Snark

by William L. DeAndrea

  The license numbers of the parked cars had been radioed in to the Tournament Press. Tipton, impatient, had just called back for results.

  Which he got. They were the plate numbers of known or suspect KGB vehicles in London. Every one of them.

  Tipton switched channels and spoke to his team. “All right. Talk to them. Hard. Approach C. Detain by force if necessary. As soon as you’re free, rendezvous with my car at the target. Bring prisoners, or guests, we better call them.” He clicked off, and spoke to Felicity in the back seat. “There, something for the Special Branch to do. We’ll arrest them on arms charges. They’ll all have diplomatic immunity, but it will make a nice splash for the newspapers.” To the driver he said, “All right, enough mooching around. Target, now.”

  It took less than half a minute to get there, even with the snow. As they drove down the block toward the museum they saw a car parked directly in front of it.

  “Of all the cheek...” Stingley breathed.

  The streetlamp reflecting from the snow lit the scene like daylight. As soon as they showed signs of stopping, a figure dashed from the doorway of the Tombs and jumped into the car, which sped off, throwing a rooster tail of snow behind it.

  “Follow them,” Tipton ordered.

  “No!” Felicity said. “Stop the car!”

  “Are you mad?” Tipton began, but Felicity cut him off.

  “It’s a decoy,” she said. “They’re still inside.”

  “Of course they are,” Stingley said. “It’s an old cracksman’s trick. A confederate leads the coppers a merry chase, and you arrest him for reckless driving, or some other heinous crime, while the other waltzes away with the swag.”

  “All right,” Tipton said. “But it may not be.” He asked the driver if he could still catch the fleeing car.

  “Sure. He’ll be a wreck if he keeps to that speed on these roads.”

  “We’ll split up. You chase him, the three of us will go inside.”

  Tipton had the driver wait only long enough to get something from the boot, then took off in pursuit of the other car.

  Stingley grinned when he saw it. “Handy,” he said. “Metal jaws, like the fire brigade use. Powerful. I was wondering how we were going to get inside through oak doors, but that thing will have them open like a tin of sardines.”

  “That was the idea,” Tipton told him. He handed the machine to the policeman. “Here, you invited yourself, earn your keep.”

  Stingley blew on his gloveless hands to warm them, then took the metal jaws. He was about to ask where Miss Grace was, but a quick look around showed that she was already at the door, touching it with flat palms as if she intended to push it in single-handed.

  Tipton and Stingley ran to join her.

  4

  WHEN BELLMAN FOUND THE way in, it was so easy it made him suspicious. It was a louvered wall vent, set nearly flush with the slope of the road that ran alongside the building. When he tried the cover experimentally, it came free. The fan blades and the machinery that ran them swung away on a hinge. Silently, as though the hinge had been newly oiled.

  The opening was a comfortable fit. There was even a chair placed on the floor below the opening to make it easier to get down.

  Bellman took a second to figure out what the hell was going on. If it was a trap, it hadn’t been designed especially for him, since no one had known he was going to be there. Not even him. Especially not him.

  Then he realized what was going on. All this hadn’t been arranged to make it easy for Bellman to get in. It had been designed to aid someone in getting out: Someone, for instance, who expected the place to be under surveillance. Someone who was concluding some kind of deal with some kind of foreign power...

  Bellman coughed, and cursed himself for making the noise. The air was fairly pungent here, even with the vent. He sniffed tentatively, and fought the urge to cough again. It didn’t smell like tear gas, or anything he’d smelled before, but then, you only smelled the lethal ones once. Maybe this was a trap.

  His eyes had adjusted to the darkness by now, and he looked around. What he saw was chemical tanks and air pumping machinery. Taped to one of the control panels was a recipe for “Simulated Smog,” which settled that.

  Bellman opened a wooden door, and found himself stepping onto damp cobblestones. A sign over his head read THE BOAR’S HEAD, with a clumsily executed painting to match.

  A London bobby stood about three feet away.

  Relax, Bellman told himself after the initial shock. This is a wax museum, remember? In the dimness of the emergency lights he could see other figures now, including one of a shabbily dressed woman looking backward over her shoulder in fear. A Jack the Ripper tableau, no doubt. Someday they’d do something about the Sussex Cyclops. Bellman smiled. And fought another cough.

  Foul-smelling mist swirled around his knees, probably the Simulated Smog settling out of the air now that the machinery was cut off. It was bad enough. It stung his eyes, the inside of his nose. Bellman realized that people used to live with this as a matter of course.

  He also realized he couldn’t stay in here. It was a shame, because his best move, the high-percentage move, was simply to stay by the window until the one who’d prepared the way out (presumably Leo Calvin) tried to leave. That wouldn’t work if Bellman were busy coughing, or wiping teary eyes. He couldn’t wait outside, either. If the place was under surveillance, by the Russians say, or even the British, at least some of it would be the moving sort, and the dullest of lookouts could spot a man standing in a snowstorm watching a ventilating duct.

  He’d have to go to them, whoever they were. He reached inside his jacket and took out his gun.

  Bellman walked through the Torture Room, the Execution Room, the Black Magic Room, and the Human Sacrifice Room. He was amazed at how phony it all looked in the darkness—he would have supposed it would be spookier. He kept walking in the direction opposite the one indicated by the arrows, figuring that would take him back to the entrance. There would be maps there, and his search would be a lot easier. It would be easier still if he’d thought to bring a flashlight.

  The flashlight question soon became irrelevant. Bellman heard the voices while he was still in the Human Sacrifice Room. Leo Calvin’s voice. And Bulanin’s. Bingo.

  Still, he couldn’t just run in there and tell them they were under arrest. He couldn’t jump in guns blazing, either. Cold War politics aside, he had no way of knowing if they’d be close enough together for him to shoot both before one of them got him.

  He walked carefully across the room, keeping well to the side to avoid being seen through the open door to the entrance foyer. He avoided the splash of light that fanned out on the stone floor as if it were a pool of acid. He dodged iron pots (South Seas) and stone altars (Druids). He made it at last to the doorway, got down low to the floor, and took a peek.

  Leo Calvin, all right. And Bulanin. And two others, who weren’t speaking at the moment. One was a black man in a pirate outfit. Bellman recognized him as the skater from the Kensington Gardens. A closer friend of Leo’s than he’d let on, it seemed. Bellman remembered with anger that he’d given the bastard five pounds.

  The other silent one was, unless Bellman was horribly mistaken, the elusive Sir Lewis Alfot. He was shabbily dressed, and he wore different spectacles from the ones Bellman had seen in the hotel corridor in Brighton. The remaining wisps of a fake beard hung from his chin.

  If the old man hadn’t been standing upright; and passing a furtive tongue over his lips every once in a while, Bellman might have taken him for a corpse. Except for the tongue, his face was motionless. His eyes were wide and unblinking. He might have been drugged, but if you were going to drug a man in a situation like that, you might as well put him out and have done with it. And if you were going to drug someone, you should at least give him something reliable enough so that you don’t have to cuff his hands together behind his back.

  And, as long as he was asking questions, how the hel
l had Sir Lewis come to be back in Leo’s custody in the first place? No wonder there had been no ad in The Times addressed to The Captain.

  Bellman stopped thinking of questions. He could get his answers once he had this all straightened out.

  As soon as he figured out how it was going to get straightened out. It was going to be a little complicated.

  As he’d feared, he couldn’t do all the shooting he needed to do with any assurance of success—the men were scattered across too wide a range. Bellman had to figure that everybody but Sir Lewis had a gun. He could see the black man’s. And there was no way he could shoot anybody without making himself a perfect target in the doorway.

  He’d have to shoot the black man first, since he had his gun out, but in order to do that, he’d have to make the best target of himself...

  He ran through all his possible first moves as he watched Leo Calvin take money from a large valise chained to Bulanin’s wrist and stuff it into a canvas suitcase. Bellman knew that when the money was done changing hands, the party was over, and he would have to act. All he had to do was decide which way gave him the least chance of dying before he accomplished anything.

  Going back to the window, he decided, was out. Not only would it take too long to get there (an ambush was no good if you set it up just two steps ahead of the arrival of the person you wanted to ambush), but there was no guarantee that that was the only way Leo had prepared to get out. He might even decide to walk out the front door, arm-in-arm with his pal the Agricultural Attaché.

  So he’d have to do something. Now. He decided he’d shoot Leo and take his chances with Bulanin and the black man. If you were going to get killed in the line of duty, you might as well get a little personal satisfaction out of it.

  Bellman fixed his eyes on Leo, in case he moved before the big jump. The idea was to spring into the opening, set, fire, hit the ground, roll, and come up shooting again. Bellman released the safety of his gun, easing it off so it wouldn’t click. He took a deep, silent breath, got quietly into a crouch, and tensed his leg muscles under him.

  Then there was a sharp, booming sound as the door knocker crashed into the heavy oaken door.

  5

  BELLMAN FROZE IN HIS crouch. This could change everything. He held his breath and listened.

  “What the hell is that?” the black man demanded.

  “A signal,” Bulanin said. “There is trouble for my men in the neighborhood. Have you betrayed me again, Calvin?”

  “You don’t think that yourself,” Leo said. “You’re not going for your gun.”

  “And have your friend here shoot me? I know I’ve given you evidence to the contrary, but I am not a total fool.”

  Leo smiled. “Just because I’ve had you going, it doesn’t mean you’re a fool. You didn’t even flinch.”

  “I suggest we finish and get moving,” Bulanin said. “Someone is out there. I presume there are other ways to leave here.”

  “Several,” Leo said. He stuffed the last of the money into his suitcase and zipped it closed. “I’ll show you out. Pleasure doing business with you. I assume you have a car planted nearby so that you can get away with our friend here.”

  Bulanin smiled. “Several,” he said. “Shall we go? There is a disguise expert at the Embassy waiting for Sir Lewis, and an official plane ready to bring us back to Moscow.”

  “I’m traveling, too. Benton, if anyone comes in here, police, or whoever, you don’t know anything, you were just closing up and going home.”

  “That’s just what I was doing, mon,” the Jamaican said, and he grinned.

  “Good. You’ve got your money; spend it in good health.” Leo picked up the suitcase and shook his head. “It was tough, but it was worth it. If only I had Driscoll in front of me now, this night would be perfect.”

  Bellman heard his old name, the name Leo had first heard of him under, and watched Leo head straight for the door of the Human Sacrifice Room, where Bellman waited for him.

  Now Bellman smiled.

  It was the door again that upset the plan. This time there was a roar and a crash, and that heavy oak door splintered like a strawberry box. Through the opening Bellman saw DI Maurice Stingley wielding power jaws like a lumberjack. Behind him was Mr. Robert Tipton. And shining above both of them was the copper-colored hair of Miss Felicity Grace, her eye blazing with blue sparks as she waited for action.

  And what the hell is she doing here? Bellman thought, then realized the question was silly. This was the cavalry arriving, British-style.

  And all hell broke loose.

  6

  THE FIRST THING FELICITY saw when the door gave way was a black man with a gun, who promptly shot Tipton, who had dashed past Stingley, in the stomach. As the Acting Director went down, Stingley and Felicity dove in opposite directions into the snow to get out of the line of fire.

  Felicity drew her gun and waited; Stingley, in the fine tradition of the British police, was unarmed. The black man stuck his head out through the hole in the door, but pulled it back, turtlelike, when Felicity snapped off a quick round at him.

  Felicity counted to ten, then edged along the door to the opening. She waited there, listening. Hearing nothing.

  A voice croaked, “All clear. Felicity. All clear.”

  She didn’t see how it could be a trap (who but Tipton would know her name?) but she had her gun ready as she jumped into the opening. She kept it ready as she knelt beside the Acting Director.

  “Alfot is here,” Tipton said. “I saw him. He ran off...ran off when the door splintered. Other two chased him. That’s”—he coughed—“that’s all I saw before he fired. Blacked out for a second.”

  Tipton tried to grin. “First bloody field operation I’ve been on in twenty-eight years, and I get shot like a bloody amateur. Maybe the Americans are right.”

  “How are you?” Felicity asked.

  “Shot in the bloody stomach. I could be dead in five...five minutes. Or it may be nothing. But sod that. The black went through that door.” He tried to raise a hand to point, and failed. He grinned again, and indicated the direction with his eyes. Felicity followed the gaze to another oaken door, normal-sized this time, that opened into a room shaped like a boot box nestled against the front wall of the Tombs.

  “Why did he go in there?” Felicity asked. “There are no windows, no way out.”

  “It’s some sort of control room. I don’t know what he’s doing in there.” Tipton moved his head, groaned, spoke. “Stingley.”

  “Yes?”

  “There’s a gun in my right coat pocket. I—I’m lying on it, and it’s quite uncomfortable. Would you take it out, please?”

  “It would be a pleasure, guv,” Stingley said. He removed the gun, gave it a quick, expert examination.

  “Guard the door,” Felicity told the policeman. “Shoot anybody that comes this way but Bellman.”

  Stingley raised his eyebrows. “And Alfot. Tipton said Alfot was here. This is Sir Lewis Alfot; right? I’ve been looking for him for weeks; I’m not going to shoot him. You just forgot about him, right?”

  Felicity looked at him.

  Stingley said, “Right?”

  Felicity said, “Ask him.” She pointed to Tipton and walked off toward the door of the control room. She stayed well to the side.

  “Open the door,” she said. “Gun out first, then you. You’ve got one chance. Twenty seconds.” Felicity began to count silently.

  Benton should have run. He knew he should have run. But how could he leave that money, all that beautiful money? It was his ticket home, where it was warm, even the rain was warm. And he was a man there, not a bloody nig-nog. With the money, he would be a big man. He could buy what he wanted when he wanted. He could make a woman happy out of bed as well as in.

  All he had to do was get there with the money. And here he was, trapped like a bird in a box. Stupid, Benton, stupid.

  Then it came to him. He was thinking like a poor man, but he was rich now. The money
Leo had given him, that he had locked up safe here in the control room. It was here now. It was his. He would do what a rich man would do—he would buy his way out of trouble.

  He had to decide how much to offer. A fifth of what he had? A third? Half?

  He would offer a third, and go to half if he had to. He could still live like a king on half. He couldn’t spend half of what he had in his whole life.

  “Hey, wait!” he yelled through the door. “I’ve got money! A lot of mon—”

  There was a crack and a zip and the bag of money sprung a leak. Benton held it close to him to protect it. More noise, another hole in the door, then another, then more. Benton tried to shout, but he was too busy dodging. Or rather, trying to dodge. In the small room there was really nowhere to go.

  Felicity used the second to last bullet on the door lock. A glance inside the control room showed her she wouldn’t need the last one. She reached inside and pulled the bag of money out of the man’s arms and placed it on a desk.

  She thought she heard Stingley’s voice somewhere behind her saying Jesus Bloody Christ, but she paid no attention. This was nightmare day. She’d killed three men so far, and might have to kill more. If she took the time to be horrified about it, she’d end up dead, too.

  She called back to Stingley to ask how Tipton was.

  “Still conscious. He says you’re a cold-blooded bitch and good show.” Stingley swallowed.

  Felicity began to reload. “This is where we see how honest you are, Stingley,” she said.

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “There’s a fortune in American dollars in here. What he came back for.”

  She finished reloading; she didn’t wait for a reply. She stepped back into the control room, studied a panel for a few moments, then started pulling switches. If she were heading off on a one-eyed search for a terrorist, two spies, and a maniac, she would bloody well do it in the light.