Mind Brothers 1: The Mind Brothers

by Peter Heath

  The Sherpa was right, thought Jason. Because of the border dispute, he and his men stood a good chance of being arrested as spies or for whatever else the Moslems decided was a convenient excuse.

  “I’m sorry I got you into this, Da Tenzing. Looks like we’ll have to find another country to land in,” he said.

  “Wait!” The Sherpa’s face suddenly lit up. He disappeared through the door to the main cabin. Seconds later, he was back, now grinning broadly.

  “You will land where you please . . . and we will land in Kashmir,” he said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Parachutes. Enough for all of us. I have made many jumps during the war and I, Da Tenzing, will instruct my men in the proper methods.”

  Jason’s eyes moistened slightly, but he didn’t disagree. He took back the controls from Cyber as the plane bored into the narrowing eye of the first high-walled gorge.

  Flying through the Indus River canyon was like threading a needle with a runaway locomotive. The walls grew closer and meaner; downdrafts sucked the old bird perilously close to the foaming rapids that plunged through the sheer, living rock; updrafts pushed Jason halfway through his seat, and he could see the wing tips bending and contorting in ways that Douglas had never intended. Well, it’s one way to get the hang of rock formation flying in a two-engine airplane, thought Jason, his hands constantly busy with trim tabs, power settings and pitch controls. A very dangerous way, too.

  It wasn’t much fun for the passengers. Da Tenzing’s face changed color, and he tried to keep his grin going. The effort failed, and the white-faced Sherpa disappeared into the cabin to share his airsickness with his men. Cyber was immune to it all. He had produced a paperback copy of Borel’s Space and Time, and as the walls of the gorge whizzed by only a few feet from his face, he was reading it at his usual clip.

  After an hour of it, the walls receded and the gorge widened out into a valley. They were approaching the Indian-Kashmiri border. Jason relaxed. It looked like a milk run from now on. Da Tenzing had his men into their chutes. Jason started to gain altitude for the jump. Then he saw the contrail out of his starboard window. It was high and moving three times as fast as the old C-47. It grew larger until he caught the flash of sun on silver wings. It was coming out of Tibet. The Chinese were making a last-ditch attempt to retrieve their honor and to destroy the evidence.

  It was the time for quick decisions. The jet looked like a late-model MIG, a supersonic job, good for high-altitude pursuit work. Maybe not so good for low and slow infighting. Jason was at 1,500 feet. He shoved the control column forward and dove the shuddering old bird toward the flat surface of the valley.

  The MIG was close now, and he could see the red star on its delta wing. It was above and ahead of him, sweeping into a high-speed turn. The pilot would try to get behind him if he knew his business. Jason was skimming a hundred feet above the flat valley floor. He watched the jet complete its turn and disappear from his line of sight. Motioning Da Tenzing to climb up into the navigation bubble behind the pilot’s seat, he waited. The Sherpa would have to be his eyes from now on.

  “The jackal approaches,” Da Tenzing called out. “He is a mile behind . . . now a half-mile . . .”

  Jason twisted the wheel savagely and gave the engines full power. Now that he was getting the feel of her, his confidence was growing. The plane whipped over on its wingtip in a steep bank just above the rushing earth. Two seconds later, a stream of tracers exploded off to the left in the empty sky where the old C-47 should have been. Then the MIG flashed by them and Jason caught a glimpse of a fiercely concentrating face. Error number one, he thought. Never lose your temper during the ball game.

  He leveled off. On his new course, he was heading toward the mountains that ringed the valley. They were two or three miles away, just about perfect for his next tactic. Keeping the plane low, he traced the maneuvers of his angry Chinese friend.

  The Chinese pilot was indeed upset. He had been scrambled out of a warm bed to chase an obsolete plane with orders to destroy it. Orders that made no allowance for failure. He was a relatively good pilot. He had been trained to operate high in the stratosphere. But now the ground was close and the speed of his aircraft made him nervous. He circled again and dove towards the slow-moving propeller-driven airplane. Because he had been trained and over-trained in the techniques of high-altitude, maximum-power approaches, his hand automatically moved the throttle forward. The MIG leaped ahead as the afterburner cut in. His finger started to depress the trigger for his twenty-millimeter cannons.

  The mountains were very close, now, and Jason held the nose toward the nearest ridge. Da Tenzing was calling out the range of the approaching jet in an excited series of shouts.

  “Two miles . . . one mile . . . the dog has activated his afterburners!” The Sherpa yelled.

  A couple of seconds later, Jason yanked the control column all of the way in to his stomach and the C-47 lurched into a steep climb, its engine protesting but doing the job. The ridge was a sheer wall just ahead and Jason skinned across its top with a few feet to spare. In the long moment that followed, he noticed his hands. They were trembling.

  “Ai-yah!” shouted Da Tenzing. “The fool has gone right into the mountain!”

  Jason swung the plane around and headed back into the valley. As he recrossed the top of the ridge he looked down. A great ball of flames marked the grave of the MIG. It had hit well below the top of the ridge. The explosion had started a small landslide, and he could see charred pieces of wreckage tumbling slowly to the valley floor.

  He relaxed. It hadn’t been such a milk run after all.

  “In five minutes you’ll jump,” he told the Sherpa.

  The goodbyes were brief but deeply felt. Without Da Tenzing, his mission would have ended in failure. The Sherpas were a brave people. Seven of them had given their lives without a question. Now it was time to deposit them in safe territory.

  He watched the chutes blossom over the fertile plain and slowly become distant specks, lost in the haze. Peshawar lay a hundred miles ahead. And after Peshawar, there was some unfinished business to take care of. Business in Washington, D.C., with a man who Jason knew quite well . . . a man who had spent twenty years of his life serving his government because it was a family tradition. A man who had used people as if they were bugs, to be squashed when their functions ceased to be necessary.

  Jason thought of Joe Blake, of Kumindani, and of Mr. Chatterji’s last plea for a merciful death. He thought of the Brotherhood and Otto Krupt. Krupt was free, but not for long. He would have to answer to his superiors, who never gave their agents a second chance. Or, perhaps, someday he would answer to Jason. But the man who had so neatly arranged for his murder and who sat, now, behind his well-polished desk inside the CIA was the most dangerous man of all.

  The man’s name was Hamilton, and the secret file nestled against Jason’s leg told the whole story. As the plane droned on, Jason’s mind was far away. He was a man in a hurry and a girl named Maria d’Allesandro Corday was in great danger . . . if not already dead.

  Now, he thought, all I have to do is get this bird into Pakistani territory and, hopefully, on the ground in one piece.

  * * *

  Chapter †

  SIXTEEN

  LIKE INDIA, Washington was used to the heat. The city sweltered under the July sun and the Capitol dome shimmered through the mid-morning glare. The President was on his ranch, and half the city was on vacation. Little boys dove into the stone pools below the fountains, searching for coolness and pennies while endless streams of tourists took pictures.

  Jason called the CIA from the airport. He asked for Maria.

  “I’m sorry, sir, Miss Corday isn’t in this week,” the receptionist told him. “She’s on vacation.”

  “And Mr. Hamilton?”

  “Mr. Hamilton has been ill for the last two days—”

  Jason hung up. He called Maria’s apartment. There was no answer. Two days. The two da
ys that had passed since he had put the old C-47 down in Pakistan, a rough landing but good enough to leave the plane in one piece. The two days that it had taken Jason to untangle his affairs with the American embassy and hop the commercial flight to the United States. Time enough for Hamilton to be informed.

  Turning to Adam Cyber, he gave him the briefcase containing the secret dossier he had taken from the Chinese laboratory and the shattered remnants of his thought-control device.

  “How you do it is your problem, Adam, but get these to the Deputy Director of the Central Intelligence Agency as fast as you can. It’s the proof they’ve been screaming for. Plus the fact that one of their most trusted officials has been a double agent for the past twenty years. I’m heading for the Hamilton estate.”

  The Hamilton estate was surrounded by miles of woodland. The road grew narrower with each twist, and tree branches scraped across the top of Jason’s car. When he saw the gate, he stopped and backed up until the car was out of sight behind a curve. He struck off through the woods, trying to keep his feet from cracking dried branches and hoping that time hadn’t run out.

  If Hamilton had had two days, the old man was probably long gone. Neither Jason nor the CIA would ever hear of him again. And Maria—the girl was the hostage that Hamilton had chosen just in case his game backfired.

  The house was an Elizabethan monstrosity. Four floors of leaded windows, ornate chimney pots, and flaking plaster. The driveway was empty, and the house looked as if no one had lived in it for fifty years. Jason remembered that Hamilton had been known as Washington’s most unpopular socialite. Now he could see why. It was the perfect cover. He let himself in through a window that opened into a baronial dining hall with a table thirty feet long and a fireplace big enough for a man to stand up in. The place was empty, dusty and unused. It reminded Jason of the Mogul palace in New Delhi. He crept forward toward the half-open door that gave way into the entrance hall.

  His head poked around the door-frame. That was as far as it got. Something kicked him across the back of the neck with paralyzing force. It was an odd feeling. His eyes were open but his body was numb. He was falling toward the floor, noticing, idly, that it needed a good coat of wax. Then things grew black.

  The perfume was familiar. He smelled it before he could get his eyes open. Finally he managed the left one. When the room stopped spinning, he tried the right. They both worked fine, and only the ache across the back of his neck reminded him that something had nearly killed him in one blow. Yes, his eyes were working perfectly and they were looking into another pair . . . a pair of aquamarine eyes in a beautiful and sensual face. It was Maria d’Allesandro Corday, and the .45-caliber automatic in her delicate hand was pinpointing the spot midway between his temples.

  “I’m terribly sorry, Jason,” she said. Her eyes told him that she was. At least in a small way.

  “That’s nice,” he said. “I’m glad we can still be friends.”

  “Oh, yes, Mr. Starr, let us not allow ourselves to become embittered. It is the fortunes of war,” the deep voice of Winslow J. Hamilton said from across the room. Jason looked. The CIA chief was putting the finishing touches on a large black oil drum. Two wires led out of the lid, and Hamilton was connecting them to what Jason recognized as a simple time-detonating mechanism.

  “A jury-rigged device, Mr. Starr. But then you gave us such short notice,” said Hamilton. He finished his connections and stood up. Jason looked at Maria.

  “Why?” he said.

  “For money, Jason. For the world that I want, the world where money buys any future you can dream of. But you wouldn’t understand,” Maria’s eyes were steady and cold.

  “I suppose not,” he said. “Too bad money can’t buy you a clean conscience and too bad about the thousands of people that your friend over there has eliminated over the years.”

  “Don’t waste the girl’s time, Mr. Starr,” said Hamilton. “She knows what she wants.” His hand caught Maria’s long black hair and stroked it. Maria smiled.

  “Mr. Starr, you have done quite well for an amateur,” Hamilton continued. “Where others have failed, you have destroyed my cover. A cover that began twenty years ago when I was substituted for the real Mr. Hamilton, unfortunately long deceased. You have also succeeded in destroying Doctor Hsin Lau and his experimental records. For this and for many other reasons, you will have to die, Mr. Starr. Although we realize the game is up, your death will leave certain problems unresolved. For instance, the thought-control device . . . The world will have to wait until the Chinese people succeed in remaking it. This may take a long time . . . but we are a patient nation.”

  “Yes,” said Jason. “A bunch of torturers and murderers working on a long-term contract to dominate the human race.”

  “Enough!” snapped Hamilton. “Maria, tie him. Tie him securely. Mr. Starr, there is enough high explosive in the barrel to eliminate you and my house. By the time the explosion is investigated, Maria and I will be landing in my helicopter fifty miles off the Eastern shore of Maryland. A submarine is waiting there to take us home.”

  The girl worked swiftly. She knew her business. When she had finished, Jason was trussed up into a ball of protesting muscle.

  “You have approximately a half-hour, Mr. Starr. To be humane, I should shoot you now, but this will repay Doctor Lau’s horrible death in a small way,” said Hamilton.

  “One question,” said Jason. “Why was Maria almost murdered in my hotel room?” He was hoping the question would have some effect on the girl. It did.

  She laughed.

  “Even professionals make mistakes,” she said. “The fools who planted the gas capsule were instructed to leave the safety on. It was my task to activate it just before I left you to enjoy your well-earned rest.” She laughed again. Ironically, the woman whom Jason had almost loved was as deadly as the snake that had killed Mr. Chatterji.

  “Come, Maria,” ordered Hamilton. “Let Mr. Starr enjoy his last moments alone.”

  Jason watched them leave. A minute later he heard the helicopter engine start out in back of the house. Then it lifted and the noise faded away. Except for the ticking of the detonator, the room was silent. He struggled against the rope, thinking of Maria and Hamilton, now on their way to safety. He cursed himself aimlessly. It was too late. But at least now his name would be cleared and the CIA would take steps to keep a closer eye on the Chinese developments in brain research. He continued to fight the ropes, but it was no use. Maria had done a perfect job.

  “No, my friend, not quite perfect.” A voice broke the stillness. Footsteps sounded behind Jason. “My—ah—business with the Deputy Director of the CIA took less time than I expected,” said Adam Cyber.

  “Adam, before you say another word, disconnect that detonator,” said Jason.

  “And how the hell did you get here?” he asked as Cyber finished his work over in the corner.

  “It was necessary to learn how to operate one of your ground vehicles,” said the man from the future. “I fear that my proficiency is not good and that the policeman who followed me will shortly arrive.” Adam smiled as if the idea was quite amusing.

  The traffic cop did arrive. He pulled up on his motorcycle and cut the siren just as Jason and Adam were coming out of the front door of Hamilton’s mansion.

  “Never mind the explanations, buddy,” he began.

  “Officer, do you have a radio on that bike?” Jason broke in.

  “What do you think this is—the sixteenth century? Of course,” the officer said.

  “Then get me through to your headquarters. This is a matter of national security. You can write your ticket afterwards,” said Jason.

  “Say, just what the hell is going on?” The officer was looking upset.

  “A promotion for you, if you do as I ask,” said Jason.

  That seemed to make the policeman feel better. He called his headquarters, and a few minutes later Jason was talking to the Deputy Director of the CIA. When he had explained th
e situation there was silence at the other end for a moment. Then the Director came back.

  “It checks out, all right,” he said. “The Air Defense Command has a slow-moving blip on their scopes. It’s headed out to sea . . . already about twenty-five miles offshore. We’ve scrambled an interceptor. He’s over them now. Wait a minute, I think we can listen in.”

  The static-filtered voice of a hunter-killer pilot came through the police radio.

  “Angel-two to Big Brother . . . it’s a whirlybird, no markings, headed out to sea . . . trying to raise them on the radio . . .”

  Jason listened.

  “. . . this is an Air Force intercept,” he heard the pilot say. “. . . you are ordered to return at once to the nearest safe landing area . . .”

  There was more silence. Then the pilot reported.

  “. . . Angel-two to Big Brother . . . there’s no answer, but they got the message . . . they’ve gone as low as they can go.”

  The Deputy Director’s voice cut in.

  “All right,” he said. “Follow your instructions.”

  “. . . Roger . . . am launching one Genie air-to-air rocket with high-explosive warhead.” The pilot sang out.

  It seemed like a long time before his voice came in again.

  “Jesus! . . .. it was a direct hit . . . no sign of the copter . . . I’m circling the area now . . . am waiting for further instructions . . .”

  “Angel-two, this is Big Brother. Return to base,” a new voice cut in.

  “Roger, returning to base. Out.” The pilot’s voice faded away.

  It was all over. Hamilton and the girl had become part of the restless ocean. A swift and terrible death. Jason didn’t want to think about it. He was suddenly very tired. He wanted to sleep. Then he wanted to have a drink and talk to a woman who would smile without death in her eyes.