Count Backwards to Zero

by Brett Halliday

  Shayne swore under his breath. He tightened the bulbs she had loosened, and both lights came on. He closed the door to the corridor.

  “You’re bleeding,” the girl said, surprised. “What happened, did you fall downstairs?”

  “Something like that.”

  He went to the bathroom. Leaving the door open, he put his head under the cold water faucet and turned the water on full. He checked his bumps and abrasions. They seemed to be minor.

  He came out toweling himself.

  “How many people knew you were here waiting for me?”

  “No one. Why?”

  He tossed the wet towel back in the bathroom and ran a comb through his hair. “You didn’t get a straight story about Bermuda. I didn’t kill anybody. A woman was killed because I made the mistake of following somebody else’s procedure. An American Foreign Service officer, a real jerk, told me if I wasn’t diplomatic he’d put in a report and have my license lifted. While we were arguing, it happened. Her name was Sally Marquand. We were on sleeping-together terms, and not only that, I liked her. She did a dumb thing, but she shouldn’t have been killed for it. All right, it’s over. Nobody followed me aboard. Nobody knew I’d be taking this ship, because I only made up my mind about ten minutes before we sailed.”

  “I don’t see what connection—”

  “A couple of people jumped me coming down from the poker game. I’m not carrying enough money to make that worthwhile. But there are only two choices. If they weren’t trying to roll me they didn’t want me to hear what you have to say.”

  Alarmed, she swung her legs off the bed. “Who were they?” He sat down.

  “I don’t know. They threw a sheet over my face. Either you put some more clothes on or I take some of mine off. Which will it be?”

  “Be patient.” She thrust her arms into her negligee and pulled it together.

  “A sheet over your head. Were they trying to—you know, just knock you out?”

  “I don’t know a damn thing about it,” he said impatiently.

  “I suppose by now everybody in first class saw me trying to get you to talk to me, but who in heaven’s name—well, I already knew it was serious. They could have picked on me just as easily, couldn’t they—except no, if they did that, Quentin would—”

  She stopped, thinking.

  “Let’s start straightening it out,” Shayne said. “Who’s Quentin?”

  “You saw me with him in the lounge. He’s a little strange-looking, but what a brain. And he’s in trouble to the tops of his ears. Dr. Quentin Little. He’s just been hired by an American aerospace company, with one of those names made up of initials. Is it Amco? Something like that.”

  “That’s one of the big ones. They have a plant in Georgia.”

  “Yes—that’s where he’s supposed to work. But the way it looks now, he doesn’t expect to make it.”

  She shook back her hair. “I didn’t believe it at first, and it’s so incredible I still don’t believe it all—I think he’s being tricked in some way. He’s going to have to explain part of this, and I just hope he hasn’t had anything more to drink.”

  “In a nutshell, Anne.”

  She drew a deep breath. “All right. He’s brought an old Bentley with him. He’s using it to smuggle in seventeen pounds of plutonium.”

  Shayne snorted. “The hell he is.”

  She gave him an angry look. “He’s been working with atomic reactors since he got out of grammar school. Plutonium to him is just—I don’t know, flour or something. And it’s not just the plutonium. It’s the whole damn thing, including the part that sets it off, the detonator. It’s a real functioning atom bomb.”

  “Nobody imports atom bombs into the United States. That’s an export item.”

  “I know it sounds insane! Let him explain it. He’s awake. I told him I’d call him as soon as you agreed to help.”

  “I haven’t agreed to help.”

  “But you know you have to,” she said reasonably. “Those men, whoever they are—if they wanted to keep you from talking to me, they didn’t succeed, did they? You’re part of it now, as far as they’re concerned.”

  “What’s he planning to do with this bomb after he gets it in, blow up Washington?”

  She blazed out at him. “It’s not so damn funny! Will you keep quiet and listen for a minute? He says it’s not big enough to blow up a whole city, but it would take out Capitol Hill and the White House and the Lincoln Memorial and the Washington Monument, as well as a big piece of the black ghetto, if you know Washington. But of course he’s not going to do anything like that. He’s planning to be caught coming through Customs.”

  About to strike a match, Shayne looked at her. “Explain that.”

  “It’s not so easy. We went through the whole question-and-answer business, and I think I finally understand it, but that doesn’t mean I can boil it down. He wants to get himself shot, you see. It’s a form of suicide. His life is insured for a hundred thousand dollars, and he can show you the policy. I admit at first I thought he was putting me on, to make himself interesting. But damn it, something’s going on, isn’t it, or why would anybody bother to attack you?”

  Shayne thought for a moment, becoming interested against his will. He lit his cigarette.

  “Did you meet him on the ship?”

  She nodded. “I’ll tell you how that happened, to get it in perspective. I don’t usually go drinking with eccentric 42-year-old atomic scientists. What I don’t know about atoms! But I’m coming off—well, a sort of unpleasant couple of months. I was in Europe with a man. He’s married, but he’s not married to me. The idea was—it doesn’t have any connection, but I might as well lay it all out—the idea was that if everything worked he’d go home and talk to a divorce lawyer. Everything didn’t work. We said goodbye in London, with tears. I was feeling lousy, and I thought an ocean voyage might help. Looking around the ship, you probably noticed a number of middle-aged widows, right? They set the tone. I was in the bar the first night, and when Quentin got up to go to the men’s room a revolver fell out of his pocket! Naturally I asked him why he was carrying a gun. He said I was an impertinent American, and a tactless bore. That kind of conversation went on for a couple of days. He kept trying to hide from me, poor man. I kept after him and he finally told me. The suicide plan, the insurance policy—the works. In one way it’s perfectly irrational. If you take out insurance and kill yourself, they won’t pay off. There has to be a year or so in between, isn’t that right?”

  “Usually two.”

  “And he couldn’t wait. Now that I know how his mind works, I can see it’s the kind of scheme that would appeal to him. Any moron can jump off a bridge. Can I tell him to come in now? He can explain all this better than I can.”

  “Not yet. He convinced you there’s actually an atom bomb concealed on this ship?”

  “I keep telling you, that’s the business he’s in. It sounds wild to us, but he’s very matter of fact about it. You know the way people tell you they’re smuggling in an extra bottle of perfume. He says this the same way. ‘I’ve got this little homemade atom bomb in the gas tank of my car.’ Petrol tank, excuse me.”

  Shayne said thoughtfully, “He took the tank apart and built it in?”

  “That’s the idea. And if you want to know if I’ve seen it, I haven’t. It’s down in the hold, wherever the hold is. That’s why we’ve absolutely got to get somebody like you. He doesn’t think we can stop it, it’s too far along, but I don’t agree. We could drop it overboard, if we could get it out of the car.”

  Shayne scraped his thumbnail across his chin. “A Bentley’s a conspicuous car for a smuggler.”

  “That’s why he picked it. That’s why he’s crossing to Miami, instead of New York. The Miami customs doesn’t get a trans-Atlantic ship more than once or twice a year, and would any sensible smuggler use a Bentley? He’s very smug about the job he did on the tank. It only holds a couple of gallons, but the needle registers full.”


  That small detail convinced Shayne that Anne, at least, believed the improbable story.

  “It’s pretty fancy.”

  “Of course it is. And as soon as you talk to him, you’ll see that it’s in character. He started playing chess when he was four. Chess! Mr. Shayne, you realize we don’t have all the time in the world?”

  “We’d better go to his cabin. I don’t think we ought to let this genius wander up and down the corridors alone.”

  She jumped up. “I convinced you! I thought it might take a little longer.”

  “I wouldn’t say you’ve convinced me,” Shayne said dryly. “An atom bomb in a Bentley.”

  CHAPTER 4

  At the door of Quentin Little’s cabin, Anne crossed her fingers and said under her breath, “Quentin, if you know what’s good for you, be awake. Be sober.”

  She tapped on the door. A voice said cautiously from within, “Anne, is that you?”

  “Yes, open the door.”

  The lock turned and the door opened. The man who stood in the doorway in oversize pajamas sent a quick look at Shayne. Behind large horn-rimmed glasses, his eyes seemed alert and intelligent.

  “This is Michael Shayne,” she said. “He’s interested, I think, but he doesn’t really believe it yet.”

  Little put out a hand and gave Shayne’s a quick, dry shake. “I think this is a waste of your time, but come in.”

  “I hear we’re carrying an atom bomb,” Shayne said.

  “Oh, there’s nothing to be alarmed about, it’s quite safe.”

  He moved a suitcase off a chair and invited Shayne to sit down. His diction was a shade too careful, but otherwise he gave no sign of having been drinking. He was badly sunburned, and his nose and cheekbones were smeared with some kind of ointment. Shayne studied him. His face was deeply scored, particularly about the mouth, and there were hollows beneath his eyes. His eyes kept moving. He was controlling himself well, but behind the surface politeness, Shayne saw that he was very close to the edge.

  “I can’t offer you anything to drink, I’m afraid,” Little said apologetically. “I’ve emptied every bottle, and yet I feel astonishingly clear-headed. My dear lovely Anne has communicated to me some of her own attachment to life. I find that a commitment of this kind has an extraordinary effect on the central nervous system. It neutralizes the alcohol.”

  He filled and lighted a pipe while Shayne watched him.

  “Ask him something,” Anne said nervously. “You feel the engine vibration. We’re not standing still, you know.”

  “Do you have a contract with Amco?” Shayne said.

  “A letter agreement. Would you like to see it?”

  “Yeah. And get out the insurance policy while you’re at it.”

  The Englishman flipped back the lid of the unlatched suitcase and drew out a manila envelope. The insurance policy, written by a London firm, contained a double-indemnity clause for accidental death and a two-year suicide exclusion. There were two beneficiaries, a wife and a daughter. The agreement with Amco, one of the big electronic and space conglomerates, was for eighteen months, with an option to renew for three years. It included a stock option arrangement that seemed very generous to Shayne, and an annual salary figure that made him raise his eyebrows.

  “Anne tells me that you’re carrying a gun.”

  Little sent a quizzical look at the girl. “Unloaded, actually. I’m not much of a gun man. It’s a sort of stage prop.”

  “Let me see it.”

  Little went to the bureau and returned with a Belgian .38 automatic, a Walther, the best of the small hand guns. The clip was empty.

  “I have bullets,” Little said, “but I refrained from loading it, not wanting to run the risk of using it prematurely, in a moment of disgust.”

  “Anne said it fell out of your pocket.”

  “I’ve wondered about that,” Little said thoughtfully. “Did I do it deliberately, to attract her attention to a desperate, doomed figure? Perhaps subconsciously. With the conscious part of my mind, I was frightened of her from the beginning. I was afraid she would reawaken something, would make me regret—”

  Anne moved impatiently. “All he wants is facts, Quentin. Tell him about the money.”

  Little gave a sardonic chuckle. “Half a million American dollars. A substantial sum.”

  Shayne’s eyes narrowed. “For what?”

  “It’s a reward, you see, for information leading to the apprehension and conviction of any un-American scoundrel who commits the folly of attempting to bring a nuclear weapon into the United States.”

  Shayne’s internal Geiger counter, which woke up whenever it heard a con artist go into his pitch, went into sudden action. He broke out his cigarettes.

  “How official is it?”

  “Very. Authorized by a special act of the United States Congress. Few people will remember. It was an obscure action, taken at a time that now seems a part of some long-ago geologic period. The date was 1949, May 17.”

  “Go on.”

  “The United States was then the only atomic power. I understand there was considerable xenophobia in your country. The nature of the fission process was imperfectly understood, a spy fever was raging. People were preoccupied with two aspects of the atomic weapon—first, its enormous power; second, its relatively small size. The explosive portion, even now, as you probably know, is really astonishingly small. Am I giving him too much detail?” he asked Anne.

  “He needs the background, I guess. But talk a little faster.”

  “When I talk fast I stutter. The question of bulk, of size, Mr. Shayne—to a nervous country that was the crux of the matter. The United States had a 100-percent monopoly on production, with a system of strategic bases and great fleets of aircraft that could reach every inhabited point on the globe. I can’t imagine why Americans should have been so frightened, but they were, they definitely were. It was known, of course, that the secret of the bomb was not really that much of a secret. Sooner or later you would no longer have your monopoly. And then some miserable fifth-rate power, or even an individual or a mad committee, would put together an elementary nuclear device and carry it to its target in America in an ordinary suitcase. The suitcase bomb—from all accounts I have read—was one of the scares of the period. No one seems to talk about it now, and I am at a loss to know why.”

  “It’s still possible?” Shayne said.

  “More so than ever. As the yield has gone up, the bulk has gone down. So you spend your fifty-odd billions a year on aircraft and missiles and antimissiles and anti-antimissiles, but how do you protect against the single madman with his suitcase? Back in 1949 some clever civil servant had an idea, and persuaded your Congress to post this reward of half a million dollars. Money was worth more then than it is now. It must have seemed to your lawmakers that such a munificent sum would set up an intolerable pressure inside even the tiniest conspiracy. Given a choice between a half million dollars and loyalty to a country or an ideal, there would always be one weak and pragmatic person who would choose the half million. A typically American notion. Free of taxes—that was part of the arrangement.”

  “Have you seen a copy of this act?” Shayne said.

  “I have seen a newspaper cutting, taken from The Washington Star. Yellow and crumbling, undoubtedly genuine. Do you doubt that such a reward was posted?”

  “I doubt the whole goddamn thing,” Shayne said roughly. “Somebody’s giving somebody a fast-shuffle here.”

  “Did you bring the clipping?” Anne said. “That would prove part of it.”

  “No, certainly not. If they found it in my pocket, it would give away the whole scheme. I assure you it happened. Public Law No. 1063. Passed by both houses of Congress and signed by the President. That can be checked, surely.”

  “But not from here,” Shayne said. “Who’s planning to collect the reward?”

  Little sucked at his pipe, which had gone out. He put it down and began cracking his knuckles.


  “This skeptical spirit is contagious. I suddenly wonder… he could have set the type for the newspaper article, but how could he age the paper convincingly? No,” he decided, “the cutting was genuine; the reward is genuine. It’s inherently probable. It fits the historical facts. It demands to be believed.”

  He leaned forward. “Pierre Dessau, an Englishman in spite of the French name. The scheme is his. He is a man with quite a good untrained intelligence and a quick tongue. I have caught him out in three or four unimportant lies or exaggerations, but it never occurred to me to doubt the veracity of his newspaper cutting. If that was bogus in any way I am really in need of your services.”

  “Quent, for God’s sake,” Anne said, “will you tell him how it happened? You met him in a pub. He said, you said. When we get that out of the way we can move on.”

  “Yes, the pub would be a logical place to start. The Three Heads of the Well. I’ve been in fairly regular attendance for the past several years. The conception of conviviality draws me. After a certain few gins, we find out small facts about one another: that so-and-so had enjoyed unnatural connection with so-and-so’s wife, that Dr. Quentin Little, from the Facility, who is at ease among subatomic particles, has no hope for animate matter and doesn’t give two farthings if the sun comes up tomorrow morning or not. I’ve made a substantial mess of things, Shayne. I have a wife who despises me. The feeling is mutual. I have two children who consider me a traitor to humanity for doing weapons research. I have been working on the definitive bomb, the really definitive bomb, and the work, I must say, is well advanced. I am also seriously in the hole financially, to the tune of upward of ten thousand quid. My wife’s family, her brother, her father, are disaster-prone, and each new catastrophe seems to cost me money. Sexually I have been impotent, really bang-out impotent. Nothing, regardless of with whom.”

  His knuckles cracked.

  Anne put in quietly, “As of twelve hours ago, that is no longer any problem.”