Silent Killer

by George C. Chesbro

  “You know who I am.” It was not a question. The man’s voice was a deep, melodious rumble originating deep in his chest. The tone reflected resolve, wariness but not fear.

  “I’ve seen your picture.”

  Wahlstrom’s laugh displayed nervousness. “Oh, I’ve seen yours too. The problem is that all the photographs of you are at least twenty years old. Descriptions of you are worthless; I’ve never heard two people describe you in the same way. The only thing they all agree on is that you’re a crazy son of a bitch who scared the shit out of them.”

  “I’ll have to hire a new public relations firm.”

  “Is this what you really look like?”

  “This is it, Inspector.”

  Wahlstrom nodded down the corridor behind Chant. “Did you leave that monster alive?”

  “Mr. VanderKlaven? He’s just unconscious—but he doesn’t look too well. I think the man may be ill.”

  “Could he have caught the same bug as the three men you left for me in the back of that truck outside the warehouse?”

  Chant shrugged. “I believe that’s very possible,” he said with a thin smile.

  “Those three are being kept in isolation in the hospital. The doctors can’t seem to be able to figure out what’s wrong with them.”

  “Isolation seems like a good idea. However, I suspect there’s no danger to hospital personnel as long as they observe normal procedures and don’t get any blood or fecal matter in open cuts.”

  “I’ll pass your thoughts on to the appropriate hospital personnel. Any idea what’s wrong with them?”

  “I wouldn’t presume to guess,” Chant said, setting the briefcase down, then sitting on the floor and leaning against the wall across the corridor from the Interpol inspector.

  “You do good work, Sinclair,” he said. “There are one hell of a lot of very nasty people around the world who haven’t had a decent night’s sleep in fifteen years, worrying that John Sinclair is going to pay them a visit and do some kind of number on them. I thank you for the information you sent me on VanderKlaven, as well as all the other tips and documents you’ve fed to me over the years. The information has been put to good use.”

  “I know that. You do good work, too, Inspector. It’s why you received the tips.” He paused, smiled. “After all, I’m a busy man—or I was. I couldn’t handle all the business, so I always figured I could send a few deserving people your way.”

  “I’ve been promoted many times because of arrests I’ve made based on information you’ve fed me.”

  “Good. You’ve deserved them.”

  “It can’t make a difference in this situation, Sinclair.”

  “If I’d ever thought you wouldn’t do your job because of personal feelings, I wouldn’t have fed you information. However, judging from your appearance in the building, I’d say it’s already made a difference. You couldn’t be certain I wouldn’t throw you down an elevator shaft.”

  “Somehow, I didn’t think you would.”

  “How did you know I’d be here?”

  Wahlstrom shrugged and grimaced, as if embarrassed. “An anonymous tip. The man who called knew enough about you to make us take him seriously. Frankly, I’m surprised you came back. After giving me the documents and all of VanderKlaven’s records, you must have known the police would be forced to start tightening a net around him. Even if I hadn’t been tipped off that you’d be here, it was still risky for you to walk into this building.”

  “I’m used to working in tight quarters. Maybe I just got overconfident.”

  Wahlstrom narrowed his lids, studied Chant for some time before saying, “I don’t believe that. Do you have any idea who it was that called me?”

  “No.”

  “How many people could have known where you’d be today, and at what time?”

  “I must have left my appointment book lying around. You sound downright disappointed that you’ve nabbed me, Inspector. Would you like me to leave and come back on another day when you’re in a better mood?”

  Wahlstrom stiffened and flushed slightly with anger. “Will you surrender and come downstairs with me?”

  “What are my options, Inspector?”

  “There is only one, Sinclair: You can die. I’m well aware of your reputation for being able to vanish into thin air, but we both know that’s not really possible. You can’t escape. There are a hundred policemen surrounding this building, and snipers on the rooftops with orders to shoot to kill if you do try to escape. Frankly, the Americans are most anxious that you not be killed; they want Interpol to take you in custody and hold you incommunicado until they can take possession of you. But Interpol does not work for the Americans, and we will do what is necessary to stop you—including gunning you down, if it comes to that. That’s what I came up here to tell you. My men will shoot if you don’t surrender.”

  “What if I’m using you as a shield?”

  “They’ll still shoot.”

  “It took considerable courage for you to come up here. In fact, I suspect it may be a highly unofficial visit. Do your superiors know you’re here?”

  “They do by now.”

  “Ah, you could be in some trouble, Inspector. You’re risking your career as well as your life. Why?”

  “I told you; I feel I owe you.”

  “Why? Because I provided you with a few tips? I told you I have more business than I can handle.”

  “I feel I owe you because you are a just, honest, decent man. I don’t want you to die.”

  Chant laughed. “I’m a criminal, Inspector.”

  “Yes, you are that too,” Wahlstrom replied simply. “Which is why we find ourselves in this unfortunate situation. I wish I were a big enough man to have ignored the information about your being in this building, but it was not possible. I can sacrifice my pension, and even my life, but I cannot fail to do my job; work, finally, is what gives a man dignity. I’m sorry it has to be this way.”

  “I always understood that we were on opposite sides of the law, Inspector.”

  “We do need law.”

  “I couldn’t agree more.”

  “Don’t die in Amsterdam, John Sinclair.”

  “All right,” Chant said easily, rising to his feet and extending his hand to help the other man up. “Let’s go, Inspector. I don’t want you to catch cold, and I certainly don’t want you to lose your pension.”

  SIX

  Chant, naked, sat on the floor of the bare, windowless cell, relaxing and once again focusing his mind on the procedures he would have to use to trigger his final, most powerful weapon. In effect, he was practicing something that could not be practiced, trying to prepare himself for a feat that could probably only be accomplished once—if at all.

  Somewhere down the long corridor outside his cell a door clanged open and footsteps approached. Chant turned his head, found Bo Wahlstrom standing outside his cell. The Inspector’s face was flushed, and his lips were pressed tightly together.

  “I am sorry for the indignities you must suffer, Sinclair,” he said in a strained voice. “I argued strongly against these precautions, but I did not prevail.”

  “What indignities?” Giant said easily, rising and walking across the cell to stand at the bars. Wahlstrom did not shy away, as Chant had suspected he might. In the twenty-four hours that had passed since he had been thrown naked into the naked cell, he suspected that the Interpol inspector had heard a lot of strange stories about him from a lot of different, strange people. “Frankly, I’m surprised to see you. Yours wasn’t the first face I expected to see.”

  “As I’ve told you, Interpol is not an agency of the United States government.”

  “That’s true, but I thought we were trying to save your pension.”

  “If I lose my pension, it won’t be the CIA that takes it away. We caught you. As I see it, that gives us the right to interrogate you first—and the Americans can yell all they want.”

  “Is this an interrogation?”

  �
��Are you warm enough?”

  “Yes. As a matter of fact, it’s a bit too warm. You can turn the temperature down a few degrees, if you’d care to.”

  “I’ll take care of it. The fact that you can have nothing in your cell, not even clothes to wear, is ridiculous—but it’s a concession we felt we had to make to the CIA for not turning you over to them right away. I’m sorry.”

  “It’s not important, Inspector.”

  “To me, it is. I consider being forced to sit naked in an absolutely bare cell, to even be forced to eat food with your fingers off paper plates, terrible indignities.”

  “I’ve told you I feel no indignity,” Chant replied evenly. “Incidentally, the food is very good.”

  “I oversee its preparation myself. It’s the least I can do, considering the fact that you surrendered yourself into my custody and now you must suffer … this.”

  “Thank you.”

  “I’ll at least bring you a pillow,” he said forcefully. “They can’t object to that.”

  “Don’t bring me anything, Inspector. Believe me, they’ll object.”

  “What on earth do they think you could do with a pillow?”

  “You’ll have to ask them.”

  Wahlstrom inclined his head, fixed his deep, brown eyes on Chant, and studied him for a few moments. “With precautions like these, it would appear that the CIA was concerned about you committing suicide. But that’s not what it’s about, is it?”

  “Something else you’ll have to ask them, Inspector.”

  “Mmm. I think not. They really do seem to believe that you can find a way to use virtually anything as a weapon, or as a means of escape.” The Interpol inspector paused, narrowed his lids as he studied the man who was standing less than an arm’s length away, leaning casually on the bars. “Can you really do all the things they say you can do?”

  Chant shrugged. “I don’t know what they say I can do.”

  “Your countrymen are very much afraid of you, John Sinclair.”

  “Not all my countrymen, Inspector. Not even the CIA proper. A few men in the agency and at various levels of government are afraid of me, and they have good reason to be.”

  “Why?”

  Chant said nothing.

  “At first I thought it was something you knew that they wanted to know, but that didn’t seem to make sense. What secrets could you possess that would still be so valuable to them after all these many years?”

  “Ah, the interrogation,” Chant said with a thin smile. “Not a good idea. It probably isn’t even a good idea for you to spend so much time alone with me, Inspector. As you’ve suspected for years, and now know for sure, my biggest enemies are very nervous and jealous men. They won’t like the fact that you’re talking to me.”

  “The Americans’ obsession with you fascinates me, Sinclair. It’s a mystery.”

  “Perhaps it’s better if it stays that way.”

  “For my benefit?”

  “For everyone’s benefit.”

  “Then it is something you know!”

  “Is it, Inspector?”

  “You won’t answer any of my questions, will you?”

  “It seems to me that I’ve already answered a few.”

  “But you won’t tell me why the CIA has been so desperate for twenty years to get hold of you?”

  “No. I won’t tell you that.”

  “They say you’re a traitor.”

  “Do they?”

  “I know that you deserted from the army during your country’s war in Southeast Asia. That much is in your file. You were a captain in the Special Forces—the youngest captain, I believe. Incredibly, that’s all there is in your file regarding your service record. Obviously, you must have been a CIA operative at the same time as you were serving in the army.”

  “Mmmm.”

  “The Americans are hiding a lot, aren’t they?”

  “Are they?”

  “Also, I suspect a great deal of truth about you and your service to your country has been distorted by them. Did you really desert?”

  “Yes,” Chant answered simply.

  Something dark moved in the Interpol inspector’s brown eyes. “I find it difficult to believe that you’re a traitor.”

  “‘Desertion’ is the description of an act. What I did fits that description. ‘Traitor’ is a term that’s somewhat more judgmental, so I leave it for others to concern themselves with. It’s not something I give a lot of thought to.”

  Wahlstrom frowned, shook his head slightly. “Why did you desert, Sinclair?”

  Chant did not reply.

  “Is the reason you deserted the same reason the Americans have been so desperate to get hold of you? Is it related?”

  Still Chant did not reply.

  “Was it a matter of conscience?”

  “It was a matter of death.”

  “Your death?”

  “Death.”

  “Will you give me a statement concerning your activities over the past twenty years?”

  Chant laughed. “There isn’t much that I’ve done that isn’t in Interpol’s files.”

  “Those are other people’s statements. Will you give me yours?”

  “No.”

  “You don’t seem all that upset about being captured.”

  “Would it do me any good to be upset?”

  “No. Will you tell me how we might be able to recover any of the money you’ve stolen?”

  “No. If I told you that, it would only go back to the crooks I stole it from in the first place. That would upset me.”

  Wahlstrom chuckled. “Where have you been living all these years, Sinclair?”

  “I won’t tell you that either, Inspector.”

  Wahlstrom sighed, studied Chant. “The CIA wants you very badly.”

  “So you’ve indicated.”

  “What will they do with you?”

  “I haven’t got the slightest idea. I’m sure they won’t feed me as well as the Dutch have.”

  “They can’t just take you away, you know. There are international laws to be observed, and you’re not in their custody yet. The U.S. Army has waived its jurisdiction, as have the U.S. courts. The European nations will certainly waive theirs to please the Americans. The Communists, as usual, will ignore you. To do otherwise would be to admit that you’ve made them look as foolish as everyone else you’ve ever gone against. Still, I suggest that you can resist in the courts here. You might be able to resist extradition. Perhaps there are other avenues to explore.”

  “Are you going to act as my lawyer, Inspector?”

  “You’re mocking me.”

  “On the contrary; I’m thanking you.”

  “You could appeal to the Dutch courts to take jurisdiction.”

  “It won’t work, Inspector. But thanks for the thought.”

  Wahlstrom stared hard at Chant for some time, his eyes troubled, then abruptly turned and started to walk away. He slowed, came to a stop, turned back.

  “What is it, Inspector?” Chant asked quietly.

  “John Sinclair, I’m sorry.”

  “About what?”

  “This is the first time we’ve met face-to-face, yet in all the years that I’ve been chasing you I’ve come to respect—and, yes, admire—you a great deal. Yes, you are a criminal—a thief, a murderer who often kills his victims in a brutal fashion. The difference between you and others is that the people you prey on have themselves chosen to operate outside the law, and their victims are innocent. You’ve saved the lives of countless people, helped countless others. You’ve helped me. That I should be responsible for—this—just doesn’t seem right.”

  “Your guilt is misplaced, Inspector. You had to do your job, and you did it. You feel guilty because we hate the same kinds of people, the same things. You are a just man who’s outraged by corruption and cruelty—”

  “So are you, John Sinclair.”

  “No. You’re an officer of the law who hunts these people out of honor and a
search for justice; I’m a businessman who hunts them for money.”

  Wahlstrom shook his head. “No,” he said simply. “There is much more to you than that.”

  “You fail to appreciate the fact that criminals make relatively easy victims; they have too much to hide, and they are very vulnerable to somebody using the right techniques. Since they’ve chosen to perform acts that are illegal, they can’t very well go to the law for help when I attack them. It’s just good business.”

  “God, you wreak such terrible vengeance,” Wahlstrom said softly. “But I don’t believe that you’ve done it for money—despite the fortune I know you’ve amassed. In fact, John Sinclair, I believe you are the most just and honorable man I have ever met. And that is why I feel guilty.”

  Chant shrugged, smiled. “Inspector, you’re starting to make me feel bad. I’ve lived very well for years doing the things I did. Now that I’ve been caught, I have no regrets. I always knew I wasn’t a good candidate for retirement.”

  “Tell me why the Americans want you, Sinclair. I may be able to help.”

  “There are only a few Americans who want me for reasons other than the ones you’ve wanted me for, Inspector. There’s nothing you can do. If I were to share that information with you, I’d be signing your death warrant.”

  “They can’t be that powerful.”

  Chant’s smile vanished, and his iron-gray eyes grew cold and dangerous. “We’ll see how powerful they are, Inspector. And that’s all I’ll have to say on the matter.”

  “Will they hurt you?”

  “Good-bye, Inspector. It’s been a pleasure dealing with you over the years.”

  Wahlstrom extended his hand, and Chant gripped it firmly. Then the Interpol inspector turned and walked away. This time the footsteps did not stop. However, the great door at the end of the corridor did not clang shut.

  A second set of footsteps—slow and purposeful, somehow ominous—approached.

  “Back off, Sinclair,” the man with the cold eyes and American-accented English said, “or you’ll get this gas grenade in the belly.”

  Chant did as he was told, and the man in the light brown suit pulled the trigger on his air gun. The gas grenade skipped off the stone floor a few feet away from Chant and exploded against the wall. Chant quickly sat down so that he would not injure himself by falling. As he breathed in the pink smog filling the cell and felt his limbs go numb, it occurred to him that Bo Wahlstrom’s was the last friendly face he was likely to see for a long time; indeed, it could have been the last friendly face he would ever see.