Flashpoint

10

It took me ten minutes to lose the tail who picked me up on the street in front of Bayak's apartment building.

I led him to a busy intersection where I hailed a cab in a bumper-to-bumper and curb-to-curb mass of cars. I watched while the tail scrambled frantically for another cab, and the instant he opened the door, I leaned forward and dropped a bill on the front seat of my cab. "Changed my mind," I told the cabbie as I went out the opposite door I'd entered. I inched my way through jammed cars to the sidewalk.

When the light changed, the traffic surged forward. I watched the cab with the tail in it follow the cab I'd been in across the intersection, and I wondered how long it would be before the tail realized he'd been had.

I found a street pay phone and called Erikson at the Queens phone number. "You mean you still don't know where the hijack is going to take place?" he demanded after I brought him up to date.

"That's right. The Turk is too cute to tip his hand even five minutes in advance of the action."

"And we have five and a half hours?"

"Less thirty minutes," I said after checking my watch. "How did you make out with Talia?"

"She's four doors down the hall. Doc Walsh thinks she was waiting to load up again just before she boarded the plane, so she was on a down cycle when we brought her out here. He says she's in the first stages of actual withdrawal, but he won't guess how soon she'll be willing to talk."

And if she didn't talk-or didn't know anything useful when she did talk-I was right up to the gate of the Turk's project with no way out.

Unless I pulled out.

Erikson must have read my mind. "Take a cab up here and we'll talk this over," he said. "There's got to be some way we can set this thing up so we can give you an umbrella." The phone clicked in my ear.

I went over it all again during the long cab ride, and I could find no better answers than I had in Bayak's apartment. The Turk had covered himself well at every turn. A man had to be crazy to go into a midnight-black cave without a flashlight, and I was going to tell Erikson so.

The cab pulled up at the emergency entrance of a small clinic, the main building of which was hidden from the road behind stone walls and high hedges. Erikson came down a white-walled corridor to rescue me from the questions of the nurse at the admissions desk. "She's cracking up," he said quietly after drawing me to one side. "Doc thinks she might spit it out anytime. Brace yourself. It isn't pretty."

I followed him down the hall. We went into an antiseptic-looking room with a hospital bed and a single chair. I heard the click of a solid lock as Erikson closed the door. A gray-haired, white-coated man with a stethoscope stood beside the bed which had high metal bars raised on either side of it.

Erikson's warning still hadn't prepared me for my first glimpse of Talia. She was a twitching mass of flesh in a short hospital gown, restrained in the bed by leather straps across chest and ankles. Ravaging lines around eyes and mouth made her look ten years older. Her features glistened damply, and wet blotches on the hospital gown indicated profuse body perspiration.

"Can she talk?" Erikson asked.

The doctor shrugged. "If she will."

"See if she knows you," Erikson asked me.

I moved in beside the barrier of the raised metal bars.

Talia's glossy black hair streamed soddenly over the pillow. Her constantly tossing head gave her eyes little opportunity to focus, but I leaned down until I thought she could see my face. She knew someone was there, all right, but I couldn't tell if she knew it was me. She muttered something in a foreign tongue, then repeated it with great urgency. "F-fix!" she whispered hoarsely. "Need-f-fix!"

I leaned still closer. Her constant struggle against the restraints was causing her body to give off an almost animal heat. "Where is Bayak's truck hijack going to take place, Talia?" I said slowly and distinctly.

"Don't-know," she got out breathlessly. Saliva flew at each consonant. More spittle formed at the corners of her mouth and ran down onto her chin. "Can't-tell you. Never told me-anything."

Erikson leaned down over the side of the bed. "Bayak smuggles dope?" he asked, spacing each word.

"Yessssss." It came out as one long hissing sibilant. "In diplo-" Talia swallowed hard and began over again. "In diplomatic pou-ches." Her throat worked convulsively. "Gets-from Arabs to-finance commando-activities." Her knees jerked wildly and her hands clenched and unclenched.

"And Bayak takes a cut?"

"Yessssss."

"What about the truck hijack?"

"Not-heroin. Way he acts-more valuable."

"What were you supposed to do in Damascus?"

"Tell Shariyk-missing element-be in hands-twenty-four hours."

Erikson's eyes met mine across the bed. "The lost-strayed-or-stolen atomic scientist," he said. He returned his attention to Talia. "Where will the truck hijack take place?"

Her black hair whipped from side to side as she shook her head in a violent negative movement. "Don't- know!" It was almost a scream. "Only place possibly- find out-his safe!"

Erikson straightened up. "I've got to make a phone call," he said curtly, and strode to the door.

I tried a few more questions, but with less and less response. In all honesty it didn't make sense that the cautious Bayak would have confided details of his plan to Talia. I stared down at the writhing girl on the bed. "Give her a shot, Doc," I said.

"She's going to have to go through this sooner or later, you know," he objected.

"Later, then."

"I've no authority-"

"Don't give me a hard time, Doc. Give her a shot."

He opened a little black bag at the foot of the bed and removed a hypodermic syringe. "These types usually aren't salvageable, anyway," he said while he wound a rubber cord under Talia's upper arm and searched with his fingertips for unpitted flesh. "Mainlining it into the vein doesn't make for a long life, but it's the only thing that can reach her now." Dextrously he plunged the needle into the black-and-blue arm.

Talia's shivering and shaking died away. Her knees went slack as I watched the familiar hard shine take over her dark eyes. "Bet-ter," she whispered. "Stomach- hurts. H-hurts."

Erikson thrust his head into the room. "Come on," he said to me.

I went down the hallway with him to a small conference room. In front of a picture window overlooking the clinic parking lot was a library table with a telephone and a scattering of medical journals. "You've got to call Bayak and explain your disappearance," Erikson said. "And try again to get him to tell you where the hijack location is."

"I've got a good out on the disappearance," I said. I looked up Bayak's number in the directory and dialed. Abdel's heavy voice answered the very first ring. Bayak came on the line immediately. "Where are you?" the fat Turk demanded angrily.

"I'm doing a little shopping, remember?" There was a note pad beside the phone. I scribbled the words "handheld acetylene torch" and "plastic explosive" on it and shoved the pad toward Erikson. He nodded.

"It's almost time for you to be at the Alhambra!"

Bayak sounded more nearly out of control than I had ever heard him.

"I had to break loose from a tail after I left your place. It could've been the precinct detectives keeping tab on me, like they said they would when Talia sprung me, or maybe the fuzz is getting close to your operation. In which case you'd better get yourself another boy."

"It was my man, not the police!" Bayak exploded. "Naturally I had to make sure you weren't being followed!"

Naturally you're a pluperfect liar, I thought. You intended having me followed for your own good reason. "If you weren't so damned secretive about these things, we wouldn't be wasting so much time," I complained. "Now cut out the foolishness. Where's the hijack location?"

Immediately he was in control again. "You don't need to know that yet." I tried to say something, but he kept right on talking. "Listen closely, now. Forget the Alhambra. There isn't time. Instead, go to the waterfront in Bayonne, New Jersey and station yourself at the northeast corner of the abandoned gate-house leading to Pier Twenty-six. You will be contacted-" There was a pause as if he was consulting his watch "-in two hours and thirty-four minutes. Do you understand?"

"Hold it while I write that down," I said. I covered the mouthpiece while I wrote it on the pad and showed it to Erikson.

"I know the area," he whispered, frowning. "It's open and exposed. There's no way we can give you back-up cover there. But we'll work out something." He nodded at the phone. "Don't keep him waiting."

I was staring out the conference-room picture window at the parking lot. Two guards were shooing off-duty nurses and white-jacketed orderlies from the center of the area. All heads were turned upwards. A gray-painted helicopter wearing bands of iridescent yellow paint around its thin boom settled slowly in the middle of the area. Its rotating blades whirled with decreasing speed, then came to a stop. The plexiglass door, which formed one side of the passenger bubble, opened and a uniformed man climbed out.

Erikson nudged me, and I uncovered the mouthpiece. "I've got that down," I said. "Will you be there?"

"I've already said that we will have no further contact," Bayak said sharply.

"I don't like working in the dark," I sought to prolong the conversation while I tried to think of another angle to bring pressure to bear on Bayak. "We should really have a dry run or two on the hijack to iron out any possible problem."

"There will be no problem unless you become one," Bayak replied. His tone was pregnant with warning. "The timetable provides sufficient latitude for you to conduct what you Americans call a 'skull session' with the men who will assist you. They know their jobs."

"But how will I know now that my money is in the Grand Central locker like you promised?"

"It's entirely your fault that you weren't in a position to verify it for yourself," the Turk said coldly. "Once the business is finished, you will be given the locker key and dropped off at a convenient point."

Dropped off at convenient point from a convenient bridge into a convenient river. "It's too complicated," I said.

Bayak's voice rose again. "It's hardly necessary to practice something that must be done perfectly the first time. Like a parachute jump, for instance. Are you going ahead with the plan?"

"Sure I'm going ahead with it," I said. "But I've got to know-"

"I must leave now," Bayak said. He hung up on me.

"I ought to cut out of this damned business right now," I told Erikson while I replaced the phone receiver. "You can't cover me, and if this hijack comes off, you'll arrive on the scene in time to deliver flowers."

"I can't order you to do it," Erikson said. "But I laid on the helicopter to save time in case you decided to follow through."

I thought again of the way Chryssie had died, and the care the Turk had shown in protecting his own gross obesity. "I'd love to put a spoke in that bastard Bayak's wheel for sure," I admitted. "You figure the hijack is going to take place right there on the Bayonne docks?"

"That would be too simple, the way the rest of the operation is shaping up. You'll probably be meeting a contact man who'll take you to the hijack spot."

"These guys have got to slip somewhere," I argued to myself. "And when they do-" I didn't finish it, but I had Iskir Bayak's left ventricle lined up in a mental gunsight. "Let's try for another first down. I'll let you know about the touchdown later."

Erikson led the way outside to the helicopter. The pilot looked like a kid. Erikson brushed aside the boy's snappy salute. "Next stop Bayonne?" I said as we settled down inside the bubble.

"Downtown New York," Erikson replied. "The girl convinced me that our only chance to nail down the hijack location is to get into Bayak's safe."

"And how do you think you're going to do that?" I asked as the engine of the helicopter caught hold and the drooping blades began windmilling again.

"You're going to do it," Erikson informed me, raising his voice against the engine noise. "Or have I been misjudging you all the time I've known you?"

I didn't say anything. "Where to, sir?" the helicopter pilot inquired as we rose from the ground.

"The heliport on top of the Pan American Building!"

Erikson shouted.

The pilot jerked his head around. "I can't do it, sir. It's off limits. The FAA closed it down."

"Just follow orders, Ensign. I'll clean up the paperwork later."

"There goes my Navy career," the boy muttered in an aside. "Boy, my tail will really be in the grease."

Erikson handed me a microphone after speaking into it briefly. "This is a 'ham' phone patch linking radio transmission to ground telephone lines. McLaren's on there. Tell him what you need in the way of a torch and plastic explosives. Have him bring them to the Turk's with two cars and four agents."

I transmitted the information as the 'copter's wide-ranging arc in the sky disclosed the blue waters of Long Island Sound in the distance. "And McLaren?"

"Yes?"

"I'll need a detailed map of the area around Pier Twenty-six in Bayonne, New Jersey. Plus the tool kit."

"Check. Sounds as though business is picking up."

I handed the microphone back to Erikson.

We approached Manhattan's tall buildings, heading into a lowering sun which turned the haze over the city into an orange mist. We crossed the East River paralleling the Queensborough Bridge. To our left, the rays of the setting sun reflected from the glass windows of the UN Secretariat Building, making its western side look like a sheet of flame.

We weren't more than a couple of hundred feet above the tallest buildings, and air turbulence made the helicopter bounce and rock. "You can see now why the heliport's closed, sir," the pilot shouted, fighting the controls. "But there it is."

"It" was the flat top of the Pan Am building a few blocks away. From where we were yo-yoing in the air, the landing area looked like a postage stamp. And when the pilot plunked us down with a shuddering thud within the yellow landing circle, it still didn't look a hell of a lot larger.

Erikson nudged me toward the closed heliport terminal. He snapped off a remark when he found the door locked, looked at me with his hand shaped into the form of a pistol, then backed behind me. I drew my.38. The bullet ricocheted off into space with a diminishing whine, but it had done the job on the lock.

In less than two minutes we had plummeted to the ground floor in the high-speed elevator. Out on the street, Erikson's commanding presence obtained us a cab. Two dark sedans were parked against the yellow-lined curb in front of Bayak's apartment building. McLaren stepped from the first car when he saw us get out of the cab.

"Don't let anyone get past us here, Jock," Erikson ordered. "Let's go, Earl."

"The tool kit," I reminded Erikson.

He looked at McLaren, who went back to the car and brought it to me. "Good luck," he said.

Erikson and I crossed the sidewalk. "Let's take the doorman up to the penthouse with us, since he doesn't know you," I suggested as we entered the lobby. "Otherwise he might call ahead and alert a welcoming committee."

"Good thinking," Erikson agreed.

The uniformed doorman was standing just inside the heavy revolving door. He nodded to me, but his gaze lingered on Karl. I stepped in close to him while shoving a hand into a jacket pocket. "No noise," I warned, nodding toward the penthouse elevator. "Get moving."

He stumbled a step backward, his eyes on my hand submerged in the pocket, then turned meekly and preceded us. I punched the single button when the bronze doors closed behind us. Nobody said anything. I could hear the doorman breathing.

The elevator doors opened, and I enjoyed the usually imperturbable Erikson's first goggle-eyed look at the sumptuous apartment. "Stay the hell out of the way now," I said to the doorman who looked as if he were trying to decide to have a fit or a chill. I opened the elevator fuse box and removed the fuse, anchoring the cab until we were ready to use it again.

I led the way across the highly polished black-and-white squares of the foyer to the steps leading down to the sunken living room. I could see that we were none too soon. The Moorish swords and armor were gone from the walls, and the antique vases had disappeared from the end tables. Someone was packing the Turk's belongings for a final departure.

The arrival of the elevator must have triggered a signal somewhere in the apartment, because Abdel appeared in the farther bedroom doorway with a puzzled look on his flat features. He had a pile of folded clothing over one arm. The giant did a double take at the sight of me, dropping the clothing. He moved toward us swiftly, his slippered feet making no sound in the deep-pile carpeting.

"Don't shoot," Erikson said to me as I reached across my chest. He moved in between Abdel and me. "Get started on the safe."

I drew the.38 anyway. I'd seen Erikson in action before, but I'd also seen Abdel. Felt him, rather. The two men collided in the center of the room like two bull moose. Abdel's arms enveloped Erikson in a bear hug as the giant tried to wrestle the smaller man off his feet. Erikson's shoulders bunched and writhed, and Abdel staggered backward with an incredulous look on his dark face, his hold broken.

I set down the tool case in order to be ready to use the.38 immediately, if necessary. Erikson pursued Abdel closely, though, and his right arm moved sideways and slightly upward in an arc like a man hurling a discus. The bladed edge of Erikson's palm thudded mightily into Abdel at the joining of neck and shoulder. I saw the whites as the giant's eyes rolled upward. He tottered, remained upright for an instant, then plunged forward on his face. The windows rattled when he landed.

"The safe," Erikson repeated to me impatiently without another glance at the unconscious Abdel. I reholstered the.38, picked up the tool case, walked to the picture in front of the safe, and swung it up and down twice as I'd seen Bayak do.

I studied the face of the safe when it came into view. I'd been hoping for a box made from welded sheets of pressed steel with asbestos packing, a type designed principally for fire protection. Instead, this safe had been machined from a solid block of steel and fitted with a circular door. Protection was not an idle word with this kind of safe.

"How about it?" Erikson asked at my elbow.

"Better tie up Abdel," I told him. "This is going to take awhile."

"You haven't much time," he warned, but walked into one of the bedrooms. He came out in a moment tearing a sheet into strips. He knelt down and began expertly binding the still motionless Abdel while I went into the liquor storage closet adjoining the safe. I did some measuring there, and then made a ballpoint-pen outline on the wall as I visualized the side of the safe just beyond it.

Erikson joined me. "McLaren brought you the acetylene torch, you know," he said. "Can't you burn off the front?"

"Not this kind of box. These solid steel varieties are machined so well that heat jams them beyond repair. And there's another reason. I know the safe is booby trapped from having watched Bayak work the picture. Presumably I've disarmed it by doing the same thing that he did, but if the booby-trap device is sophisticated enough, there could be another trigger inside to be activated if the front of the safe is tampered with. It's a lot safer to go through the side of it."

Erikson looked at his watch significantly, and I unrolled the leather tool case and began laying out equipment I knew I'd need. An experimental cut through wall plaster and lath with a powered skil-saw disclosed that I'd figured correctly about the safe's location. I enlarged the cut to expose the entire side of the safe plus its top.

"See those?" I said to Erikson who was standing beside me in the closet, brushing at the fine white particles of plaster floating about.

"Those" were two tanks atop the safe. I reached in carefully and disconnected the lever arm which would have activated them. The fingers of my hand came away covered with a bright purple dye when I removed my arm.

"A jet spray of purple dye would have covered anyone standing in front of the safe who managed to bypass the explosive device," I said. "The second tank is probably a flame thrower. The combination would make anyone who caught it in the kisser kind of stand out in a crowd."

Erikson didn't reply. I selected a powered grinding wheel, plugged it in, and went to work on the few thousandths of an inch thickness of case-hardened steel on the safe's exterior. When I had a bare spot, I fitted a special one-eighth-inch drill into a bit and braced my arms and shoulders as steel shrieked against steel.

It was hot work, and perspiration ran down my face. I ran the drill alternately in long and short bursts to prevent its overheating. It broke through finally, and I reversed it to get it out. I replaced it with a drill an inch in diameter and went to work again. It went more easily with the pilot hole already established.

When the second drill punched through and I withdrew it, I took a long-handled dentist's mirror and a penlight from the tool case. I inserted the dentist's mirror through the hole and then beamed the light from it, angling the mirror so that I had a good look at the safe's interior. I wanted no unpleasant surprises.

I could see nothing but loosely stacked papers and-in the rear of the safe-packets of wrapped money. I found a pair of medical forceps in a pocket of the tool case and went to work extracting documents. The forceps brought the papers to the edge of the hole, and my other hand folded and crumpled them enough to pull them through. Erikson snatched them from my hand as fast as I could produce them.

"I need more light," his voice said impatiently from behind me. I turned in time to see him carry a double handful of letters and official-looking documents from the liquor storage closet to the living room.

I went to work with the forceps again. I maneuvered a wrapped packet of money nearer the front of the safe with the forceps, broke the strap, then forced green bills through the hole in the safe a few at a time. I worked fast, not stopping to count or even to stack. I pulled bills through and let go, pulled bills through and let go. The floor at my feet and then my shoes were covered with money. This time there was going to be a payoff on a job I did for Erikson, and not only for Hazel.

When I couldn't reach any more money packets, I scooped up the money on the floor and stashed it behind a wine rack. I repacked the tool case, brushed the plaster dust off my trouser legs, and went out into the living room. Erikson was reading and discarding papers and documents with increasing haste, glancing at his watch almost with each discard.

I sat down and picked up a few of the papers he hadn't reached yet. Some were in a foreign language, Turkish probably. A couple were in English, obviously multiple carbons of official UN business Bayak had attended to for his mission.

"We don't even know what we're looking for!" Erikson snorted as he winnowed through the stack.

I found myself looking at a sheet torn off from a desk calendar pad. There was a notation on it in bold printing: "Waybill No. 45603, carton marked AEC #3M45D, Hanford, Washington, shipping weight 12 pounds."

I read it again.

"Bayak said the package on the truck weighed twelve pounds," I said to Erikson.

"What was that?" he inquired absently as he continued to riffle through the loose stack of papers.

I repeated it, and this time it penetrated. Hands stilled, Erikson stared at me. I gave him the desk calendar sheet. "Hanford, Washington!" he exclaimed. "With an AEC number! That's an Atomic Energy Commission shipment!"

"You mean-"

"I mean it could be fissionable material, and with a knowledgeable physicist waiting for it in Damascus-" Erikson rose to his feet abruptly, the balance of the papers sliding to the floor. "This thing finally begins to make sense. I'll call Washington right now and verify what's in the shipment, but without a doubt this is what the Turk is after."

He strode to the telephone. "Any chance Bayak has his own line tapped?" I suggested.

Erikson froze in the act of reaching for the phone, then picked it up anyway. "Right now I'd settle for scaring him off this job," he said grimly. "Although I'd love to catch him at it."

"He won't be anywhere near the scene," I objected.

"Oh, yes, he will," Erikson predicted. "This is Big Casino on everything he's been attempting to do in this country." He removed a card from his wallet. "Operator, this is a priority call." He ratded off a string of numbers, meaningless to me. "I want to speak personally to the Secretary of the Atomic Energy Commission in Washington, D.C."

I carried the tool case to the elevator and discovered the doorman, whom I'd completely forgotten, flaked out in a chair, snoring. I restored the fuse I'd removed to the elevator's fuse box so we'd be ready to go. "Then I'll speak to his deputy!" Erikson's voice crackled from the living room. "All right, who's there who can answer a question about an AEC shipment? Then put him on."

He identified himself to the individual at the other end of the line. "This is an emergency," he continued rapidly. "I need to know the freight line and the route for an AEC shipment on Waybill number four-five-six-O-three, carton number three-M-four-five-D out of Hanford. I realize it will take time, but it had better not take too much. No, you can't call me back here." He recited another number. "That's the phone number in our communications car. Call through the mobile operator. And push this thing for all you're worth."

He hung up the phone, bounded up the steps from the sunken living room, and approached me at the elevator. I indicated the sleeping doorman, but Erikson paid no attention. "You're still the only link," he told me. "If we get the information in time, we can pull you back from the center of the action, but right now it's on to Bayonne." He stepped aboard the elevator.

"What happens in Bayonne?" I asked as we descended.

"If we get a call telling us where we can intercept the shipment, we'll divert the truck and you'll be out of it," Erikson said. He looked at his watch in what was becoming a ritual gesture.

"And if you don't?"

"I'm supplying you with a car with a transmitter we can home in on from the comcar. We'll be behind you."

Out on the sidewalk, McLaren and a man I didn't know were standing, watching the entrance to the building. "Get into the first car with McLaren and me, Wilson," Erikson ordered. "Drake will take yours."

McLaren handed me an object I recognized as one of the beepers I had seen in the equipment room. "If you have to change cars for any reason, take this with you and attach it to the other car, preferably on the outside. It has a magnetic plate so it will stick to any metal you can reach."

The second man, Wilson, brought a canvas sack from the first car which he handed to McLaren. "This is your acetylene torch and plastic," McLaren said, handing me the sack. "And here's the map."

He handed me a detailed drawing of a waterfront area. "Don't forget to detail a man to take Abdel into custody, Jock," Erikson said. He took the map from me and marked Pier Twenty-six with a star. "We'll lead the way to Bayonne, to this point." He placed a finger on the map. "Then we'll drop back behind you."

"Suppose you lose me?"

"We can't lose you as long as you have the beeper. If we don't flag you down in the meantime, when you make contact with these people, drag it out as much as you can so we can move in close. Now roll it."

Not for the first time in my association with him, I realized that Karl Erikson would use his own grandmother to get a necessary job done.

I made the gatehouse at Pier Twenty-six with sixteen minutes to spare, according to Bayak's timetable. I sat in the car for another seven minutes before anything happened. Then a glare of headlights swept over me in the driver's seat. A sedan pulled in alongside, so tightly I couldn't have opened the door on my side.

A man jumped out and approached my car on the passenger's side. He rapped on the window. I leaned across the seat to lower it with my left hand, keeping my right close to my.38. Even in partial shadow, I could make out dark features and an Arab cast of countenance. "You have identification?" the man asked when I had the window down.

I started to ask what he meant, and then I realized. I opened the canvas sack on the front seat and showed him the acetylene torch. He nodded. "Come with us," he said.

I brought the bag and the beeper with me. When my interrogator opened the door of the sedan, I handed him the canvas sack. He leaned into the car to put it into the back, and I slapped the miniature homing device under the skirt of the rear fender. The man motioned me into the back seat, and I found myself alongside another swarthy individual who was smoking a cigarette that gave off a bitter, disagreeable odor.

The man who had approached me got under the wheel, and the sedan left the dock area and rolled along for a dozen blocks through a warehouse district. The air polluter in the back seat with me had nothing to say. Then the car swung into an alley and stopped halfway through it. Another turn and the headlights were beamed upon a corrugated steel door. The driver beeped the horn three times.

The door clattered upward and we drove inside.

My heart sank when I saw that the building was a steel warehouse.

If I knew anything about electronics, the steel would form a shield cutting off the beeper signal as effectively as if I'd dropped it into the East River.

Erikson could never find me now.

I was committed to the hijack.