Assassins Have Starry Eyes

by Donald Hamilton

  “Well,” I said, “it shows you’re never quite as smart as you think you are. I figured a bunch of amateurs might let that one slip by them.”

  Nina smiled. “Maybe that’s why I gave you the gun. So we’d know what to look for when you got here.”

  I said, “Don’t rub it in. Where do we go now?”

  She looked around, and spoke sharply to the others: “Come on, let’s get it cleaned up before a plane wanders over and sees the lights. Pull that dummy brush back on the landing strip. Hurry it up now!” She jerked her head at me. “This way.”

  Walking along beside her, I said: “You sound like a top sergeant.”

  “They need one,” she said grimly. “Or a slave driver with a whip. They seem to think you can run an organization like this on nothing but fine ideals.”

  “Which brings up the point,” I said. “An organization like what?”

  “Haven’t you guessed?”

  I shook my head. “A fellow I know named Van Horn would like to blame it all on the communists, but I’m not so sure. I’ll bet you’re saving the world from something, but I haven’t determined just what.”

  She laughed. “Well, you’ll find out in the morning.”

  “What happens in the morning?”

  “They hold a meeting and decide what to do with you. There’s been some disagreement about policy lately, and you’re to be the test case.” She glanced at me. “Why don’t you think we’re communists, Jim? It seems like a logical explanation. You can blame anything on the communists these days, can’t you?”

  I said, “Personally, I give the Reds credit for a little more efficiency than this outfit’s displayed so far. They’re professionals; and this is an amateur production, judged by the sloppy way it operates. Professionals don’t get so jumpy at the smell of blood. I’ve said that from the very beginning. This looks and acts like a collection of brilliant minds and weak stomachs; a lot of fancy ideas and no guts, Spanish.”

  She laughed again. “I think you’re calling us names because I fooled you, Jim.”

  “You certainly did,” I said bitterly. “I thought I was reasonably safe in trusting you. Not merely because you kissed me and gave me a gun to protect myself, but because I couldn’t see you working with the gang that tried to kill your own brother. Maybe I should take back that remark about weak stomachs. Yours seems to be strong enough.”

  She hesitated. We were moving toward the canyon wall—the north wall, I decided, after a quick glance at the stars. I had lost my bearings completely in the air; I was not even sure we were still in the state of Utah.

  “You have no right to say that,” Nina said. “I went with you to save Tony’s life, didn’t I?”

  “I wasn’t accusing you of sending him to his death or even of knowing he was to be killed,” I said. “Certainly when I pointed out the possibility, you were eager enough to go; and I’ll admit you worked hard over him after we found him. But you know as well as I do who was responsible, and here you are associating with the very people who tried to murder him—in their usual fancy and gutless way. Van Horn and the authorities seem to think Jack Bates’s death is tied in with the rest of this, but I don’t believe it. The person who killed Jack had the nerve to stand in front of him with a gun and make sure of the job; and he didn’t bother to dress up his work with a lot of clever trappings of accident or suicide.”

  She said, “You sound as if you judge a man’s character by how well he commits murder!”

  I said, “After all this elaborate pussyfooting around, a good, honest, straightforward murder is like a breath of fresh air. I can understand a person who hates somebody and grabs a gun and blows his head off. I can’t understand this clever stuff. It’s beyond me.”

  “Well, that’s one way of looking at it. As for Tony—” She hesitated. “As for Tony, he died yesterday afternoon, Jim.”

  We walked a couple of steps in silence. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t know.”

  “They thought for a while they were going to save him. I think they told you so over the phone that morning. But he was just too weak, after the carbon monoxide. His heart couldn’t quite make it, I guess.” I did not say anything. She went on quietly, “Nevertheless, I’m here. Some things are bigger than mere personal relationships, Jim.”

  “Sure,” I said. “Sure, Spanish.”

  “Just because… just because some fool got panicky for fear my brother was going to talk and sent somebody to kill him, does that mean I have to renounce everything I believe in? Besides—”

  “Besides what?”

  “Besides, I could be looking for the man who gave the order.”

  The swinging lantern in her hand cast the shifting, twisted shadows of the sagebrush out around us in every direction. Then we were climbing the talus slope at the foot of the cliff. We passed a building that seemed to be an old mine shack. Some fifty yards above it, we reached the shaft opening. The wooden shed protecting the mouth against slides from above looked battered and weatherbeaten, but it did not yet have the silvery patina of age that you find on some of the really ancient deserted structures scattered around that country. Inside, the tunnel was just high enough for me to walk erect. There was debris on the floor that had fallen from the roof. I don’t like caves or tunnels or holes in the ground of any description.

  “There is actually no mine called Ararat Three,” Nina said behind me. “That happens to be our name for this place, and you weren’t supposed to broadcast it.”

  “Why did you tell me then?” I asked.

  “Because we wanted you to come looking for it. I was supposed to give you enough clues to start you in this direction; after all, it’s the region people think of when somebody mentions uranium, isn’t it? We were going to feed you more hints as you went along, until we had you out in the open where it was safe to move in and pick you up.” She laughed. “You have quite a reputation as a dangerous man, Jim. Nobody was willing to tackle you alone. And then you messed up the plan by taking all kinds of people into your confidence. I don’t quite understand that. I thought we could count on your working quietly by yourself; after all, your wife’s still suspected of murder, isn’t she?” I did not speak, and she went on, “Anyway, we had to take you out of circulation in a hurry, and the kidnap note seemed like the best bet although I admit it was a fairly corny idea.”

  “Well, it worked,” I said. “I’m here.”

  “With a hide-out gun in your pants leg! Jim, I’m afraid you’re kind of corny yourself. What were you planning to do, rescue your wife and fight your way clear with a smoking pistol?”

  “Something like that,” I said. “It would have worked, too, except for you.”

  She glanced at me, started to speak, and changed her mind. We were getting pretty far underground; I didn’t like it at all. Nina spoke at last: “Actually, this place is known as the Big Judith Mine, but the local people call it Fleming’s Folly. It seems that a rich easterner named Fleming was taken in by a very fancy salting operation, although the geologist told him you don’t find uranium in this type of strata. Of course, Fleming knew better than to pay attention to them; if Steen and Pick had listened to the geologists, they wouldn’t be riding around in Cadillacs now. So he bought this claim out in the middle of nowhere, and built miles and miles of road and put in heaven only knows how much expensive equipment—and of course all he ever got out of it was the truckload or so of high-grade ore that the swindlers had hauled in on muleback and planted artistically around for him to find. Anyway, that’s the story that got around. When Fleming finally woke up to what had happened, they say he was so mad he just drove off and left all his equipment in here to rust. His road washed out the following spring, and a couple of slides helped to block it completely. Nowadays you can’t even get a jeep in here, and not many people try. After all, it’s been pretty well proved there’s nothing here worth the trouble.” She laughed. “Of course, Fleming was one of us, and his equipment was put to good use after he took his
dramatic farewell of the place.”

  I said, “Pretty neat.”

  Nina said, “We have another entrance now, but you’d never find it without knowing where to look. We only use this one to meet the plane, since it can’t land on the other side. It’s about eight miles around to Number Two entrance by trail, and quite a climb, both up and down. It’s only half a mile or so straight through.”

  I said, “Just between the two of us, I’d rather go around.”

  She laughed. “Does it give you the creeps? It did me, too, at first. It won’t be so bad once we get below. Naturally we try to leave this part looking completely unused and deserted. There’s always some optimist willing to go to a lot of trouble to poke around an old mine, even one that’s supposed to be a dud.”

  A few rods farther on, the tunnel ended. Here a transverse passage explored the interior of the earth to right and left. We took the right-hand branch, moving only a dozen steps or so before the lantern light showed a mass of splintered timbers and fallen rock ahead. Before we reached this, Nina stopped and touched a switch or button of some kind, concealed in the right-hand wall. She waved me back a little. Part of the tunnel floor in front of us began to move, settling down and swinging aside heavily in the manner of a safe door or the breechblock of a naval gun. It left a round hole about three feet in diameter. Light streamed up through the hole and illuminated the roof of the passage. Nina raised the glass of her lantern and blew out the flame.

  “Be careful going down,” she said. “The ladder’s kind of slippery.”

  I knelt and felt for the ladder with my foot, found it, and climbed down into a lighted chamber that disappointed me slightly. In the movies it would have had shiny plastic walls, tile floors, and indirect lighting. The people would have been wearing skintight leotards and little capes like Superman. I don’t know why the costume of the future always has to look like a romantic variation on my winter underwear. But this was just another hole in the ground, a little more spacious than the passage I had just left, and much more heavily reinforced by timbering. The illumination was electric, to be sure; it consisted of an ordinary light bulb of about sixty watts in a dime-store porcelain pull-chain socket screwed to one of the timber uprights that lined the walls. Two insulated wires supplied it with current. I could have made a neater installation myself. Amateur handymen always mess up the heads of screws; while long experience with guns has made me finicky about using the right size screwdriver for a job. The place did have heat and ventilation; there was a definite movement of warm fresh air up through the open trapdoor.

  The people awaiting us at the foot of the ladder were not dressed for outer space or the year two thousand; they were wearing jeans and overalls and the most noticeable thing about them was how dirty they were. Well, the area wasn’t noted for the abundance of its water supply; but the woman, whom I did not know, could at least have combed her hair and put on lipstick, even though she was over fifty and fairly homely. The man, whom I did know, could have got hold of an electric razor somewhere, since they had juice down here, and shaved off the matted growth that masked the lower portion of his face. It took me a moment to recognize him. He had always been a very fastidious sort of person when I knew him at Los Alamos; fastidious and a little precious, and there had been rumors that certain facets of his sex life had been the subject of official investigation, but nothing had ever come of this, so forget I said it.

  I said, “Hello, Louis,” and held out my hand.

  Louis Justin hesitated; then he took my hand and said, “Greg, I’m sorry about this. Believe me, it was none of my doing. If I’d known there was any thought of resorting to violence—”

  He looked up, retrieved his hand, and used it to pull nervously at his beard, as Nina dropped down from the ladder near us. Louis looked self-conscious in his grimy jeans and denim shirt, although the condition of the garments indicated that he had worn them long enough to become accustomed to them.

  He said, “Where are the others, Miss Rasmussen?”

  “They’ll be along in a minute, Doctor,” Nina said. “Come on, Jim.”

  “Where are you taking him?” Louis asked.

  “I have my instructions, Dr. Justin,” she said.

  “Oh. Well, all right.”

  We started down a sloping corridor sparsely illuminated by naked, dusty, forty-watts bulbs. I heard Nina laughing softly to herself.

  “What’s so funny?”

  “All the bright little boys and girls,” she said. Her voice had an edge of dislike. “That was Dr. Minna Goldman, the well-known microbiologist, in the overalls. All the bright little boys and girls waiting for the old world to go boom so they can jump out and start a new one.”

  “Is that what they’re waiting for?”

  “Certainly. What do you think this place is? It’s an overgrown bomb shelter, complete with the latest defenses against radiation and fallout. Of course, the living conditions are a little crude, but you can’t have everything.”

  I said, “Ararat. The mountain on which Noah landed his ark.”

  “Yes. Aren’t we symbolical?”

  I said, “Does the number ‘three’ also have mystic significance?”

  “Such as?”

  “Such as indicating the existence of Ararats One and Two, and maybe Four, Five, and Six?”

  She laughed. “That comes under the heading of classified information,” she said. We had stopped descending. She came to a halt at the beginning of what seemed to be a long, level, timbered hall. I could see doors and the openings of several transverse passages. Standing there, I was uncomfortably aware of all the tons of rock above me. The people who go crawling through caves for fun always amaze me; I can’t even relax in the Chicago subway. Nina walked to a door on the right, knocked gently, opened it, and looked inside. Then she closed the door and glanced at her wrist watch. “I guess the Director’s gone to his room,” she said. “It’s after midnight. Well, I’d better not disturb the old humbug. You’ll meet him in the morning.”

  “I’m looking forward to it.”

  She turned to face me. “You’ve got nerve, Jim,” she said after a moment. “Most of the people down here haven’t. That’s why they’re here. Because they’re scared. You might keep that in mind.”

  I said, “You’re not scared, Spanish.”

  “No,” she said, “and when you find out why I’m not scared you’ll think even worse of me than you do now. Well, I’ll take you to your wife.”

  I walked beside her down the hall. You could see the light bulbs down the timbered ceiling ahead in an interminable and not quite ruler-straight chain. An occasional one had burned out and not been replaced. We stopped in front of a door that, like the others, was rudely made of boards fastened to two crosspieces with nails that, longer than the double thickness of wood, had been turned and clinched. The latch was what you might expect on a garden gate; it was secured with a cheap padlock. They certainly hadn’t wasted money on their fittings and hardware. Nina produced a key, unlocked and removed the padlock, and stepped aside.

  “Jim,” she said.

  “Yes?”

  “You were asking what these people are saving the world from. I’ll tell you. They’re saving it from people like you.”

  I looked at her for a moment. It was hardly the time to investigate riddles. I turned from her and went through the door, and heard her lock it behind me.

  TWENTY-THREE

  I HEARD SOMEONE stir in the darkness that was broken by a few rays of light leaking through cracks in the crude door behind me. They only made the darkness seem more intense. I heard the metallic, half-musical sound of bedsprings creaking. The low voice that spoke was completely familiar; I would have known it anywhere. Until I heard her voice I had not realized how much I had missed her.

  “Greg?”

  “Hi, Princess,” I said. “Where the hell’s the light switch around here?”

  “Just reach in front of you; there’s a chain… Wait, I’ll get it
.”

  “I’ve got it,” I said.

  I pulled, and raw light flooded the place. It was a small room, or cave, about seven by seven by six and half under the beams; it looked even smaller because of all the timbering. It occurred to me that the mine above had not been reinforced in the rugged manner of these lower levels. I suppose they had built this part to stand up under shocks that miners do not usually have to consider in their calculations. It was logical enough in a nightmarish way; but it gave me the feeling that I was dealing with people who had withdrawn from reality into an elaborate sort of science fiction—or maybe I was the person who, with the best information in the world on the subject, was stubbornly refusing to face the truth about the probable fate of the earth.

  The furnishings of the tiny chamber consisted of a folding chair, a wooden shelf bracketed to the wall uprights, and a narrow iron cot covered by an army blanket. A white receptacle of the type we used to have on the farm when I was quite young was tucked away under the cot. A towel, and the blue leather jacket she had worn away from our house in Albuquerque, hung from nails in the wall. The jacket had lost a great deal of its smart and jaunty look in the week or so since I had last seen it: it was scuffed and dusty.

  She was sitting on the edge of the cot facing me. She was fully dressed. I don’t know why it should have shocked me to find her still wearing the clothes she had departed in; after all, her suitcases had remained in Nevada with the wrecked sports car.

  She said, “I’m sorry. I… just lay down to wait. I must have fallen asleep…”

  Her voice trailed away. She stood up. I had forgotten that she wasn’t a very tall girl; or maybe I just neglected to make allowances for my cowboy boots. She looked up at me, pushing back a wisp of dark hair.

  “You shouldn’t have come,” she said.

  “Yeah,” I said. “Sure. Just tell me and I’ll go away.”

  We stood there looking at each other. Her face and hands and knees were clean, and her lipstick was bright and even; otherwise she was kind of a mess. Her dark hair was stringy, her shirt and shorts were wrinkled and grimy, her shoes were scratched and dusty, and there were holes in the heels of both her socks. Except for the clean face and the careful lipstick she looked like a tenement kid. She was the prettiest thing in the world. I had done some moderately crude and deceitful things to find her, and I hoped to do more to get her out of here; and she would be worth every lousy word and deed of it.