Veil

by George C. Chesbro

  Veil is stunned into silence. His mouth is dry. The air in his lungs feels thick and heavy, like that of some alien planet.

  "You asked for it straight, Captain," Madison continues, "so that's how I gave it to you. You're going to Tokyo for six weeks for a little R and R and some very specific instructions on how you're going to handle this new assignment. Needless to say, the poor innocents who dreamed up this stunt can't begin to appreciate what a truly insane, insubordinate son of a bitch you really are."

  Veil shakes his head. He feels shamed. "Don't do this to me, Madison," he says quietly. "I'm a soldier, not a performer."

  "After Tokyo you'll come back to Saigon for appropriate awards ceremonies jointly conducted by us and the South Vietnamese. Then you're off to the States." Madison pauses, nods toward the impassive Vietnamese. "This is Major Po. He's your replacement here. I want you to introduce him to your people, and then we're getting the hell out—"

  This is an exceptionally unpleasant dream, which Veil has not experienced for years. Since learning how to control them, he has trusted his dreams, for they have often proved useful to him. But he cannot understand why he should be dreaming of

  Southeast Asia and events that had occurred so many years in the past. Unable to see any connection between where he was then and where he is now, Veil rolls out of the dream and segues into deep, restful sleep.

  Chapter 4

  ______________________________

  Veil completed a third set of bench presses and eased the weights down onto the holding rack above his head. He pushed back his long, sweat-soaked blond hair, sat up, and studied himself in the wall mirror as he waited for his pulse to normalize and the satisfying ache in his muscles to ease. His pale blue, gold-flecked eyes narrowed as he appraised what he saw. There were scars, of course, including a puckered mound the size of a baby's fist on his right side where a lance of twisted metal had skewered him and collapsed a lung, but his body was solid; the muscles in his stomach, chest, arms, and legs clearly articulated.

  Satisfied with his workout, Veil rose and walked to the showers, passing through a cloud of musky-smelling mist that was leaking from the half-open door of the steam room. He shuddered under an ice-cold needle spray for a few seconds, then padded down a narrow, tiled corridor leading to the pool.

  He knifed cleanly into the still, blue water and swam the twenty-five-meter length of the pool under water, pulling rhythmically with his arms and using a powerful scissors kick. As he reached the shallow end he had the abrupt, alarming sensation that someone was stuffing a flannel rag down his throat. He surfaced and began to cough violently.

  Finally the racking spasm passed. Puzzled, Veil took a series of deep breaths as he rubbed his sore chest and swallowed repeatedly. Feeling no lingering ill effects, he pushed off the wall and lazily backstroked toward the deep end. Without warning he began to cough again, and he barely managed to keep from swallowing water. There was a bitter medicinal taste at the back of his throat, and he felt as if he had been gassed.

  The steam room, Veil thought.

  He heard the familiar sound of soft, distant chimes in his head, and knew he was in terrible danger.

  He twisted around in the water in time to see a golden shape angling up toward him from the bottom of the pool. He had heard no sound—no closing doors in the locker room, no smack of feet on tile, no splash as the man had entered the water.

  Veil rolled to his left and jackknifed beneath the surface. A hand grabbed for his ankle, missed, caught hold of his left wrist, and yanked. Fighting against dizziness and a swelling pressure behind his eyes, he relaxed and allowed himself to be pulled toward the bottom of the pool. The fingers on his wrist were very strong, powerful enough to snap bone. He knew that he had to control his gag reflex, for he would drown if he coughed. That was what the man wanted; he had been gassed just enough to make him an easy target.

  Veil reached across his body and wrapped the fingers of his right hand around the man's wrist. He pivoted a quarter turn, brought his knees up to his chest, and kicked under the man's extended arm into his rib cage. Despite the fact that Veil's strength was rapidly failing, the blow landed with enough force to break the wristlock and drive the man away. There was a gurgle of surprise, accompanied by a burst of bubbles that shimmered with a pink glow in his drug-clouded field of vision.

  Veil swept his arms up over his head, driving himself down hard to a squatting position on the bottom. He immediately pushed off, extending his arms over his head and angling toward the side of the pool. He broke the surface just inches from the edge, slapped his palms on the deck, and pulled. His momentum carried him cleanly out of the water. He swayed with dizziness, coughing and gasping for breath, but managed to stay on his feet.

  He had to get into the locker room, had to get to his gym bag.

  There was an explosion of water four feet to his right as the yellow-haired, deeply tanned man burst out of the water like a missile launched from a submarine. The golden man landed light as a cat on the deck, then immediately dropped on his hands and executed a gymnast's leg sweep in an attempt to cut Veil's legs out from under him.

  Veil hopped over the scythe of the man's legs, then dove toward the center of the pool. He entered the water at a sharp angle and, wincing at the sick pain in his head, immediately reversed his direction, crabbing down and back. The golden man landed in the water and shot past overhead. Veil turned, pulled to the surface, and again hopped up on the deck. He grabbed a long-poled skimming net from a rack on the wall, spun around, and crouched, ready to jab with the pole's blunt end. His muscles felt rubbery.

  The golden man was treading water easily in the center of the pool, long yellow hair floating around his shoulders. There was surprise and respect in the dark brown eyes that studied Veil. "Don't resist," he said in a flat voice. "It won't do you any good. I won't hurt you if you don't force me to. You won't feel anything."

  American, Veil thought. Home-grown talent. He judged him to be in his mid-twenties. It was all Veil could do to draw a breath, and the golden man wasn't even breathing hard. "My dentist used to say things like that," Veil replied in a voice that sounded like it came from an echo chamber inside his head. "I think I'll decline your offer and just wait here until somebody shows up."

  "The doors are locked. Nobody's coming in, and you're not walking out."

  "Talk is cheap, my young friend. What else do you have to show me besides your vocabulary?"

  "I heard you used to be quite the martial artist, Kendry. Well, you're not anywhere near top stuff now. You're past it. Even without that shit in you, you'd be no match for me. Accept my offer."

  "If you think you're so goddam good, why don't you wait for me on the other side of the pool? As soon as I stop seeing two of you, I'll see if I can't make you work up a sweat."

  "Don't take me for a fool, Kendry. I was just stating a fact, not issuing a challenge. This is just business."

  "You're Madison's man, right? How is that fat, sadistic bastard?"

  The golden man did not answer.

  "Why the hell pick this place to come after me?" Veil continued. "What was wrong with New York?"

  The golden man's response this time was a faint smile as, head up and eyes fixed on the end of the skimming net pole, he began to glide slowly toward Veil.

  He waited until the man was a few feet closer, then hurled the pole at his head. The golden man casually knocked the pole away with the side of a thickly callused hand. Veil launched himself into the air. He soared over the golden man's head, landed flat on his stomach and chest in a racing dive, and sprinted toward the opposite side.

  Now he was exactly where the assassin wanted him, Veil thought, in the water. But swimming across the pool was the most direct route to the locker room, and that was where he had to go. The time he had already gained seemed to be working to his advantage, for he no longer had the urge to gag and cough. The drug was passing out of his system. He felt better but nowhere near well enough to tur
n and fight. He needed still more time.

  Feigning only slightly more exhaustion than he actually felt, Veil slowed as he approached the side and listened carefully to the sound of the golden man thrashing through the water after him. He gripped the edge, made a motion as if he were going to haul himself out of the water, then flipped over on his back, cocked his right leg, and kicked out at the golden man's face. The assassin managed to partially block the kick, but a popping sound and a rush of blood told Veil that, at the least, the man's nose was broken.

  The assassin grabbed for Veil's ankle, but Veil was already out of the water and staggering into the locker room.

  More than a minute passed. Then the golden man appeared, naked and silent as a shadow, at the far end of a row of lockers. Blood still flowed freely from his nose and mouth, but he gave no indication that he was in pain. He stared for a few moments at Veil, who was sitting on a long wooden bench, gagging and coughing as he slumped over a blue canvas gym bag.

  "You should have done as I asked," the golden man said, lisping slightly as his tongue passed over the space where his front teeth had been. "You hurt me, and now I'm going to hurt you before I kill you. In the end it will still look as though you drowned."

  Suddenly Veil straightened. There was a flash of movement as his hand came out of the bag and he hurled a set of heavy ankle weights at the assassin's head. Displaying incredible reflexes, depth perception, and nerve, the golden man calmly reached out and plucked the leather-and-lead missile from the air. The golden man smiled with contempt, then shrugged and started to toss the weights to one side. In that instant of wasted motion and flickering concentration, Veil threw the bench. The golden man was able to sidestep the flying bench, but by then Veil was in on him.

  Chapter 5

  ______________________________

  Where did you learn to use your hands like that, Kendry?"

  "I don't know what you mean, Lieutenant."

  "You tore away a man's throat with your bare hands."

  "That's ridiculous, Lieutenant. I don't even have long fingernails."

  "Don't be a fucking wise-ass! You did it! I want to know where you learned how to do it."

  "I pushed him away from me," Veil replied quietly. "He tripped and caught his throat on the sharp edge of the locker. It was a freak accident."

  "Do you expect me to believe that story?"

  "It's true."

  "You're not going to like it much if I decide to book you on a murder charge."

  "I didn't like it much when that man tried to rob me."

  "Tell me again what happened."

  "I'd worked out in the weight room and taken a swim. I was getting dressed when this man came up. He swung those ankle weights in my face and demanded my wallet."

  "The man was naked, Kendry. Have you ever heard of a naked mugger?"

  "Come on, Lieutenant. This happened in a locker room. Obviously, the man was on his way to take a swim. He noticed me coming out of the pool and figured I was an easy mark."

  "You don't look like an easy mark to me, Kendry. As a matter of fact, you look pretty damn solid."

  "He had the weights. He said he was going to smash in my face if I didn't give him the wallet."

  The man questioning him snorted with disgust and looked away. Veil relaxed slightly and glanced around the room. There were three men with him in the small reception area outside the director's office. His interrogator had been introduced to him as Lieutenant Parker. Parker was a lean, hard man whom Veil judged to be in his mid-fifties. His close-cropped, iron-gray hair matched the color of his eyes. He kept toying with a pencil and yellow pad set squarely in front of him on a secretary's desk, but he had yet to write anything down. There was an almost palpable air of suspicion and disbelief about the man, but he did not seem able to mount a sustained verbal attack. It struck him that Parker badly wanted to pursue a different line of questioning, but for some reason felt constrained from doing so.

  Dr. Henry Ibber, the Institute's chief investigator and the man who had conducted Veil's intake interview, stood leaning against the wall just behind Parker. Dressed in brown slacks, black turtleneck, and rust-colored tweed jacket, the physician seemed almost as nervous as Parker. Prematurely bald with a droopy mustache that framed thin lips, Ibber kept shifting his weight from one foot to the other as his dark eyes darted about the room. Veil judged the man to be in his early thirties, and tougher than he looked.

  Only Jonathan Pilgrim seemed at ease. The director was slouched in a leather armchair at the far corner of the room, his booted feet propped up on a coffee table. He was smoking one of his thin cigars and staring up through a haze of blue-gray smoke at the ceiling. Pilgrim's demeanor seemed to Veil somewhat bizarre under the circumstances. Like a magnet, the slouched figure kept drawing annoyed glances from Parker.

  "Am I boring you, Colonel?!" Parker snapped. "A man's been killed!"

  "That's certainly true," Pilgrim replied in a mild tone, "and I'm certainly glad it wasn't Mr. Kendry." Pilgrim slowly swung his feet to the floor, straightened up, and ground out his cigar. When he looked up, there was a hard glint in his eye. "I think you're being overzealous, Lieutenant. Dr. Ibber and I have told you that the dead man was one of our cooks. When they're off duty, our staff enjoys the privilege of using the recreational facilities. It looks like we hired ourselves a bad apple. It happens. Also, it does seem unlikely that an artist could tear out another man's throat with his bare hands, doesn't it? So, why the hassle?"

  Blood rushed to Parker's face, and for a moment Veil thought the man would pound the desk. They gray-haired man swallowed hard, brought himself back under control. "All right, Kendry," he said at last, his voice gravelly with frustration.

  Veil met the other man's hostile gaze. "Meaning?"

  "Meaning that I know where to find you if I have any more questions."

  Pilgrim abruptly rose to his feet. "Sorry for the trouble, Kendry. Are you certain you feel all right?"

  Veil nodded.

  "Good luck to you," Pilgrim continued brusquely as he walked across the reception area, opened a door, and disappeared into his office.

  The director had left the door to his office open, and Veil had a clear, if restricted, view of the interior. A modern glass-and-steel desk was visible, and on the wall behind the desk a map on a spring roller had been pulled down. The map appeared to be a larger version of the one printed in the Institute brochures, except that it included two huge gray areas, each at least half again the size of the "official" compound. One area was on the northern face of an adjacent mountain, and the second was at the eastern end of the valley running between the two mountains. Neither area was labeled.

  A moment later his view was blocked as Henry Ibber moved quickly across the room and pushed the door shut. Parker, red-faced and seething, rose and walked stiffly out the door. Veil glanced inquiringly at Ibber, who seemed embarrassed.

  "Kendry," Ibber said tightly, "this is an uncomfortable situation for both the Colonel and me."

  Veil smiled thinly. "I think I'm about to have my invitation withdrawn."

  Ibber took a deep breath as he thrust his hands into the pockets of his tweed jacket. "Even though you seem perfectly collected, a traumatic experience like the one you've just had can't help but leave deep and disturbing emotional overtones which may be with you for some time. Under the circumstances, it would be impossible for us to properly conduct the kinds of tests we'd planned for you. I hope you understand."

  Veil gave a slight shrug, rose to his feet. "Sure. Keeping me around might cause some deep and disturbing emotional overtones in the other guests, not to mention your ex-cook's buddies."

  "That isn't the point, Mr. Kendry, I assure you. In fact, we'd like to reschedule you for another session, perhaps in six months or so."

  "I'll look forward to it."

  Ibber smiled uncertainly. "There's no need for you to leave right away. Why don't you stay the night? In the morning someone can take you to the airpo
rt in the helicopter. We'll drop off your rented car." "I think not. I'd just as soon fly out tonight, and I prefer to drive myself."

  "As you wish."

  Veil stared hard at the other man for a few moments, until Ibber averted his eyes. "I know my way to the garage," he said as he headed for the door. "Nice meeting you, Ibber. Tell the Colonel I said good-bye."

  Chapter 6

  ______________________________

  Veil stopped for an hour along a barren stretch of coast. Satisfied that he wasn't being followed, he drove on to the outskirts of Monterey and checked into a dingy, third-rate motel under an assumed name. He stayed in his room the remainder of the day, went out to eat an early dinner, then went to bed after leaving a request for a ten P.M. wake-up call. By one in the morning he was back at the base of the Institute's mountain. He drove his car off the side of the road into a copse of fir trees a half mile from the entrance to the underground parking area, then walked back.

  The service road leading up to the compound at the top of the mountain was located twenty yards to the right of the closed-down funicular. Veil stepped over the chain blocking the entrance to the road and started up.

  Forty minutes later he was hunched down in a shallow depression across the road from a brightly lighted helicopter pad. There was a small guardhouse inside a high chain-link fence topped with barbed wire. Veil went a hundred yards beyond the pad and guardhouse, then crossed the road to the fence. He had not seen any transformers on the way up, and so he assumed that the fence was not electrified. He checked to be certain that the 38-caliber snub-nose he had retrieved from the car was secure in his waistband, against his spine, then removed his garrison belt from his jeans and gripped it between his teeth as he easily climbed the fence. At the top he wrapped the belt around the palm of his right hand and pressed down on the strands of barbed wire. He swung through the V of the wire and dropped down on the other side, rolling to absorb the shock of his landing. An instant later he was on his feet and sprinting through the moonlight in the direction of the administration building. He intended to find out what was in the gray areas he had glimpsed on the wall map, and he reasoned that the logical place to begin his investigation was with any files Jonathan Pilgrim might keep in his office.