by Buck Sanders
“Oh,” she said, distantly.
Slayton decided not to pursue that topic any further. It was a good excuse to switch to a brief and entirely gratuitous ramble on his car collection. Housed in a special garage on his “farm” in Virginia, the autos ranged from those left to Slayton by his father—Hudson Terraplanes, mostly—to Slayton’s own acquisitions, which included his Nash-Healy, Packards from the 1930s, and vintage Cadillacs from even earlier, mainly 1912 through 1920. All were lubricated, rebuilt, as close to mint as Slayton could tinker them, and a good deal of his time on the farm was spent in that garage.
The rap was mainly called up to impress the women in the car, and impress them it did.
“It would be simply marvelous to see all those old cars,” said Shauna. “They all work?”
“If they don’t work I get extremely perturbed,” commented Slayton, “… so I spend a lot of time making sure they work. Yes.”
“Good for the soul,” grumbled Professor Willis, speaking in a low voice like a grizzly bear just grumped up from hibernation. His participation in this conversation had been unexpected to Slayton, though Willis, as usual, seemed to be talking exclusively to himself—the most intelligent audience he could find. “Do the soul good, to see a Packard in good running condition after all these years. Haven’t ridden in one since… ye gods, since 1938. Only comfortable automobile ever built.”
Slayton was taken by surprise, but grinned. It was the first thing he had heard Willis say that was not related to Egyptology, or the tour. He had a fleeting glimpse of a kindred soul; it was not too much of a fantasy to visualize Willis in that garage, clucking over his automobiles.
For now, it would be just fine to get these people rebilleted in a new hotel and see what Winship’s briefing had to offer on Rashid Haman—whoever he was. Willis had dozed off in his seat, his pronouncement on Packards the final one, for the moment. Shauna had become mesmerized by the road. She sat distractedly twisting a strand of hair, twining it around her index finger.
At the moment, Slayton was thinking how touchy it might be to search the artifacts comprising the Seth-Olet tour—thousands of pieces—and he decided to cover that, too.
“I hate to bring this up, Shauna, Maggie… but those guys in the grey J.C. Penney’s suits will want to stick flashlights in rather rude places once all that stuff is uncrated, if the President is going to come anywhere near it. Looking for bombs, revolutionaries, radicals… mice… anything. Everything makes them nervous.”
“Some of the artifacts are extremely delicate,” said Maggie immediately.
“Yes. I assume there’s some kind of objection to poking into everything, so I thought it would be better to iron this out now. They will want to look, and they can be ungracious about it if you have conditions.”
“Governmental bully-boys. Why they’re called the SS, I suppose,” Maggie said to her reflection in the window.
“So,” Slayton continued, “I’d like to act as liaison, to supervise the poking, to be the interface, so I can turn one way, shouting at them, then the other, speaking civilly to you. Okay?”
“No objections whatsoever. It would be much more pleasant that way. We’ve had to deal with insistent spy-types before. Though we’ve never shot one.”
“Though we’d have liked to, on occasion,” Shauna chimed in.
“No, Mr. Rademacher, you’re not like them at all,” said Maggie. “Which seems odd.”
Uh-oh, Slayton thought. He did not wish to go down that road, or provoke quizzes that might undermine his position with the higher-ups of the tour. Instead, he saw another opportunity to shift gears, and seized it: “Washington ahead, ladies.”
7
“Then your preliminary investigation has yielded nothing,” Winship said, with that downward curl in the sentence that hinted at dissatisfaction with his top man. Slayton naturally had not mentioned the searches, bombs, or assassination attempts he had been subjected to over the past couple of days.
“On the contrary, sir,” he said, standing before Winship’s desk with his hands clasped behind his back. “I’m in especially tight with the three principal members of the contingent. My contact for the Arab workers turns out to be their leader, and he’s most anxious to please. If there is any indication that there will be an incident,” he was careful to add, “… of any type, not only do I now have full cooperation of the people who matter, but several prime suspects among the crew.”
Winship sat and absorbed the information. The pipe came out and he began fiddling with it, waiting for more.
“Frankly, sir,” Slayton cleared his throat, “if Haman was to make any move involving the tour, it would be stupid to do it in Baltimore. If we’re going to see any actions on his part, it will more likely be in Washington.”
“Why, if he is so thorough?” asked Winship.
“Because he’s also a prima donna, sir. He involves himself with theatrical plans and grand-slam staging for his gimmicks. He has the stealth for the unobtrusive setup, sure, but he’ll get gradually more obvious as deadline time approaches.”
“An unfortunate choice of phraseology.”
“What I mean is that now is the time to look for Haman’s presence, not when he’s in Baltimore.”
“In that case,” said Winship, “I have several things here that ought to provide you with a very good reason to stay alert nights when everyone else is sleeping.”
Slayton decided to keep the comment that came to mind exclusively to himself.
“First, Shafter in Egypt reports that Haman definitely left with the Seth-Olet tour. If he’s not with the tour, then he came over with it, and we might have had him at the docks—”
“No sir. You’re underestimating Haman, again.”
Winship harrumphed, looking dourly up from the scattered papers on his desk. Slayton shut up, and he continued: “Second, we have reason to believe that although you have not yet identified Haman, he has identified you. So much for infiltration.”
“Is that concrete, sir?” said Slayton, hoping Winship did not know about the incidents and was just stringing him along.
“Not ironclad, but the third thing is,” shot back Winship. “Records reveal that three years ago you inadvertently got mixed up in one of Haman’s spoiling raids and killed three of his men. If the man is Haman, and if he has the make on you as we suspect, and if he makes this connection, then you might be in greater danger than the President.” Winship let that hang while Slayton provided the missing part.
“But, Ham—I’m already committed to protect the President during this thing. And we both know the limits of that commitment, so the best I can do is try to get Haman before he gets me.” His voice was deadly and neutral. Winship did not have to be told the side-effects of the game, but Slayton felt the urge to lay them out in detail.
“And if Haman gets me, I think we can both give up on the President.”
Winship puffed thoughtfully on his pipe, meeting Slayton’s eyes directly only for a second as he spoke.
“I should have better faith in the men I would assign to replace you,” he said. “But I think you’re right, though I’ll call you a liar if you were to tell anyone else.”
“Anything else on Haman,” asked Slayton, slightly embarrassed and returning to business.
“The international computers don’t take any more time than the domestic ones. All are damn short on details, except for descriptions of the raids Haman participated in; assassinations, torture, murder… and of course, lists of the dead. Which is why you have to watch your step, Ben.” Rarely did Winship use Slayton’s first name in this fashion.
“Haman is particularly ruthless in the matter of retribution. He once uncovered a spy in his own group, a plant from a French group of corporations he was in charge of blackmailing. He promptly delivered a personal demand for twice the amount he had tried to extort previously—a demand that went directly to each company head, accompanied by a piece of the dead agent. His hands, his ears, his te
sticles… there were quite a few executives.” He let the implications hover in the space between himself and Slayton. “They paid.”
“So if Haman places my handsome face, I can say hello to the meat grinder. Except for one thing: I don’t really think Haman placing me would be allowed to leak unless Haman wanted me to know he knew me.”
“I don’t follow.”
“He’s throwing the gauntlet down, daring me to stop him. Of course we could cancel the tour, lock the President in a bank vault somewhere. But to Haman that’s a chicken-hearted response. Fear is what allows him to operate freely. Cancelling the tour would in itself be a propaganda victory of sorts. If we don’t panic, and accept the challenge, we have a better chance of getting him.”
Winship’s expression rearranged into horror at the prospect of setting up the President of the United States, which is what Slayton seemed to be getting at.
“Wait, sir, wait. Now—Haman loves to be the victor, not just to do a job you could hire any thug for. It’s his style. It’s why his attacks are flamboyant and successful. He prefers hunting a cougar with a bowie knife and winning, rather than insuring his win by shooting carp in a beer barrel, if you follow my analogy.”
The expression subdued itself, just slightly.
“If you’ll pardon me, sir, I think Haman knows that I am about as proficient as he is. It’s a dare. Or rather, a wager—the winner gets the President.”
“Jesus H. Christ on a crutch, Slayton!” Winship had absently gathered the papers into a neat stack on the desk, hinting that the exchange was finished on a factual level. “Your duty is to protect the President at any cost, not to trifle with his life to even some obscure, stupid score!”
“Exactly, sir. And I think a moment ago I mentioned that I understood the depth of that commitment. Trust me.”
Winship. snorted, calmed down a bit by now. Slayton made for the office door, turning for a parting shot.
“And you’ll see me after this, sir, and I’ll still be in one functional piece.” The door hissed shut with a thump.
The dour expression had become resigned. “I hope so, Benjamin,” the man behind the desk said. “Sincerely.”
Slayton spent a while with a pot of coffee and the stack of documentation, soaking up specifics on Rashid Haman’s diverse inventory of atrocities. It was entirely possible that, despite the events of the last two days, Slayton had had no direct contact with the terrorist.
He would have operatives waiting in the United States, people who would follow his orders—providing one of the best ways to execute hits and gimmicks. Fly them in, and if they live through the gimmick, fly them out. But don’t pick them off the local trees. The British authorities had wasted months after the gimmick that bumped off a pair of Cabinet members, rounding up and grilling locals, when Haman had shipped in one of his star students, a Japanese now supervising terrorist phalanges in his home country. While the British were convicting a couple of wackos who happened to have antigovernment diaries, the Oriental was enjoying a drink on the plane home. Now, like Haman, this man also farmed out work for money whenever he needed folding cash.
Which brought up another ugly point, which became even more apparent as Slayton delved into the new dossiers: Haman was no patriot. He needed a formidable cash-flow to maintain his nonprofile, to hide, to set up and execute gimmicks. Often, officials had to be bribed on an international basis, and that required lots of money. Thus, it was entirely likely that Haman’s choice of America had a twofold motivation. Not only was somebody paying him to set up the President and embarrass the government in front of the Egyptians, but somebody else was forking over for his services as a teacher of home-grown guerillas. Plus, Slayton’s subconscious nagged, there are probably four or five other reasons you haven’t thought of yet.
The Seth-Olet tour was setting up in Washington, D.C., and the head count among the crew and supervisors remained constant. If Haman was there, he had not disappeared on the docks.
Of course, he would know the government could identify the work of Rashid Haman, and that would make it necessary to leave the country as soon as possible. To Haman, the best way to vanish from a country was to stay inside its borders. You either escaped within seconds, or stayed around to watch the guys with the diaries get grilled on national television. Either way, you did not get caught, and that was the basis of the bigger game.
Slayton did not make a habit of smoking, but he wanted a cigarette now. He needed some philosophical smoke drifting around him.
Terrorists had no ideals; they played both sides of political shortcomings against the middle, usually killing the innocent in the interest of point-making for people or systems they would just as easily turn on, killing for whoever would pay the asking price. Politicians fought wars, killing the innocent to perpetuate the international shell game. Revolutionaries and anarchists killed the innocent for causes. Deaths were totalled in different coinage, but the result was still death. Haman specialized in death, in spreading the madness, and it was Haman and people like him who had brought the United States to the brink of the same type of urban terrorism that now determined railway schedules in Ireland, or curfews in Jordan.
He pushed back from the desk. The records room was too well-lit, like a classroom, conducive to reading but not to thinking.
He glanced at his watch, a Seiko which he had retained, sweep hands and all, throughout the craze for electronic digitals. It was midnight, and it was time to contact Wilma, to see if she had come up with anything on the histories of the tour people.
Slayton stepped out of the building.
“I’ve got an absolute ream of notes,” Wilma told him over the phone. “I’d rather pass ’em to you under a table than read the entire novel over the telephone.”
“Done and done,” said Slayton, and they arranged to meet at Wilma’s apartment.
Driving, Slayton felt a residual twinge of anxiety. He was certain he was not being followed, yet, if Rashid Haman was on his tail—as his paranoia did not insist, but suggested, with its sly, used-car dealer’s grin—it would be idiotic to endanger anyone else, let alone anyone close.
Somehow Slayton felt he would live through the night. He also knew, as did Wilma from the moment she picked up the phone, that it would be impossible to merely scoop up the folder-full of her painstaking amateur detective work and breeze out of the apartment. The idea that he might get murdered had nothing to do with terrorists.
She met him with a glass of wine, and his fears were confirmed. But first, she insisted, “I have to tell you about the Egyptological swap meet that’s coming to our fair town.” Slayton smiled pleasantly, and braced himself for a dunning repetition of facts he had known for some two days.
“It seems that the barge that brought these priceless artifacts to our shores—it’s called the Star of Egypt, fittingly enough—may also have unloaded a second cargo of god-knows-what.”
“What?”
“Take a look,” she said, trotting to the sofa with a manila folder of 8×10 glossies. She dropped it in his lap. The positives were heavily grainy.
“Are these blowups?” said Slayton.
“Yeah. Unfortunately I had to use my James Bond camera.” It was the way she referred to her 16-mm subminiature Minolta. She saw him squinting, and leaned closer, pointing. “The men unloading the boxes are Americans. The trucks—there were two—checked out as rentals out of Albany, New York.”
“Where is this?”
“Okay, only orientation I could get was against the boat. Ship, I mean. Here.” She pointed out several shots that emphasized a warehouse door, a garage-sized affair set into a cul-de-sac beyond the rear portion of the Star of-Egypt. Beyond that, Slayton could make out, in fuzzy relief, what had to be the cordoned-off section of the docks where the Seth-Olet tour had unloaded.
He felt like smacking his head. Right next door!
“What do those boxes tell you, Ben?”
He saw no point in lying. “They look to me lik
e grenade crates, crates for M-16’s or LAW rockets.” He stopped and looked directly at Wilma. Her enthusiasm flagged just slightly.
“I know, I know,” she said. “Which brings it into the jurisdiction of not only the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, but also U.S. Customs, which both translate as Treasury, which translates as you… and do I have to give up my pictures?”
She and Slayton had had this conversation before, in varying degrees of seriousness, throughout their relationship. But he needed whatever else she had.
“I’d like to take them, but not for the reasons you think. These could help me immensely. So,” he piled them back into the folder and placed the folder between them, “… let’s skip the part where you deny having duplicates, okay? Otherwise you wouldn’t bait me by asking if you could keep them.”
“Rats,” she said. “You rise so eagerly to the offered carrot, you know, and sometimes it’s fun to watch. I knew I was onto something.” But she did not yet feel the piercing sense of urgency that Slayton was contending with. “They’re yours,” she said.
“On one condition,” Slayton finished.
She looked taken aback. “No way. I’ve got several. First board: exclusive story rights if and when.”
That was normal, and Slayton nodded, as usual.
“Second board: I’m not going to stop my investigation just because you’re starting yours.”
“Fair enough.” She would, anyway.
“Third board: you’ve got to tell me what you know about that ship in exchange before I give you what I’ve got on the passengers. I have a sneaking feeling they’re connected somehow.”
She had watched him react to the photographs, and the reactions to the shots of the dock area were mainly ones of familiarity. She, too had skipped steps in the conversation. The dazzling blue eyes were all business.
“Alright,” Slayton said simply. “For that I’ll need time, though.”
Wilma had heard that one before, so she said, “Word of honor.”