The Vanishers (36 page)

But I couldn’t help being aware that Bennett’s hand had gone smoothly back for the FBI rig—he’d prepared himself, earlier, by taking off his jacket to expose it, just as I’d tucked in my sweater to make sure it didn’t get in my way. Bennett had swept the gun out of the holster and was swinging it up to bear, and his left hand was coming up to meet and steady it. He was good, all right, and there wasn’t a way in the world he could possibly miss me at this range with that firm two-hand grip, but he faltered…

He faltered, I realized, because my first bullet had just cracked past his ear. His
ear
; and I wasn’t supposed to be aiming that high! Didn’t I know that in a situation like this, with speed all-important, I was supposed to snap my shot at the largest target, the chest? All the rules said so. He’d counted on it, as he’d counted on the bullet-proof vest I’d spotted at the last moment—I’d noticed earlier that he’d seemed a little thick and clumsy in the body, but I’d just put it down to advancing years and a hearty appetite. It had been the secret source of his courage; but now he knew I’d caught on. Kevlar around the ribs wouldn’t protect him from a slug in the face. It shook his confidence, and his hand. His shot went wide.

The Smith & Wesson kicked back at me a second time, in the vicious way of a light weapon used with heavy loads. All the psychic target-finding instruments were calibrated now, and all the psychic connections were good; and something happened to Bennett’s jaw. A hair low. Wish the next one up a bit—and the hole appeared below the right eye, and one between the eyes, and one in the top of the head as he bowed forward slowly, like a tree. His dying hand squeezed off a second shot that came nowhere near me as he fell facedown in front of me. It’s only on TV that they’re hurled backwards across the landscape by the impact of one lousy little .38 slug, or even several of them.

I stood there for a long moment looking down at him, feeling some satisfaction as you always do upon the completion of a job, even a dirty one. I know, humanitarian regret is the fashion, but I’m not a very fashionable guy. Slowly, I became aware of the fact that nobody had come forward, either to compliment me or curse me. I saw that they were all gathered about something on the ground beside the distant Audi: a small, blue-clad figure. I realized where Bennett’s last, blind, wild shot had gone…

The death of a small blonde girl and an American bureaucrat in the far north of Sweden didn’t get as much publicity as I’d expected, perhaps due to the energetic efforts of Cousin Olaf, so my family mission wasn’t a total failure, even though I’d lost the subject I was supposed to be protecting. Even the Nordic peace demonstration that had escalated into incendiary violence was ignored by the U.S. papers I picked up in Chicago’s Midway Airport. They had their own big story.

I don’t know what it is about America. Hundreds die from AIDS yearly, and the number is rising. Fifty thousand get smashed up fatally on the nation’s highways. The cancer deaths number, I believe, in the millions. Hardly anyone cares. But just let a small bunch of people—well, fifty in this case—get grabbed by an even smaller bunch with guns and held for ransom, and you can hardly find the weather or the stock market reports because of the way this dreadful national crisis monopolizes our TV screens and the columns of our daily press. Perhaps I’m callous, but I can’t help feeling that the reaction is out of proportion to the stimulus. If you expend all your emotional resources on a mere fifty people, how can you cope with the multitudes starving in the Sahara?

I read up on it while riding on another plane, smaller than the monster flying machine that had brought me back across the ocean. I was now heading north over Wisconsin towards the upper peninsula of Michigan, a state which, in case you’re not up on your geography, is split in two by the Great Lakes. Why they didn’t give the upper chunk to Wisconsin, to which it’s attached, instead of to lower Michigan, to which it isn’t, I have no idea, but state lines often don’t make much sense. One of the papers I’d bought had an alphabetical list of the hostages. I found there three people I knew, at least by name:
Janet Rebecca Beilstein, businesswoman; Arthur McGillivray Borden, government employee; Emil Franz Jernegan, tennis professional.

Except that the text explained that Emil Jemegan, the young athlete Beilstein was supposed to have run off with, was no longer with the others. He had been killed four days ago in a particularly brutal manner and left for the police to find. Actually, a phone call had let them know where to pick up the body, by a dirt road in western Pennsylvania. A multistate search in that part of the country had turned up no clues to where the other prisoners were being held. Obviously the kidnappers had taken Jernegan far from their hideout before executing him to let Washington know that they meant business and would kill again if driven to it—that they would slaughter the whole group if they were crowded by nosy policemen, or if their demands were not met.

Apparently, they were Central American revolutionaries who’d been impressed by the strange U.S. hostage syndrome. If it was so easy to turn the great nation to the north into a quivering mass of jelly, one would be foolish not to take advantage of the phenomenon, señor. Therefore, they had systematically abducted an adequate number of suitable victims, not so important nationally that their vanishing would trigger immediate and hysterical law-enforcement activity, but not so unimportant that their danger could be ignored. I noted that the specimen chosen for sacrifice, Jernegan, was the least prominent of the prisoners, an obscure young country club employee who’d been taken in the first place merely to provide cover for Mrs. Beilstein’s disappearance. Clearly they weren’t going to waste any of the more valuable hostages until they had to, waste being the operative word.

The organization called itself the PLCV. Their leader had been arrested and imprisoned, they said, by the reactionary fascist politico currently oppressing the downtrodden citizens of their country with U.S. approval and assistance. The PLCV demanded that the U.S. employ its influence to effect their hero’s release and that of the brave patriot fighters arrested with him. They further demanded withdrawal of all American support for that deformed megalomaniac politician, the dictator-criminal who had the affrontery to call himself
el presidente…

We landed in the town of Houghton, a little ways out the Keweenaw Peninsula that sticks up into Lake Superior. You would kind of expect a bunch of Latin American terrorists to pick some desolate scenery near the Mexican border, as close to home as possible, in which to hide their prison camp; but these people hadn’t chosen badly. That part of Michigan is still one of the less-civilized parts of the U.S., with logging the primary industry, according to the thumbnail sketch I’d been given when I reported to Washington by phone from northern Sweden and was told to haul my ass westward soonest. Doug Barnett, director pro tem, speaking. When I asked what the hell was in Houghton, I was told to disregard the Mont Ripley Ski Area, and Michigan Tech University, and concentrate first on the airport. When I had that made, I should transfer my attention to the hospital.

“He asked for you,” Doug said. “If you hurry, maybe you’ll make it in time.”

It was cold and raining when I got off the plane. The man waiting for me had only one hand, and there were scars on his face. I’d worked with him once, before he got damaged trying to defuse a homemade whizbang that had one more booby-trap circuit than he’d figured. I tried for the name and got it: Martinson. Greg Martinson.

“This way,” he said. “I’ve got a car waiting.”

The windows were steamed up, except where the defroster made a clear spot in front, so I didn’t get much of a view of Houghton, Michigan. It was a rental car, not arranged for the handicapped, but he’d clamped a little knob onto the wheel, and did all right one-handed. He dumped me in front of the hospital entrance.

“Room 29, second floor,” he said.

“Thanks for the ride, Oscar,” I said, to let him know I remembered. Oscar was the name he’d worked under at the time.

He grinned faintly. “We old retired crips didn’t do too badly, while you kept the healthy young squirts chasing you all over Europe.” His grin faded. “You’d better hurry. They said time could be getting kind of short.”

But naturally, having raced across the whole Atlantic Ocean and half the United States of America at barely subsonic speeds, upon reaching my destination, I found myself sitting on a hard bench going nowhere for the best part of an hour. When that grim nurse said no visitors, she meant no visitors.

There were two guards. Fedder was one; and if Fedder was there, Rasmussen would be somewhere around because they hunted together. Fedder had the roving brief, wandering around the corridors casually to see if anything or anybody was moving in on his subject. Standing by the door conspicuously, holding down the decoy spot, was a man with a patch over one eye whose name I didn’t know. We nodded to each other; but we’d shared no missions, and he didn’t look like the talkative type, so I didn’t bother him. I just sat on my bench, reflecting that Mac seemed to have drafted every old agency warrior for the job, including some retired for physical disability—men whose loyalty to him was unquestioned. The bright young recruits who had yet to prove themselves, he’d left to Bennett.

Occasional white coats went in and out of the room, male and female. I saw a wheelchair roll by in the main hall to my left and paid it little attention; after all, this was a hospital. Then I looked again before it went out of sight and got quickly to my feet.

“Hey, Ricardo!” I called. “What the hell are you doing here?”

There were two men with the chair; small, dark-faced men in neat dark suits. They whirled at my call, and their hands went under their coats. I kept my own hands in plain sight. The young man in the chair swung it around and rolled it towards me.

“Matthew, amigo! I did not see you sitting there… It is all right, muchachos, he is a friend.” He grinned at me as I came up. “Although there were times in the past when that was hot a certainty. But you must address me properly.”

“Yes, Mr. President. Certainly, Your Excellency.”

“I joke. To you I am Ricardo, always. Anyway, it is not a state visit; I am here incognito. Mr. Richard James, at your service.” His smile faded, and he glanced towards the door of the room in front of which I had been waiting. “How does it go in there?”

“For God’s sake, this is a hospital, man. Do you expect them to tell you how a patient is doing?” I grimaced. “I gather that you’re a mean sonofabitch these days, Your Excellency. A megalomaniac, reactionary, fascist, dictator-criminal, according to what I read. Who’s the guy you’ve got in pokey that they want out so badly?”

Ricardo Jimenez, president of Costa Verde, smiled thinly. “You are getting soft, Matthew. Unlike them, you refrain from making reference to my handicap.” He patted his useless legs. “And the man I have in prison is the man I have to thank for it. You must remember him.”

When I’d met him, Ricardo Jimenez had been the exiled scion of a political family trying to fight his way back into his country. We’d spent some time in the jungles together, back when another man had occupied the big presidential chair in Santa Rosalia. The nation had been a police state then—Ricardo had changed that, later—and he’d had some painful experiences with its prison system, of which the damaged legs were one reminder. He had others.

“Armando Rael?” I said, surprised. “I thought you finally managed to run him to hell out of there.”

“He ran, yes, when his soldiers would no longer fight for him, but he is back as leader of
El Partido de la Liberacion de Costa Verde.
PLCV. The Liberation Party of Costa Verde. He had Communist backing up to a point.”

“What are the Communists doing, backing that reactionary bastard?”

“They will support anyone who will forward their program of chaos and disruption. However, when Rael’s clumsy coup failed, the reds washed their hands of the enterprise. Some of his remaining Costa Verde supporters, who dislike my reform policies and hope to get rich, or richer, if he wins, thought up this plan for achieving his freedom. It might have succeeded, since I could not have resisted much pressure from your country, but the man in that room, your superior, spoiled their plans. I do not know the details, no one will talk, but the hostages have been freed and most of the kidnappers are dead. The news will be on your television and in your newspapers this evening; it was withheld while certain principals were being traced. However, we were informed in Santa Rosalia, and I thought it only fitting that I should fly up here and pay my respects to the gentleman who has for the second time contributed so much to the welfare of my country, this time at great cost to himself.”

It was the first time to my knowledge that the head of a state, even the fairly young head of a fairly small state, had seen fit to thank us for our work in person. Looking at him, I realized that he wasn’t so young any longer. The crippling injuries, and the responsibilities of his political office, had matured him.

I asked, “What will you do with Rael now, shoot him?”

Ricardo Jimenez shook his head regretfully. “For any other man, I would call the firing squad immediately. But not for the man who put me into this chair. It would be said I was taking a personal revenge on my predecessor in office, and I cannot afford that. I will hold him until his followers disperse, and then I will banish him, sparing his life in my usual magnanimous fashion. To try again, perhaps, but…”

He stopped, looking towards the door of Room 29. Three people had come out. The two men in white coats and stethoscopes went on down the hall. A tall woman remained; a slender, handsome, middle-aged lady in a gray slacks suit. Her dark hair was pulled back severely from her face; but it was the strong kind of face that could stand such treatment. She seemed to be looking for somebody; then she saw me and started towards me, but stopped abruptly and buried her face in her hands, swaying. The sentry with the eyepatch and Ricardo’s bodyguards all moved towards her, but I beat them to her. After a moment she drew a ragged breath and raised her head to look at me, dry-eyed. She seemed steady again, so I released her. “Sorry,” she said. “You’re Helm, aren’t you?”