Count Backwards to Zero

Chapter 3

She was two shades of brown, much paler in the two narrow strips where her bikini shielded her from the sun. One hand was behind her head. Her look was cool, somewhat mocking.

“Do you always come into a room as carefully as that?” she said. “Private detectives — good grief. It must be a strain. And what do you think you’re going to do with that knife?”

Shayne snapped the blade shut and put it away. He looked around for clothes. Finding only a filmy negligee, he swept it up from the chair and held it out.

“Put this on and get the hell back to your own bed.”

“Mr. Shayne, you know you don’t mean that preposterous suggestion.”

“It’s not a suggestion. It’s what’s going to happen.”

“After all that cognac, I thought you wouldn’t know I was here till you got into bed. I wanted to surprise you.”

“You surprised me,” he said. “Now get the hell out.”

“I’ve been known to play poker too, Mr. Shayne. This isn’t a bluff. I have the high hand.”

“How do you make that out?”

“All I wore is that wrapper, and if you try to put it on me I’ll fold my arms and scream like a fire siren. People are going to hear me, I promise. It’s going to embarrass you.”

“I can stand it.”

“I heard what happened in Bermuda. You killed somebody, apparently. You want everybody to leave you alone so the calluses can form. OK! Now I understand why you’ve been behaving like a baboon all day. But I don’t know what to do! Unless you start being human I’ll definitely shatter your peace and quiet, and by God I mean that!”

Shayne swore under his breath. He tightened the bulbs she had loosened, and both lights came on. He closed the door to the corridor.

“You’re bleeding,” the girl said, surprised. “What happened, did you fall downstairs?”

“Something like that.”

He went to the bathroom. Leaving the door open, he put his head under the cold water faucet and turned the water on full. He checked his bumps and abrasions. They seemed to be minor.

He came out toweling himself.

“How many people knew you were here waiting for me?”

“No one. Why?”

He tossed the wet towel back in the bathroom and ran a comb through his hair. “You didn’t get a straight story about Bermuda. I didn’t kill anybody. A woman was killed because I made the mistake of following somebody else’s procedure. An American Foreign Service officer, a real jerk, told me if I wasn’t diplomatic he’d put in a report and have my license lifted. While we were arguing, it happened. Her name was Sally Marquand. We were on sleeping-together terms, and not only that, I liked her. She did a dumb thing, but she shouldn’t have been killed for it. All right, it’s over. Nobody followed me aboard. Nobody knew I’d be taking this ship, because I only made up my mind about ten minutes before we sailed.”

“I don’t see what connection—”

“A couple of people jumped me coming down from the poker game. I’m not carrying enough money to make that worthwhile. But there are only two choices. If they weren’t trying to roll me they didn’t want me to hear what you have to say.”

Alarmed, she swung her legs off the bed. “Who were they?” He sat down.

“I don’t know. They threw a sheet over my face. Either you put some more clothes on or I take some of mine off. Which will it be?”

“Be patient.” She thrust her arms into her negligee and pulled it together.

“A sheet over your head. Were they trying to — you know, just knock you out?”

“I don’t know a damn thing about it,” he said impatiently.

“I suppose by now everybody in first class saw me trying to get you to talk to me, but who in heaven’s name — well, I already knew it was serious. They could have picked on me just as easily, couldn’t they — except no, if they did that, Quentin would—”

She stopped, thinking.

“Let’s start straightening it out,” Shayne said. “Who’s Quentin?”

“You saw me with him in the lounge. He’s a little strange-looking, but what a brain. And he’s in trouble to the tops of his ears. Dr. Quentin Little. He’s just been hired by an American aerospace company, with one of those names made up of initials. Is it Amco? Something like that.”

“That’s one of the big ones. They have a plant in Georgia.”

“Yes — that’s where he’s supposed to work. But the way it looks now, he doesn’t expect to make it.”

She shook back her hair. “I didn’t believe it at first, and it’s so incredible I still don’t believe it all — I think he’s being tricked in some way. He’s going to have to explain part of this, and I just hope he hasn’t had anything more to drink.”

“In a nutshell, Anne.”

She drew a deep breath. “All right. He’s brought an old Bentley with him. He’s using it to smuggle in seventeen pounds of plutonium.”

Shayne snorted. “The hell he is.”

She gave him an angry look. “He’s been working with atomic reactors since he got out of grammar school. Plutonium to him is just — I don’t know, flour or something. And it’s not just the plutonium. It’s the whole damn thing, including the part that sets it off, the detonator. It’s a real functioning atom bomb.”

“Nobody imports atom bombs into the United States. That’s an export item.”

“I know it sounds insane! Let him explain it. He’s awake. I told him I’d call him as soon as you agreed to help.”

“I haven’t agreed to help.”

“But you know you have to,” she said reasonably. “Those men, whoever they are — if they wanted to keep you from talking to me, they didn’t succeed, did they? You’re part of it now, as far as they’re concerned.”

“What’s he planning to do with this bomb after he gets it in, blow up Washington?”

She blazed out at him. “It’s not so damn funny! Will you keep quiet and listen for a minute? He says it’s not big enough to blow up a whole city, but it would take out Capitol Hill and the White House and the Lincoln Memorial and the Washington Monument, as well as a big piece of the black ghetto, if you know Washington. But of course he’s not going to do anything like that. He’s planning to be caught coming through Customs.”

About to strike a match, Shayne looked at her. “Explain that.”

“It’s not so easy. We went through the whole question-and-answer business, and I think I finally understand it, but that doesn’t mean I can boil it down. He wants to get himself shot, you see. It’s a form of suicide. His life is insured for a hundred thousand dollars, and he can show you the policy. I admit at first I thought he was putting me on, to make himself interesting. But damn it, something’s going on, isn’t it, or why would anybody bother to attack you?”

Shayne thought for a moment, becoming interested against his will. He lit his cigarette.

“Did you meet him on the ship?”

She nodded. “I’ll tell you how that happened, to get it in perspective. I don’t usually go drinking with eccentric 42-year-old atomic scientists. What I don’t know about atoms! But I’m coming off — well, a sort of unpleasant couple of months. I was in Europe with a man. He’s married, but he’s not married to me. The idea was — it doesn’t have any connection, but I might as well lay it all out — the idea was that if everything worked he’d go home and talk to a divorce lawyer. Everything didn’t work. We said goodbye in London, with tears. I was feeling lousy, and I thought an ocean voyage might help. Looking around the ship, you probably noticed a number of middle-aged widows, right? They set the tone. I was in the bar the first night, and when Quentin got up to go to the men’s room a revolver fell out of his pocket! Naturally I asked him why he was carrying a gun. He said I was an impertinent American, and a tactless bore. That kind of conversation went on for a couple of days. He kept trying to hide from me, poor man. I kept after him and he finally told me. The suicide plan, the insurance policy — the works. In one way it’s perfectly irrational. If you take out insurance and kill yourself, they won’t pay off. There has to be a year or so in between, isn’t that right?”

“Usually two.”

“And he couldn’t wait. Now that I know how his mind works, I can see it’s the kind of scheme that would appeal to him. Any moron can jump off a bridge. Can I tell him to come in now? He can explain all this better than I can.”

“Not yet. He convinced you there’s actually an atom bomb concealed on this ship?”

“I keep telling you, that’s the business he’s in. It sounds wild to us, but he’s very matter of fact about it. You know the way people tell you they’re smuggling in an extra bottle of perfume. He says this the same way. ‘I’ve got this little homemade atom bomb in the gas tank of my car.’ Petrol tank, excuse me.”

Shayne said thoughtfully, “He took the tank apart and built it in?”

“That’s the idea. And if you want to know if I’ve seen it, I haven’t. It’s down in the hold, wherever the hold is. That’s why we’ve absolutely got to get somebody like you. He doesn’t think we can stop it, it’s too far along, but I don’t agree. We could drop it overboard, if we could get it out of the car.”

Shayne scraped his thumbnail across his chin. “A Bentley’s a conspicuous car for a smuggler.”

“That’s why he picked it. That’s why he’s crossing to Miami, instead of New York. The Miami customs doesn’t get a trans-Atlantic ship more than once or twice a year, and would any sensible smuggler use a Bentley? He’s very smug about the job he did on the tank. It only holds a couple of gallons, but the needle registers full.”

That small detail convinced Shayne that Anne, at least, believed the improbable story.

“It’s pretty fancy.”

“Of course it is. And as soon as you talk to him, you’ll see that it’s in character. He started playing chess when he was four. Chess! Mr. Shayne, you realize we don’t have all the time in the world?”

“We’d better go to his cabin. I don’t think we ought to let this genius wander up and down the corridors alone.”

She jumped up. “I convinced you! I thought it might take a little longer.”

“I wouldn’t say you’ve convinced me,” Shayne said dryly. “An atom bomb in a Bentley.”