Shadow of a Broken Man

13

When I regained consciousness, I was giggling uncontrollably. I found the idea of being ambushed by two men in a green Cadillac outrageously funny. My head felt twice its normal size, pumped full of helium that was carrying me off to a Land of Oz peopled with smiling, gun-toting Europeans who lived in the glove compartments of green Cadillacs. I giggled some more.

In between my flights of hysteria, the two men-who spoke with British accents-took turns asking me what I thought were the most absurd questions about Victor Rafferty. I'd answer, then howl at the thought that anybody should be asking me questions on a subject about which I knew so little.

A few times I thought I heard my own voice talking back to me. That would be my tapes. I tried to get angry at the Englishmen for breaking into my apartment, but everything was just too funny.

I told them about the book and the piece of paper. One of the men left the room while the other went through my pockets. It tickled, and I laughed. The man with the red hair asked me about the Fosters, and I told him what I knew. I thought it was funny that they should know about the Fosters. I laughed and laughed, and finally fell asleep.

I woke up with a wicked drug hangover. My mouth was dry, raw, puckered. My head still felt twice its normal size, but now it was filled with tacks. I lay still and surveyed the room in front of me through half-closed eyes. I wanted to get some idea of the order of this particular universe before I welcomed company.

It seemed to be a moderate-sized room, rugless, with peeling yellow paper on the walls. I was lying on a convertible sofa that smelled of age and mildew. Overhead was a large chandelier that looked as if it had been imported by someone with a droll sense of humor. To my left was a rickety card table on which had been placed two tape recorders. A few feet in front of me, just above eye level, was a dirty window; I could see the tops of trees through it, which would put me on the second or third story of the building.

There were voices coming from behind me. The two men were discussing European- politics in their clipped British accents. I continued to lie motionless.

Someone mentioned tea. There was the sound of a chair scuffing against a hardwood floor, then footsteps. I peered through my lids as the darker man paused beside me, then walked out into the adjoining kitchen to my right. I waited until I heard him rummaging around with the pots and pans, then moaned softly. Again there was the sound of a chair being pushed back, heavy footsteps. The red-haired man loomed over me. He was the man who'd hit me; I opened my eyes and smiled dreamily up at him.

"Hey, Georgie!" the man yelled. "The little bloke's awake!"

The little bloke grunted and kept grinning.

"All right, Peter," the answering reply came from the kitchen, "get him up."

"I don't know. He still looks pretty dopey."

"Well, walk him around. I want to ask him a few more questions."

Peter reached down to shake me. I waited until he had both hands on my shoulders before I gave him another big grin, whispered that he was a son-of-a-bitch, and hit him in the jugular with the side of my hand. His eyes bulged and his hands flew to his throat as his face turned purple. He made a series of staccato choking noises that could barely be heard. My head immediately began to feel better.

I swung my legs over the side of the sofa, stood up, and relieved him of the automatic he had in his belt. I hit him in the gut with it, bringing him down to my level, then rapped him on the back of the head. He hit the floor hard with his face and stayed there.

The commotion brought George, pipe still clenched between his teeth, rushing into the room. He braked, skidded on one foot, and finally came to a halt when he saw me and the gun pointed at him. His swarthy face grew still darker as it mottled with blood. His eyes flashed as he did a double take between me and his fallen partner. He hunched his shoulders and started forward.

"Stay," I said quietly, punctuating the sentence with a loud lead exclamation point just over the top of his head. A chunk of plaster fell from the wall.

George stayed, but he bit through the stem of his meerschaum. The pipe, minus half its mouthpiece, clattered to the floor, and George spat out the rest. "He'll kill you," he stammered, pointing to the gasping redhead. "If he doesn't, I will."

"Oh, shut up, George, and sit down," I said, pointing with the gun toward a chair.

George thought about it for a few seconds. I helped him toward a decision by pointing the gun at his stomach. He sat down. I said something witty about clearing his sinuses permanently if he did anything I didn't like, then went across the room and took the sash cord from the broken Venetian blind hanging beside the window. The landscape outside looked like farmland, and I wondered where I was. It was dusk. Assuming it was the same day, I hadn't been out more than a few hours.

I used the sash cord to tie Peter and George. George moved once, but froze when I snatched up the gun from the floor and pressed the barrel against his spine. Now it was my turn to ask questions. I walked over to the tape recorders and turned one on. It was my own tape. I turned that one off and the other one on. The first question surprised me.

"Who is Victor Rafferty?"

I pressed the pause control and looked over at George. "What the hell kind of stupid question is that?" I said. "Don't you know?"

George glared at me and said nothing. I took my finger off the pause control and listened as the two men took turns asking me questions. Occasionally they played sections of the tape I'd made and asked me questions about statements I'd made. My own voice sounded blurred and indistinct, like a drunk's. There were about ten basic questions, repeated over and over in different variations. The Englishmen didn't seem to know any more than I did, a fact which I found depressing. Still, they'd known about me.

I pressed the gun squarely to George's forehead, directly between his eyes. "Is Victor Rafferty alive?"

"You tell me, you little bastard."

"Maybe I'll just shoot you."

"Go ahead."

"Take some time to think about that answer, George; use the time to try to remember all you know about Victor Rafferty. You can start off by telling me why everybody is so interested in him."

He spat at me. I sidestepped the wet missile and tapped lightly on the top of his head with the gun. He cursed. "We've been working blind, you bloody dwarf! We just do what we're told to do! We don't know any more about Rafferty now than we did last time!"

"Last time?"

"Fuck you!"

Peter was beginning to look fairly normal, although he kept swallowing and wincing in pain. Spittle had dried and caked on his lips. His eyes never left me; they were bloodshot, bright with hate.

"How did you know about the Fosters?" I asked George, not really expecting an answer.

"You're going to be killed for this," George hissed. "This thing is a lot bigger than any of us."

"Are you making fun of my size, George?"

"You bloody----! Untie us!"

"First I want you to tell me all about that 'last time.' I also want to know who did the job on the Pakistani."

George's face became a stony mask. "I'll tell you nothing. You're wasting your time."

He was probably right. I decided to look around the house, and the first thing I found was my gun on a counter in the kitchen. Next to it were the book on parapsychology and the mysterious sheet of paper; I hoped that meant they'd brought my car along with them.

I left everything where it was and searched through the other rooms on the floor. They were barren for the most part, except for a few ratty pieces of furniture that jutted out like bits of flotsam floating in a moldy sea of ratty carpet. Outside, a full moon was rising, bathing the surrounding countryside in a soft, cold glow. I assumed the farmhouse was some kind of meeting place, or intelligence drop point. Or perhaps it was no more than what it seemed: an abandoned farmhouse that George and Peter had commandeered for the purpose at hand.

The lights obligingly came on when I flipped a switch, and I hit the jackpot when I looked in a closet off the main sitting room: there was a large black medical kit. Inside the kit was a pharmacist's delight, with drugs ranging from what I suspected was L.S.D. to the familiar and effective sodium pentothal. I picked up the bag and went back into the big room. George was obviously unhappy with my discovery; his eyes bulged and sweat broke out on his forehead.

"What the hell are you going to do with that stuff?" he asked warily.

"Time for your vitamins, George."

"That's not going to do you any good!" He swallowed, pumped up the volume of his voice. "I'm trained to resist drugs!"

I groped around inside the bag, took out a handful of bottles and three hypodermics. "Well, I think I'll give you a little of this and a little of that, and see what happens."

"Do you have any idea what you're doing?" he said as I picked three vials at random and filled a hypodermic.

"With drugs? Well, I've found I prefer aspirin for the common headache. What about yourself, George?"

"Jesus, you're going to kill me with that stuff! Or turn me into a raving loony! I'm telling you I don't know anything!"

I held the tip of the needle poised over his arm. "It would be a shame for you to get turned into a pumpkin for nothing, wouldn't it? Who pays you?"

He took some time to answer as his eyes stayed riveted to the tip of the needle. Finally he heaved a deep sigh. "Christ, dwarf, use your imagination. M.I.-5."

He visibly relaxed as I took a step backward. "How did you get on my trail?"

"Contacts at the U.N.," George said sullenly. "The Pakistani was asking questions about Rafferty and your name was mentioned. The Home Office put us on the job."

"How did you find me in Tuxedo Park?"

"We had a beeper on your car; planted it while you were in the rental agency."

"Did you or your friend here kill the Pakistani?"

"No."

I stepped forward again and raised the hypodermic. "I don't think I believe you."

"It's true" George squeaked as a few drops of clear fluid dripped onto his arm. "We didn't kill him. That had to be Kaznakov. The Pakistani was tortured; that's Kaznakov's trademark."

"Who's Kaznakov?" I whispered. I suddenly felt choked, short of breath.

George looked at me a long time. "You don't want anything to do with Kaznakov, believe me."

"Come on, George. Who's Kaznakov?" I squirted fluid between his eyes.

"Russian. A bloody freak."

"Where can I find this Kaznakov?"

"Soviet U.N. Mission. He's supposed to be a minor aide, but that's only his cover. He's an agent; a specialist. He's a crazy, bloody freak. One of the worst, from what I hear, although you Americans are supposed to have-"

"Tell me about the 'last time,' George. Did you work on the Rafferty case before?" He turned his face away and didn't say anything. I thought of Abu and had a sudden, almost uncontrollable surge of rage. I grabbed his ear, twisted his head to one side, and held the hypodermic like a dagger over his exposed neck. "I'm not shitting you, George!" I shouted into his ear. "I have to find out these things! If you don't tell me, I'm going to drop this load in your neck and go to work on your friend!"

Something in my voice must have convinced him. When I released his ear, he slumped in his chair. "Five years ago," he said, seemingly resigned. "But we thought Rafferty was dead; killed by an American named Lippitt. Now a lot of people aren't so sure Rafferty's dead after all."

"Why does everyone want Rafferty, George?"

"I don't know. We were just told to find him, kill him if he is alive. Didn't much like it, but orders are orders.

There wasn't much chance Rafferty would work for us, so I'm told, so we had to make sure he didn't end up working for anybody else. It was the same five years ago."

"He wouldn't work for the British, so you were told to kill him?"

"That's right. Everyone had those orders. We were in a big hurry because we knew the Frenchies had a good line on him."

"The French knew about Rafferty?" It had obviously been, obviously was, a crowded track.

"Hell, yes. The French have a good man working for them. Been feeding them top-grade information for years."

"What's this agent's name, and where can I find him?"

George shrugged. "Nobody-except some controller- knows. He-or she, for all I know-has a deep cover; you find out, let us know. There's someone who can tell you what you want to know about Victor Rafferty. Shit, Peter and I are just cannon fodder compared with the Frenchie. You know, you hurt my fucking ear."

"But you don't know why all these people had orders to capture or kill?"

"Top Secret. We were just following our orders. Now, that's all I know. I swear it."

I pressed the point of the needle against the thick blue vein on the inside of his forearm. He squirmed, the color draining from his face as. a droplet of blood formed on his arm. "You'll kill me if you stick me with that! What the hell are you doing?"

"George," I replied, "I feel I'm losing your cooperation."

"Then ask me something, for Christ's sake! Or go find the Frenchie!"

I kept the tip of the needle just inside his vein. "Five years ago a doctor by the name of Arthur Morton was murdered. Do you know anything about that? Think carefully, George; my thumb is beginning to twitch."

"We killed him," George croaked, his eyes bulging as he stared down at the hypodermic and the trail of blood running down his forearm.

"Why?"

"It was an accident! The goddamn bloody fool had no business coming to his office in the middle of the night. We weren't expecting him. He surprised us. He had a gun. We just didn't have any choice!"

"Why were you in his office?"

"We were supposed to take pictures of Rafferty's medical records," George said hoarsely. "And I don't know why. I swear it!"

I removed the tip of the needle from George's vein but kept it where he could see it. "What do you know about the Fosters?"

"The Russians have them. Everybody in the business knows it. The Russians want everybody to know."

My mouth suddenly tasted metallic. "Where have the Russians got them?"

"Russian consulate."

"Why? What do the Russians want with the Fosters?"

"Mrs. Foster used to be married to Rafferty. The Russians figure maybe they can pressure Rafferty into turning himself in, if he's alive." George clucked his tongue. "It's a bloody bad business," he said sincerely. "Got everybody and his brother running around."

"How is Rafferty supposed to find out that the Russians have his ex-wife?"

"You thought Rafferty was at the U.N. If he is, he'll find out soon enough."

"What if he isn't there?"

George shrugged. "You never know what the Russians will do." Suddenly his face went chalk-white as he glanced up and saw something just behind me. "Kaznakov!" he cried in a strangled voice.

I wheeled and froze. The man filling the doorway was huge-well over six feet and better than two hundred and seventy-five pounds, all resting on ridiculously small feet. There was nothing ridiculous about the machine pistol in his right hand. His eyes were like twin moons, pale and lifeless, suspended in an unbelievably ugly, pockmarked face; a large, mashed nose sat in the middle of that face like a broken rocket drifting off to nowhere. The trackers had been tracked, and I doubted that the Russian was looking for information.