Forever and a Death

by Donald E. Westlake

  After a while, the men digging at the face came to something solid, which pleased them. Mark didn’t dare spend too much time looking, but it seemed to be some sort of underground wall, possibly of concrete, convex, curving toward them. Excited, the men cleared more of it, working their way down the wall across a narrow band, not bothering to clear to left and right. They threw dirt back more quickly than ever, and Mark worked and worked.

  Then everyone stopped while another man arrived, a more important man, in shirt and long pants, and carrying something that looked at first like a space-age machine gun. Everyone stepped out of his way, and Mark leaned, grateful, against the tram, and the man stepped over to the newly reached wall. He aimed his machine at it, and it was some sort of high-powered laser, shooting a thread-thin beam too bright to look at directly.

  The man was very skilled. He scored the concrete wall with a kind of long narrow vertical oval, perhaps four feet high, a foot and a half wide, just large enough for a man to slide through. He scored several times on the same line, cutting at an angle inward, until he’d sliced all the way through. Then Li came forward with two metal handles, which were fastened with screws to the concrete. Grasping the handles, two of the men lifted the cut section out and away, and Mark saw there was some sort of dim-lit room beyond it. A cool breeze came in from that room, like the sympathetic touch of an angel. Mark cried, feeling that touch, but no one noticed or cared.

  Bennett appeared, from the main tunnel. Mark looked at him like a beaten dog, but Bennett paid him no attention. He went through the new opening into that distant room, spoke back into the tunnel, and the man with the laser and four other men went through, carrying shovels and a rolled-up length of canvas. The cut-away piece of wall was put back snugly into place, and the nice cool breeze stopped, and work began again.

  It was some time later that the laser man was there once more. More of the wall had been exposed, completely clearing it on the left, and the laser man scored a vertical line down that side, as though to open the wall completely to the same size as the tunnel. This time, though, he didn’t cut all the way through, just drew that line partly into the concrete, to make it weak.

  Then it was another time. The plug in the concrete wall was sometimes open, sometimes shut. Men brought back heavy loads of dirt wrapped in the length of canvas. Men went through with their tools, and later they came back.

  The clearing of the wall on this side was nearly done.

  Mark looked up and Luther went by. He stumbled, he seemed dazed, he looked at Mark without recognition and moved on, shoved by Bennett.

  Luther? Mark tried to think. Was Luther here? Had he forgotten? Was Jerry here? He tried to think, but it was very hard to think.

  A hand smacked him across the back of the head. He bent over the shovel, and worked.

  5

  No one noticed that Luther was missing until they were in the elevator on the way back up to lobby level. Kim was thinking how strangely ordinary the tunnel had seemed, like somebody’s wine cellar, only longer, or the basement under a very old house, and then she found herself thinking about poor Luther, how remote he seemed these days, how he didn’t seem to react to or even much notice anything around him. And then she realized he wasn’t there. “Luther!” she said.

  Everybody looked at her, not knowing what she meant, and then they all made the same discovery. Mr. Hang, the building manager, gave them a look more exasperated than accusing, and said, “There was one more of you!”

  “Luther,” George said. “We left him behind.”

  Captain Sahling, the rather impatient chief of the building’s security, snapped, “The man didn’t stay with us? Why did no one keep an eye on him?”

  Mr. Hang said, “We’ll have to send someone down for him.”

  Kim said, “Can’t he just get the elevator?”

  “The door to the tunnel,” Captain Sahling said, in the iciest of tones, “is kept locked. In fact, both doors, at the head and the foot of the staircase, are kept locked. Someone will have to go down to release him.”

  The elevator took them up to the lobby, a high echoing place of glass and chrome, with a marble floor that made footsteps ring out as though everybody were suddenly more important. Captain Sahling spoke in irritable Chinese into his walkie-talkie, then the six of them stood around waiting, to one side, away from the traffic to and from the elevators. George and Tony Fairchild took turns trying to placate the captain, assuring him that Luther had been under a strain lately, that they all appreciated that this was taking up more of the captain’s time than he’d bargained for, and they were certain Luther would be completely chagrined when he came up. The captain reacted to all this with stiff impatience, and Kim noticed that Inspector Ha and Mr. Hang didn’t bother trying to soothe the captain’s ruffled feelings at all.

  Two slim young security men in tan uniforms hurried into view, saluted their captain, and took an elevator down. Captain Sahling assured them all once more that he was a busy man. Mr. Hang said he was sorry Luther hadn’t managed to call out to them or knock on the door to attract their attention, because he would be in darkness down there. “Poor Luther,” Kim said.

  Captain Sahling’s walkie-talkie made its sputter. The reactions of Inspector Ha and Mr. Hang to the transmission in rapid Chinese suggested some sort of bad news.

  Captain Sahling, more irritable than ever, snapped something angry into his walkie-talkie, and it rasped a response. One more exchange, and he glared at them with fury compounded by doubt. “They say,” he reported, “he isn’t there.”

  George said, “That’s impossible.”

  “Nevertheless.”

  Mr. Hang said, “We must go back down.”

  “I will go,” Captain Sahling said.

  George said, “We’ll all go, Captain.”

  The captain was going to argue, but then decided not to, and they all rode the elevator back down to the lowest basement and the small bare concrete room where the two young security men stood, looking awkward and embarrassed, afraid they were about to be blamed for something.

  In addition to the door to the stairwell, there was one metal door from this room to the rest of the sub-basement, but it was locked and had not been disturbed. Captain Sahling spoke with the security men and then, more calmly, Inspector Ha spoke with them, and then everybody trooped down the stairs again and into the tunnel.

  There was no one there. Luther was gone. They spent ten minutes searching the place, and there was no sign of Luther, no sign of any other way in or out. At last they gathered again at the door to the stairwell, not knowing what to do next. Their flashlights bobbed uncertainly, pointing this way and that. Captain Sahling, who clearly resented situations he couldn’t control, said, “I don’t know what your friend has done.”

  George said, “Our friend? Captain, it’s your tunnel.”

  Sahling stared at him, then looked away, down the length of the tunnel. “Is it?” he asked.

  6

  Mr. Curtis was furious, and Bennett understood why, but what else could he have done? If he’d killed the German and left the body there, that would have been worse, wouldn’t it? There was no time or way to invent an accident. So those people had a disappearance on their hands, that’s all, no way to be absolutely certain what had happened. Maybe the German had even walked off on his own. After all, the others had forgotten all about him, they’d walked off themselves and left him there.

  “All right, all right,” Curtis said, at last calming down a little. “You did what you had to do.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  The three of them stood in Curtis’s quarters on the site, a small construction trailer kept strictly for his use, the rare times he was here. Half of it was an office, simple but complete, with Internet access and fax machine, where they now talked. The other half was a bedroom and bath, which Curtis had never used.

  Bennett had brought the German directly here, because what else was there to do with him? Curtis had been sea
ted at his desk, computer screen open before him, and when he’d seen the German he’d jumped to his feet, yelled at Bennett to shut the door, and had demanded to know where the German had come from and what was going on. Now, the first shock of it done, he was a bit calmer. “All right,” he said. “The damn fellow can do some work for us.”

  “Oh, good, sir, like the other one.”

  The German was recovered now from his tussle with Bennett, but merely looked at them both with a vague expression on his face, as though they were speaking a language he didn’t understand. Gesturing at him, Bennett said, “Should I give him to Li too?”

  “No, I don’t want them together,” Curtis said. “Take him to the other side, there’s a dig supervisor named Chin.”

  “Good, sir.”

  “And come back.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Bennett took the German by the arm and led him outside. Halfway across to the building, the German made a sudden dash toward the main gate, and Bennett had to grab him and hit him several times to calm him down. But then he went along quietly.

  They were digging cross-tunnels in two directions from here, trying to reach as many water tunnels as possible, so Bennett delivered the German to the work crew on the second side, then returned to Curtis, now at the large table, with construction plans laid out. Looking up at Bennett, he said, “Any trouble?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Good. Come over here.”

  Bennett went over to stand beside Curtis and study the plans. God, it was good to be back in construction again! To be standing in a site office, shoulder to shoulder with the boss, looking over the plans. This, Bennett thought, is where I’ve been supposed to be, lo, these many years. “Yes, sir,” he said.

  Looking at the plans, Curtis said, “We don’t have as much time as I’d hoped, Colin.”

  “No, sir.”

  “Them being here in Hong Kong, and in one of the tunnels, suggests they know far too much.”

  “It’s that Mark Hennessy, sir,” Bennett said, meaning, there’s a bad employee, and here, sir, right here at your side, is a good employee.

  Curtis said, “I suppose part of it is Mark, but not all of it, he didn’t know that much. I think it’s mostly George Manville, figuring things out. Why I didn’t get rid of him when I had my hands on him I’ll never know.”

  “You thought he could still help you, sir.”

  “Well, I was wrong about that,” Curtis said. “But it isn’t going to stop us, Colin.”

  Us. “No, sir!”

  Bending over the plans, Curtis said, “We’ve linked seven of the tunnels. I’d hoped for ten, and more profit, too.” He tapped the plans. “There’s some gold out there we won’t be getting, Colin.”

  “We’ll be getting a lot, sir.”

  “Oh, yes, I know we will. But we’re going to have to do the job right now.”

  Surprised, Colin said, “Now, sir?”

  “Tonight.” Curtis looked away, at the flat rectangle of window framing the sunlit construction site. Within, the air-conditioning faintly hummed, “In a way,” Curtis said, and Bennett knew he was talking mostly to himself, “it’s better to have them here. Deals with everything at once.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “You’re going to be my eyes and ears, Colin,” Curtis said, and there was a knock at the door. Curtis said, “That’ll be Jackie, I just called him to come over. Let him in.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Bennett didn’t much like Jackie Tian, his manner of being on the inside track here in Hong Kong, but he’d never let either Tian or Curtis know it. He crossed to open the door, and smiled a big smile at Tian, saying, “How are you?”

  “Good,” Tian said, curtly, as though Bennett were too unimportant to care about. Entering, he said, “Afternoon, Mr. Curtis.”

  “Hello, Jackie, we’ve had a little problem here.”

  Tian looked at Bennett as though assuming he was the cause of the problem, and said, “What’s that?”

  “The people who’ve been bothering me are here in Hong Kong. Colin found them in one of the bank tunnels, but they didn’t see him.”

  Surprised, Tian said, “In the tunnel? You mean, they know what we’re doing?”

  “They can’t know everything,” Curtis said, “or they’d be in this room with us right now, and a number of policemen as well. But they know something, they know too much to risk waiting anymore. As I just told Colin, we’ll have to change our plans, cut back on what we hoped to accomplish, and run the operation tonight.”

  Tian frowned down at the construction plans on the table, though Bennett doubted the man could read them. “Will that work?” he asked. “We aren’t everywhere we wanted to be, are we?”

  “We’re close enough,” Curtis told him. “There’ll still be plenty of profit for all of us, Jackie.”

  “Good,” Tian said. “I’m ready to go live somewhere else for a while.”

  Curtis laughed, sounding a bit shrill. “I think we all are, Jackie,” he said. “Now take a look at this.”

  The three men bent over the table as Curtis moved a finger along the various tunnels. “Jackie,” he said, “your job is the bulldozer and the vaults. Is the submarine hooked to the bulldozer?”

  “It’ll trail me like a geisha,” Tian said, “everywhere I go. It’s on the wheeled carriage.”

  “All right. Once we start, we’ll have to move very fast. They’ll know something’s happening, their alarms will be going mad, but they won’t know where we’ve come from and they won’t know where we’re going and they won’t be able to come down to interfere with us.” Turning, he said, “Colin, that’s where you start. The first set of explosives are in position—”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “—and you’ll set them off when Jackie says he’s ready. He’ll radio you as he moves, and you’ll be in here with the controls.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “When the submarine’s full,” Curtis said, “Jackie, you’ll come up out of there, with your crew. But moving fast, Jackie.”

  “Count on me,” Tian said.

  “When Jackie radios you that he’s clear,” Curtis said to Bennett, “you fire the explosives, to breach the seawall at the ends of the tunnels.”

  “Right, sir.”

  Curtis said to Tian, “Is the new diver here?”

  “He’ll be here tonight,” Tian promised.

  “He stays in the tunnel with the submarine,” Curtis said. “Once the tunnel fills with water, he uses the external controls to guide it down the tunnel and into the harbor. Then he switches it to radio control, and I guide it from there.”

  “Right.”

  “Then he comes back through the tunnel and up here.”

  Tian said, “Why doesn’t he just go out across the harbor, come out anywhere?”

  “And be questioned?” Curtis shook his head. “The only safe way in and out, Jackie,” he said, “is this construction site. That’s what it’s here for.”

  “Fine,” Tian said.

  Curtis turned back to Bennett. “Now, the second set of explosives,” he said, and tapped the plans here and there, “we’re going to have to move. We’re in fewer tunnels, the physics changes, and to be honest, I’d feel more comfortable if I had George here to look at my figures. But I’ve done it, and I know I’m right.”

  Bennett hadn’t the first idea what Curtis was talking about, but that didn’t matter. “Yes, sir.”

  Curtis said, “I’ve marked the new positions. They all move, all six of them, slightly. But the exact position is important, all right, Colin?”

  “Absolutely, sir,” Bennett said. He frowned at the plans as though to memorize the new positions of the explosives, though in fact he’d be carrying a set of the plans with him when he made the changes.

  “Once the tunnels are flooded,” Curtis said, “you trigger the second explosives with the radio.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “You will then have thirty minutes.”r />
  “Yes, sir.”

  “When those explosives go,” Curtis said, and turned his bland eyes on Bennett, “they will destroy every bit of evidence of what we’ve done. I think it possible there’ll be some damage even here.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Don’t try to leave the island,” Curtis said, “but do get away from this neighborhood. Maybe east, over toward Wan Chai. I want you all safe,” Curtis assured them.

  “Yes, sir,” they both said.

  7

  They were all gathered around Inspector Ha’s table. After the inspection of the tunnel under the bank building, and the disappearance of Luther Rickendorf, they’d come back here to police headquarters and this conference room, where they sat around the long oval pale-wood table on gray swivel chairs with black plastic arms.

  Inspector Ha shook his head ruefully. “I have always been proud of how large and important our city is, how dense, how many people we have put together on this small island. More here than in Manhattan. But now, to find one man in it, one wealthy man, here illegally, with who knows how many people working for him, paid to keep him hidden…” He spread his hands, to show the complexity of the task.

  “An army,” Tony said, feeling glum. “That’s what Curtis has, an army at his disposal. Of course, we have an army, too, or you do, Inspector, but Curtis also has time on his side.”

  “That’s what I’m afraid of,” George said. “If he has Luther, and I guess he must, then he knows we’re here. He knows we’re close. So if he can speed up what he’s doing, he will, even if it means he loses some of the loot he’s after.”

  Ha said, “Mr. Manville, I agree with you that he must be using one of the current construction projects to cover his activities. He’s probably staying on the site when he comes to the city, and when he leaves he’ll do so late at night in a small boat. If he does that, we’ll never find him, and never prove anything against him. So we are trying now to learn which construction site is the front for Richard Curtis.”