Mission Earth 03 - The Enemy Within

by The Enemy Within [lit]

  I was no longer garbed as a sheik, of course. I looked far more Sicilian in my tight and modish three-piece suit and dark slouch hat, even though I would be a pretty big Sicilian.

  Senator Twiddle sat at his desk, flanked on one side by the American flag and on the other by that of his home state, New Jersey. He was the very picture of a noble politician—blond, swept-back hair, a patrician if somewhat alcoholized countenance, upright of bearing and deep and resonant of voice. A man in whom you could have confidence. He was the Mafia contact given us by Gunsalmo Silva. He was also Rockecenter's man.

  "Sit down, sit down," he said. "And what can we do for you? Always glad to meet men from the unions."

  "Senator," I said, taking a chair and refusing the cigar that would gas me flat, "what would you say if I told you that the Rockecenter oil interests—in fact, all of Octopus—was in dire peril of competition?"

  "Aha!" he said. "I'd get right on that phone and call his attorneys!"

  "Well, Senator," I said, "it's too delicate to go on the phone, monitored as they are. And even a bit too delicate to put to his attorneys."

  "You mean you want to talk to the man himself?" He was stunned.

  He fiddled with his cigar. He put it down. He opened a drawer and got out a pint of Jack Daniels. He took a bottle of sparkling water that is furnished the Sen­ate free by the company. He poured two drinks. I pre­tended to drink at mine. He tossed his off.

  He sat back, "Young fellow, I like your looks. It's ob­vious you don't know danger when you see it. And it's obvious that you don't know the man in question. Not that he would ever be in question, understand, so don't quote me."

  He scrubbed his chin with a puffy hand. He tipped out another drink to sip. He sat back. "Young fellow, I like your looks. And any favor to Rockecenter is a favor to me. You understand? Don't quote me."

  I nodded.

  "You know any part of that family?" he asked. I shook my head. "Well, educating the young is a sa­cred mission of the experienced. I vote affirmative on all education bills. And on all union-sponsored bills," he added hastily. "And there are some things that aren't in the Rockecenter account in Who's Who. If you don't know them, you won't get anywhere with Delbert John Rockecenter. But don't quote me.

  "Off the record, that family goes way back. They were emigrants from Germany in the 1800s. The right name is Roachengender. The family founder in this coun­try sold crude oil as a quack cancer cure and was a wanted criminal for rape. Don't quote me. I'll deny every­thing. And you've got too frank a face to be from the FBI.

  "The family proceeded to go downhill while their finances went uphill. The first generation in America changed its name to Rockecenter and expanded into crude oil and, with the advent of the automobile, got a monopoly on the nation's petroleum. Congress itself tried to break up that monopoly in 1911 but it just dodged.

  "The next generation controlled oil and drug com­panies. The third generation controlled oil and drugs and politics. The fourth generation started to go to pieces.

  "Now usually, great fortunes only last three genera­tions. The socialists have seen to that, mostly. But the wealth of the Rockecenters was so great it went into the fourth generation. But it was wobbly. Politically, it stum­bled. The third generation only got to the vice-presidency but the fourth generation appeared to fade even below that.

  "Then out of this fourth generation and onto the world stage stepped Delbert John Rockecenter. A dark horse. A candidate nobody even noticed until they were buried in landslides! He apparently had read up and fol­lowed all the principles of the original American Rocke­center. And I quote: 'Be moderate. Be very moderate.

  Don't let good fellowship get the least hold on you.' Another is 'Trust nobody!'

  "In short, young gentleman, he resurrected the basic Rockecenter policies. Gouge everybody. Don't tolerate competition of any kind. Do everybody down including your own family. Don't quote me. This is off the record.

  "That Delbert John grabbed all the holdings of all the other Rockecenters and lumped them up again in one huge pile. He even had his Aunt Timantha murdered to get her inheritance. He mended all the ropes they had ever had on anything—banks, governments, fuel, drugs, you name it. And he took those ropes into his own hands. Alone and personal. Single. Never married. Not about to. Why should he when the whole world is his to (bleep)!

  "Now, you may think he's old to look at him. But don't let that fool you. He's a powerhouse of cunning! He's the most rapacious (bleepard) I have ever met. He is as crooked as a corkscrew. He has my undying sup­port!"

  He finished off his drink. He sat forward. "And that's the man you're asking to see personally." He shook his head. "Not even heads of state get to see Delbert John Rockecenter when they want." He sat back and smiled a politician's smile, totally false. "And so, you tell me all about it and I'll tell his attorneys."

  "Well, sir," I said. "I can talk to his attorneys myself. A Mafia chief assured me that you could help."

  Oh, that shot told. I had hoped I wouldn't have to use it. In a sort of haggard way, he said, "The unions and the Mafia. I should have known. Are you sure this is in the Rockecenter interests?"

  "A new cheap fuel that threatens his monopoly is of great interest," I said. "I'm only trying to help."

  "All right," he glanced at the note which his secre­tary had made and which bore the name I had I.D. for at the moment, "All right, Inkswitch. What do you want?"

  "Credentials as a Senate Investigator," I said. "Full, complete and bona fide. He'll see me." Then I added the clincher. "Off the record, you can take the pay for your­self."

  His face brightened. "Aha! You'll go far, Inkswitch. I head the Senate Energy Crisis Committee. I do favors for him all the time, keeping down excess supplies of fuel. He'll see my name and know I'm in there pitching for the old Rockecenter interests come next election time! A new cheap fuel, eh? Well, that is a crisis!" And he promptly wrote the order to issue me what I needed.

  I was glad to see somebody else writing orders for a change.

  We parted the firmest of friends.

  And two hours later I had all the I.D. anyone could ask for, a Senate Investigator, including the right to bully any official in the land and even the right to carry and shoot a gun—limited only by an oath not to shoot any Senators.

  Heller, I said to myself, your chin is almost under. All you need is one firm push to grease your hair with boiling oil.

  Now all I had to do was pry Utanc out of Wash­ington.

  Chapter 3

  After two days, when Utanc showed no signs of mov­ing on, I resorted to a masterstroke. Using Washington cabs, I tailed her limousine. It was easy to do: I would jump in a cab and flash my credentials as a Senate Inves­tigator and say, "Follow that limousine!" and the cabby would say, "Oh, you God (bleeped) Feds!" and follow the limousine.

  I got to see quite a bit of Washington. I several times passed the huge advertising sign that dominates Pennsyl­vania Avenue:

  J. EDGAR HOOVER

  I decided not to buy any. But I did toy with the idea of going in and finding Stupewitz and Maulin and telling them, as one Federal to another, how Heller had tricked them, but as sneering laughter might arouse professional jealousy—leading to their shooting Senator Twiddle and leaving me without credentials—I forbore.

  Utanc was covering museums and things. She was easy to spot, she was so well dressed and chic.

  In late afternoon I found the limousine stopped in Potomac Park. It was almost in the exact place where Hel­ler had been grabbed. I even recognized the mounted park patrolman as the same one who had spotted him. Seemed like old times.

  A brief scout found Utanc. She was standing on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. She had her finger in her mouth and was looking east toward the great, tall obelisk of the Washington Monument. The leaves of fall were already blowing around and the wind was on the surface of the long mirror pool so the monument didn't reflect in it. At this time of year it really wasn't even
a very scenic scene. I couldn't imagine why she was just stand­ing there, looking at the monument. Nothing much to see. Just a white shaft.

  I was fifty feet away from her, dressed in clothes she had never seen me in. My tailing had been very secret. She gave a shuddering sigh. She took her finger out of her mouth and turned to me and said, "Isn't it beautiful, Sultan Bey?"

  I walked over to her. I might as well, now that she had spotted me. My curiosity was aroused. "What's so beautiful about it?"

  "So tall, so white, so hard" She put her finger in her mouth and looked at it again.

  Inspiration! I said, "That's only 550 feet high. In New York City, the Empire State Building is 1,472 feet high, close to three times as tall!" "It is?" she said, incredulous. "Indeed, it is," I said. "It even has a spike on top." And we left that very night for New York City. It takes real genius to operate in the Apparatus!

  We checked into the Bentley Bucks Deluxe Hotel, the penthouse. In the 50s, it had a clear-shot view of the Empire State Building to the south and Central Park to the north. But that wasn't what was good about it: it had two bedrooms! Marvelous! I could sleep on an actual bed, not a living-room sofa! And this was especially good, as I expected we would be here for quite a while. My luck was already good and now it was improving! Bright and early the following morning, all refreshed and with no crick in my back, I had breakfast and, as soon as the numerous waiters and maids had cleared out, unlimbered my receiver and viewer. Before I went into action, I had better have a good look at what (bleeping) progress Heller had made lately.

  Flare out!

  Maybe my equipment had been damaged in transit. I checked the various indicators. It seemed to be all right.

  Then I realized what was wrong. The 831 Relayer was coupled to the activator-receiver! It was boosting the signal so it could be seen thousands of miles away. Until it was turned off, I would get no views in this area!

  Where had Raht and Terb said they had put it? Aha! On the TV mast of the Empire State Building. I walked out on the terrace and looked south. I was in straight view of it.

  Well! Nothing easier. I would get it turned off.

  I phoned the New York office.

  It rang and rang. No answer. Then I remembered Faht Bey's complaint that they were all out chasing crimi­nal prospects.

  Gods. One had to do everything himself. I dressed in ordinary street clothes, puzzled over the subway sys­tem, and took a cab.

  We were only a score or so of blocks north of the Empire State Building, and in no time at all I entered through the 34th Street entrance, bought my observatory ticket and went flying up to the 80th floor. The elevator takes less than a minute and I left my stomach on the first floor!

  Nevertheless, as it was all in line of duty and one must never quail at that, I took the second elevator to the 86th floor observatory.

  Without thinking, I actually walked out on the pub­lic platform. There is a ten-foot fence around it to keep people from using it for casual suicides, but this doesn't block any views. Although I might have been able to look all around for fifty miles—it was a clear autumn day, relatively speaking, for New York—I hastily backed inside again to the snack bar and nervously had a Coke. This place was HIGH!

  Cokes apparently don't calm your nerves. You'd need a telescope to see the people on the street below from that platform.

  Where was the (bleeped) TV antenna? A guide said, "Oh, that's the upper platform. The circular observatory on the 102nd floor." He pointed up.

  "The 102nd floor?" I wailed.

  "Oh, it's perfectly safe. Glass enclosed."

  Duty, remorseless duty, called.

  So up I went to the 102nd floor.

  Well, to be brief, that isn't the top. There's another 222 feet on top of it! The literature said they built it to be a dirigible mast but never used it after one near-fatal attempt. And now it was a TV antenna.

  The activator-receiver and 831 Relayer were up there somewhere!

  There was glass all around me. Yes, I could see for fifty miles. And I could also see 1,250 feet DOWN!

  There was a trap in the ceiling.

  I began to shake. I hate heights. I knew in my soul that trying to get up there wouldn't result in a near-fatal attempt. It would be TOTALLY fatal!

  I controlled my vertigo enough to get into the ele­vator. And though I had protested the speed of those three consecutive elevators going up, I blessed it going down!

  When I arrived once more on 34th Street, I bent over and reverently patted the sidewalk!

  Silly situation. Thousands of miles away, in Turkey,

  I could track Heller easily. Now here he was, only a few hundred feet up in that same building and I couldn't track him at all! (Bleep) Spurk!

  Raht and Terb!

  I did know where they must be—the Silverwater Memorial Hospital over on Roosevelt Island. But I did not know what names they were registered under.

  I couldn't figure out the subway system on how to get there. I took a cab.

  Only because I knew their approximate date of entry and the state they had been in was I able to run them down in the wards "as a caring friend."

  And there they were. Ambulant! They weren't even in bed! They were sitting by themselves in a patients lounge, watching TV! The nerve of them. I knew they had done all that just to get a vacation at Voltar govern­ment expense!

  They became aware that somebody was standing there in a deadly manner.

  "Officer Gris!" gasped Terb. He raised the casts on his arms protectively.

  Raht didn't speak. His jaws were still wired up. "What are you doing here?" said Terb somewhat unnecessarily.

  "I am doing your jobs!" I thundered at them.

  "Sssh!" said Terb, waving his casts about.

  "Why 'sssh'?" I demanded. And indeed, why? There were only some old and chronically ill people in the lounge. Riffraff. "You are neglecting your govern­ment duties! You left the 831 Relayer on! Negligence!"

  A nurse came tearing in from the hall with a what's-wrong, what's-wrong, this-is-a-hospital look on her face. I stopped her! I flipped out my Federal credentials and in minutes I was talking to a chief administrator.

  "Those two men are malingerers," I said. "They are evading the draft. They have been recalled to ser­vice. When can you get them out of here?"

  He was impressed. He said, "The records here show compound fractures. They have some time to go before they can be unwired and have the casts sawed off. It would be dangerous to just discharge them."

  "If you don't cooperate, I'll cut off your Medicaid," I said. "The government must be served."

  He knew that. I didn't tell him which government. He grovelled and said he'd do the best he could.

  I went back and told Raht and Terb to get that 831 Relayer turned off as soon as possible. I gave them my phone number at the Bentley Bucks Deluxe Hotel and told them, acidly, that when they'd caught up on their TV, they were to phone me that they were on duty once more and that, until then, their pay was suspended.

  I left. I was pretty cross, actually. Here I was work­ing my skull to the bone while others just lay about.

  But it didn't solve my problem. I had to know what Heller was doing.

  I returned at vast expense by taxi to the hotel.

  Before I undertook my next step, I should surely check on Heller.

  Utanc was out. I had missed lunch. I ordered room service to send me up three shrimp cocktails and ate them moodily.

  Then inspiration! Food sometimes has that effect on one. I remembered the telescope.

  I unpacked it and went out on the terrace. Certainly one of those rooms in the Empire State Building was his.

  There was trouble with the image. Unclear. Sort of yellow. I went and read the instructions.

  This telescope, when you turned it on, wasn't really a telescope as such. It threw a beam. The beam sensed the other side of a wall by going through the spaces between molecules of a wall and then not finding any. When it didn't find a
ny more to go through, it made a patch of energy which acted as a mirror. And the image on that mirror was what came back to the viewer. It also had an audio pickup. Well, well. It sure looked like a tele­scope.

  I tried again and then saw what it was. Smog. The poor telescope thought the smog was a solid wall and tried to construct reflective mirrors all along the way. Too much smog. Too much distance. I did get a vague impression of stenographers on people's desks and things but nothing useful. Heller's office, I suddenly remem­bered, faced south anyway! The other side of the build­ing. (Bleep)! I had to get on the job right away. Duty demanded it! No possible delay could be tolerated!

  Utanc came back, followed by two bellboys who looked more like mountains under her purchases. I saw signs on the wrappers: Saks, Lord and Taylor, Tiffany. I hoped we would have enough money to get home!

  She came out on the veranda.

  "We got to stay here for some time," I said. "I hope we will have money enough to get home!"

  She opened her purse. "Almost all of the hundred thousand left," she said. I gaped. After Rome, Paris, Lon­don and Washington? What a money manager this wild creature from the Kara Kum desert was! Amazing!

  She was friendly, too. Talking to me even.

  "My goodness, look at that!" she said, putting her finger in her mouth. She was staring at the Empire State Building bathed in the setting sun. "My, it's tall and bold and hard! So HIGH! It's a sight that goes right through you!"

  "Indeed, it does," I said with a shudder, thinking of my horrible experience with it.

  She had something on her mind. She looked at me prettily. "Sultan Bey, do you suppose that when we've had some supper and it is nice and dark in your room, I might come in and... well... you know."

  Oh, joy!

  Never before in my life had I heard such a wonderful plan!

  Duty could wait!

  More than my spirits rose to the occasion!

  Chapter 4