Soft Targets

by Dean Ing

  "Have you told Althouse and Charlie George about this?"

  "Was Edgar Hoover a fed? Of course, Mr. Everett, we're not amateurs. At least Mr. George knows. Nobody's raised the Althouse guy yet but they'll get to him."

  "Or somebody will."

  "Is that a fact," Fulton said drily, and slammed the door.

  Two minutes later, Gina and Everett were ar­guing. "Anybody could bully us off the road in that crackerbox of yours," she spat.

  "If they could catch us in this ice, which they couldn't without a Porsche turbo and front-wheel drive," he returned.

  "And besides, how many more crazy Irishmen know you drive that Mini."

  "Good God, Vercours, who's the boss here?"

  She dropped her shoulders and her voice. "You are, of course. I'll get my things out of the Firebird."

  "You will like hell," Everett grunted. "I have the better car, but you have the better argument." He grinned. "Anyhow, the Mini's heater isn't worth a damn. The 'bird it is, ma'am."

  They were laughing before his weekend gear was repacked in the Firebird. He drove back down the highway toward Golden, explaining that they needed more food. As they neared the town, she was glancing backward. "When you stop, pull out of sight and face the highway," she suggested.

  He pulled in near a market, turning the car end-for-end in a rum-runner's switch on the icy ground. They waited. After several minutes a big tandem rig came steaming past, chains singing on the pavement. Then nothing. "I'll go in," she said; "I know what kind of junk food I like. And you can keep warm with this," she added, laying a compact automatic on the seat.

  She was back very soon with a single brown sack, celery poking from its top. Everett eased the Firebird onto the highway, soon passed the roadhouse and his forlorn Mini without a glance. Near Empire they slowed at a neat row of cabins with overhead telephone lines stretching away to the office.

  Quickly, then: "None of this two-adjoining rooms crap, Maury. We're together. That's my job."

  He nodded and punched the car's nose through crusty snow into the drive. The owner was pleased to rent his best and most secluded cabin to Mr. and Mrs. Marks.

  "Soda pop and cigarettes here, Mr. Marks," he said, "but I'll be locking up shortly."

  "We'd appreciate it if you'd patch the phone in so I can make calls directly."

  "Can't do that." He found that he could indeed, with a fifty-dollar nonrefundable deposit.

  "One more thing," Gina said. "We were supposed to meet some folks tomorrow who love to surprise us—and I detest surprises. If anyone asks for us—" A moment's thought "—tell them we're an old couple. And as soon as they leave, please give us a ring."

  A collusive smirk spread across the leathery features. "I got it," he said archly, not getting it at all.

  Inside the chill cabin, Everett turned up the heat and found a bonus in the dry wood piled beside the fireplace. Gina, blowing on her hands, checked the windows before taking a portable door lock from her bag. She emplaced the heavy steel assembly at breastbone height, wedged into the facing by a heavy setscrew. Then she made a call, using her scrambler over the mouthpiece, which reduced her conversation to gibberish for any monitoring device. Maury Everett imagined himself as a push-pin relocated on some FBI map, and knew he had no real alternative.

  As the tiny blaze began to lick upward into the kindling, Maury turned to study the place. Well-furnished, plenty of blankets, electric range and a decent shower. Behind the cabins, he knew, lay an unbroken white expanse leading into the soaring trees beyond. Too bad he had only one set of snowshoes for his morning trek, but— "What on earth are you doing, Gina?"

  "Setting our detectors," she said absently, ad­justing a dial on the device she had taken from her bag. "I can sleep with this little rig, and I don't want to be roused by every passing field mouse."

  "That's new Oracle hardware," he laughed, and stood up to see. He explained his history with the firm that marketed her detectors, oddly warmed to find that the little wireless motion sensors were as useful as his sales people had claimed they would be. With one inside the Firebird, a second dropped into the snow outside the bathroom window, and another placed adhesively under the eaves away from steady winds, they would be forewarned of approach by anything larger than a rabbit. Gina emplaced the sensors while Everett rummaged in their groceries. When she returned he had spread the stuff on the table. He saw her turn quickly to sit on the bed, her head down.

  "Problems?"

  "I don't know," she said groggily, her breath­ing deep and rapid. "It's not time for my period. I just feel like a wet rag." She looked up, hearing him chuckle. "I'm glad it meets with your approval" she growled.

  "The altitude," he said gently; and turned his chair to sit facing her. "Hey, lady, you're two kilometers high, here. Takes a few days before you can scurry around, jock or no jock, without getting spots before your eyes."

  He placed a tentative hand on her shoulder, felt her stiffen, patted her once, withdrew the hand. "Prescription is simple: just keep breathin'," he said, and moved back to the table. "Prognosis is simpler still: you'll be hungry as a hoot-owl in another five minutes."

  Presently, as he sliced a second hunk of the petrified salami to go with his corn chips, he heard bedsprings creak. A moment later she was sitting across from him, the brunette wig dis­carded, her hair gleaming beryllium bronze in the firelight. "Don't mind me," she said, her buoyancy gradually returning. "When I'm not fully fit I feel vulnerable. And when I feel vulnerable, I am not the easiest person to approach. You know?" Her frown was questioning, seri­ous.

  He nodded. "Like being fresh out of videotape when the bridge collapses," he offered.

  "At least," she smiled, then sniffed. "What's this stuff?"

  He watched her finger the soft disc of cheese he had taken from its airtight tin. "Camembert; Give it an hour to soften, and it makes the worst beer in Colorado taste like dark Lowenbrau."

  "Can't just be dead, huh? It has to putrify."

  She saw something shatter behind his eyes before he squeezed them shut. He shook off the outward display, turning to stare into the fire. "I'm sorry," she whispered. "That was stupid of me."

  Everett told her, inflections low and halting, of the youth who almost certainly lay under swirl­ing rapids in his expensive metal coffin several kilometers away. "I keep hearing him yelling. He was scared out of his sphincter, Gina. I don't think he knew what was happening."

  "My synopsis said he had an automatic weapon. He knew."

  "That was the third guy, the one in the back seat; the one I—I aimed at."

  "Then you didn't actually pull the plug on the kid driving?"

  "Not intentionally." He swallowed with an effort. "I'm not like you, Gina. I don't have the killer instinct very well honed." He saw her start to protest and held up a restraining hand. "I've seen you move in when you didn't have to, lady. And I'm grateful, I admire you for it. Wouldn't want you any other way. Okay?" She gnawed her lip and gave silent assent. "But I think, I honestly think I wouldn't've pulled that trigger if I hadn't found myself within spitting distance of that Czech automatic. I was going to round the bastards up. I think."

  She began to tear small shreds of celery leaf, placing them atop corn chips like hors d'oeuvres. "And I think we simply have differ­ent views of what constitutes self-defense," she mused, voice low and calm. "You defend only against immediate threat to your life. I have another view: when something has demon­strated that it is ready and willing to screw me good—and I'm wearing my Freudian half-slip there—I'm likely to defend against the possibil­ity; one demonstration is all I need."

  "Screw me twice, shame on me," Everett quoted.

  "Absolutely. I got screwed twice, 'way back when, and it left me with a sense of shame I don't want to feel again. Ever." the last word intense.

  A thin piercing tone stuttered from the Oracle detector. Gina flashed to it, flicked off the audio alarm and checked the tiny lamp glowing on the detector face. "In back
," she whispered. "Leave the lights alone but get down." He followed in­structions, watched her check the Beretta before she closed the bathroom door. A musical laugh, barely audible from the bathroom: "Come here a minute, Maury. This, you have to see."

  He found her peering through the back win­dow, the scene outside a dazzling blue-white against black. Twenty meters away, a sleek four-point buck stood quartering toward them, the long neck arched up, antlers stark against the sky. "Testing our scent," Everett breathed, lips brushing her hair. They watched in silence for a long moment. "He doesn't want to get screwed, either."

  "Is he in season?"

  "Not for me. Always, for a camera. Maybe we can track him tomorrow."

  "You're out of your mind," she chuckled. The buck, startled perhaps by some faint transmis­sion of her voice, swung gracefully around, sprang away into the trees with vast heart-stopping leaps.

  "Nijinsky," Everett said. "They used to say his leaps were magic. Maybe he was just part deer."

  Moving back toward their catastrophic array of foods on the table, Gina paused to reset the detector audio. Everett found his wine, wrenched the cork out, found two coffee cups and poured, yawning as she sat down again.

  "Did I understand you right?" She was smiling quizzically. "You only hunt with a camera?"

  "Don't let it get around. Some of my friends wouldn't understand."

  "Or maybe they would, which'd be worse."

  He swigged the wine, crooning happily. "Much worse," he agreed. "Don't get me wrong: I shot an elk once, to get his hide for a pair of trousers. Could've just bought the goddam hide but if I really needed a set of elkhides I figured it was only right to get 'em the hard way."

  "How did you feel afterward?"

  "Pretty good, to tell the truth. I packed a hindquarter down with the green hide. God, I was a bloody mess. The trousers turned out to be heavy as guilt, but I still have 'em. And if I ever need another pair, I'll go after another elk. It's all the shit we go after that we don't need; that's what puts my hackles up."

  She tasted the wine. "Sherry? Wow."

  "Harvey's Bristol Cream," he nodded. "The dirty old men with their Madeira just haven't discovered this stuff."

  She slouched in her chair, feeling for the rungs beneath his own, and he moved his legs compan­ionably aside. "You don't need a whole lot, do you," she asked shrewdly. "I mean, you don't chase after much. Women, trophies over your mantel, man-of-the-year nominations—"

  "Mark of the year, maybe," he snorted.

  "Mr. and Mrs. Marks," she said; "I noticed that. But you're avoiding my interview, Commissioner."

  "Ah, yes." Pompous clearing of his throat. "I chase what I need, Gina. Well, hell, sometimes I don't even do that. When my wife left me a lo-o-ong time back, I needed her. It wasn't pride that kept me from chasing her. It was knowing she'd just leave again. I didn't have what she needed, you see. Someone who'd stay down off the timberline and build furniture, mix drinks, mow lawns, lust after a silk tie or a smoking jacket."

  That throaty laugh again. "David Engels was right, then. You're solitary as a bear. No wasted effort, no chasing all the lady bears out of raunch season. And definitely, no learning to ride a bicycle just to be a circus bear."

  He sipped, took a bit of cheese. "Yeah, Dave's probably right. I'd like to think of me as being like Nijinsky out there," he nodded toward the back of the cabin, yawned. "But deer are gregari­ous critters, full of grace and helium. And they don't hibernate, and I do." He stretched until his joints cracked. "You must've figured out some sensible sleeping arrangement."

  "The best. You under a sheet, me above 'em. Best-kept secret of the New England bundlers, or so Conklin tells me. But you go ahead. I'll stoke the fire later and set the detector up close."

  He undressed, wondering that he felt no par­ticular unease in her presence. Once she glanced toward him and smiled, raising her cup in a silent toast, then faced the fire again. He doused the lights and, scissoring his legs briskly be­tween the sheets to warm them, heard her low chuckle. "Now what," he asked.

  "That's what I do," she said. "Go to sleep." He rolled onto his side, faced the wall. Just parts in a machine, he insisted to the image of Dave Engels. You don't know everything, buddy. Yet the last image he recalled that night was the halo of yellow made by lambent firelight on the mane of Gina Vercours.

  SATURDAY, 13 DECEMBER, 1980:

  He awoke to the odors of omelet and coffee, sat up quickly, noting that Gina evidently slept in a loose culotte arrangement. "Whoo," he rubbed hands briskly over his face as she turned; "for a second there, I forgot all this. Mind-bending."

  "Your friends in Denver wouldn't let me forget," Gina replied. "You had a call a few minutes ago. Agent Fulton; I promised to have you coherent when he calls again. Did I lie?"

  "Nope, unless you promised I'd be decisive, too." She gestured with a plate and he nodded, waving it to him with both hands. He took the steaming plate and settled it into his lap.

  "Don't expect this kind of service every morn­ing," Gina teased, going back for the coffee. "I'm feeling sorry for you today, is all."

  Between mouthfuls of omelet: "Why?"

  " ‘Cause you're indecisive."

  "Did I talk in my sleep?" He had stopped chewing, the cup poised halfway to his mouth.

  "No-oo," she said, a full-octave drop within that one word managing to convey mild irritation, bewilderment, and desire to drop what had begun as banter. "Or if you did, I didn't listen. What's got into you—or should I ask?"

  He destroyed the rest of the omelet before replying; and when he did, it was with reluctance. "I know what Fulton wants. And it isn't an easy decision. When I didn't respond to his hints yesterday, he finally laid it on the line. The FBI thinks I should drop out of sight, with a faked media release about my going into the river with those two men in the BMW."

  "You mean take a new identity? Pretty dras­tic," she said, the hazel eyes unblinking over her cup.

  "You have a real gift for understatement. But I've been thinking it out, and there may be an alternative," he said, as the telephone rang.

  The scrambler was not perfect, requiring him to speak slowly for clarity. "Thanks, Fulton, I'm fine," he said, grateful that Gina had chosen to take her shower during the call. "Yeah, I've thought about it. God knows how you'd get total silence from that little cook, uh, Bohlen? And I couldn't very well continue to perform my Commission duties from the grave, so to speak."

  He listened, nodding as if into a videophone. "I'll take your word for that, but look: what if I were listed as seriously injured?" Pause. "I don't know; Walter Reade, San Diego Naval Hospital, Brook General maybe; whatever sounds con­vincing. You could say I'd been shot or whacked, and collapsed later. Internal hemorrhage, even a relapse from the licking I took at Pueblo. Hell, call a doctor and work it out; I'm open to sugges­tion, so long as it'd let me continue my work through a mail drop."

  He sipped the coffee through a longer pause, one corner of his mind occupied with the liquid slither of a nude blonde soaping herself a few paces away. A nude blonde butch, he reminded his libido; forget it.

  Then he heard Will Fulton's last suggestion, which made it easy to forget women. "Oh no, fella; that's out." Brief pause. "I can't tell you why, exactly, but the idea lacks appeal. I've been Maury Everett too long. And who'd foot the bills?"

  He barely noticed Gina's return, immersed in a debate he felt that he was losing. "Okay," he said at last. "I'll think about it, and you set up a scenario. I'll be around here somewhere until you can convince me this'll work. Remember, Fulton, in some ways I'm like any other working stiff." He watched Gina as she sat on the bed to slip from culottes to slacks, then forced himself to look away. "Sure; and I appreciate it, Will. 'Bye."

  Everett would not discuss his problem with Gina until he had thought it out in a more pleasant setting. Over her objections, they canvassed Empire, then Golden, for an extra set of snow-shoes. She objected again at the price, observing that they made the u
gliest, most expensive pair of hand-chewed tennis racquets in her experi­ence. It was past noon on Saturday before they were properly shod for the trek, Gina quickly learning the widestance shuffle, carrying her shoulder bag easily for the first hundred meters.

  Maury Everett stopped frequently to let her rest, and laughed as she stumbled down a slope. "Lean back until you have the hang of it," he advised. "You're not on skis."

  Grumbling pleasantly, wiping snow from her goggles, she moved with him across the mounded blue-white wilderness, pausing now and then to inspect animal tracks. They had cov­ered more than a kilometer before Everett found a sunny overhang sheltered from the wind and, with his clasp knife, cut boughs for insulation. They took off the snowshoes and sat on them, leaning against the green boughs, silently shar­ing cheddar and crackers.

  The sunlight was warm on her face, distant peaks sharply visible in the thin clear air. It was no longer so difficult to see how a man of solitary habits might prefer winter in the Rockies, alone, to any other time, any other place. She said as much.

  "Only we're not alone; and neither is Nijinsky," he replied, and indicated a copse of trees in a ravine far below. Gradually she traced the patterns that revealed several deer among the mass of conifers, as Everett launched into a dis­course on the fleet animals.

  "My fanny's like a waffle from sitting on these snowshoes," she said, shifting, and provoked a lecture on the differences between her bobtailed `bearclaw' snowshoes and the long-tailed types used for less rugged country. Gina suddenly realized that the big man was temporizing, focusing on familiar topics, using her as a stimulus to deflect his thoughts. From what? "My face is frozen in a permanent squint," she said then, to change the subject. "Could we get moving again?"

  Single file, they followed the mountain's contours, Everett taking the lead. Eventually Gina admitted that her stamina was waning again in the high altitude and, after another quiet breath­er, they retraced their path. In another hour they stood in a grove of trees above the cabin.

  "Let me go first," she insisted. "I'll wave you in if it's okay."