by Ed McBain
“Where’ve you been?” he whispered.
“Around the hospital. My … my hours have changed.”
“Don’t lie to me, Jean. If you don’t want to have anything to do with me, say so. But please don’t lie to me.”
“I’m sorry. I was trying to make up my mind. That’s why I—I’ve been avoiding you.”
“Have you made it up yet?”
“No.”
“When, Jean? I’ll be out of here in a few days. You know that, don’t you?”
“Yes, I know.”
“Honey …”
“Please, don’t rush me. Let me think. Can’t you see that I …”
His hands were on her shoulders now, biting into the fabric of her uniform.
“Jesus, you’re beautiful,” he whispered. “Jean, Jean …”
He pulled her close, and she tilted her face involuntarily, and his lips came down on hers, strangely tender for such a cruel mouth. He was gentle and she was swallowed up in the tenderness of his kiss. She moved closer to him, and his arms tightened around her, and she returned the kiss, enjoying the tight circle of his arms, enjoying the strange gentleness of his mouth She broke the kiss then, and his lips trailed over her jaw. She buried her head in his shoulder, still clinging to him, feeling a little weak now, a little dizzy from his kiss, and the tightness of his arms, the closeness of his body.
“You will, Jean?”
“Yes,” she said. “I will.”
“You want to?”
“I want to.” She was still weak. She clung to him desperately, urging her senses to return.
“Friday,” he said. “I’ll be out by then. We’ll go to a movie in Newport News. All right?”
“Yes.” She pulled away from him. “You must let me go now. Someone might come.”
“Eight o’clock, Jean,” he said. “In civvies. You know the movie house there, don’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Eight o’clock Friday night. Jean, I—”
“Don’t. Don’t say it.”
“All right. Later.”
“Yes, later. Now please go.”
He kissed her again, briefly, and then he whirled and went off down the corridor. She watched him until he was out of sight, and then she leaned against the wall limply and thought, Friday night, Friday night.
On Thursday afternoon they sat together in the sixth-floor solarium. The glass was in place now, against the onslaught of winter, glass that stretched from floor to ceiling, substituting for the screens that were up in summer. They sat together, the three men, and they looked through the glass and out over the base.
Guibert was the first to rise.
“I’m going down to take a nap. O.K., Greg?”
Greg nodded, saying nothing.
“One thing about a rare disease,” Guibert said, “everybody treats you like a walking test tube. Hell, the whole future of mankind may depend on what they find out about me.”
“You’re priceless,” Greg said. “Go on downstairs and ask one of the nurses to lock you up in the vault. We wouldn’t want to lose you.”
“Greg’s a card, all right,” Guibert said. “Well, I’m going down.” He paused. “Tennis, anyone?”
No one answered. Guibert shrugged and walked away.
He watched Guibert walk past Greg and then out into the corridor. In a little while, he heard the whine of the elevator, and then the doors rasping open and slamming shut, and then the whine again. He turned to Greg.
“You must be happy,” he said.
“Yeah? Why?” Greg answered.
“I’m leaving tomorrow.”
“We’re gonna miss you, pal. It ain’t often we get a professional goof-off like you around here.”
He smiled. He could afford the luxury of a smile now. Now even Greg couldn’t get under his skin. Everything was all set with Jean now. Tomorrow night, after that—hell, it would be simple.
“What’re you grinning about?” Greg asked.
“Oh, nothing.”
“I didn’t think you’d be so happy about leaving. I notice you been real palsy-walsy with Miss Dvorak.” Greg paused. “You ain’t stepped out of line with her, have you?”
“Me?” he asked, feigning incredulity. “Hell, Greg, I know my place. Miss Dvorak’s an officer.”
“So was Claire Cole,” Greg snapped.
“Well, I didn’t know Claire Cole. But even if I did, I’d have respected those j.g. stripes.”
“You knew her well enough to figure that, huh?”
“What?”
“That she was a j.g?”
“Everybody on the Sykes knew that.”
“Sure. Including Schaefer.”
“Including Schaefer.”
“He seemed like a nice kid, Schaefer. Not the kind you figure to be messing around with a broad. Not the kind who kills.”
“No?”
“No.” Greg paused. “You, look more like the kind who kills to me.”
“What do you mean by that?, He was sitting upright in his chair now, staring across at Greg. Greg’s eyes had narrowed, and he looked into those eyes and realized he had responded too nervously. He would have to be careful.
“Yeah,” Greg said slowly, as if an idea were forming in his mind. “Yeah, you look just like the kind who would kill.”
“What the hell do you know about killers?” he asked calmly, watching Greg very carefully now, not liking the crafty look on the pharmacist’s mate’s face.
“Nothing. Only what I can smell. You smell like a killer to me. Yeah, you know that? You smell like a killer. You must be a real bastard in a fist fight.”
“I can handle myself.”
“Yeah, and better with women, I suppose.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Must be easy to slam a dame around, huh?”
“I never hit a woman in my life.”
“No?”
“No.”
“Who hit Claire Cole?”
“Schaefer did.”
“Yeah? Is that what it said in the base newspaper?”
“Yes, that’s what it said.”
“But we know different, huh?”
He was alert now, every sense alert. He stared at Greg and wondered if the pharmacist’s mate were bluffing, how could he know, how could he possibly …
“What do you mean?” he asked.
“Claire and me used to talk together a lot,” Greg said, the crafty look gleaming brightly in his eyes now.
“Yeah? Wh … what about?”
“Lots of things. Life. Liberty.” Greg paused. “Men.”
“What would she want to talk to you for, you crud?”
“I’m sympathetic. She told me all about Schaefer.”
“Yeah?” He felt relieved. Greg knew nothing.
“And you!” Greg said suddenly.
“Me?” He snorted. “Hah, that’s a laugh.”
“How you were crazy about her,” Greg said, his eyes narrowed, standing now, moving closer to the chair, his back to the huge glass area around the solarium.
“You’re nuts.”
“Real crazy about her. How you and her had a real ball here at the hospital, right under Schaefer’s nose.”
“Get out of here, will you? You’re dreaming. You never talked to her.”
“I did. Oh, yes, mate, I did.”
Was Greg telling the truth? He couldn’t be sure. Jesus, had Claire talked to him? But what was all this garbage about Schaefer? No, no, he was bluffing.
“You’re bluffing me,” he said.
“Bluffing about what?” Greg snapped.
“About … about talking to Claire. You never talked to her.”
“Why should I bluff you? What’s there to bluff you about? Why should I want to bluff you into anything?”
“You want me to say I knew Claire. You’re needling me again, that’s all.” He glanced hastily around the solarium. They were alone, and he was thankful for that. No one else was listening to
this conversation, no one but the two of them, alone up here.
“You got something to hide?” Greg shouted. “You think I don’t know you knew Claire?”
“I didn’t know her!”
“You’re lying! You knew her here, and you knew her ashore, too!”
“What the hell! You’re—you’re—I didn’t know her!”
“She said you did! She told me so. She said you were real chummy.”
“She was lying, then. I didn’t know her.”
“She said you went to bed together!”
The accusation hung on the silence of the solarium. He sat watching Greg, aware of a thin sheen of sweat on his brow now, wanting to know how much else Greg knew, wanting to know if this were true, uncertain now, thinking maybe, maybe …
“When did she tell you this?”
“Just before she died,” Greg snapped, his eyes blazing. “Just before she went to the Sykes.”
“She … about me? She mentioned me?”
Greg moved forward swiftly, his lips skinned back over his teeth, his eyes bright. “She said she was going to the Sykes to meet you! That’s what she said!”
He leaped out of his chair. “You tell this to anyone?”
Greg backed off a pace, his face suddenly pale. “You … you …” He was fighting for ideas now, and fighting for breath. “Why, you … This is all true, ain’t it?” Greg’s eyes were wide in astonishment now, and something else. Fear. He was backing away quickly, as if he expected an attack. “I—I was just making it up, trying to get a ri … But it’s true! Holy Jesus, you killed her, didn’t you? Holy Jesus, you killed Claire Cole!”
He shoved out at Greg, and Greg stumbled backward a pace, and then he shoved again, harder this time, and Greg floundered for balance, losing his footing, going back, back. He closed in on Greg, and this time he shoved with all the weight of his shoulder and arms behind the push. He saw Greg lunge backward, and then he heard the crash as Greg’s body hit the glass. The body clung there for a moment, and then the glass shattered and the body rushed out to meet the cold winter air, eyes wide, hands clawing at nothing.
He rushed out of the solarium, hearing footsteps down the corridor, ducking around a corner where he was unseen.
When Greg hit the pavement, six stories below, his eyes were still wide in astonishment and disbelief, and his skull cracked open with an angry splash that blotted everything out of his mind and his body.
13
The B-26 was painted yellow, and it hung against the gray sky like an egg yolk on a city pavement. Its nose was pointed toward the New Jersey coastline, and its engines droned monotonously. Up in the cabin, the pilot and copilot damn near fell asleep.
On the island of Brigantine, off the New Jersey coast, there stood a hotel. The hotel had once been headquarters for Father Divine and his angels, but it had been taken over by the Navy for a radar school, and its roof bristled with antennae now. The Sugar Roger antenna, the large bedspring type attached to the air-search gear, revolved with methodical precision, circumscribing a 360-degree impenetrable area of electronic impulses. The impulses leaped through the air, reaching out and out, striking the metal skin of the B-26, bouncing off that skin, echoing back through the nonresisting atmosphere, were caught again by the all-seeing eyeless bedspring antenna, channeled down into the depths of the hotel via a thick cable, translated onto the circular P.P.I. scope in terms of short electronic visual spurts of brightness, and retranslated by the radar operator in terms of range and bearing.
Fred Singer depressed the button on top of his sound-powered phones. “Bogey,” he said, “three-one-zero, range thirty.”
A radarman named Rook, wearing sound-powered phones, one earpiece in place, the other shoved onto his temple so that he could hear messages on the phones and orders from Mr. Masters simultaneously, picked up a thick black crayon and applied it to the plastic surface that stretched in front of him. The plastic was etched with a large wheel, the hub of which was the hotel, the spokes of which were the relative bearings from 360 degrees, around to 090 degrees, to 180 degrees, to 270 degrees, back to 360 degrees. Circles within circles, marking off the ranges—ten miles, twenty miles, thirty miles, forty miles, and out, out, out—crossed the bearing markers. Automatically, Rook found 310, followed the range markers out to thirty miles, marked a large X on the plastic at the intersection. Writing backward, so that the writing was visible and intelligible for Mr. Masters, standing on the other side of the clear plastic, he jotted down the time in minutes and quarter minutes: 073.
Singer called in another reading a minute later. Rook marked another X and connected both X’s with a straight line. Another reading, another X, another reading, another X. On the plastic, writing backward, Rook drew a box and inside the box he indicated: Course, 190. Speed, 250.
From the radar gear, Singer asked, “Request permission to stop Sugar Roger antenna.”
Masters snapped down his button. “Permission granted,” he said.
Singer snapped a dial, adjusted another. The operation couldn’t have taken more than forty seconds. Into his phone he said, “Single bogey.”
Rook automatically wrote this onto the plastic. They now knew they had an unidentified aircraft (which they’d known all along, since the B-26 was simulating an enemy plane and they had been informed of this before the practice session began) that was traveling at a speed of 250 miles an hour on a course of 190, which meant it would be on the hotel in a matter of minutes.
Masters pulled down a hand mike. “Blue One, this is Blue Base,” he said. “Over.”
Caldroni, who was playing the role of the squadron commander leading the interceptor planes known as Blue One, answered, “This is Blue One. Over.”
“Single bogey,” Masters said, glancing at the plastic again. “Three-one-zero, range twenty-two, course one-nine-zero, speed two-fifty.” Rapidly he calculated an intercepting course. “Vector two-one-zero, angels five. Over.”
“Wilco and out,” Caldroni said.
On the plotting board before him Caldroni plotted his own squadron’s progress, together with the progress of the oncoming B-26. The B-26 moved relentlessly toward its target, which was the hotel. Caldroni’s squadron, for which they had calculated a top speed of 350 miles an hour, had a hell of a long way to go before visual contact could be made.
Masters picked up the hand mike again. “Blue One, this is Blue Base. Over.”
“This is Blue One,” Caldroni said. “Over.”
“Tallyho?” Masters asked, wanting to know if, according to the plotting Caldroni was doing, the squadron had as yet sighted the enemy aircraft.
“Not yet, sir,” Caldroni said. “Over.”
“Out,” Masters said sourly. The men all looked up as they heard the sound of the B-26 overhead. “We were just blown off the map,” Masters informed them. “You all did one hell of a sloppy job.” He picked up a live mike and said, “Yellow One, this is Charley Horse. Over.”
Static erupted into the darkened room. Then the pilot of the B-26 answered, “Go ahead, Charley Horse.”
“Want to take another run, please? Over.”
“Roger. Give us a vector. Over.”
“Vector three-one-zero, angels three. Choose your own approach. We want to be surprised. Start out at about a hundred and fifty, will you? We want to see what kind of range pickup we’ve got.”
“Hope you’ve got plenty of time,” the pilot said. “This buggy can’t do much more’n two hundred and fifty per. This ain’t a jet, you know.”
“I know,” Masters said. “We’ll be ready for you when you come back.”
“They should’ve put this crate in moth balls years ago,” the pilot muttered, and then he added, “Out.”
Masters turned to Singer. “What the hell’s wrong with you, Singer? Were you asleep?”
“I was getting a lot of land-mass echo, sir.”
“Baloney,” Masters said. “There’s nothing between you and England but the Atlantic ocean.”
“Must be high waves, then, sir.”
“Come on, Singer, get on the ball. You pick him up at thirty miles, and he’s on us before we can get a plane to him. All right, let’s leave this for now. I want all of you in Room Thirty-three in ten minutes. Take a smoke, and be there on the button. We’re going to try a few torpedo runs.”
“We did that already,” Kraus, another of the radarmen, complained.
“And we’ll keep doing it until we get it right,” Masters snapped. “Go take your smokes.”
Andrew Brague, an ensign fresh out of communications school, walked over to Masters. “Think we’re riding them too hard, sir?”
“What?” Masters said, wondering why every idiot ensign in the world eventually came under his wing.
“The men, sir. Don’t you think you’re being a little hard on them?”
“How so?” Masters asked, annoyed.
“No liberty since we’ve been here. Round-the-clock watches. Classes every minute except for chow and smoke breaks. I don’t know, sir.”
Masters eyed Brague sourly. “Tell me, Ensign,” he said, “just what the hell you think this is—a picnic?”
“Sir?” Brague said, startled.
“We’re here to unify these men into a smoothly working machine. We’re going to be a picket ship, Brague. Do you know what that means? It means that the life of the Sykes and the life of the task force behind the Sykes will depend upon the efficiency of our radar screen. Do you know what the average life span of a picket ship on station is, Brague?”
“No, sir.”
“It’s measured in minutes, Brague,” Masters said. “I don’t want to wind up as a statistic. So I’m trying to pound some working knowledge into the heads of these men. This may all be a joke to them now, but someday it may be serious, damned serious, and I think we should be ready, don’t you?”
“Well, of course, sir.”
“Then don’t tell me I’m riding the men too hard. I’ll ride them as hard as I have to, and there’ll be no liberty until I can see something sinking in. Have I been ashore yet, Brague?”
“No, sir.”
“Damn right I haven’t. And I’ll tell you something else, Brague. There’s a girl I’ve been dying to call for the past week. She’s in Norfolk right now, and that’s where I’d like to be, and I want her to know that. But every time I come within six yards of that phone booth in the lobby, there’s always somebody coming along with another damn order from the C.O. of this joint. I haven’t even had time to write her a letter! So don’t come weeping to me about the men. We’re all ‘men,’ Brague, and to hell with Navy jargon. And I don’t like this any more than the rest of us.”