Thin Air

by George Simpson

  But he wasn't watching her. He was staring at his bathroom and the open door of his shower stall. If McCarthy could make himself vanish from one place, he had to reappear at another. Somewhere there was a receiving station, a pre-set instrument that acted like a homing beacon to bring him to a safe location. The landing place was probably a small, enclosed room...like a vault.

  Hammond put down the brandy, whirled, and charged into his office. He grabbed the phone and froze. Bloch's number. He didn't have Bloch's unlisted number. And then he remembered: Smitty would have it.

  After ten rings, he got Smitty's butler, who was sleepy and very slow. The wait was interminable, but finally Hammond had Francis P. Bloch's home number.

  The call was answered by one of the servants. Hammond could hear the party still going on in the background. He breathed easier and asked to speak with Admiral Gault. The servant left the phone for what must have been only a minute. To Hammond it was forever.

  He glanced at his desk clock and calculated that McCarthy had vanished less than ten minutes ago. Bloch's home wasn't too far away. If McCarthy had walked it, he could be there in twenty minutes.

  But he hadn't walked.

  "Hullo?"

  It was Gault, a little sloshed.

  "It's Hammond, sir."

  "You left too soon, Nick. They just broke out the twelve-year-old Scotch."

  "Admiral, I want you to look around. Tell me if you see a man with red hair, a tall Irishman with a drinker's nose."

  Gault hesitated. "Christ, Hammond, if this is a joke—"

  "No joke. It's important. Where are you?"

  "In the goddamned foyer. What am I supposed to do? Search the house?"

  "No, sir. Wait a minute. Has anybody come through the front door in the last ten minutes?"

  "No."

  "How long have you been there?"

  "Hammond, what is—?"

  He broke off. Hammond listened.

  "Just a second," Gault said, his gaze distracted by something he saw on the second-floor landing. Two figures were descending from the third floor. He recognized the big fellow named Coogan; he was talking to another man in a plain blue suit, carrying a black trenchcoat over his arm. He had a bloated face and red hair....

  "I think I've found the nose you want," Hammond heard him say.

  "Where?" Hammond said anxiously.

  "Upstairs with your friend Coogan—"

  "Upstairs?"

  "That's what I said. Who is he?"

  "McCarthy."

  Hammond heard him suck in his breath then swear out loud. "Shit," he said, "want me to nab him?"

  "No, sir—please! And don't say anything to him."

  "Then what the hell do you want me to do?"

  "Sir, he tried to kill me about fifteen minutes ago."

  Gault fell silent again, then his voice dropped two octaves. "Where are you?"

  "My apartment."

  "How did he get back here so fast?"

  Hammond started to explain, but Gault interrupted him. There was silence and he felt his heart begin to thump.

  "He's coming downstairs," Gault whispered. He gazed furtively upstairs at the two men who had finally parted. Coogan remained on the landing while the red-headed man clumped downstairs, keeping his eyes locked straight ahead so he wouldn't attract attention.

  McCarthy stepped off the stairs, and his crepe-soled shoes squished across the marble as he headed for the front door.

  "He's leaving!" hissed Gault. "Hammond, I can't let him go—"

  "You've got to!" Hammond shouted back.

  It was too late anyway. McCarthy passed Gault without even seeing him. He was out the door and gone.

  The admiral made a move to follow and stopped. He stood poised to leave the party with the host's telephone as a souvenir. He made a foul face, then brought the receiver up. His gaze automatically swept up with it and he found himself locking eyes with Joe Coogan, standing stiffly on the landing overhead.

  "Uh-oh," Hammond heard him say. "Coogan caught me looking. Hammond, I don't know where your doctor friend is going, but I suggest you avoid another house call."

  "On my way."

  "Where?"

  "MAGIC."

  Hammond threw on plain clothes and a jacket, wondering whether he finally had some concrete evidence against these characters. Jan was a witness: McCarthy had tried to kill them. I have the gun, he remembered, and ran to the living room to get it. He stuffed it into his briefcase along with all his papers on Thin Air. Gault could vouch for the fact that McCarthy got back to Bloch's house in better than Olympic time. And that device on Bloch's third floor, that was his Grand Central Station. Hammond smiled neatly—they would never be able to get rid of it fast enough. Tomorrow he could go in there with a Federal search warrant and an army of FBI agents, drag the CNO along by the scruff of his neck, and—

  "Shit!" he yelled, and punched the wall. It wasn't enough. It might be enough to start an investigation, but if there was a secret project somewhere that these people were trying to protect, Intelligence could never move fast enough to keep them from hiding it.

  He had to catch them red-handed, actually standing there up to their hips in misappropriated funds—

  "Nicky?"

  Jan stood in his office doorway in his jeans and sweater, staring quizzically at him. She looked tired.

  "I'm sorry, honey," he said. "We'll go now."

  He grabbed the case and turned out the lights, then guided her to the door. She stopped as he opened it, too frightened to go out.

  "It's okay, Jan." She wouldn't move. He had to pull the gun out of his briefcase and start down the stairs. She came out on the landing, frowning at him.

  "What good is that against an invisible man?" she demanded.

  "He's not invisible," said Hammond. "He's just great on fast getaways."

  He took another two steps and looked back.

  "How do you know?" she said.

  He felt a shiver of discomfort and looked out into the night. He swore under his breath. How did he know?

  The drive back to Virginia was long and dark. It was sixteen miles north on the Dulles Access Highway to Herndon. Jan sat curled up at Hammond's side, staring uneasily at the road ahead. It started to rain. Thunder and a few forks of lightning. Her eyes grew heavy with exhaustion and, against her will, she went to sleep.

  Hammond watched the wipers slap back and forth and thought of that night on the back road in Taos. He began watching the cross streets and checking his rear-view mirror, anxiously gripping the wheel every time a speedster zoomed up behind and passed him.

  He looked at Jan. Was she strong enough to take all this? Could he keep her protected? For how long? And when it was over, would it be over for them, too? They'd had one night together, an emotional collision, but it didn't mean their relationship had resurfaced. Hammond was too confused and nervous to know what he felt. He didn't want Jan to get hurt, not physically or emotionally. But did he want to get involved again?

  He pulled up to the house on Merlin Street just after two a.m. A security man stepped out of the bushes while Hammond was gently waking Jan and helping her out of the car. The security guard flashed a light on them and Hammond barked the password. They were covered all the way up to the door. Before Hammond could knock, it opened and Ike Menninger smiled sleepily at them. He was in pajamas and robe.

  Jan was asleep again. Menninger helped Hammond carry her upstairs. They put her on the bed and drew a quilt over her, then slipped out of the room and closed the door.

  Yablonski was in the hallway waiting for them. "How'd it go?" he said, tying his bathrobe.

  "Downstairs," whispered Hammond.

  Menninger stood guard on the landing while Hammond and Cas went down to the den. Cas was anxious to hear all about the party, so Hammond recounted the evening in detail. When he finished describing McCarthy's attack, Yablonski was wearing a dark scowl and clutching the arm of his chair so hard his knuckles were white.

&
nbsp; "I wish you'd let me go," he said. "I could have stopped that sonofabitch from following you."

  "He didn't follow us. He was there waiting. Spent the whole evening ransacking my office. Besides, how can you stop a man who can teleport himself out of your hands?"

  "How did he know you'd come back to the apartment?"

  "I don't think they know about the safe house. Oh, they might guess, but they don't know where it is. I'm sort of glad we did go back: now at least we know their trump card. But I still haven't figured a way to arrest anybody."

  "And hang onto them," Yablonski added.

  "That's not what I mean. Grounds. Except for McCarthy, I haven't got grounds."

  Yablonski got up and motioned Hammond to follow. They went to the kitchen and he offered Hammond a piece of the pie his wife had baked. They ate in silence, Yablonski busy thinking.

  "I see Menninger's put on some pounds," said Hammond.

  "Like a bird. Eats twice his own weight in a day." Yablonski smiled, then grew serious. "You need hard evidence against these people, right?"

  "Lost without it."

  "What about the equipment that was aboard the Sturman? The ship may have been scrapped, but I guarantee you they wouldn't have junked all that stuff. Too much of it and very expensive. There must be records of where it went, who got it, and when. And if it ended up in the hands of your buddies at Micro-Tech, then I'd say you've got them by the balls. You could probably bring in a whole Congressional investigation. Am I right?"

  Hammond stared at him. "Want to come with me tomorrow?"

  Yablonski concealed his excitement. "Where?"

  "Operational Archives."

  Yablonski smiled.

  At 0900, while Jan was still asleep, Hammond phoned Ensign Just-Ducky at the Pentagon and asked her to arrange a meeting that afternoon with somebody in Naval Archives. She called back twenty minutes later and informed him that a Lieutenant Gordon McWilliams would meet him at the Historical Display Center in the Washington Navy Yard at 1330.

  The phone rang again and it was Gault's secretary. "You're wanted for a meeting in Mr. Smith's office at 1100, Commander."

  Hammond decided they wanted a report on his activities last night. Fine. He would take Yablonski along and hit the Navy Yard afterwards.

  Hammond didn't wait around for Jan to wake up. He and Yablonski had to get rolling fast. It was Saturday morning and the traffic on the Dulles Access Highway would be heavy. At the door, Mrs. Yablonski straightened her husband's bomber jacket, took his face in both her hands, and kissed him warmly on the lips before she let him go.

  Hammond followed him to the car and took the wheel. As they pulled out of Merlin's Way, Yablonski seemed uncommonly determined.

  "What is this, Cas, Commandoes Die at Dawn? Why are you and your wife so solemn?"

  Yablonski was silent a moment, then he said, "I had a dream last night...."

  Hammond stiffened. "About the Sturman? Yablonski nodded. "Same dream as always?"

  "No. Some of it was. Becoming invisible, being frightened, the blackness...."

  "What was different about it?"

  "I kept seeing McCarthy everywhere I looked." He shivered convulsively.

  "That sounds like a normal paranoid nightmare."

  "We're going to meet them today, Hammond," Yablonski said quickly. "We're going to be right in the middle, just you and me."

  "Part of your dream?"

  Yablonski shook his head. "It's going to happen. I don't know how, but it's going to be today."

  Hammond drove silently, then asked, "How many of them do you figure there are?"

  "I don't know."

  "Take a guess. I'd like to know how many bad guys we'll be fighting off."

  Yablonski's mouth clamped shut and he looked away.

  "Bloch could have minions by the carload. What do you think?" Hammond persisted.

  Yablonski shrugged.

  "Personally, I think it's a small organization. Bloch, Traben, Coogan, McCarthy, and a handful of others—maybe a dozen at most in on the whole plot. Everybody else, including Admiral Corso and that international gang of scientists at MTL, knows only what they need to know."

  He glanced over and saw Yablonski looking at him again. "Engineers work on projects in bits and pieces, like at an automobile assembly plant. Except at MTL I doubt if they get to see the final product. It's just a matter of Traben telling his crew they're developing a top-secret project for the Navy, so secret they can't even be told what it is."

  "Are you telling me everybody out there is innocent except the top dogs?"

  "Probably."

  "What makes you so sure?"

  Hammond concentrated on passing a truck, then said, "From 1955 on, these guys have been jzery busy trying to Emit the number of people who knew what was going on. I can't see them risking that knowledge today in the hands of a large, far-flung organization. These are not supers villains with a thousand men at their command, all wearing neatly pressed space-age uniforms and carrying advanced laser weapons. That's comic-book time. This is a close-knit band of very determined, very vicious, and, I suspect, very greedy human beings. Why else did they send McCarthy out to get me? Your fucking psychiatrist, for God's sake! Why was he the hatchet man?"

  Yablonski swallowed. "Because they couldn't risk sending anybody else?"

  "Exactly. With their unique mode of transportation, they can minimize the risk of exposure by having their key people do everything. Since they can teleport anywhere there's a receiving station, they only need one or two assassins—at the most."

  "What about the two creeps who tried to get us?"

  "Paid muscle. Those two and a few others make up the inner circle."

  "Paid and ignorant, Hammond? Good guess, but—"

  "Damned right it's a good guess. But do you see the implication? If we flush those four key people out in the open, force them to tip their hand—!" He calmed down. "You're right," he said quietly. "We will be in the middle—very soon. But it might not be today."

  Yablonski gazed out the window at the traffic whizzing by.

  "Yes, it will," he said.

  When they arrived at the Pentagon, it became clear that the conference with Smitty wasn't going to be any ordinary staff meeting. Ensign Just-Ducky came right to the point: "Admiral Corso, Admiral Gault, and Mr. Smith are waiting for you."

  Hammond hurried back to his cubicle with Yablonski. He closed the door and uneasily changed into a fresh uniform.

  Yablonski watched him from his chair. "Are they gonna bite your head off?"

  "Funny," grumbled Hammond. "That's the feeling I always get when, I'm called to a meeting with no agenda." He grabbed his tie and fumbled with it, heading for the door.

  "Knock 'em dead, kid," Yablonski said casually.

  Hammond threw him some papers from a stack on his file cabinet. "Reading matter. Enjoy yourself."

  "What is this?"

  "Re-enlistment forms."

  Yablonski was tearing them in half as Hammond banged out the door. He found Andrews in the coffee room and asked him to watch Yablonski. "And don't let anyone near him," he added.

  Two minutes later, Hammond was standing in Smitty's waiting room, pacing in apprehension. The door opened and Admiral Gault stepped out, closing it partially behind him.

  "Nicky," he whispered, "we may have to act for a while as if you're on the spot, okay?"

  Hammond blinked. "Act?"

  Gault smiled, then set his face into a properly somber expression and propelled Hammond into the office.

  Smitty didn't rise. He sat behind his desk walruslike, benign and inscrutable. But Admiral Lawrence J. Corso, USN Retired, bounced up from the leather sofa and stood at parade rest. Hammond looked at him carefully. He was an older man, well dressed in a tweed suit and brown bow tie. He seemed powerful. His head was shorn to an iron-gray crewcut. His eyes were blue and piercing, set in a face of uncompromising strength; the tight flesh seemed to stretch back to his ears, giving him a st
ern, masklike expression. He was an Airedale: a tiny set of Naval Aviator's wings were pinned to his lapel. His eyes flicked to Hammond's wings in a moment of silent reproach. If the Navy permitted, undoubtedly he would have worn his uniform.

  The introductions were carried out by Gault, who quickly took the chair on Smitty's left, consigning Hammond to the one in the center of the room, allowing Corso to circle him like a prosecutor stalking his witness.

  "All right, Admiral, it's your show," said Smitty.

  Corso wasted no time getting to the point "Commander Hammond," he said, "I made what I felt was a legitimate request of Admiral Gault with respect to your investigations into MTL. Yesterday, your superior assured me you would comply with my request. Now, to my dismay, I find that you are continuing to badger and accuse innocent parties without cause. Mr. Bloch was quite upset about the direction your conversation took last night, and very much so by the fact that you searched his house without permission. He resents your intrusions and, I must say, so do I."

  "Admiral—" Hammond cleared his throat. "I resent the attempts on my life."

  Gault said nothing. He was watching Corso. Smitty made a low, noncommittal noise in his throat but sat with his hands pyramided.

  Corso stopped pacing and stood in front of Hammond, his back to Smitty. "Let's get one thing straight, mister, the people I represent have no connection whatsoever with any attempts at foul play. They simply would not use those methods! Why in the world do you think I'm here?"

  "Because they failed three times."

  Corso went off like a skyrocket. "How dare you make such unsupported accusations? How dare you!"

  Hammond was quiet for a moment. Then, in as calm a voice as he could muster, he listed his reasons: "I have the assassin's .45 in my possession. I have his phony ID. There's an Air Force staff car in New Mexico filled with bullet holes. A former associate of Dr. Traben got himself charcoal-broiled because he talked to me. There's a man in my office who was attacked along with me by two goons in a phony mugging. The FBI stopped a housebreaking in Los Angeles before it became a murder. And the person responsible for most of this was seen at Bloch's house last night, fifteen minutes after he tried to kill me!"