers (11 page)

“Just to bring you up to date, Mr. Frechette,” I said, “the former owners of those wallets did not contribute voluntarily to the Helm going-away fund. I’d hate to have to add your wallet to the collection, but I wouldn’t hate it very much, so I hope you’ll see your way clear to cooperating with me.”

The security man licked his lips. “In what way, Monsieur?”

“Can you summon Dr. Caine without arousing his suspicions? Don’t say yes if you can’t produce.”

Frechette looked puzzled. “You want me to ask the Director to come here?”

“That’s right.”

“It would sound more natural if Dr. Somerset called him, sir.”

“I know that,” I said. “But Dr. Somerset would happily allow me to shoot her to death if she could just manage to gasp out a warning first. I’m hoping you’re not quite so ready to die, Mr. Frechette.”

The uniformed man frowned as if he found thinking painful, then he brightened. “I could tell Dr. Caine that Dr. Somerset had asked me to make the call for her, sir.”

“Do it,” I said.

“I… I think Dr. Caine will still be in the dining room.”

He was. We waited for him to come to the phone. I listened in on the desk extension. It seemed to go all right. If any code words were passed, signaling emergency, I didn’t spot them. Waiting, afterwards, I tried to kid myself that my clothes were actually drying and I was getting a little warmer. I was aware of Kitty shivering uncontrollably from time to time. Abruptly, the door opened.

“What’s so urgent it couldn’t wait fifteen minutes—”

Dr. Caine stopped abruptly. The door sighed closed behind him. His glance shifted from me to Kitty to the seated pair by the round table, and back to me and the gun I held.

“What’s going on here?” he blustered. “I must warn you, Madden, that we’ve had plenty of practice in dealing with violent patients attempting to escape from this institution. You have no chance whatever to get away, so please put down that weapon and be sensible. It will be all the worse for you if you hurt somebody.”

I regarded him for a moment. Apparently he didn’t wear his doctor-coat to dinner; he was very distinguished-looking in a dark suit with a neat white stripe. He looked as if he’d have a great bedside manner, but I didn’t judge he’d take a lot of pressure, which was why I’d got him here.

I said, “That’s very unfortunate, because Trask is lying in Hyacinth with a broken neck. Dugan is lying outside Goldenrod with a broken neck. Your outside guard, who was so kind as to contribute this gun, is lying outside Aster with a fractured skull. Dr. Somerset claims to have a fractured wrist. So I’m afraid I’ve already hurt some people, Albert. I guess I’ll just have to take my medicine, whatever it is.”

“My God!” he whispered. “My God, you must be mad!”

“Well, you’d be just the man to know about it, director of a place like this, wouldn’t you?” I said. I straightened up from the desk on which I’d been half-sitting. “Now it’s your turn. I don’t figure it’s much use my trying to interrogate Dr. Elsie over there, much as I’d love it. She looks pretty tough to me. You look more like a person’d listen to reason. Anyway, if I work on you, I’ve got help available.”

He swallowed. “Interrogate? I can’t imagine what you think I could tell you—”

I said, “I want to know the identity of the Observer.”

“Who?”

I said, “I mean the small, corpulent character who stood in the corner and watched all the fun back there in Elsie’s recreation room. Don’t claim you never saw him, Albert, because I remember a couple of times when you stuck your head in the door and he was there.”

Dr. Caine’s handsome face was pale. He licked his lips. “I’m sorry, I really don’t know who that man—” He stopped, hearing the sharp click of the revolver coming to full cock. “Oh,
that
man!” he said breathlessly. “Yes, yes, of course, but I’m afraid I can’t tell you… I mean, he just comes and goes as he pleases, Mr. Madden. Lewis brings him in the Mercedes, that’s all I know. I don’t know his name, really. I haven’t… haven’t been permitted to know it.” He glanced resentfully towards Elsie. “They… they don’t take me into their confidence, Mr. Madden; they keep me completely in the dark, I swear it. They just force me to allow these premises to be used… an unfortunate incident in my past, totally misunderstood. It’s sheer blackmail, Mr. Madden.”

“I want the little man’s name,” I said when he finally ran down.

“I swear I don’t know it! I swear it!”

I said, “That’s too bad, Albert. That’s really too bad. Okay, let’s go.” I gestured with the gun.

“What… what are you going to do?”

I asked irritably, “What the hell do you think I’m going to do? I’ve got the electrical equipment, and I know from personal experience that it’s very effective. I’ve got the lady expert to run it—I told you I had help available. We’ll determine scientifically just what you know and what you don’t.”

“You mean… you’re going to take me back
there?
”

“I’ve been there. Kitty’s been there. What’s so damned special about you?” I grimaced. “Elsie’s feeling deprived. All her pretty human toys have been taken away. She’s got nobody left to play with. We wouldn’t want her getting totally frustrated, would we? We’ll start in the chair, I think. I doubt that you’re stubborn enough to require the special attentions for which she uses the table. It’s too bad you’ve just had your dinner, of course. It means that you’ll undoubtedly spew all over yourself when she hits the button. Then, since you haven’t been properly prepared the way Kitty and I were, you’ll probably shit your pants full; but by that time you’ll be having such wonderful electrical convulsions you won’t even care.”

“But you
can’t!
” he gasped.

“It will be the greatest pleasure I’ve had in months, Albert, more fun even than wringing Dugan’s neck,” I said cheerfully. “I’m really looking forward to it. However, there’s an unfortunate possibility that my enjoyment won’t last very long.”

He licked his lips. “What … what do you mean?”

“Well,” I said deliberately, “I don’t know how to run that shock machine. Only Elsie knows; and she seems to take this mystery crusade of hers, or revolution, or whatever it is, very seriously. She told me herself it was much more important than a mere human life, or even a thousand mere human lives. If you have information that threatens it, she won’t want you telling me, will she? That means there’s a good chance that, being a logical lady, after we’ve got you strapped in the chair with all electrodes properly attached, she’ll simply rev up her volts and fry you permanently before you can talk… Well, you know her better than I do. Maybe she’d never dream of treating a colleague in such an unfriendly way. And of course if you really don’t know anything, as you claim, you’re perfectly safe.”

Dr. Caine licked his pale lips and glanced at the ugly, craggy face of the woman seated at the end of the room.

“Ovid,” he whispered. “The name is John Ovid…”

It took Kitty a little while to figure out how to get an outside line; after that, Washington, D.C., U.S.A., was easy. She shoved the phone base across the desk and offered me the handset. I put it to my ear lefthanded. There was a certain amount of suspense as I listened to the ringing at the far end. In a sense I was calling my own past, long distance.

When the voice came on, I recognized it at once. It was the voice that had called me at the hospital and introduced me to the name Helm.

“Yes?”

“I’m calling from the Inanook Sanitarium somewhere near Vancouver, B.C.,” I said carefully. “I think I want to talk with somebody called Mac.”

“I’m Mac,” the voice said. “At least I’m so called by some people under certain circumstances. Greetings, Eric.”

“Who’s Eric?” I asked.

“You are, in our records, filed under the agent’s code name… I gather your memory has not returned.”

“I’m accumulating lots of information but few recollections,” I said. “I’m told I work for you. Tell me something about how we operate, sir. Do we have research facilities? Internment facilities? Useful contacts with the Canadian authorities?”

“All are available within limits,” said the man called Mac, three thousand miles away. “What do you require?”

“Reinforcements, first,” I said. “But the reinforcements should be properly briefed, sir, because some discreet burials will be required—”

“Just a minute!” There was suspicion in Mac’s sharp voice. “Are you quite sure you remember nothing of our former relationship?”

“Nothing comes back, sir. I wouldn’t recognize you if I met you on the street. Why?”

“Because you are the only operative who habitually addresses me in that overly respectful way. It is an old joke, or custom, between us.”

I thought that over for a moment, and said, “Maybe my tongue remembers more than my brain, sir. Or maybe I’m just naturally smart enough to know that I’m more apt to get the help I need if I ask for it respectfully.”

“To be sure. How many bodies?”

“Three so far, but the evening’s young yet.”

I looked meaningfully towards Dr. Elsie, who’d started to lean towards the uniformed guard beside her, perhaps to whisper some escape instructions. She saw me looking and straightened up in her chair. The guard seemed not to have noticed; and Dr. Albert sat stiffly in his chair looking as if the other two were total strangers whose acquaintance he had no desire to make.

Mac said, “Very well. Go on.”

“A little official manpower is indicated,” I said. “I’ve got the inner citadel secured, so to speak, but the rest of the fortress is still in enemy hands. I also have some of the staff under my gun, but I don’t know how many of the others are involved with this Threepee outfit; and even perfectly innocent employees may misunderstand the situation and get very hostile. I’m pretty well armed and I can probably shoot my way clear if I have to, but I hate to see the butcher bill get much bigger. I’m hoping you can send somebody with a badge to pry me loose; somebody who knows the score. Tell him to come straight to the assistant director’s office off the main lobby. What’s a good code knock?”

“We use three and two as a rule.”

“Okay, but they’d better use a gunbutt. It’s a soundproof door. I’ll hang on while you get them moving.”

There was a period of silence. Kitty shifted position uncomfortably, as if her damp clothes were sticking to the chair, or to her. I didn’t look at her. I kept my attention where it belonged, on the woman who was the only real source of danger here, but Elsie didn’t move and nobody else stirred. It occurred to me that I was calling three thousand miles across a continent to have Mac call three thousand miles back to speak to some officials who were probably located practically around the corner from me.

His voice returned. “So. They estimate twenty minutes.”

“Good enough,” I said. It was strange to be talking so easily with this man I couldn’t remember at all; and I said a bit more stiffly, “I hope the experiment turned out in a satisfactory manner, sir.”

There was another silence. “What experiment?”

“Arranging for an agent who’d lost his memory to be thrown to the sharks, just hoping he’d remember how to bite back.”

I heard Mac laugh shortly at the other end of the line. “So far I would call the experiment a success. After all, you’re alive, you’ve found the place for which we’ve been searching—one of the places; we have reason to believe the PPP has at least one more hidden refuge in the area—and you seem to have the upper hand. Let me point out that I did my best to protect you by revealing your true name. There are individuals involved who, while they would wipe out an annoying photographer ruthlessly, would hesitate a long time before doing permanent harm to one of our people. We try to demonstrate, from time to time, that it is a very expensive proposition.”

I remembered the little man in the corner of the torture chamber, and the way he’d kept Dr. Elsie in line, and the reasons he’d given.

“Yes, sir,” I said. “The message got through, which is why I’m still here with my brains more or less intact.”

“Furthermore,” he went on, “I not only had satisfactory reports from the medical staff of the hospital, but the agent with whom you’d been associated earlier, although she does not operate under my authority, was kind enough to pay you a visit and give me her opinion, reassuring as it turned out, on your condition.”

I said, “So that’s why she popped in that day. Whose authority does she operate under if not yours?”

“Since I gather you’re not speaking from a safe phone, I’d better not tell you that. However, you should know that there were two separate and independent investigations, one of which, the one with which you and Miss Wong were concerned, seemed at first to have nothing to do with bombs or terrorists. Miss Wong discovered that there actually was no separation when she witnessed a meeting between her subject, Herbert Walters, and a subject connected with the other investigation, a certain Joan Market.”

“I’ve been told about Mrs. Market,” I said. “So I was switched over from Mission X to Mission Y, or vice versa?”

“Yes, the anti-terrorist operation had priority over Miss Wong’s mission, although you still maintained contact with the lady and rendered her assistance to the extent permitted by your new duties.” Mac paused. “But we haven’t got time to go into the details now. You wanted some research done.”

“That’s right,” I said. “First, John Ovid. Ovid, like the Roman poet, or was he Greek.”

“Roman, I believe.”

I said, “Height about five-two, weight around one-seventy, a real little butterball. German accent. Address unknown, but transportation is provided for him by a sanitarium limousine driven by a guy named Lewis. Wait a minute, I heard the first name once: Gavin Lewis. If they grab Lewis maybe they can get a lead to Ovid. He seems to be in touch with the PPP council, as they call it; he wields considerable authority. And then there’s Dr. Albert Caine, and there’s Dr. Elsie Somerset, director and assistant director of this bughouse—”

I saw Albert wince. Even under these strained circumstances, he obviously felt I should be referring to his institution with more respect. Elsie was staring into space, drumming her fingers on the round conference table in an absent way.