Guess Who’s Coming to Kill You

Chapter 11

“Is it all right if I sit down?” Brook said.

The Luger waved hospitably. Brook backed up till he felt the seat of the couch against his legs. He sat down.

“Heeled, Peter?” asked Stark.

“Never.”

“No,” Jasmine said.

“Well,” Brook said.

“Yes,” Stark said. Jasmine shut the door. The Australian’s pulpy eyes had taken on a certain hardness and the layers of fat in his face no longer gave him a jolly look. “I thought you’d ask why the artillery. Try to bluff it through, that sort of thing.”

“Not much point in that,” Brook said.

“You bloody Americans.” Stark laughed; it was not at all the kind of laugh he bestowed on the workaday world. “The old unexpected, eh, Brook? Put the jolly old fat boy off guard. You can forget it, chappie. I’ve killed more smart lads than your analyst ever dug out of your bloody dreams.”

“I’m sure you have.”

Stark looked unconvinced. “Oh, yes? And how did you find out?”

Brook shrugged. “When I phoned from that noodle-vendor boy’s of yours, I heard the bell here. It puzzled me — I couldn’t quite identify the sound. Also Jasmine’s voice. I know now it was Jasmine’s. I thought then it was a man’s.”

“Hear that, Jazz?” Stark said. “He thought you were a man.”

“I know better now,” Brook said.

Jasmine stared back at him. The talented lover of a few minutes ago had quite gone, although she had left her formidable equipment behind. Her eyes were blanked out, as empty of feeling as a snake’s.

“Hope you enjoyed it,” Stark said affably. “You’ll be interested to learn that Jazz didn’t. But then you couldn’t know, could you? That masculine-sounding voice is no accident. She prefers her own sex, whatever that is. But she’s a bloody good actress, what?”

“This talk is not necessary, Toby,” Jasmine said.

“Just a bit of man-talk, my dear. Too bad I couldn’t let the play go on. It was fun. Worked it out rather neatly, Peter, didn’t I?”

“Not bad,” Brook said. “A little on the complicated side, though. All that trouble planting Danny Boy and having him drive me to the festival where you could come to my rescue like a U.S. Marine. What were you trying to do, build me up to the big let-down?”

“You’re marvelous, Peter,” Stark said, “absolutely marvelous. Now you’re trying to divert me. While all the time your brain’s working like mad. And you sit here playing for time. You won’t get a chance to make a break, old chap. I assure you of that.”

Brook watched the Luger. It gave him no confidence.

“Toby,” Jasmine said, coming in and shutting the door. “Let us get on with it.”

“Plenty of time, Jazz. Whom were you telephoning at the Mitani Hotel, Peter?”

Brook did not reply.

“It doesn’t matter. We have the room number.”

“You won’t find anyone if you go there, Stark.”

“Probably not, but we’ll check it out just the same, eh? Bad luck, making that call. I walked into the lobby just as you hung up. Clerk’s jaw falls. He knows I’m a wizard, but he looks bloody surprised all the same. How could I be calling from the castle and standing in the lobby, too? Of course, it was a dead giveaway. Must say it’s forced my hand. And lost you a few rare moments. If you hadn’t made that call you might have enjoyed some more tussles with Jazz.”

“While she pumped me.”

“Very true.”

“Which means there’s still a lot you’re in the dark about.”

The fat shoulders shook; the hand holding the Luger did not. “A few details, old boy. I know you’re here to take Krylov over. That’s the main thing.”

“Then you’re one up on me, Stark. I don’t understand why, if you don’t want Krylov to come over, you don’t just ship him back to Moscow.”

The Australian stared at him in amazement. Then he laughed all over. “Hear that, Jazz? The Yank doesn’t know! Marvelous, absolutely marvelous.”

Brook was puzzled. “What don’t I know?”

“You lose more points, Peter,” Stark said, wagging his head. “What don’t you know? Why, that we’re not Krylov’s people.”

Brook said softly, “China.”

“How quick he is, Jazz,” Stark said.

“Krylov spent some time there in the old days. Helped set up the Chinese espionage network. So he knows too much about it. Bad enough when he was a loyal Russian Communist, but catastrophic if he should come over to us and spill what he knows about your Chinese playmates.”

“Go to the head of the bloody class.” He sounded piqued.

“But how did you know Krylov was fixing to come over? How did you find out we were working on him?”

“For one thing, we’ve watched him proper. Saw a lot of the same signs your people must have seen. We had your man Wilkinson compromised some time ago, and when he went after Krylov it was obvious what was in the wind. As for you, Brook, we weren’t sure till you went to see Krylov’s Jap doxy. The waiter overheard a few things when you talked to her, we put it together with your behavior here at the Spa — going to all that trouble to be alone in a boat with Krylov — and we had a clear notion what you were up to.”

“Why didn’t you kill Krylov a long time ago?”

“Seldom got the chance, for one thing — he’s well-guarded, you know. Also, orders from the top. They didn’t want to risk the KGB’s guessing we were responsible. Or something. We don’t question our orders. Do you?”

“So you took Wilkinson out, and that night when I left Kimiko’s you tried to take me out.”

“Now you have it, chappie.”

“Then you took out Kimiko. What was it? — did she know too much?”

“Actually,” the Australian said with a frown, “that’s the bloody thing. No reason for us to kill the girl. Either it was one of those coincidences — a prowler, or one of her ex-boy friends — or you did it yourself. Didn’t you?”

“No.”

“Didn’t think so. I loathe coincidences, don’t you?”

“Yes,” Brook said. Then he said, “How is it Krylov came yachting here — in the very place you were planted, Stark? Don’t tell me that was a coincidence, too.”

“Hardly. I installed the boats at Katori Spa, remember. Just made sure Krylov heard about it. Then sent him a diplomatic discount, along with the other foreign-service lads in town. With that Roosian’s mania for boats, it couldn’t miss, and it didn’t. We do things methodically, you see. Krylov and his bloody gang don’t realize how well they taught us in the old days.”

“So you’re a Marxist,” Brook said with a laugh.

“Me? Gawd, no! Oh, I had some notions in the days when I was mucking about with party members, but I never really fell for the line. Thing is, they’re bound to come out top dog sooner or later, and I like to run with the pack. And then there’s the travel and the excitement. Hard to explain, really.”

“Toby,” Jasmine said through her magnificent teeth, “we are wasting time.”

“Be nice, Jazz, and I’ll fetch a cute little geisha for you to play with tonight.”

She hissed at him.

“Oh, for the love of Christ,” Stark said. “How often do I get a chance to chin with a fellow-professional? Even if he does think he’ll see a chance for a break.” He grinned and wiggled the Luger.

Brook said, “Two questions, Stark. Why didn’t you take me out when Danny Boy handed me over to you? And why don’t you take me out right now?”

“Orders from up top again, chappie. Got them after we made that first try. Good sense, when you think of it — they’ve got brains up there. You see, Brook, what we need from you is the information Jazz was hoping to squeeze out while she was giving you the time of your life. It’s obvious you’re set up to take Krylov over. We want to know how so we can make an intercept. Your maneuvers have presented us with a shining opportunity, as they say.”

“Yes,” Brook said. “Though it seems to me your side’s being a little stupid about this.”

“Oh? How so? It’s always nice to get a professional opinion.”

“You can stay out of it completely. Just by seeing to it that the Soviet embassy gets the word about Krylov’s intentions. They’ll do the rest for you, I guarantee it.”

“Thank you,” Stark said, grinning, “but no thank you. By doing it ourselves without tipping off the Roosians we can so arrange it that your people are blamed for it instead of us. That’ll make the Roosians mad at you, chappie, even madder than they are about Viet Nam.”

“Nonsense. This sort of thing goes on all the time.”

“Well.” The fat man shrugged. “I don’t make policy. Those are my orders.”

“Of course,” Brook said reflectively, “you see the hole in it.”

“What’s that?”

“I have to talk for your scheme to work. They used to call me Gabby before I started to shave, but that was before I started to shave. I’ve learned to be awfully tongue-tied.”

“We’ll see.” Stark smiled sweetly. “And that, I suppose, brings us to what Jazz here has been tapping her little tippy-toes about all this time. Truth is, she’ll enjoy it more than I will. Her favorite author is de Sade.”

“Toby,” Jasmine said icily, “you are a fat fool.”

Stark ignored her. “You all primed for it, old boy?” he asked Brook.

Brook hoped that his sneer was convincing. “Fire away, Gridley. I can take anything you’ve got.”

And that’s a lot of horseballs, he thought as he tried to prepare himself. That night in Belgrade, when they were working on his testicles, he had been as ready to fall as a tree-ripened apricot if they’d only had the sense to let up. But they had kept going, and he had kept screaming, unable to get out the words they were torturing him for. And then he had passed out, and their opportunity was gone. Maybe he had been lucky then to fall into the hands of a bungling crew. His stomach and groin were telling him that Jasmine, at least, was no bungler in these matters.

“Maybe you can,” Stark said, “and maybe you can’t. It’s been my experience, chappie, that there’s no such thing as holding out. Whoever you are. Of course, a well-thought-out torture takes time — the Chinese are awfully good at it, as I suppose you know — but time is what we have little of. So we’ll have to do it the crude way, Brook. Or you can be sensible about this and answer my questions and save yourself a lot of grief.”

Brook shook his head. “You know I can’t, Stark. Noblesse oblige, and all that. I could never look myself in the face again.”

“You’re an idiot,” the fat man said, almost with surprise. “Well, then. Can you judge where I’m pointing this pistol, Brook?”

Brook said, “About eight inches below the belt.” Here we go again, he thought. Somebody must be trying to tell me something. They consistently go for my posterity.

“That is correct, Brook,” Stark said. “Now I’m very good with a pistol, you understand. I can put a slug into a two-inch circle in that area ten times out of ten from this distance, and at just the right angle. Quite surgical with this thing, I am. You understand, of course, that you would then be rendered the promptest medical care to keep you alive. That’s the dirty part of the trick, Brook — being left alive after a thing like that.”

Brook was shaking his head. “That’s bad psychology, Stark. I’m too well trained to talk before the shot, and after it I’d walk through six shots to get my hands on you for what you’d have done to me. This is no way to make me talk.”

“What do you take me for?” the Australian said. “This isn’t to make you talk. It’s to make you wag your tail like a nice little doggie till Jazz here can do her part of the job. Listen carefully, Brook. Jazz is going to step near you. She’ll be within your reach for a few seconds. I’m advising you what I’ll do if you make the slightest twitch toward her. The slightest bloody twitch of a fingertip.”

“Oh,” Brook said, and fell silent.

Jasmine was stalking him with a hypodermic syringe.

“You will roll up your sleeve, Brook,” said Stark. “I don’t have to tell you how.” The Luger never wavered.

She stepped to one side and out of reach while Brook rolled up his sleeve. He did it with considerable care. I wonder what the ineffable Bond would do in a jam like this, he thought. Probably leap like a tiger to use her as a shield while the fat man’s shot obligingly went wild.

“Very nicely done, old chap,” Stark said. “I’m happy at your good sense. Now hands down and under your buttocks. Sit on ’em; that’s it. Gives me the split-second advantage, you see, in case you’ve got rash ideas. Now hold very still. That’s a good chap.”

She did it with admirable efficiency. He had barely time to feel the sting of the needle when the contents of the syringe were in his arm and she was out of reach again.

Brook glanced down at his arm. “Scopolamine?” He had been hoping it was sodium pentothal. Once Holloway had put all his agents through a practice in resisting the effects of the so-called truth drug; it could be done, the Director had insisted, if a man’s will was strong enough. But he knew it was not the truth drug. Sodium pentothal worked with great speed, and he still had his senses.

Stark shook his ponderous head; Brook could see the wag quite clearly. “A homologue of succinyl choline chloride. Something new. Developed here in Japan.”

“S.C.C.? Isn’t that the stuff that slows everything down and makes a man seem dead?”

“This is a related compound. The effect’s a little different, Brook. I see you’re beginning to feel it.”

Yes. The outlines of the fat face were blurring and the high-walled room was rocking like a cradle. He was conscious of a buzzing that seemed to be able to approach and recede simultaneously. Then the whole room rose and spiraled away from him. His body began to turn upside down counterclockwise. It continued to revolve in gentle circles.

Length. Breadth. Depth. But no time. Interesting. The present belonged to the moment past and the moment to come. He was still revolving. Or maybe it was the room. Toby Stark had become an elongated oval, featureless. There was a slimmer oval that must be Jasmine.

Toby Stark was striking him. Toby was powerful and his arm landed like a house-wrecker’s ball. The echoes bounced around in his skull whenever he was struck. Toby was kicking him, too. Not kicking him, kneeing him. So he hadn’t escaped that after all. But pleasantly, no pain. And no anger. He did not mind Toby’s beating and kneeing him, nor Jasmine’s leaning forward to watch. Time had stopped and with it all feeling.

Except love.

How right. He felt love. Adoration. For Toby. Or fear? Love and fear. In a curious mixture he had never felt before. Toby, Toby, you’re my master, I love you, I’m afraid of you, father, boss, CO., Holloway. Dear Australian. Dear fink. Dear bastard. I will do as you say. I must. Elephants must. Elephants go into must — musth? — and they never forget. They are loyal. Royal. Toby, you royal son of a bitch.

The house-wrecker’s ball crashed against his cheek. Again, dear Toby. Do it again. I love-hate you.

“Who’s working with you, Brook? This Benny you called. Benny what? What’s his cover name?”

“Wilfred Jennings Schnickelburger,” Brook said. Hilarious. To make a discovery like that at a time like this. The stranger who looked just like him had stepped out of him and now stood well-planted beside him, not revolving at all, answering in old Brookie’s voice. Of course the look-alike was lying his head off. Benny’s name wasn’t Wilfred Jennings Schnickelburger. That was the look-alike’s name. Didn’t Toby — dear old Toby — see that?

Crash-bang. One-two. Button your shoe, up the flue.

“When is the meet with Krylov? Where?”

“In the meet shop. He’s bringing his wife and kidneys.”

Wham. “Answer my question, damn you!”

“I love you.”

The lesser blob that was Toby’s head was turning toward the other blob. “I can’t make this out, Jazz. Too big a dose?”

“Wait,” the other blob said. “It will settle down.”

Down. Down. But no time. At stroke of gong will be half-past afterward. Which of course has already happened.

Bonggggg.

Correction. No gong. That was dear Toby smashing him again. Wham. Better. More like it. Love is a manysplendored think.

“What’s the plan, Brook? How you going to get Krylov out?”

“Get out, get out, wherever you are.” Somebody was laughing. It was Wilfred Jennings Schnickelburger.

In the world outside his head Brook knew that time was passing for everybody but him. It came to him that what the clock and the calendar would call two days had passed, although they differed in measure and quality no more than two seconds or two years. During this period Brook saw Stark and Jasmine often. Invariably when they appeared he was beaten and Stark’s questions would race around in Brook’s head like white mice in a psychologist’s drum. At intervals there were other faces, slant-eyed, whom the Australian called by names Brook could not remember. The owners of these faces would try their hands at beating him, sometimes with bamboo sticks in various places, sometimes with their hands, sometimes with things he could not identify. Once there was “Han,” the noodle man. Brook told Battered Face, “I love you,” and “Go to hell.”

Jasmine gave him repeated injections.

“He doesn’t react normally, Toby. I am told it happens this way sometimes. Although rarely.”

“We’d have to catch the exception! That bloody dope of yours just isn’t doing the job, Jazz. Not on him.”

“We had better try another way.”

“You’re bloody damned right we’d better!”

When had they said that? Long ago? Just now? Or had he developed the gift of second sight and it was something they were going to say? Brook floated in a void, remaining perfectly still at the speed of light. He couldn’t have cared less.

Dreams ran before his awakening like ancient heralds. He hung by hairs from impossibly high places. He was chased through fuming bogs by unspeakably pathetic monsters. He gasped. He moaned. He jerked in his sleep. Twice he sat up and screamed, only to fall back into his nightmares.

Brook opened his eyes. He could see normally again. Probes of light dug into his eyes from the slits high in the wall.

He was alone.

He was lying on the floor.

He turned his head right, left. The room had been emptied of furniture; there was only the mat on which he lay. His body throbbed and burned; his mouth was full of cat fur.

He sat up and rubbed his face. It was greasy with sweat and blood and felt like mohair.

He went to the iron door on a zigzag course. The door was locked, and he returned to the middle of the room to eye the slits in the walls through the swelling. He was not sure why he wanted to reach them; they were too narrow to squeeze through. Anyway, they had left him nothing to stand on.

He saw now that he was naked and that his body looked as if it had run through a meat chopper. The sight of the welts and cuts and bruises reminded him of the pain he had not felt under the drug. He sank onto the mat for a few moments to discipline his nerve-endings. That was a bad time. When he rose again his body was wet; in its macerated condition he looked as if he were sweating blood.

He took his first hard look at the room and saw his shirt and tie and suit lying on the floor in a corner where someone had tossed them. He picked them up and found the contents of his jacket pocket undisturbed: the box of little cigars with four cigars still in it, the ballpoint, the pocket comb, even the gold obi cord he had removed from Kimiko’s neck. Stark had either overlooked them or did not consider them important. Perhaps not. But they were here and he was no longer empty-handed. Problem: how to use any or all of them to effect an escape.

Brook sat down on the mat again. He felt surprisingly strong; or the two-day assault on his nerve-endings had left them half numb. It might be a false strength. Better conserve it while he figured a way out.

A key rattled. Immediately he stretched flat and shut his eyes to slits.

The noodle man, “Han,” stepped into the room. He stood there in the doorway looking about, blinking to adjust his pupils to the gloom. His fighter’s face seemed to Brook to wear a stupid look. He held a carbine in the crook of his left arm. He stared at Brook lying there, still apparently out, for some time. Then he stepped back, and Brook heard him lock the door.

Brook sat up again. He rubbed his beard and began to crave hot water. He smelled foul, not only unwashed but sick. He looked about and saw the evidence; he had been sick, all right, and they had not bothered to clean the mess up. He got up and went over to the iron door. The carbine suggested that the noodle vendor was standing guard outside. He had probably been told to look in every once in a while to see if Brook was conscious; they couldn’t be sure just when the drug would wear off, they had given him so much of it. If they found him conscious they would undoubtedly go at him on a new tack; or rather on the old one, the tried-and-true torture technique instead of the fancy stuff Stark, out of his grandiosity, had tried. In his weakened condition they would break him very quickly. There was no defense against the old-fashioned methods.

So he must find a way to get through “Han,” and right away. There was always the possibility that “Han” was not alone on guard out there, but it was a chance he would have to take.

Brook put his clothes on tenderly. He looped the gold cord in one hand and with the other he banged on the door.

He stepped to one side as he heard the key in the lock.

The door swung open and the noodle vendor stuck his head in. Brook flipped the cord over his head, jerked him inside, kicked the door shut, kicked his man prone, straddled him, tightened the cord. He kept up the pressure until the noodle vendor’s flinging about stopped. It took some time.

Brook rose, stuffed the cord in his pocket, and opened the door a crack. From the light and the shadows of the rocks and bushes it was late afternoon, almost evening. In one direction, across the garden, Stark’s “castle” stood in peace; in the opposite direction the big green bell hung motionless.

Brook slipped out, shut the iron door with love, and headed for the wall.