by Ron Hubbard
And that made me think of Heller.
I bolted the door to my room. I went into the right-hand closet. I pushed the back panel and it slid open. I stepped through into what was really my room.
It was bigger than the one I had just left. It was unknown to the staff. It didn’t show from the outside as it was dug back into the mountain. A secret door at the end of it led right down into the base. Another secret door led to a passage that ended in the archaeological barracks.
I opened a closet. The laugh was on the staff. Here were my real clothes, various costumes of different nationalities. They were all here.
A cupboard disclosed that my makeup kits were intact.
I opened a panel and revealed my guns. They were protected by a device which took moisture and oxygen out of their hiding place. I removed the chambered cartridge and clip from the Colt .45 and put it away. I got out a Beretta which is more my style, really, being easier to hide — and I even have a license for it.
That done, I opened a safe and reviewed my passports. Some were expired in the last year and I made a note to get them renewed. I looked over other identification documents: they were fine.
With a quick inspection, I verified that all my assorted luggage, like suitcases and attache cases, were there.
Great. I was in business.
I went back into the advertised bedroom and changed my clothes, noting I should be more careful and not go around in space insulator boots in public.
I put on a sport shirt with flaming poinsettias, a pair of black pants and some loafers. I looked in the mirror: no movie gangster ever looked more at home.
Now for Heller. I picked up the box and went back into my real room. I unloaded the gear and set it up on a table. Nothing wrong with it from the trip.
I set it all up and then, as an afterthought, brought in the pitcher of sira and a glass.
What was Heller up to?
I turned on the activator-receiver and viewscreen.
I didn’t think I’d need the 831 Relayer as he wasn’t in the ship and must be within ten miles.
And there he was!
Chapter 10
Heller was walking along a dark street.
I wondered what had taken him so long to get into Afyon and then realized that, after the rumor I’d spread, probably nobody at the hangar would give him a ride and he’d had to walk. It was only a few miles, they had probably said in a nasty tone of voice.
I adjusted the viewscreen controls. I found out that by flaring the screen a little bit, I could possibly pick things up as well as Heller could.
The picture was really great quality. Because I could look directly at the peripheral vision area, even though it was a trifle blurry, I could probably see what was going on around him even better than Heller: a matter of my concentrating on it while he was looking at something else. Great.
He wasn’t doing anything. He was just walking along the street. Up ahead of him were a few lights from shop windows. But Afyon is really dead at night and it was at least ten by now.
It gave me time to study the instruction book. I found to my delight that, by pushing a button, the screen split into two screens. You could go on watching the continuing action while you replayed, at any speed you wished, fast or slow or still-framed, on the second screen. And all without interrupting recording. Great. What a brilliant fellow that Spurk had been. Good thing he was dead.
It was too bad, though, that I had missed Heller’s transportation refusal. It would have been delightful to watch. I fed in a pack of strips and vowed never to turn this thing off. Then I could speed review for juicy bits and save myself lots of time.
The action of doing a recording loading almost made me miss something.
Way up the street, somebody had moved across a light path from a store window. Aha! There was somebody up the street, standing in a dark place. Somebody waiting for Heller?
If Heller had registered it, he gave no evidence of it. He just kept strolling forward. I thought to myself, the dumb boob. In Afyon, you don’t keep right on walking toward a possible ambush. Not if you want to go on living! Heller was too green at this business. He would not last long. The green die young, one of my Apparatus professors used to say — Tailing 104 and 105, Apparatus school.
Yes! The figure was waiting for Heller. Whoever it was had chosen a patch of street darker than the rest.
Heller drew nearer and nearer. And then almost walked right on by.
The stranger halted him. The fellow was shorter than Heller. I stilled the frame of the second screen to study the face. More of a hatchet than a face. Hard to tell in this light.
“You from the DEA?” the stranger whispered.
“The what?” said Heller, not whispering.
“Shhh! The Yew S Drug Enforcement. The narcs!”
“Who are you?”
“I’m Jimmy ‘The Gutter’ Tavilnasty. Come on, you narcs and us have always been friendly.” I thought, indeed they have. The DEA narcotics agents would be paupers if it weren’t for the bribes of the Mafia.
Heller said, “What makes you think I’m DEA?”
“Oh, hell. That didn’t take any figuring. I seen you wading around in the poppy fields and I suspected it. And then when I saw you climb that skyscraper of a rock over there, I knew it. Anybody else would have gone up the regular way, but you went up the front, hoping nobody would see you. And then when this,” and here he lifted a night-rifle sight, “showed you surveying the whole valley with a glass, I stopped guessing.”
“I was measuring distances,” said Heller.
The Mafia hood laughed. “Trying to estimate the crop in advance, are you? Pretty smart. The Turks lie like hell about their morf.”
“What did you want from me?” said Heller.
“Good. I like that. Get down to business. Listen, I been hanging around here for weeks and you’re the first promisin’ new face to show up. Now, being you’re from the DEA, there’s a C-note in it for you if you can help.”
“A C-note?” said Heller. “A credit?”
“No, no, no. You guys can’t have the credit. That’s mine! Look, I got a contract on Gunsalmo Silva.”
Heller must have made a movement. Jimmy “The Gutter” darted a hand into his jacket, about to pull a rod. But Heller had merely whipped out a notebook and pen. “Geez, pal,” said Jimmy “The Gutter,” “don’t DO that!”
“Now,” said Heller, pen poised. “What did you say his name was? Spell it.”
“G-U-N-S-A-L-M-O S-I-L-V-A, as in dead man. You see, he was a bodyguard to Don ‘Holy Joe’ Corleone and we got an idea that he put the finger on his own boss and maybe even pulled the trigger a few times himself. The Family is very upset.”
“Family upset,” muttered Heller, writing.
“Good, I figured you’d have an ‘in’ with the local fuzz.”
“And who do I send the information to, if you’re not around?”
The hood scratched his head, just a shadow of movement. The light was very bad. “Why, I guess you could put it through to Babe Corleone, that’s ‘Holy Joe’s’ ex. That’s Apartment P — Penthouse — 136 Crystal Parkway, Bayonne, New Jersey. Phone’s unlisted but it’s KLondike 5-8291.”
Heller had written it all down. He closed the notebook and was putting it and the pen away. “All right. Too bad his family is upset. If I see him, I’ll tell him.”
The effect was electric!
The hood started to go for his heater. Then he halted the motion. “Wait a minute,” he said. He took Heller by the arm and steered him into a pool of light and looked at him.
Absolute disgust contorted the pockmarked face of Jimmy “The Gutter” Tavilnasty. “Why, you’re just a kid! One of them God (bleeped) leftover flower nuts out here looking around for some free junk! You can’t be more than sixteen or seventeen! Go home to your mama and leave a man’s world alone!”
The hood gave Heller a shove. He spat at Heller’s feet. He turned his back and stalked away.
Heller just stood there.
I myself was surprised. Doctor Crobe was wrong. He had pointed out that Heller would look young. He had said that at twenty-six, Heller would look like an Earth-man of eighteen or nineteen. The health of his unblemished skin had lowered that. People would think he was just tall for his age the way some kids are!
Then I hugged myself. Oh, this was better than I had planned! You have to realize that, on Earth, they don’t take kids seriously. It’s almost a crime for a man to be seventeen!
Heller, after a bit, walked on. It was too bad Spurk had never put a feeling indicator in the lineup. Heller must feel about one inch tall!
There was a bar ahead. There are very few in Afyon — really the place is no city. And the bars are not much. The men hang out there during the day, taking up chairs and nursing coffee and reading newspapers. The dumb proprietors don’t object.
Heller walked in. And I suddenly realized he didn’t have any money to order anything with. I hoped he’d forget he only had credits on him and couldn’t produce them. If he did, I could seize him for a violation of Space Code Number a-36-544 M Section B and even imprison him for making the presence of an extraterrestrial known. I made a mental note to be on the watch for such. That pen and notebook had been a near breach but wouldn’t stand up in a charge. Money would.
The proprietor was the usual greasy, mustached Turk. He was taking his time. The place was practically empty as it was very late for Afyon and the proprietor had nothing else to do. He finally came over to Heller at the counter.
In English, Heller said, “Could you give me a glass of water?”
The Turk said, “Ingilizce,” and shook his head to indicate he didn’t speak it. The Hells he didn’t. Half the people around here did. He started to walk off and then I saw a light come into his eyes, followed closely by a cunning look.
Now, it is a funny thing about Earth races. From one race to the next, they rarely can tell how old anyone is. And Heller might look seventeen to an American, but a Turk would not notice that. They think all foreigners look alike!
At last I began to see the fruits of the rumor I had had Faht Bey plant. The proprietor changed his mind. He reached under the counter and got a somewhat dirty glass and he filled it with water from a jug. But he didn’t put it in front of Heller. He carried it over to one of the many empty tables and pulled back a chair and pointed.
Heller, the fool, went over and sat down. Now, while the water in Turkey is usually pretty drinkable, that dirty glass gave me hopes. Maybe Heller would come down with cholera!
The proprietor went straight over to a telephone at the far end of the room. And then I found out something very interesting: the audio-respondo-mitter, not being tuned to his ear channels, could evidently hear what was going on in the room better than Heller! All I had to do was advance the audio gain. While it brought up the room noises uncomfortably high, you could pick out what you wanted to hear. What a nice rig for spies! Which is to say, the handler of spies. An ambulant bug! I was beginning to really love this rig.
The proprietor just said three words in Turkish: “He is here.” And he hung up the phone.
But Heller was not drinking the water. From his pocket he had pulled half a dozen poppies! He put them in the glass!
Oh, how sweet, I sneered. He had bought the lie that this type was for the flower markets and he had picked himself a bouquet! Well, they do go in for a lot of flowers on Voltar. And come to remember, some of the estates on Manco — was it Atalanta? — specialized in breeding new varieties. Lombar had even once considered bringing seeds back and growing the poppies at home but he had been given pause by the fact that a new variety of blossom always produced enthusiasm amongst the flower fans and one could see these from air surveillance too easily. I also dimly recall there was some problem with a seed virus that attacked poppies. But anyway, Heller was indulging nostalgia. Probably homesick for pretty flowers.
He was certainly intrigued by them. He stroked their leaves as they sat there in the glass. He smelled them.
I lost interest in what he was doing and was suddenly very interested in how he looked. By peripheral vision, a big mirror was showing his image.
They had given him clothes too small! Even though they might not have had his size, I was certain this was intentional. The sleeves of the shirt and jacket were three inches too short. The shoulders pinched way in. They had given him no tie and he had just buttoned the shirt.
Now, Kemal Ataturk had made it against the law to wear Turkish national costumes and had forced the whole country into Western dress. He had even put people in prison for wearing the red Turkish fez. And as a result, the Turks, with no tailors for it, have since looked about as sloppy as anyone ever.
But Heller was worse!
He had gotten cement dust on him climbing that rock. He had evidently torn his jacket. He had mud on his shoes from the poppy fields.
He looked like a complete bum!
Where, I gloated, was the spiffy Royal officer now? Where were the shimmering lounge suits? Where was the natty working cover suit and the little red racing cap? Where was that fashion plate in Fleet full dress that would make the girls faint?
Oh, I gloated! Were our roles reversed now! On Voltar I was the underdog, the uncouth, the tramp. Not on Earth! I glanced down at my lovely gangster outfit. And then I looked back at Heller, a slovenly, dirty tramp!
This was my planet, not his!
And there he was, my prisoner. He had no funds to buy any clothes, to go anywhere.
“Heller,” I said aloud in gloating glee, “I’ve got you just where I want you. And in my fondest dreams, I never thought you could look that bad! A dirty, penniless bum in a stinking slum cafe! Welcome to Planet Earth, Heller, you and your fancy ways. Everyone does MY bidding here, not yours! Our roles have reversed utterly! And it’s about time!”
Chapter 11
What a stupid, untrained “special agent”!
Didn’t he realize the danger he was putting himself in? Yet, there he was, in the center of the planet’s opium trade, sitting in a cheap bar, a stranger in the place, a foreigner, his back to the door, and a bouquet of opium poppies in front of him! Just asking for it! And no way to get out of trouble if anything did happen. No connections. No friends. No money. And he didn’t even speak Turkish! What a child. I could almost feel sorry for him.
Heller sat there for a bit, looking at the flowers. From time to time he rearranged them.
Then he took one of them, a gaudy, orange blossom and idly began to pull off its petals. I wondered if he was nervous. I certainly would have been in such a spot as that!
An opium poppy has a big black ball in the center. Really, that’s the bulk of the flower. He had it stripped. He smelled it. Silly performance: fragrance comes from petals, not the stamen.
Heller put it aside. He took another flower from the glass. He got out a piece of paper. He laid the whole flower on half the sheet and straightened out its petals. Then he folded the paper over, covering it.
Then he took his fist and banged the package!
I really laughed. That isn’t the way you press flowers. You put them in between two sheets of paper and you gently let them flatten and you put it away to dry. You don’t bang it with your fist. He didn’t even know how to press flowers: he should have asked his mother!
He opened the paper and of course the whole thing was a complete mess. The huge center ball had simply squashed! That isn’t the way to handle an opium poppy. You gently scrape the ball and you get the sap and then you boil it and you have morphine!
He must have realized that wasn’t how it was done for he just emptied the squashed mess on the table, folded the paper and put it in his pocket.
He looked up. People had been drifting in: Turks of the area, dressed in their sloppy jackets, tieless white shirts, unpressed pants. Maybe twenty of them had come in, a strange crowd for this time of night. I realized that the word had spread. They just sat down at ta
bles, not ordering anything, not talking, not looking at Heller. They seemed to be waiting.
Then the front door crashed open and into the room swaggered the two top wrestlers of the area!
Now, the Turks love wrestling. It is a national sport. They wrestle in any style. They are big and they are tough and they are good! So that was who Faht Bey had called! The wrestling champs!
The bigger one, a formidable hulk named Musef, swaggered to the middle of the room. The other one, named Torgut, sauntered over to the wall behind Heller’s back. Torgut was carrying a short piece of pipe.
About fifteen more townsmen came in behind the wrestlers, avid expectancy on their faces.
The proprietor yelped in Turkish, “Not in here! Outside, outside!”
“Be quiet, old woman,” said Musef insultingly.
The proprietor, faced with that growl and about three hundred pounds of famed muscle, got very quiet.
Musef walked over to Heller. “You speak Turkish? No?” He shifted to badly accented English, “You speak English? Yes?”
Heller just sat there looking at him.
“My name,” and Musef hit himself on the chest, “is Musef. You know me?”
With a slight incredulity, Heller said, “A yellow-man!” And indeed, now that I thought about it, Musef and Torgut did bear some dim resemblance to the yellow-men of the Confederacy. Not surprising, since the Turks come from Mongolia.
But it was the wrong thing to say. Musef snarled, “You say I yellow?”
There was a ripple through the audience as those who didn’t speak English got those who did to tell them what was being said. And then it had to be clarified for some that “yellow” meant “coward” in English. And believe me, eyebrows really shot up and eyes went round with anticipation. You could almost hear them pant.
Musef pretended to be outraged that Heller was not saying anything further. So he spat, “You want to fight?”
Heller glanced around. Torgut was hefting the iron pipe over by the wall. It was indeed a hostile crowd. Heller looked at Musef. He said, “I never fight…” There was an explosion of laughter in the room. Instantly Musef picked up the glass and threw the water and flowers in Heller’s face.