The Innocent Bystanders c-4

by James Munro

  He came in at last and they moved toward him in a wave of impatience and relief. What had delayed him? Was anything wrong? Why did he have to be late on this night of all nights? It was Daniel who called them to order. Daniel was leader now. He took Kaplan to the window and examined him in its light. Beside Daniel's huge, slab-muscled body, Kaplan's wiry toughness looked frail. His face was gray and there was a bruise already darkening his cheekbone.

  "Tell it," said Daniel.

  "I was bringing the poison," Kaplan said, "and a guard stopped me."

  "He found it?" Klein asked. Daniel motioned him to silence.

  "He wanted me to fetch water. I was too slow for him. He hit me—and kicked me. Here." He pressed his hands to his stomach. "Daniel—I don't think I can do it."

  "You must," said Daniel. "Each man has his place. You know that. Without you we cannot go."

  "I can stay behind and help Zimma," Kaplan said.

  "Then you will die."

  "Of course," said Kaplan.

  Daniel turned to Goldfarb. "Look at his stomach," he said.

  Goldfarb's hands were deft and tender as he looked. The bruise was enormous and they had nothing for it. "It hurts," Kaplan whimpered.

  "Does it hurt too much to pray?" Daniel asked, and Kaplan stood then, and Klein led them in prayer.

  When they had done, Daniel sat down beside the older man, and his voice was gentle. "Kaplan," he said, "it must be tonight. We are ready now. Tomorrow and every day that follows, little by little our courage will go. Our food will be found, our tools will be discovered. It has to be tonight. And please do not stay behind with Zimma. It is brave, but it is also foolish. If you want to die, volunteer for the wire." Kaplan bent his head.

  "Please do not hate me," he said.

  "How can I hate you? How can any of us? We need you, Kaplan." *

  Then Kaplan said, "Very well. I will come," and the others crowded round to thank, to praise, and Daniel gave him some vodka, the only painkiller they had, from his carefully hoarded store. Kaplan raised his glass, and drank to their endeavor. Six hours later he, Daniel, and Asimov were declared missing; the rest were dead.

  CHAPTER 2

  Craig accepted his third drink and watched as Thomson put in the ice, added whisky, and then ginger ale. His quantities were generous. At one time Craig would have hesitated when the third drink was offered, needing the assurance that it was safe to accept, that his mind and body would not be called upon to work for him with a speed and certainty that a third large Scotch could impair, perhaps with fatal results. But now Craig ran no risks, and so he accepted the third drink without hesitation. It was easier too. Thomson was an overforceful host. But then Thomson was an overforceful everything. He had the flat above Craig's in the elegant block in Regent's Park, and that, Craig thought, was the only possible reason why he'd been invited to the party. The best way to keep the neighbors happy was to invite them too. He didn't mind; parties were boring, but he was always bored anyway. At least at a party you had company.

  Thomson produced films for television. He had noisy friends who did noisy things and a seemingly endless supply of young actresses who looked intense and called Craig "darling" and were nice because Craig might turn out to be in the business, and if they weren't nice he wouldn't offer them a job. Craig knew that in television terms this passed as logic, so he played fair most of the time and admitted he didn't do anything. Only with the very pretty ones did he linger for a while, make them wonder, before the shocking truth came out. He was nothing, not even an adman, and not even ashamed . . . He sipped his Scotch and looked from a very pretty one to the bracket clock on Thomson's not quite Regency table. It was seven thirty. Time to go out to dinner. After he had dined

  Loomis wanted to see him, but he wouldn't care if Craig were late, not any more. Loomis saved his anger for the important ones, and Craig was no longer important. The thought was consoling. Craig had known another man whom Loomis had considered important, and that man was incurably insane. He shook the ice in his drink and put it down on a coaster, dead center. The girl he was talking to—Angela, was it? Virginia? Caroline?—noticed the power in the hand, the ridges of hard skin across the knuckles, along the edge of the hand from wrist to fingertip. And because she was a sensitive girl, she also noticed the boredom of the man and resented it. A man who stood six feet tall, a wide-shouldered lean-hipped man with mahogany-colored hair and gray eyes that made her think of Scandinavian seas, had no right to be bored. Not when she was talking to him. Suddenly he smiled at her, and the face, that had been only strong before, was suddenly handsome.

  "You're very nice," he said. "Very nice indeed." The words distressed her, though they were kindly meant. "Look," he said, "why don't I introduce you to those people over there? Two of them are producers, and one's a casting director."

  "You don't have to be so bloody polite," said the girl. "I'm not a hag yet."

  She left him in a flurry of anger, her mini-skirt riding over impeccable thighs, and Craig went to say good-bye to his host.

  Thomson was hurt. He said so noisily, and at great length. The whole idea of the party, he explained, was for Craig and a few kindred spirits to get together. Have fun, enjoy themselves, talk to a few girls.

  "I've done all that," said Craig. "It's time I was off."

  Thomson wouldn't hear of it. There was a second, and very exciting reason why a favored few had been asked along. He'd hoped to explain it later over a few sandwiches and a mouthful of champagne. As a matter of fact that girl he'd been talking to would be staying. Wouldn't Craig like that?

  "Very much," said Craig. "But I really have to go. You know. Business."

  The word was one which Thomson had never taken lightly, and he responded to it at once.

  "Just give me five minutes, old man. That isn't too much to ask, is it?" And Craig agreed that it was not.

  He found himself hustled into a room called a study, which was mostly Morocco leather, on books, on the writing desk and chair, even on the wastepaper basket. Thomson shut the door on him, disappeared, then reentered almost at once with a short, squat young man and a trayful of Scotch. The squat young man it seemed had written a play, and Thomson needed a backer . . . Craig discovered it was even later than he had thought. He said so, and turned to the door.

  The squat young man said, "I'm an artist. I create things. Surely I have a right to a hearing?"

  His voice was unbelievably harsh. Nothing it could say, not even "I love you," would sound like anything but a threat.

  "Some other time," said Craig. "I have enjoyed meeting you."

  The squat young man put a hand on his arm.

  "Look," he said. "I used to be a wrestler. I've done time for assault. You're going to hear me now."

  Craig looked at Thomson, who had the baffled look of a conjuror suddenly realizing that his best trick is about to misfire.

  "Is he sober?" he asked.

  "He's had a few," said Thomson.

  Craig looked at the hand on his arm.

  "A year or two ago if you'd done that I'd have broken your arm," he said.

  The hand slid up the muscle of Craig's arm, and fell at once to his side.

  "Some other time, when I'm not so busy," Craig said, and left.

  Thomson downed a drink quickly, looked in scorn at the wrestler turned playwright.

  "And you thought he was a fairy," he said.

  Craig dined on salad, sole veronique, and a half-bottle of Chablis, and as he dined he thought of the squat young man. The violence of his own reaction surprised him.

  Their tactics, after all, had been perfectly reasonable in terms of the world they lived in. He'd made no passes at girls, therefore he was queer, and because he was queer the squat young man had put his hand on him. There were better ways to handle that situation than to talk of breaking arms. And yet it had happened at once: the flat threat thrusting at them both, escaping his conscious control. He could have done it too, even now. Without disarranging his
tie he could have broken both their arms; or their necks. Craig shivered. He didn't want that feeling, not any more. Nor did he want to see Loomis, but he went. The fat man was power: irresistible power to those who had worked for him, and Craig had served him for five violent years.

  Queen Anne's Gate looked well by night. The street lights softened the clean lines of the buildings to a pretty romanticism that made the street remember its elegant past with nostalgia, but Craig's thoughts were with the present. He ignored the row of brass plates: Dr. H. B. Cunnington-Low, Lady Brett, Major Fuller, the Right Reverend Hugh Bean. They were precisely the sort of names that belonged in Queen Anne's Gate—but they didn't exist. Craig pressed the bell marked "Caretaker" and waited till the door was opened by a muscular man in overalls. Somewhere about him, Craig knew, he carried a Smith and Wesson .38 revolver and a commando knife. The caretaker held his job because he could use them.

  "You're expected, Mr. Craig," he said. "You're to go straight up."

  Craig climbed the stairs to the flat marked "Lady Brett" and went inside. The caretaker watched him go in. Lady Brett's flat was Craig's office, and Craig had no business there when Loomis had summoned him at once, but the caretaker made no move to interfere. Craig might be slowing up and drinking a bit too much, but he had a judo black belt and an expert's knowledge of karate, and the caretaker had to practice unarmed combat with him once a month. He never antagonized Mr. Craig if he could help it.

  The office was neat and tidy, the way his secretary Mrs. McNab always left it. And, anyway, there wasn't much work sent to him now. The place wasn't all that hard to keep in order. He looked through his "In" tray, but nothing had been added since he left: there was no helpful memo from Mrs. McNab. Whatever Loomis had in store for him would come as a surprise. The fat man liked surprises, when he delivered them. Craig went along the corridor and tapped on the door that was of paneled mahogany, polished silken smooth. There was an indeterminate growl from behind it, and Craig went inside, into a perfect establishment setpiece with a superb stucco ceiling, sash windows, and overstuffed furniture covered in flowered chintz. Behind a Chippendale desk Loomis sat in a buttoned leather armchair that was the biggest piece of furniture Craig had ever seen, and yet it fitted the big man so exactly that a Savile Row tailor might have measured him for it. Loomis was vast, a figure of enormous power that had slopped over into fat, with pale, manic eyes, an arrogant nose, and white hair clipped close to his skull. When Craig first met Loomis the white hair had been dusted with red, but now the red had gone.

  "Pour coffee," said Loomis, "and sit down." For Loomis the invitation was cordial.

  Craig poured coffee from a vacuum flask—it was black, bitter, scalding hot—then sat on the arm of one of the chairs. It was bad enough facing Loomis, even if he were in a good mood, without being three feet below him.

  "I've been thinking about you," said Loomis. "Thinking a lot. I'm beginning to wonder if you still fit in here, son." Craig waited; there was a lot more to come.

  "You've done some nice jobs for us," Loomis said, "and I don't deny it. You kill people nice and tidy, and you got a few brains as well. But the last job spoiled you—or at least I think so. Do you still dream about it?"

  "No," said Craig, and it was true. The best and most expensive psychiatrist in the country had labored for weeks to stop those dreams.

  "Think about it?"

  "No," Craig said again, and this time it was a lie. When you have been tortured by having electric shocks run through your penis there are times when you think about it, no matter how hard you try not to.

  "I don't believe you," said Loomis, "but it doesn't matter. You finished that job and I'm grateful to you, but I don't think you're ready for another one."

  "Nor do I," said Craig. He put his cup down quickly before his hand began to shake.

  "You do nice paperwork, but I got too many fellers for that already." He paused. "Experts," he said, making the word an insult. "I'm beginning to wonder if I can use you at all."

  "You can hardly just let me go," said Craig. "No," Loomis agreed. "I can hardly do that. Nobody ever leaves my department—once they sign on." Craig waited again.

  "I been thinking of sending you to the school," Loomis said. "Training the young hopefuls. You're the kind of feller they'll be up against, once they get into the field—or you were. But I dunno. You're not exactly cut out to be a schoolmaster, are you? On the other hand, I got nothing else to offer. We better make it the school. I tell you what," he said. "I'll make you a sort of graduation exercise. Go down there tomorrow, have a look around, but don't let the students see you. Pascoe will pick out the ones who are ready, and you can set up test situations for them. See if they're any good. See if you're any good come to that. Like the idea?"

  "No," said Craig.

  "I didn't think you would. You can go down there tomorrow. I'll tell Pascoe to expect you."

  The school was in Sussex, an isolated Elizabethan manor house in fifty acres of grounds enclosed by an eight-foot granite wall. There were always two men at the gates, and they were armed. Closed-circuit television warned them of every approaching car, and day and night Alsatians roamed the grounds. They were good dogs; Pascoe had trained them himself. The nearest village was seven miles away, and the villagers had kept well away from the manor house ever since the dogs had caught a poacher ten years ago. The villagers believed that the manor house was a nursing home for wealthy, dangerous maniacs, and

  Pascoe did all he could to encourage that belief. Once he'd even faked an escape: a red-bearded schizoid armed with a crowbar, trapped in the snug of The Black Bull just before opening time; dogs and straitjackets and a tremendous smashing of glass. It had cost Pascoe fifty pounds in breakages, and the village had never forgotten.

  His pupils were driven hard. They had to be: there was a great deal to learn. The school existed only for the benefit of Department K, and those who worked for Department K were specialists of the highest order. Their business was destruction—of plans, of aspirations, of life when the need arose. And those who wished to serve Department K had first to master many trades. In the school Pascoe had a language laboratory, a small-arms range, a unit dealing with arson and sabotage, a gymnasium, and a garage. There were daily sessions in unarmed combat, there were visiting lecturers who taught safe-breaking, the extraction of information, the use of the knife, the improvisation of weapons, the picking of pockets, on every conceivable subject from desert survival to everyday life in the Soviet Union. There was a course on how to resist methodically applied pain to the limits of physical and mental strength. At the end of each course— and courses were held only when there were a sufficient number of likely candidates—the school turned over to Loomis a handful of men and women who were afraid of nothing but their master's power. If they disobeyed, defected, or used their skills against anyone but the targets Loomis selected he could have them killed, and they knew it.

  They had been deviously recruited, those who served Loomis: from the Intelligence Services some of them, or the Special Branch of CID; from the armed forces, the universities, the business desk, and the factory floor. Some, not many, from prison. One of Loomis's experts spent his whole working life reading photostated personnel files acquired via his cover as director for the Unit of Psychological and Statistical Research. Likely candidates were spotted, observed, tailed, unknowingly interviewed, and tested. Loomis's expert was good. Of the candidates he spotted, perhaps four per cent reached the school, and after that they belonged to Department K forever, whether they reached the standard of field operative or not. Loomis's security was absolute. No one who knew about the department ever left it alive.

  Craig waited at the gate while one of the men on duty examined his pass. The other one wasn't in sight, but he'd be there, Craig knew, with a gun on him. The man he could see handed back the pass and said, "Straight on up to the house, please, sir. And don't get out of the car till Mr. Pascoe comes to fetch you. There's dogs about." He went bac
k to the gatehouse, pressed a button, and the gates swung open. Craig drove the Lamborghini through and at once the gates were closed. As he drove slowly up the drive, the car whispering, Craig spotted the dogs. They used cover like leopards, and they followed him all the time. He reached the main doors of the house, switched off the engine, pulled up the hand brake, and waited. The six dogs settled in a great arc round the car, ears back, the hair on their necks bristling. If he left the car they would kill him, for all his slull, and Pascoe wasn't there to meet him; Pascoe was enjoying the fact that Craig was helpless in the face of something that he, Pascoe, had created.

  He appeared at last, and whistled to the dogs. At once they moved off back into the grounds and their endless patrol. Craig got out of the Lamborghini and moved up the steps, not hurrying, to where Pascoe waited. Pascoe had been a colonel in military intelligence and a liaison officer with the maquis, and had survived three months in a Gestapo prison. He was tall, thin, whipcord hard, and proud of his school. The people he turned out were the best there were, except that Craig had been better than any of them. Craig was the only Department K operator who had never attended the school. Pascoe detested him.

  "You do yourself well," he said, and looked at the Lamborghini, its insolent scarlet blaring at a bed of soft Mayflowers. Craig walked past him into a hall that held a Shiraz rug, a Jacobean chest, an oil by Srubbs.

  "You don't do too badly yourself," he said. "For a schoolmaster."

  Pascoe's hands clenched. Sooner or later they always did, when Craig appeared. He had never met the man who could beat him, until he met Craig. The thought was bitter to him. Then he remembered what Loomis had said to him over the scrambler phone. Craig was getting past it. The fists loosened, became hands again.