Operation Moon Rocket

Chapter 12

He rolled over, struggling onto hands and knees, his head hanging toward the ground like that of a stricken animal. The floor was shaking. There was a stink of hot lubricating oil in his nostrils. He knew vaguely that he was alive, but who he was, where he was, what had happened to him was temporarily beyond recall.

He opened his eyes. A shower of red pain burst through his skull. He moved his arm. The pain worsened. So he lay still, watching the sharp, reddish fragments race across his vision. He took stock. He could feel his feet and his hands. He could move his head from side to side. He could see the metallic coffin in which he lay. He could hear the steady roar of an engine.

He was in a moving object of some kind. A car trunk? No, too big, too smooth. A plane. That was it. He could feel the faint rise and fall, that sense of weightlessness that went with flight.

"Teddy, take care of our friend," said a voice somewhere off to his right. "He's comin' around."

Teddy. Max. Johnny Hung Fat. It came rushing back to him now. The Brooklyn-style stomping. An eighty percenter — the most savage kicking a man could absorb short of having his bones crushed. Rage gave him strength. He started to climb to his feet…

A sharp pain exploded in the back of his head and he pitched forward into the darkness coming up at him from the floor.

It seemed only an instant that he was out, but it had to be longer. For as consciousness came seeping slowly back, an image at a time, he found that he was out of the metallic coffin and sitting strapped in a chair of some kind inside a large sphere of glass webbed by steel piping.

The sphere hung at least fifty feet above the ground in a huge, cavernous room. Banks of computers stood along the far wall, making soft musical noises like children's roller toys. Men in white smocks resembling surgeons were working over them, pushing switches, loading reels of tape. Other men, wearing earphones with dangling plugs, stood looking up at Nick. The edges of the room were lined with a collection of weird-looking devices — rotating chairs reminiscent of giant kitchen blenders, tilt tables, egg-like disorientation drums revolving on multiple axes at fantastic speeds, heat chambers that looked like steel sauna baths, exercise unicycles, Aqua-EVA simulation pools constructed of canvas and wire.

One of the white-coated figures plugged a hand-mike into the console in front of him and spoke. Nick heard his voice, tiny and remote, trickling into his ear."…thank you for volunteering. The idea is to test how much vibration the human body can tolerate. High-speed whirling and tumbling on re-entry can shift the position of a man's liver a full six inches…"

If Nick could hear the man, then maybe… "Get me out of here!" he bellowed at the top of his lungs.

"…at zero-G, certain changes begin to take place," the voice continued without pause. "Blood pools, vein walls soften. Bones release calcium to the blood. There are serious shifts in body fluid level, muscular weakening. It's unlikely, however, that you will reach that point"

The chair had started to slowly turn. Now it began to pick up speed. At the same time it began shaking up and down with increasing violence. "Remember that you yourself control the mechanism," the voice in his ear said. "It's the button under your left index finger. When you feel that you have reached the limit of your endurance, press it The motion will cease. Thank you again for volunteering. Over and out"

Nick pressed the button. Nothing happened. The chair whirled faster and faster. The vibrations grew more intense. The universe splintered into a chaos of unbearable motion. His brain crumbled under the terrible onslaught A roaring started in his ears and over it he heard another sound. His own voice, shouting in agony against the mind-destroying shaking. His finger stabbed the button again and again but there was no reaction, nothing but the roaring in his ears and the bite of the straps that were tearing his body to pieces.

His shouts turned to screams as the assault on his senses continued. He closed his eyes in torment, but it did no good. The very cells of his brain, the corpuscles of his blood, appeared to throb, to burst in a mounting crescendo of pain.

Then, as suddenly as it had begun, the onslaught stopped. He opened his eyes but saw no change in the red-splashed darkness. His brain pounded inside his skull, the muscles of his face and body quivered uncontrollably. Gradually, bit by bit, his senses began to recover. The scarlet flashes became crimson, then green, then vanished. The background blended with them in a growing lightness, and through the haze of his damaged sight something gleamed, pale and motionless.

It was a face.

A thin, dead face with dead gray eyes and a savage scar around its throat The mouth moved. It said: "Is is there anythin' else you want to tell us? Anythin' you've forgotten?"

Nick shook his head and there was nothing after that but the long, deep dive into blackness. He surfaced once, briefly, to feel the faint rise and fall of a cool metal floor under him and to know that he was airborne once again; then the blackness spread across his vision like the wings of a great bird and he felt a cold, clammy rush of air against his face and knew it for what it was — death.

He awoke to a scream — a terrible, inhuman scream out of hell.

His reaction was automatic, an animal response to danger. He kicked out with his arms and legs, rolled to the left, landing on his feet in a half crouch, the ringers of his right hand closing around the gun that wasn't there.

He was naked. And alone. In a bedroom with thick white carpeting and Kelly green satin furnishings. He was facing in the direction from which the noise had come. But there was nothing there. Nothing that moved, inside or out.

Late morning sun streamed through the arched windows at the far end of the room. Outside, palmetto-fronds hung limp in the heat. Beyond them the sky was a pale, washed-out blue, and the light glinted off the sea with blinding flashes as if mirrors were being played across its surface. Cautiously, Nick inspected the bathroom and dressing room. Having made sure no danger lurked behind him, he returned to the bedroom and stood there, frowning. Everything was very quiet; then all at once the sharp, hysterical cry that had awakened him came again.

He strode across the room and looked out the window. The cage stood on the terrace below. Nick chuckled grimly. A myna bird! He watched it hop back and forth, its oily black plumage ruffling. The sight of it brought the other bird back to him. With it came the smell of death, the pain and — in a series of brilliant, razor-sharp images — everything that had happened to him. He glanced down at his body. Not a mark on it And the pain — vanished. But he automatically cringed at the thought of further punishment.

The new look in torture, he thought grimly. Twice as effective as the old because you recovered so quickly. No aftereffect except dehydration. He unstuck his tongue from the floor of his mouth and at once the acrid taste of chloral hydrate burst through. That made him wonder how long he'd been here, and where "here" was. He sensed movement behind him and swung around, body tensed, ready to defend himself.

"Good morning, sir. Feeling better, I hope."

The butler came ploughing through the heavy white carpeting, a tray in his hand. He was young and husky, with eyes like gray pebbles, and Nick noticed the telltale bulge under his jacket. He was wearing a shoulder rig. The tray held a glass of orange juice and "Mickey Elgar's" wallet. "You dropped this last night, sir," the butler said smoothly. "I think you'll find that everything's there."

Nick drank the juice down greedily. "Where am I?" he demanded.

The butler didn't bat an eye. "Cathay, sir. The Palm Beach estate of Alexander Simian. You were washed ashore last night."

"Washed ashore!"

"Yes, sir. Your launch is a total wreck, I'm afraid. It ran aground on the reef." He turned to go. "I'll tell Mr. Simian that you're up. Your clothes are in the closet, sir. We've pressed them, though I'm afraid the salt water hasn't done them any good." The door closed silently behind him.

Nick opened the wallet The one hundred crisp portraits of Grover Cleveland were still there. He opened the closet, and found himself staring into a full-length mirror on the inside of the door. Mickey Elgar was still in place. Last night's "workout" hadn't disturbed a single hair. As he looked at himself, he felt renewed admiration for Editing's lab. The new, fleshlike polyethylene silicone masks might be uncomfortable to wear but they were foolproof. No amount of tugging, scratching or smearing could remove them. Only hot water and knowhow could do that.

There was a faint salt-water smell to his suit. Nick frowned as he got dressed. Was the shipwreck story true, then? The rest a nightmare? Reno Tree's face came swimming vaguely into focus. Any thin' else you want to tell us? That was an interrogation standard. It was used on someone just coming around. The idea was to convince them that they'd already talked, that only a few points remained to be filled in. Nick wasn't going to fall for that one. He knew he hadn't talked. He'd been in the business too long; his training had been too thorough.

A voice boomed in the hallway outside. Footsteps approached. The door opened and the familiar bald eagle's head atop huge, hunched shoulders leaned in. "Well, Mr. Eigar, how do you feel?" Simian rumbled jovially. "Ready for a little poker? My associate, Mr. Tree, tells me that you like to play for high stakes."

Nick nodded. "That's right"

"Then follow me, Mr. Elgar, follow me."

Simian strode rapidly along the hall and down a sweeping staircase flanked by cast stone columns, his footsteps ringing authoritatively against the Spanish tiles. Nick followed, his eyes busy, his photographic memory registering each detail. They crossed the first floor reception area with its twenty-foot-high ceiling and moved through a series of galleries with gilded pillars. The paintings that hung on the walls were all famous ones, mostly of the Italian Renaissance school, and the uniformed GKI police spotted here and there suggested that they were originals, not prints.

They went up another staircase, through a museumlike room filled with glass cases containing coins and plaster and bronze statuettes on pedestals, and Simian pressed the navel on a small David and Goliath. A section of wall slid silently aside and he motioned Nick to enter.

Nick did, and found himself in a damp concrete hallway. Simian stepped past him as the paneling slid shut. He opened a door.

The room was dark, filled with cigar smoke. The only light came from a single, green-shaded bulb that hung a few feet above a large round table. Three men sat at the table in their shirtsleeves. One of them glanced up. "You gonna play, for chrissake?" he growled at Simian. "Or you gonna wander all over the place?" He was a bald, thickset man with pale fish-eyes that shifted now to Nick and rested on his face a moment, as if trying to find a slot to put him in.

"Mickey Elgar, Jacksonville," said Simian. "He's going to sit in a hand."

"Not until we're finished here, friend," said fish-eyes. "You." He pointed to Nick. "Move over there and keep your trap shut."

Nick recognized him now. Irwin Spang, of the old Sierra Inn crowd, reputed to be co-director of the Syndicate, the sprawling nationwide criminal organization active at every level of business from vending machines and loan sharking to the stock market and Washington politics.

"I thought you'd be ready for a break," said Simian, sitting down and picking up his cards.

The fat man next to Spang began to laugh. It was a dry, papery laugh that caused his great, loose-hanging jowls to shake. His eyes were extraordinarily small and heavily lidded. Sweat poured down his face and he passed a screwed-up handkerchief round the inside of his collar. "We'll take a break, Alex, don't worry," he wheezed hoarsely. "Soon as we got you squeezed dry."

The voice was as familiar to Nick as his own. Fourteen days of it pleading the fifth amendment in front of a Senate Committee ten years earlier had made it as famous as Donald Duck's voice — which in a gravelly way it resembled. Sam "Bronco" Barone — the Syndicate's other director, the one known as The Enforcer.

Nick gathered saliva into his dry mouth. He had begun to think that he was safe, that the masquerade had worked. They hadn't broken him, they hadn't tumbled to the Elgar mask. He had even pictured himself walking out of this room. Now he knew it could never happen. He had seen The Enforcer, a man generally thought to be either dead or in hiding in his native Tunis. He had seen Irwin Spang in his company (a connection the Federal Government had never been able to prove), and he had seen both men in the same room with Alex Simian — a sight that made Nick the most important witness in U.S. criminal history.

"Let's play poker," said the fourth man at the table. He was a dapper, suntanned Madison Avenue type. Nick recognized him from the Senate hearings. Dave Roscoe, a top Syndicate lawyer.

Nick watched them play. Bronco passed four hands in a row and then got three ladies. He opened, drew but didn't better it, and got out. Simian won on two pair and Bronco showed his openers. Spang stared at him. "What-sa matter, Sam?" he growled. "You don't like to win? You had Alex's doubles beat."

Bronco chuckled grimly. "Wasn't good enough for my money," he rasped. "I want a big one when I catch Alex's purse."

Simian scowled. Nick sensed the tension around the table. Spang swung around in his chair. "Hey, Red," he croaked. "Let's have some air."

Nick turned, surprised to see three other figures in the shadowy room. One of them was a man wearing glasses and a green eye-shade. He sat at a table in the dark, an adding machine in front of him. The others were Reno Tree and Clint Sands, the head of the GKI police force. Sands stood up and pulled a switch. The blue haze began to boil up toward the ceiling, then disappeared, sucked into the maw of an exhaust vent. Reno Tree sat with his arms on the back of a chair, watching Nick, a faint smile on his lips.

Bronco let another two or three hands go by, then he saw a thousand-dollar bet and raised it the same amount Spang and Dave Roscoe called and Simian raised a thousand. Bronco raised two G's. Dave Roscoe folded and Spang saw. Simian tipped it another G. It seemed to be what Bronco was waiting for. "Ha!" He shoved in four G's.

Spang backed out and Simian studied Bronco with glacial eyes. Bronco grinned at him. Everyone in the room started to hold their breath.

"No," said Simian grimly and tossed in his cards. "I'm not going to be suckered into that."

Bronco spread his cards up. The best he had was a ten high. The expression on Simian's face was dark and wrathful. Bronco started to laugh.

Suddenly Nick knew what he was up to. There are three ways to play poker, and Bronco was playing the third — against the man who is the most desperate to win. He's the one who usually overplays his hand. The need to win shuts out his luck. Get him mad and he's dead.

"What's that make it, Sydney?" wheezed Bronco, wiping tears of laughter from his eyes.

The man at the adding machine had switched on his light and tabulated some figures. He tore the tape off and handed it to Reno. "That's twelve hundred G's less he owes you, Mr. B," said Reno.

"We're gettin' there," grated Bronco. "By the year 2000 we'll be settled."

"Okay, I'm out," said Dave Roscoe. "I've got to stretch my legs."

"Why don't we all take a break?" said Spang. "Give Alex a chance to scrape some cash together." He nodded in Nick's direction. "You got here just in time, pal."

The three of them filed out of the room and Simian pointed to a chair. "You wanted action," he said to Nick. "Sit." Reno Tree and Red Sands advanced out of the shadows and eased themselves into chairs on either side of him. "Ten G's a chip. Any objections?" Nick shook his head. "Then deal."

Ten minutes later he was cleaned out. But the setup was clear at last. All the missing keys were there. All the answers he'd been searching for without knowing it.

There was only one problem — how to walk away with that knowledge and live. Nick decided a straight approach was best. He pushed his chair back and stood up. "Well, that's it," he said. "I'm flat. Guess I'll be going."

Simian didn't even glance up. He was too busy counting the Clevelands. "Sure," he said. "Glad you sat in. When you feel like dropping another bundle, contact me. Reno, Red, see him out."

They walked him to the door and did just that — literally.

The last thing Nick saw was Reno's arm swinging in a swift arc toward his head. There was a brief sensation of nauseating pain and then darkness.