by Ross Thomas
“What do you expect us to say?” Burchwood said. “Peachy keen?”
“They do that brainwashing,” Symmes said. “We heard all about that in Moscow. They turn you into zombies.”
“They wouldn’t do that,” Padillo said. “You’d just have to make a few speeches, a few tape recordings. Tell them what you remember about NSA, and then they’d give you a job. Teaching, probably.”
“No, thank you,” Symmes said.
“How do you expect to avoid it?”
“You got us into this mess; you can just get us out of it. We’re your responsibility,” Burchwood said.
Padillo studied them for a moment. “I’ll make you a deal.”
“What kind?”
“You help McCorkle and me, and if we get off this tub, all bets are off. You can go wherever you want. The Russian Embassy’s about a mile from here. You can ask for political asylum. Of course, they offered to trade you for me and you might prove just a little embarrassing for them, but that’s your risk. Or you can turn yourselves in and I’ll do what I can. It would be a kind of blackmail, but I think our side might pay. They’d almost have to.”
“What do you mean blackmail?” Burchwood asked.
“As you’ve gathered, my former employers and I don’t quite see eye to eye. Either they give you a break—and I get good evidence of it every six months—or I call in the press and then they can explain how come two top staff members of NSA defected to the Russians.”
“We weren’t top staff members,” Symmes said.
“The way I’d tell it you would be.”
Symmes and Burchwood looked at each other and their mental telegraphic systems seemed to be functioning as well as ever. They nodded their heads simultaneously.
“Do we have to hit anybody?” Burchwood asked.
“It might come to that. If it does, hit as hard as you can. If there’s something lying around, like a bottle, use that. There’re four of them—Ku, Maas and the two Albanians.”
“I was wondering what they were,” I said.
“There’s also somebody in the room that Jimmy Ku came out of—probably a Dutch couple who owns the barge.”
Padillo outlined his plan. Like most of his ideas, its merit lay in its simplicity. We wouldn’t have to sink the barge or set the Rhine on fire. All we had to do was run an excellent chance of being shot and dumped over the side.
“How about it?” Padillo asked Burchwood and Symmes.
“Isn’t there some other way?” Symmes asked. “All that violence.”
“If you’ve got something better, lay it on.”
Symmes and Burchwood telegraphed their messages to each other. They nodded agreement. I shrugged.
“O.K., Mac, here’s the bottle.”
“No sense in waste,” I said, and took a drink and gave it back. “Hand it up to me.” I heaved myself up to the top bunk. Padillo took a drink and passed me the bottle. I poked its neck through the metal-wire mesh that covered the red light and smashed the bulb. I turned and lay lengthwise along the bunk, which was only eighteen inches or so from the ceiling. The door was to the right of the bunk and I held the bottle in my right hand.
“O.K.?” Padillo whispered.
“Ready,” I said.
“Go ahead, Symmes,” Padillo said.
I could hear but not see Symmes moving toward the door. He let out a scream, a good loud one that ranged up and down the scale. He began to pound on the door with his fists. I took a tighter grip on the bottle.
“Let us out!” Symmes yelled. He made his voice crack. “He’s vomiting blood. Let us out, for God’s sake; let us out!” He moaned and whimpered. He was very good.
“What is it—what’s going on?” It was one of the Albanians calling through the door in German.
“This man—this Padillo is sick—he’s getting blood all over everything. He’s dying.”
Some voices murmured in the other room. A key turned in the lock. The door opened and light from the other room shafted in to show Padillo bent over in a corner, his head cradled in his arms. The Albanian came through the door, gun drawn, his eyes on Padillo. I swung the bottle in a flat sidearm, backhand motion. It hit the back of his neck and shattered. The pieces tinkled as they fell to the floor. Padillo sprang from the floor and chopped the Albanian across the throat and grabbed his gun. The Albanian crumpled. I rolled out of the bunk and snatched Symmes’s left arm and bent it backward behind him until it almost touched his neck. He screamed and this time it was sheer pain. I jabbed the broken shard of the bottle against his neck with my right hand. Padillo had the Albanian’s gun up against Burchwood’s neck, just below the right ear.
“We’re coming out, Jimmy,” he called. “Just stand there. If you blink, I’ll shoot Burchwood and Mac will slice Symmes’s throat.”
Looking over Symmes’s shoulder, I could see Ku and Maas through the doorway, standing by the table. Maas’s mouth was slightly open. Ku’s hands were in his jacket pockets, his face impassive except for a slight, bemused smile. “How’d you fake the blood, Mike?” Ku asked.
We moved out into the room slowly, turned, and backed toward the stairs.
“I didn’t,” Padillo lied. “I just stuck my finger down my throat and it came up. I’ve got a couple of cracked ribs and something’s bleeding inside. Call your man down from topside, Jimmy.”
Ku called him and the other Albanian clattered down the stairs backward. Padillo clipped him hard across the back of the neck with the barrel of the gun. He fell forward on the stairs and then bumped down the steps to the floor. He didn’t move.
“That wasn’t necessary,” Ku said.
“I evened the odds,” Padillo said.
“You know I have a gun in my hand?”
“I don’t doubt it. But shooting through a coat pocket is tricky, Jimmy. You might hit me, but more likely you’d hit Burchwood here. And anyway I’d pull the trigger and he wouldn’t have any ear left or any face. As for Mac, he’d probably cut the big vein or at least make Symmes whisper for the rest of his life.”
“Shoot,” Maas whispered to Ku, his eyes bulging a little. “Shoot, you fool.”
“I would just as soon shoot you, Maas,” Padillo said, “and make my deal with Jimmy alone.”
Ku’s smile grew broader and he exposed some very good teeth or an excellent cap job. “Make your proposition, Mike.”
“We’ll leave these two on deck for you after we bolt the door from the outside.”
Ku shook his head slowly from side to side. “Not good enough. You’d spill on us, Mike, once you got off this barge. One way or the other, you’ll have to try to shoot your way out.”
I could feel Symmes’s Adam’s apple move against the broken neck of the bottle that I held pressed to his throat. I gave a small jerk to his left arm and he gave out a little cry, like a kitten’s whimper.
“Please,” he said, “please do what they say. I know they’ll kill me. I’ve already seen them kill too many people.”
“Shoot them,” Maas pleaded. Ku’s hand moved slightly in his jacket pocket.
“No more, Jimmy. I don’t have to aim, but you do.”
“Shut up, fat man,” Ku told Maas.
“Let’s go,” Padillo said to me, and started to back toward the stairs. He kept the gun pressed against Burchwood’s neck, his eyes on Ku. I watched Maas and gave Symmes’s arm a tug. We backed after Padillo and Burchwood.
The door next to the table banged open and a chunky, blond man jumped into the cabin. He held a shotgun in his hands and he was waving it around the room when Padillo shot him. I knocked Symmes to the floor and dived for the stairs. I could see Maas fumbling for his Luger. Padillo fired again, but nobody yelled. There was another shot and Padillo grunted once behind me but kept scrambling up the stairs. I was outside and Padillo stumbled through the doorway of the stairs. He fell and sprawled on the deck. I picked up his gun transferring the broken neck of the bottle to my left hand. I flattened myself against the cabin housing
, and when Ku came through I chopped the wrist that held his pistol with my gun barrel. He yelled and dropped the gun, stumbled over Padillo, and sprawled into the darkness. Padillo got to his knees. His left arm hung limply by his side. He turned and looked at me. “Take care of Maas,” he said. He got painfully to his feet and Ku jumped him from the edge of the pool of light. I couldn’t get in a shot. Ku’s left hand, palm up, jabbed at the base of Padillo’s nose. Padillo blocked it with his right and kicked out with his left foot. The kick was low and caught Ku on the thigh. Ku jumped back into the darkness and Padillo dived after him. I started to move toward them, but I heard a clatter on the stairs. I flattened myself against the cabin housing. The noise on the stairs stopped. I could hear a thumping out in the darkness, and then I could make out two figures struggling tight together against the low railing that ran around the stern of the barge. There was a scream and they disappeared over the side. There was a splash, smaller than I expected. And then there was no noise at all. Nothing. I ran to the railing and the shotgun blasted behind me. The blast drilled a thousand or so burning needles into my left thigh. I stumbled and fell to the deck, twisted around, and saw Maas framed in the door of the stairway. I lifted the gun and took aim and pulled the trigger and it clicked.
Maas smiled and walked toward me carefully. I threw the gun at him and he dodged. It was no trouble. He held the shotgun casually, just aiming it enough to make sure it would blow off my head. I looked at the shotgun and then at Maas.
“So, Herr McCorkle, it is only you and I.”
“That’s a bad line, Maas, even for you,” I said, dragging myself up so my shoulders rested against the stern railing. My thigh was wet and warm and covered with liquid fire.
“You are hurt,” he said, and sounded as if he were really concerned.
“Just a nick—nothing really. No need to panic.”
“I assure you, Herr McCorkle, I am far from panicking. Everything has worked out even better than we had planned.”
“What happened to Symmes and Burchwood?”
“They are comfortably asleep for the moment. A slight, carefully placed blow. Perhaps they’ll have a headache, but no more.”
“The blond man with the shotgun?”
“The owner of the barge? Dead.”
“So now?”
“So now I simply make other arrangements for the transfer of Herr Symmes and Herr Burchwood in Amsterdam. Where Ku failed, I shall succeed, and I assume that I shall be adequately compensated.”
“You can pilot a barge?”
“Of course not. I will merely transfer them to an automobile and drive to Amsterdam. There will be no trouble at the border. I checked their excellent papers that you so thoughtfully provided.”
“That takes care of everyone but me,” I said.
“I’m afraid, Herr McCorckle, that this is the end of our association.”
“And we were becoming such friends.”
Maas smiled faintly. “Always the joke, even at such a time.”
“There’s one you haven’t heard yet.”
“So?”
“That’s a single-shot you’re aiming at me. I don’t think you reloaded.”
Maas pulled the trigger and the hammer made a comforting click. He swung the shotgun down at me, but I had already begun to move and its barrel clanged on the steel railing. My right foot caught him in the stomach. It was a hard, satisfying kick. He belched and stumbled forward and fell on the railing. The shotgun dropped into the water. I edged myself around and gave him another kick and he tumbled over the edge, but his arms caught the rail. I hit at him weakly with my right hand. He slipped some more and dangled above the water, clutching the railing with only his hands.
“Please, Herr McCorkle; I cannot swim. Pull me up. Good Jesus, pull me up!”
I crawled to the rail and leaned over and looked down at him. Something scraped against the deck. It was my left hand. It still held the neck of the broken bottle.
I stared down at Maas. He stared back, his mouth making little round O shapes as he tried to make his arms lift his weight. They refused. His head twisted from side to side. His shoes scraped against the barge. He couldn’t pull himself up, but he could hang there all night.
“Drown, damn you,” I said, and raised the bottle and brought it down on his hands again and again until they were bloody and they didn’t clutch the rail anymore.
CHAPTER 21
The attendants were putting me in a strait jacket and chattering away like magpies about what kind of knots they should use when the pain came back and I could taste its bitterness far down into my throat.
But it wasn’t a strait jacket, it was only a life preserver, the Mae West type, and Symmes and Burchwood were struggling to get me into it.
“He’ll bleed to death,” Symmes said severely.
“Well, there’s no rowboat and I don’t go to all those summer camps without learning something.” That was Burchwood.
“I know what you learned,” Symmes said, and giggled.
“What town is this?” I said.
“He’s awake,” Burchwood said.
“I can see he’s awake.”
“We’re going to swim you ashore, Mr. McCorkle.”
“That’s nice.”
“That’s why we’re putting this life preserver on you,” Symmes said. “Russ used to be a lifeguard.”
“Good,” I said. “Have you got one for Padillo? He’s hurt.” I knew it was a stupid thing to say before I said it, but it came out anyway.
“Mr. Padillo isn’t here,” Symmes said. His voice was apologetic.
“Gone, huh?”
“Everybody’s gone, Mr. McCorkle.”
“Everybody’s gone,” I said dreamily. “Weatherby gone. Bill-Wilhelm gone. The blond kid on the wall a long time ago. He gone, too? The captain gone, and Maas is gone, and Ku is long gone. And the Albanians gone. And old partner Padillo gone. Goddamn, that’s something. Old partner Padillo.”
The water woke me up. Someone had me by the neck and was swimming somewhere. I was on my back. My left leg throbbed and I felt lightheaded. I leaned back into the life jacket and looked up at the stars. The water must have been cold because my teeth chattered. But I didn’t notice. I was too busy counting the stars.
They dragged me up the bank of the Rhine and flagged down a truck that was bound to the Bonn market with a load of chickens. I had to talk to the driver, because he spoke only German. I was standing there, supported by Symmes and Burchwood, sodden and scraggly, and trying to make up a reasonable lie about how my friends and I had been walking by the river and had fallen in. Finally I gave up and fished out all the money I had from the ruined billfold Wolgemuth had given me. I pressed it on the driver and gave him my address. For $154 he let us sit in the back of the truck with the chickens.
Burchwood and Symmes dragged me out of the truck and up the twelve steps to the front door of my house. “There’s a key under the mat. My clever, clever hiding place.”
Burchwood found it and opened the door. They half carried, half pushed me in and dumped me into my favorite chair so I could bleed on it for a while.
“You need a doctor,” Symmes said. “You’re bleeding again.”
“Whiskey,” I said. “At the bar. And cigarettes.”
Symmes went behind the bar and came back with a half-tumbler of whiskey and a lighted cigarette. I clutched the tumbler and managed to get it to my mouth, where if started to play a tune on my teeth. I sloshed some of it down. It was bourbon. I got some more down and then reached for the cigarette and took a long, grateful drag. Then some more whiskey and another lungful of smoke.
“Hand me the phone,” I told Burchwood.
“Who are you going to call?”
“A doctor.”
He handed me the phone and I dropped it. Burchwood picked it up and said, “What number?” I told him and he dialed it.
It rang for a while and a sleepy voice answered it. “Willi?”
“
Ja.”
“McCorkle.”
“You drunk again, you and that no-good partner?”
“No. Not drunk yet. Just shot. Can you help?”
“I’ll be right there,” he snapped, and hung up.
I slopped some more whiskey down. The pain wouldn’t go away. “Dial ‘nother number,” I told Burchwood. He looked at Symmes, who nodded. He dialed and the number rang. It rang a long time before it answered.
“Fredl,” I said. “S’Mac.”
“Where are you?” she asked.
“Home.”
When I awoke I was in my own bed between fresh clean sheets and daylight was creeping through a crack in the drawn drapes. Fredl sat in a chair next to the bed smoking a cigarette and drinking a cup of coffee. I moved experimentally and my thigh responded by sending out a wave of pain. My stomach felt as if someone had slammed a bat into it.
“You’re awake,” Fredl said.
“But am I alive?”
She leaned over and kissed me on the forehead. “Very much so. It took Dr. Klett an hour to pick the shot out of your thigh. He said you got only the fringe of the pattern. Also your stomach is going to be sore for a week or so and you bled a lot. And, finally, what in God’s name have you been up to?”
“Too much,” I said. “Where are Symmes and Burchwood?”
“Those two!” she sniffed.
“You jealous?”
“No, they just seemed so tired and pathetic—and lost, I suppose.”
“They’ve been through a lot, but they’re O.K. I’d hate to see anything happen to them.”
“One’s asleep in the den. The other’s on the couch in your living room.”
“What time is it?”
“Almost noon.”
“What time did I call you?”
“About three this morning. You passed out right after that, they said. Then the doctor arrived and started to use his tweezers. He said that you lost quite a lot of blood—that you’ll be weak for a few days.”
I ran a hand over my face. “Who shaved me?”
“I did—and gave you a bath. Since when have you been a sergeant?”
“Since yesterday morning—or afternoon. A long time ago.”