Assassins Have Starry Eyes

by Donald Hamilton

  I said, “If you didn’t follow people around, you wouldn’t get into trouble. Well, we’ve got a sick man a couple of miles up the canyon. How are you boys with shovels?”

  “A sick man? Who?”

  “Give your profession a rest, Van. We’ve also got a nice warm cabin and plenty of food. You can ask the questions when we get there.”

  Uphill and against the wind, it took considerably longer to go back than it had to come down. When we got there, the cabin was still where I had left it, and smoke was still coming from the stove-pipe. The tall young fellow, whose name I never learned, was pretty cold and miserable: he started running clumsily when he saw it, like a thirsting man heading for an oasis. I called him back.

  “Whoa, there,” I said. “Just hold it a minute. She’s got a loaded Winchester in there, and she isn’t expecting me back before dark.” I took the .270 off my shoulder, worked the bolt, aimed at the sky, and pulled the trigger. Even in the wind and snow, the big gun crashed loudly enough to hurt your ears. “Yo, Spanish!” I shouted. “Reinforcements coming in.”

  There was a little pause. I had time for a sickening sense of apprehension; time to know that the door wasn’t going to open, that we were going to go inside and find something terrible—or, worse, nothing at all. Other people had turned up missing in more civilized places than this. I shouldn’t have left her here with only a sick and helpless kid for company… Then the door swung open, and she looked out at us with the carbine over her arm. Van and his companion started forward again. I paused to throw the empty out of my rifle, and unload. There were plenty of firearms around if we should need them, and I was taught never to bring a loaded gun into the house.

  I looked up to see her coming down the path toward me, half running. She stopped in front of me, a little out of breath. She was bareheaded and kind of tousled-looking, and a light application of lipstick wouldn’t have ruined her appearance, but you operate on somewhat different standards of personal cleanliness and adornment when you get out into the back country in winter. She looked all right to me.

  “Are you all right?” she asked. “I was kind of worried about you.”

  “Sure,” I said. “How’s Tony?”

  “He’s starting to cough. It sounds as if he’ll tear himself apart inside.”

  “Well, as soon as everybody gets warmed and fed, we’ll have him out of here.” I slung the empty rifle on my shoulder. “I’ll go make sure the car’s going to start while you see that our guests are well supplied with energy-building foods.” I started to turn away.

  “Jim,” she said.

  I turned back. “Yes?”

  We faced each other for a moment. Suddenly she was in my arms and I was kissing her with the snow blowing around us and the two rifles getting mixed up together—I remember hoping vaguely that the hammer of the carbine wasn’t cocked. It was an odd experience on all counts. I had not had any girl but Natalie in my arms for better than three years; and I’d never had a great deal of time for girls before that, so I wasn’t quite sure what was expected of me. We had too many clothes on for any serious display of affection; it was a very innocent kiss. At last Nina turned her face aside and buried it in the damp fur of my hunting-coat collar. I said, “I don’t know what the hell I’m going to do with you, Spanish. At the moment, I’ve already got one wife.”

  “I know.” Her voice was muffled. Presently she straightened up, stepped back, and put her hands to her hair, pushing it back from her face against the wind. “I know. I just… if anything had happened to you, after I’d sent you out in all that snow and wind, I’d have died, Jim!”

  I looked at her for a moment longer; and she looked back at me steadily. It was like coming to an unmarked fork in a trail. I could not quite see which was the proper direction to take. Well, it did not have to be decided in the middle of a blizzard.

  “This could develop into quite a problem,” I said. “Let’s shelve it temporarily, shall we?”

  She laughed quickly. “You’re a funny person. Don’t be so farsighted, my dear; it doesn’t pay. Maybe I just kissed you because I was glad to see you. Maybe I just go around kissing all sorts of men. There’s no problem unless… unless you want to make one.”

  “I know,” I said. “That’s just the problem, whether to make a problem or not. Well, let’s pass it for the time being. Tell those guys to hurry up and eat while I see just how big a job we’re going to have getting out of here.”

  The rear of the Pontiac was pretty well covered with snow. I set the rifle aside, took out my heavy hunting knife, and chopped a pine branch to use for a broom—a big hunting knife is generally considered to be the mark of a tenderfoot, but I don’t go along with that theory. I’ve got a pocket knife for fine whittling; I see no point in wearing a toothpick on my belt, too. I pushed and swept the snow off the trunk lid and opened it up. I wiped off the rifle and put it back into its case. Then I got the shovel out and dug around the car, and cleaned off the radiator and windshield. Finally I got inside and started the motor, relieved and pleased to have it start right away. I nursed it along until it was idling smoothly—they’ve taken the old manual choke and throttle away from us and replaced them with an unpredictable thermostatic gadget, so now you can’t warm up a car properly without staying with it every second of the time.

  I left it running, climbed out into the snow, and waded over to Tony’s car to look for another shovel. They are practically standard equipment for anyone who does much back-road driving in this part of the country, and I found one in the trunk. Then I looked in front to see if Nina had brought out everything of value, since the car might be standing there some time, and the local Indians were probably no less averse to stripping a deserted car than white men would be in similar circumstances. The smell of exhaust gas was still noticeable. There was nothing inside except some magazines on the seat; apparently Tony had stocked up with reading matter before heading for his hide-out.

  I removed the rubber hose and closed the window. Climbing out, I knocked the magazines to the floor. One slid forward and blocked the door. I shoved it back, and noticed the blurb for the lead article; Is Fallout Threatening Your Future? It was hardly the time for reading, but I picked up the magazine and glanced through it. The guy was on the old mutation pitch. If so and so many genes were irradiated by so and so many roentgens we would breed so and so many little monsters, one of which might be yours. I don’t know why they always assume that a mutation necessarily has to be bad. As I recall my biology, mutations are why we’re not still swinging from the trees by our tails with the other monkeys.

  According to the writer, however, nuclear physicists were callous fellows gaily tossing radioactive poisons into the atmosphere without a thought to the possible effects on the human race. I had, of course, heard that theory expressed before; Nina herself had hurled similar accusations at me the day she came to the hospital to avenge Paul Hagen. It was fairly clear where she had got the notion; in fact Tony had blamed himself for shooting off his mouth around the house when he came to apologize later.

  Standing there in the snow, I frowned at the magazine, tossed it in back, and picked up another. It wasn’t on the cover, this time, but I found it in the table of contents: The Growing Menace of Radioactivity. The third had an article explaining just how many cities the size of New York could be wiped out by one of the latest X-bombs, as it was called: something too secret to describe, but terrible. The fourth contained a piece entitled: The Atom—Pandora’s Box? The thesis, at a glance, seemed to be that splitting the atom had been a big mistake and we should glue the damn thing back together again quick like a bunny.

  Anyone who has read the history of science will give a rueful little laugh when he comes across this sort of crap. There hasn’t been a scientific advance yet that wasn’t going to ruin the human race if we didn’t quick stuff it back where it came from and forget all about it. When you have a little time, look up what they said about the steam engine, which was going to do all ki
nds of dreadful things to the people reckless enough to allow themselves to be snatched through space in a railroad car at the unthinkable speed of twenty miles per hour…

  When I came back to the Pontiac, Van was coming along the path with an armload of gear. I helped him load it into the trunk.

  “You really travel equipped,” he said. “We could have used some of this stuff last night.”

  “I hope you had a nice miserable time,” I said.

  “Still mad, eh?” he said.

  “I haven’t heard any apologies,” I said.

  He grinned. “If I went around apologizing to everybody whose feelings I had to hurt in the line of duty, I’d never have time for anything else. What’s the dope on the kid in there? Did he try to kill himself or was it somebody else’s idea?”

  I shrugged. “He still hasn’t said. But when we found him there was a fresh bump on his head; and a jeep had come out of the canyon shortly before we started in.”

  “How do you figure the motive?”

  “My guess is that somebody doesn’t like keeping failures on the payroll, particularly when they lose their nerve and take to the hills. Somebody was afraid the boy was scared enough to talk. Anyway, that was my hunch, which was why I thought we’d better come after him when we discovered he’d run away.”

  Van nodded slowly. He looked around at the rock and snow of the canyon. “I guess I’m just a city boy at heart,” he said. “This kind of country scares hell out of me.”

  “It scares me, too,” I said. “That’s why I like it. What’s the fun of tackling something easy?”

  “For a respected scientist,” he said, “you have some very juvenile attitudes. Well, let’s get out of here before my feet freeze up again.”

  We brought the boy down last of all. The cold air set him coughing badly; I was glad the heater had been running long enough to warm up the interior of the car thoroughly. Nina got in back with him; Van and his stooge joined me in front, each with a shovel. I gunned the engine, backed up as far as she would go, and took a running start across the brief clear space where the car had been standing. It was the first time that I really appreciated those two hundred horsepower. We hit the deep stuff hard, swerved, straightened out, and kept on moving. It was downhill, which helped; and the weight of five passengers and the gear in the trunk also helped.

  We made half a mile before a drift stopped us. I backed up and hit it twice more, but couldn’t break through. The last time she wouldn’t back out of it, either. The shovel brigade turned out; and I got out to open the hood and push the snow out of the radiator. They got it out from under the wheels and cleared something of a lane and got behind and pushed. We made twenty yards and stuck again. They shoveled some more. We made another twenty. They shoveled again. We pulled clear and kept on going, but they had to run after me a quarter of a mile before I found a place where I could stop with some hope of getting started again.

  Then we had a long downhill run along an open hillside where the snow had blown thin, followed by a mean climb where it had drifted three feet deep and had to be shoveled all the way to the top. I spelled Van for a while when he showed signs of weakening. In the middle of the afternoon we passed the fire where I had found them, still smoking. Some time later we passed their car, half-buried in the snow. I was surprised they had got that far without chains. We had to dig it out and nudge it aside with the Pontiac before we could squeeze past on the narrow road.

  It was five o’clock and twilight when we reached the end of the canyon, having spent four hours covering six miles. The state road had not been plowed, but a truck of some kind had come through leaving tracks that were like a paved highway after the stuff through which we had been driving. We only had to dig out twice in the next nineteen miles. The sky was clearing. The main highway had been plowed when we got to it. We reached the hospital in Espanola a little after seven, turned the boy over to the doctors, and sat down to wait for them to tell us something.

  Presently Van came in the hospital front door, looked around, spotted us sitting there, and came over.

  “How’s it going?” he asked.

  Nina shook her head. “Nobody’s told us anything yet.”

  “Well, your brother’s in good hands. Come on out and I’ll buy you both dinner.”

  “Thanks, but I’d rather wait here.” She glanced at me. “You go ahead, Jim. I’ll be all right.”

  I put back the magazine I had been reading. “Well, I’ll bring you back a sandwich and some coffee.”

  Outside it was clear and cold. There was some snow around, but not very much. You would not think fifty miles and a thousand feet of altitude would make so much difference.

  “That’s a nice girl,” Van said.

  “How much are you selling her for?” I asked.

  “What… Oh.” He laughed.

  I said, “If I should decide to divorce my present wife and marry Miss Rasmussen, I’ll remember that I have your blessing.”

  He said, “Okay. You don’t have to hit me with a brick; I’ll mind my own business.”

  Espanola is a small town on the upper Rio Grande, big enough to have a movie and, as I recall, a traffic light, but not much else. It’s not as much of a tourist trap as most of those places, since it’s a little off the beaten track. The café we entered specialized in Mexican food. It was late and I was hungry enough to take a chance on my rebuilt digestive tract; I ordered the standard mess of tacos, enchiladas, and frijoles, which are beans. Van ordered a hamburger and coffee. It wasn’t a comfortable meal; we didn’t have much to say to each other.

  When I returned to the hospital, Nina was not in the waiting room. A nurse said she was with her brother. I sat down and read a magazine. It was getting late and there wasn’t anybody in the place except an expectant father who seemed to be taking it pretty hard considering that, from what he said to the nurse, he was waiting for his fifth. Well, I was hardly in a position to sit in judgment on him, not having been through it even once, myself. The print became hard to keep in focus. When I opened my eyes, Nina was standing over me. She did not speak at once.

  I sat up and said, “I brought your sandwich. I’m afraid the coffee’s cold by now. How is he?”

  “They’ve got him full of sulfapyridine,” she said. “They say he has… a good chance.”

  I looked up at her. She was so tired she was swaying. “Sit down and eat something,” I said, unwrapping the sandwich for her. “Then we’ll find you a place to sleep.”

  She sat down beside me. “It’s all right,” she said. “One of the nurses is a darling; she’s fixed me up in a room they’re not using. Jim?”

  “Yes?”

  “Does ‘Ararat’ mean anything to you?”

  “Not except as a mountain in the Bible. Why?”

  “After you left the cabin to get help this morning, he woke up. We talked a little. He wasn’t very coherent, but he knew me. I mean, he wasn’t delirious. I asked him… what I thought you’d want to know. About your wife. He said ‘Ararat Number Three.’”

  “Ararat Number Three. Did he say anything else?”

  “He said ‘mine.’ Then he said ‘uranium’ and laughed. When he laughed, it hurt him, and he stopped talking. Later he started to cough. I didn’t get to ask anything else. I’m sorry.”

  I said, “You did fine. I’m very grateful.”

  “It’s not much. I hope it helps you find her.”

  We looked at each other for a moment. I said, “Yes, I guess that comes first, doesn’t it?” I got to my feet; and she rose also.

  She said, “It’s funny. I used to hate you.” After a silence she said, “It was just a kiss. It doesn’t obligate you in any way. Remember that.”

  “Sure,” I said. “Well, so long, Spanish.”

  “Jim.” She looked down, unfastened the two lower buttons of her wool shirt, and reached inside. “Here,” she said. “You may need this, wherever you’re going. You can’t always carry that big rifle with you.”

&
nbsp; I looked down at the pistol she was offering me: a .22 automatic with a slim, short barrel. The weapon was familiar. I had had an opportunity to study it carefully from the wrong end some months before. The police must have given it back to her. I looked from the gun to her face. She blushed. It was an interesting phenomenon, and one you don’t see very often these days.

  “I—” she said, and stopped.

  “I’m hurt, Spanish,” I said. “You didn’t trust me. You brought a gun along to protect yourself from me.”

  “Yes,” she said, “and there was a time or two when it looked as if I might need it, too.” Her smile faded and she looked at me steadily. “Bring it back if you can,” she said. “If not, it doesn’t matter. Don’t worry about it. Good luck.”

  EIGHTEEN

  A HUNDRED YEARS ago, if you’d been snowbound up in the Chama country, it would have taken you a decent number of days to work your way back to civilization as represented by Santa Fe, and even then the transition would not have been overwhelming, since Santa Fe was a fairly crude town at the time. Today you can practically step out of a snowdrift into a hot shower. It puts a strain on a man’s adaptability. What it did to me was upset my digestion, or perhaps I should put the blame on the enchiladas.

  I had a rough night; in the morning, the worst was over, but I felt weak and tired. Also I seemed to be catching cold again. It seemed advisable to take things easy lest I wind up back on the sick list; I had tea and toast sent up to the room, and called the hospital in Espanola and was told Miss Rasmussen was sleeping and her brother was holding his own. I got a boy to run the Pontiac to a garage with orders to tighten any nuts and bolts that might have worked loose, wash and grease the thing, and hang onto it until I came or called. Then I hung out a Do Not Disturb sign and slept until two o’clock in the afternoon. I had some clear bouillon sent up although I was hungry enough for steaks.

  I started to call Espanola again, but stopped when I realized that I was much less interested in how her brother was making out than in just talking to her; and we didn’t really have a great deal to talk about. I hung up the phone, therefore, found a pencil and paper and, sitting in bed, wrote: