Dean Ing & Mack Reynolds

by Deathwish World(lit)

  But Peter, tennis-trim, bounded after him and, even as he went, reversed the gun. The Graf spun, a small Gyro-jet pistol in hand. Too late. Windsor crashed the gun butt into his solar plexus, sending him reeling backward and into the window and, screaming shrilly, through it in a shower of shards. His thin screams, unbecoming to one of the Grafs image, continued as he plunged downward.

  Sepp came into the room quietly, an antique 9mm Luger in his right hand. He took in the scene, his Germanic face politely questioning, still playing the obsequious butler.

  Peter snapped, "Sepp, cover these two!" He waved his disabled submachine gun at Frank and Jerry.

  Sepp turned to Margit Krebs and his eyebrows went up. "Fraulein?" he said.

  "Shoot him," she said flatly. "He just killed the Graf. He'll do the same to us, given the chance."

  Peter Windsor yelled, "No!" even as Sepp brought up the automatic and shot him exactly once in the middle of the chest.

  Frank, walking like a robot, went over to the window through which Lothar von Brandenburg had plunged. For the briefest of moments he looked out over the superb view of mountain peaks and river. Then his eyes went down.

  He shook his head in nausea, pulled in air deeply, and said, "He's splattered all over the side of the swimming pool. Five feet farther out and he would have landed in the water.''

  Jerry Auburn still bore the brandy bottle in his right hand.

  Margit Krebs, efficient as always, went to a wall and pushed back a curtain. Behind it was a microphone. She reached up and touched a switch.

  She said, very crisply, "Now hear this. Now hear this. Margit Krebs speaking. The Graf is dead. Those of you near the swimming pool can see his body. Peter Windsor is also dead. They killed each other. Now hear this. Now hear this. The Graf, for reasons of his own, has had the Wolfschloss mined. Within the hour, the schloss will go up. He has thrown the switch. Time is short, but with discipline and complete following of my instructions, we can all be saved. The cable car is totally inadequate for evacuation in such short order. It will be utilized only by the guards and crew who have been in control of it. All others will descend into the bomb shelters and then through the tunnels to the countryside. Women and the more elderly will use the elevators to the bomb shelters. All in good physical trim will use the stairs. The hospital will be evacuated; all patients and medical staff will use the freight chopper to escape. The small jet will be reserved for the senior staff. That is all. Remember, cooperation and discipline will enable us to evacuate completely. Any deviation from my instructions will mean disaster. We will rendezvous in Vaduz for final severance pay and distribution of other funds coming to you. Carry on!" She turned back to the others.

  Jerry looked at her thoughtfully. "Are there such bombs?"

  "No. But I had to clear them out of here before they got the idea of looting."

  "Will they believe you?"

  "Yes," she said. "I've been in this job for ten years and I have never lied to any member. I've built up an impeccable record of confidence. Now I'm calling on it. They'll be shocked when I don't turn up at that rendezvous in Vaduz." She looked at Sepp. "You'd better start packing our, ah, luggage; we're heading for Tangier. No extradition there and Interpol will be after us by tomorrow. We should be able to take eight large bags. We four can carry two apiece down to the jet. We're not in too much of a hurry. We want everyone else cleared out of the schloss before we cross the enceinte carrying those bags. You might start with that gold tray with the brandy, Sepp. For God's sake, don't forget any of the paintings small enough to go into the bags; forget the others, no matter how valuable. I'll go to the Grafs private rooms and to the wall safe. I know the combination."

  The impassive Sepp stuck his gun back into his clothing and, taking up the gold tray, left the room.

  Jerry said to her, "How do you know that any of us can fly a jet?"

  She was unperturbed. "Frank, here, told us that he had studied to be a pilot."

  Jerry was looking at her in puzzlement. He said, "Why did you make the choices you did?"

  She shrugged. "It was all falling apart. You were right, the Graf was all but bankrupt. I found out very early in my relationship with Lothar that in this organization one looks out for oneself. Very well, I have looked out for myself. Had your offer gone through, I might have gone along. The Graf would probably have taken me into retirement with him. As it turned out, when Peter went berserk, I had to play it by ear."

  She turned and left.

  Frank glared at Jerry Auburn. "You damn fool, suppose that gun hadn't been jimmied? We'd all be dead."

  The other grinned at him, a glint in his blue eyes. "Sometimes you have to take chances. When I saw that gun on his wall, I decided that it was useless. Sooner or later, here in the sanctum sanctorum of the Graf, somebody would have done something to it. Besides, in narrow quarters like this, you can often take a man with a gun before he can finish you off. Why did you think I asked for this bottle of guzzle?" He grinned again. "I'm a crack shot throwing a bottle."

  Frank Pinell took a deep breath. "All right," he said. "How did you pull off that skin-color change?"

  The other shrugged. "For a long time we've had chemicals that can change complexion, either lighter or darker. I've known blacks who passed that way, and I once knew a white news reporter who circulated among blacks getting inside information hard for a white man to acquire. He turned himself darker. No big thing."

  Frank said, "All right," again. Then, "Windsor got what was coming to him. So did the Graf. I get my inheritance. Margit and Sepp get to loot this place, which should enable them to retire, I suppose. What is there for you, Jerry?"

  The other shrugged it off. "For me, there's always the brandy bottle," he said, reaching down for it.

  Aftermath

  When Jerry Auburn stopped off at Lee Garrett's suite in the Palazzo Colonna, she was gathering her things preparatory to a Central Committee meeting.

  She flashed him a smile and said, "Hello, darling. So you're back. Sheila was afraid you wouldn't make it. Where have you been?"

  He smiled back at her, which would have been difficult not to do. Lee Garrett, as always, was radiant. He said, "I was just checking out a few things. A few things like the American National Data Banks. Honey, you still make a lousy agent provocateur, spy, or whatever."

  She stiffened and then stared at him, at first uncompre-hendingly, then slowly it dawned. "Why. why, you're that. what was his name? Hamp. Hamp, something or other, of the Anti-Racist League. But he was a black and you're white!" She was completely confused.

  He grinned at her. "Actually, I'm kind of gray," he said. "Over the generations, I've become so racially mixed I don't know what I am, except that I'm rabidly anti-racist. But to get back to the National Data Banks. It seems that you had a boyfriend. A pretty close boyfriend, which makes me a little jealous of course, since I've been planning on a permanent relationship with you, Lee. And it seems that he had a ranking job in the data banks."

  "Why, I don't know what you're talking about."

  "Like hell you don't, girl of my dreams. The fact is that you've got a nicely high I.Q. ,and Ability Quotient but not quite that high."

  She stared at him, dismayed.

  He said, "Your boyfriend jollied around with the equipment so that you were a cinch to be sent here to Rome for a job with the World Club. I doubt if even you expected it to be quite as good a job as this, though. Now, come on, honey, what are you really doing here and who was it that you were really reporting to? And don't tell me your mother."

  She was defiant. "It was my mother. She's as opposed to the World Club's meddling as I am, and as strongly as my father was. He fought it all of his life and neither my mother nor I am satisfied about the way he died."

  That took the smile from his face. "They were at it that far back, eh? So what was his case against us?"

  "He wasn't entirely against eventual world government but he was opposed to it being under control of a handful
of Western billionaires, plus a high-ranking police bureaucrat, and a religious fakir. He was of the opinion that such a government would stifle healthy competition, which is the source of much progress. He was absolutely appalled that a State Church was being considered, not to speak of Mercenaries, Incorporated as a possible world police. At any rate, mother and I schemed to have me infiltrated into the World Club to keep an eye on developments and possibly help expose them."

  Jerry ran the back of a hand over his mouth ruefully. "Maybe we're not as far apart as all that," he said.

  She was still confused. "But you were a member of the Anti-Racist League."

  "Still am, honey. However, some time ago it seemed to me that the World Club might offer a quicker way to end racism, so I got into it, too. As a matter of fact, I belong to various other outfits. One of them is African-based. They're fighting racism there-against whites. There's quite a bit of anti-white bullshit going on in parts of Africa." Then he murmured something that made no sense to her. "Pod Hampton, I wonder if you ever dreamed what the hell you started when you ripped off that silver." He looked at his wrist chronometer. "But we'd better go to the meeting."

  As they walked the corridor to the conference room, he looked over at her and said, "How was the news of my supposed accident on the Riviera received?"

  "At first, we were upset," she told him. "We were all aghast-" she hesitated-"except possibly Sheila, Chase, and Moyer. But then, of course, your announcement came through that it was all a case of mistaken identity."

  He grunted. They reached the Central Committee's conference chamber and a page opened the door for them.

  Inside, all the rest were already seated around the heavy oaken table. They were chattering among themselves, two or three more heatedly.

  Sheila Duff-Roberts looked up from her papers and said tartly, "Well, Jerry, late as usual, I see."

  Jerry Auburn slid into his chair, while Lee took her place next to the committee's secretary. He said, "This will be the last time that will irritate you, Ms. Duff-Roberts."

  The majestically proportioned woman looked at him, frowning. "What do you mean by that?"

  The buzz about the table fell off as the committee members turned their attention to the two.

  Jerry said evenly, "The body of Pamela McGivern has been discovered. After you fired her she began motoring home to Dublin. She was overtaken by a car driven by professional assassins, and run over a mountainside. This type of killing seems to be the latest thing among the pros these days. At any rate, the corpse was hidden, but inadequately."

  "That's terrible," Sheila said, seemingly shocked.

  "It certainly is," Jerry told her. "It looks as though our Pamela knew too much, so she was turned over to the mercies of Peter Windsor and his boss, the Graf."

  All eyes were on him now, a beginning of alarm in those of Harrington Chase and John Warfield Moyer.

  Jerry said, "Both Windsor and the Graf are now dead, and Mercenaries, Incorporated dissolved. I was present and heard their last words."

  The amazon secretary's face was ashen.

  Jerry Auburn went on. "By Central Committee rules, any three members of the committee can remove a secretary. Members Mendel Amschel and Fong Hui got together with me before this meeting and we duly removed Sheila Duff-Roberts."

  She was on her feet in fury. She turned blazing eyes to Chase and Moyer, who sat side by side. "Are you going to put up with this?" she demanded.

  The big Southwesterner was glaring at Jerry. "It seems precipitous! The rest of us have not been consulted."

  Jerry said, completely at ease, "The case of Pamela McGivern is not unique. Harold Dunninger's kidnap death was also engineered by Peter Windsor's men, and that attempt on me which resulted in the death of my brother. In short, ladies and gentlemen, we have narrowly missed imposing on Mother Earth a World Police State, a state more ruthless than any in history, if only because of its universal scope."

  Mendel Amschel said quietly to Sheila Duff-Roberts, "And now, if you will leave? If any changes are made in our actions involving you, you will immediately be informed."

  She stormed from the room.

  The international banker turned his eyes back to Jerry Auburn. "And now, if you will go into the various matters you discussed with Mr. Fong and me earlier today?"

  Jerry made himself still more comfortable in his chair. He looked around at the committee members one by one. "If you will excuse the youngest member of this body taking so much time, I will excuse myself by pointing out my recent escape from planned assassination, because I was opposed to certain tendencies recently developing in the World Club. I was also, ah, active in removing the late Lothar von Brandenburg, and it was my agents who discovered what happened to Pamela McGivern."

  "Go on," Nils Norden, the Swedish industrialist, said impatiently.

  Jerry said, "It has been pointed out that the Central Committee is composed almost exclusively of males, of whites, of westerners, especially Americans, and totally of the wealthy."

  "That's as it should be!" Chase boomed, his voice belligerent.

  "Is it?" Jerry looked at him. "We meet today to elect a new member to replace Grace Cabot-Hudson. I suggest that we replace not one but four of our membership. I am of the opinion that our goals have shifted from the founding days of our organization and that we should return to them. A world state I think desirable, but not under the domination of the World Club. We should return to investigating the possibilities of the future and even making recommendations, but forswear any attempt to come to power ourselves."

  "That's nonsense," the usually taciturn Moyer blurted.

  "Who could be more capable than ourselves to govern a world state?"

  "Who are we to say?" the Chinese murmured softly.

  "I propose," Jerry said, "that we invite a representative of the Space Federation of Lagrangia and the Asteroid Belt Islands to join the Central Committee. It is ridiculous to divorce them from Earthside affairs. Secondly, I suggest that we invite a member of the Wobblies, preferably a woman, since we are so short of female members."

  "The Wobblies," Chase boomed. "Those subversives! Those half-assed radicals! They're against everything we stand for."

  "That's why we ought to invite them in-to get opinions other than our usual conservatism. Thirdly, I think we should have a representative from the Anti-Racist League. We are talking about a world social order, and surely the so-called colored races are in the overwhelming majority."

  "Now I know you've blown a fuse, Auburn," Chase shouted. "A representative from the Anti-Racist League! He'd undoubtedly be a black. We've already got a kike and a chink on this committee and that's too much! Now you'd invite a nigger!"

  That ran across the grain with even the usually conservative Nils Norden. "You can be repulsive when you really try, Chase," said Norden.

  "Fourth," Jerry pressed on, "we should have another woman representing women's rights. There's still a great deal to be done in that direction, especially in the more backward countries that will eventually be part of the new world society."

  The chunky Moyer said, his voice reasonable, "Central Committee rules allow for only ten members on the Central Committee so that it doesn't become unwieldly. Only one is resigning-our respected Grace Cabot-Hudson. Where is the space for all these nominees of yours, Auburn?"

  "I propose that three of us resign."

  "Who?" Chase blurted, still red of face. "I suppose you are thinking of me! Well, think again!"

  Jerry was cool. "I propose that the three be Harrington Chase, John Moyer, and myself. If such resignations are not immediately forthcoming, I shall go further into the details of the deaths of Harold Dunninger, Pamela McGivern, and the attempt to assassinate me."

  Silence fell. And continued for long moments.

  Finally, the heavyset Chase pushed himself to his feet. He growled to Moyer, "Done! Come on, John, let's get the hell out of this madhouse. They've gone completely around the bend."

&nb
sp; When they were gone, there was still long silence.

  But then, "Why you, Jeremiah?" It was Fong Hui, his voice typically gentle. "I have always thought of you as. a dependable younger member of the committee. Too many of us are elderly."

  Jerry looked over at the aged Chinese. "Because, my honorable friend, had I not offered my own resignation, then undoubtedly Chase and Moyer would have fought, and then everything would have broken into the open and possibly the new World Club would never have seen the light of day. Indeed, the oJd one would have probably gone under." He looked off info an unseen distance and added, his voice low, "Frankly, I'm a mixed-up sonofabitch. And you want to know something else? I suspect so is everybody else. That is, everybody who's trying to make rhyme or reason out of this world we've got on our hands today."