The Clan of the Cats

VIII

After so long a time that Milo had all but given him up for dead of cold or wolves or misfortune, Dik Esmith arrived below the plateau with five other Horseclansmen, a half-dozen packhorses and a small remuda of remounts. When once the newcomers and Milo’s party had set up the yurt and set to constructing a protective corral for the horses against a spot at the base of the plateau, Milo squatted with Dik and a sub-chief of Clan Linsee, one Alex.

“How far behind you are the main party? demanded Milo. “How many more days until they arrive, Dik?”

Dik remained silent, deferring to the Linsee sub-chief, but looked uncomfortable. It was Alex Linsee who replied.

“Uncle Mio, my brother and the other chiefs met in council on this matter and they decided that, all things considered, they dare not send out any more warriors than those with me here. But after the thaw commences, they will come up here, all four of the clans together. This clansman you sent back averred that game was to be easily found up here, but still the chiefs sent some packloads of hard cheese, dried herbs and roots, smoked fish and fat-paste for your party and for us, who will remain with you until after the thaw begins and the clans are come.”

“Now what’s all this about four clans, Alex Linsee?” demanded Milo, “When my original hunting party left camp there were but the two—Linsee and Esmith. And just why do the chiefs feel that they dare not send out a larger party of warriors than your measly six? What has happened down them on the plain since I left?”

Both the sub-chief and Dik Esmith sighed. “It’s a bitter hard winter, Uncle Milo,” said Alex Linsee in preamble. “Game is scarce on the plains, and the wolfpacks run large and very fierce with their hunger. So dangerous are they in their numbers that not only folk and kine must be protected from them but even the largest and strongest of our hounds, are any to survive until the thaw.

“As if all that were not enough and more than enough, though, shortly after you and your hunters left, the very clan camp was attacked of a night by rovers not of Kindred ilk. Silently, they crept in upon us, silent as serpents in the snow, and only mere happenstance revealed them to one of the herd guards in time to save cattle and camp and clans. They were driven off with losses, in the end, but the fight was hard and long and costly to us, as well.

“As for Clans Makawlee and Baikuh, they were encamped miles to the southeast of us. Attacked as were we, but by vastly more numerous foemen, they broke camp and fled toward the higher country until their scouts chanced to meet a party of our hunters and decided to make common camp with us for mutual protection from these non-Kindred marauders. As the poor Makawlees and Baikuhs had lost all of their sheep and most of the goats and cattle and even some of their horses, no difficulties in combining camps was seen by my chief or the Esmith.”

“There were too many nomads to fight, then?” asked Milo.

Dik Esmith shook his head. “Oh, there has been fighting and killing and dying, too, Uncle Milo. Immediately the stockade and brushwalls had been expanded, enlarged to hold the new folk and kine, my chief set the eldest and youngest and the matrons to guard it, then took out almost all the warriors and the maiden-archers. They found those who were pursuing the Makawlees and the Baikuhs, ambushed them and put to scattered flight those who survived the ensuing battle.

“Then some of the younger warriors and the maidens backtracked the non-Kindred to an ancient, ruined Dirtman town. They fired the wagon-tents and thatched roofs with arrows ran off all the few animals there, slew some of the folk but rode back without taking the time or risk to pillage.

“It was as well that they acted just so, for my chief and his victors arrived back at the clans’ encampment to find it under heavy assault from another aggregation of non-Kindred rovers—those who had earlier tried that night attack, along in company with certain others of their unsavory ilk. With many of his own victors wounded already, he and they were hard pressed to even hold their own against so many, but the timely arrival of the party of maiden-archers saved the day for the right … but not quite in time to save the life of my chief.” Dik’s voice caught in his throat and he paused, his pale eyes swimming in unshed tears.

Milo reached across to grip the young man’s arm hard, in wordless expression of sympathy and shared grief. “He was a good man, Dik. I will miss him. But he now rides the boundless plains of Wind. And, knowing him as I did, I am certain he went to Wind in great glory, glory which will be long recalled and bard-sung to generations of Esmiths whose great-grandparents are not yet born.”

Sub-chief Alex Linsee attested, “That he did. Uncle Milo, that he assuredly did. The Esmith was already sore hurt when he rode into that fight, yet he slew two of the enemy with his spear before it lodged in a body and he had to let it go; then he turned a spear on his target and sabered off the arm that held it above the wrist. Next, faced by two opponents, he took one hard in the face with the boss of his buckler, even while all but decapitating the other with his saber. He was turning to deal with the one he had stunned, who sat reeling in the saddle, when one of the byblows, afoot, stabbed up under his shirt of boiled leather with the long blade of a spear. It was Dik, here, who split that baseborn bastard’s lousy head from pate to chin, but his chief’s mighty heart had already been pierced and burst.

“Ever since that bloody fight, though there have been no more real raids against us, not by men, at least, the chiefs feel that we do not longer number enough sound warriors to send any larger numbers than those I lead up here, away from the camp.”

Milo nodded once. “They’re right, of course. These ruins won’t go away or disappear in the few weeks or months until thaw sets in. Indeed, all things considered, why not just leave Dik here and you and the rest ride on back to the camp? Now that you’ve all been up here, you should have no trouble guiding the clans whenever the chiefs are ready to come up. Take the horses and the yurt and what you’ll need of the provender for your return journey and leave us the rest; with it and such game as we take, we’ll make out fine.

“You can load any spare horses with bales of scraped, part-cured winter-wolf pelts, property of both Linsees and Esmiths. But plan on biding here tonight and tomorrow. Dik has told you about the cats, and I want you all to meet them and converse with them, too.”

In the end, Dr. Harel chose to leave precipitately rather than sit through the thorough unmasking of him planned by Bedford. The defeated man announced his intention to repair to the project director in California and seek employment in the project designed to replicate a dwarf mammoth. Though the other professionals were disappointed not to witness the further humbling of the arrogant, brutal, hectoring bully, Bedford was relieved to see him go so quickly and easily.

But with Harel safely away and the initial work on the feethami project commenced, he felt it high time to himself commence a longish, circuitous trip to—among other things—try to use the newly undertaken project to shake or squeeze out a bit more funding from any contact that would sit still long enough.

This time, on his way to Japan, he went by way of Texas. There, at the complex housing the Steakley Foundation, he spoke with an old friend, Dr. Fleming Van Natta.

Van Natta poked with one stubby finger at a file in the stack atop his desk and nodded. “Yes, Jim, Dr. Harel has already applied to my people in Sacramento. They consider him to be arrogant and a bit surly, but quite knowledgeable in his field. His résumé is impressive, to understate, especially his Cyprian work experience. His apparently close contacts with Dr. Ivanov and some other Russian scientists in our field will be most helpful to our project, for we are going to need a fair amount of genetic material of the very sort that is most easily come by in Russia.”

Bedford nodded. “Yes, I am certain that certain of Dr. Harel’s skills and contacts will be very helpful indeed to you, Van; and that’s precisely why I mentioned him to start,” said Bedford, adding, “But there is at least one other side to him that I feel it only fair you should know, are you and the rest of your staff to work with him, to bottle yourselves up on an isolated island with him.

“To begin, he should have good contacts in Russia, because that’s where he was born and mostly where he was educated under his original name and identity of Vladimir Abramovich Markov. He was allowed to emigrate to Israel, and it was there that he had his name legally changed to Dov Harel. After his requisite time in their defense force, he went up to the university, studied under Dr. Goldman, then went with him into the island fauna thing on Cyprus and Crete.”

Van Natta bobbed his close-cropped head. “I’ve spoken with Sol Goldman on v-phone, while he was in Tel-Aviv, last month, and with Petronolis, in Athens, too; they remember Harel as a good—if somewhat slow and methodical—man, though they still don’t seem to have any idea why he abruptly left their project to seek and gain permission to emigrate to this country from Israel. He notes on his résumé ongoing differences with the directors of the project, but at least two of those selfsame directors don’t seem to have been aware of the existence of any differences at all between them and him.”

Bedford half smiled. “Van, I have reasons that, to me, are sufficient and logical to believe that Dr. Harel-cum-Markov left the Mediterranean area and came here because he was ordered to so do by his real employers: some little-known branch of the KGB.”

“The KGB?” demanded Van Natta with a look of utter incredulity. “But … Christ Almighty, Jim … why?”

Bedford shrugged. “You know how leaky is even our security here at this foundation, so you can imagine what a sieve many of the smaller, less well funded, less established projects are. The Russians had heard that the Stekowski group was about to begin a sabertooth replication project, of course, and they almost certainly have one or more similar projects underway or planned, and so they wanted to shoot down this one—especially since such notable types as Stekowski and Singh were involved in it—before it could hope to undercut their own.

“And there’s more … and far worse.” Then he went on to tell an encapsulated version of just how atrociously Harel had gone about forcing Drs. Stekowski and Baronian into backing him in the ill-omened Project latifrons.

Van Natta raised his bushy, blondish eyebrows and pushed back from his desk. “And you tried to wish a slimy monster like that off on me, Jim? What the hell kind of a friend do you call yourself man? Contacts or no contacts, I want no bastard like Harel in my group. What the hell were you thinking of to first sell the fucker and his vaunted accomplishments to me, then send him to our Sacramento office? I think I deserve an answer, Jim. I thought you were fond of all of us here at this foundation, just as we all are of you, still, for all that you left us for another project. What the hell did you intend to set us up for, planting this creature you knew to be a Russian agent among our new group in a fledgling project?”

“Take it easy, Van, just take it easy,” said Bedford soothingly. “Think harder, my friend. Had I had designs to set you up, as you say, I’d never have come here today and told you all that I have. Think, Van, would I?”

“Well … well, maybe not,” Van Natta agreed, albeit grudgingly. Then why did you do it, any of it?”

“Before I tell you that,” answered Bedford. “I have to know if you will agree to take on Harel, take him into your group, take him to your island facility. And also agree to deny him any use of a v-phone, radio or regular phone for any calls not thoroughly monitored by a Russian-speaker … one that he knows is monitoring his calls.”

“Why?” Van Natta asked in a tightly controlled voice.

Bedford shook his head. “Sorry, Van, no answers from me until I get the answers I want from you. That’s the way the stick floats, buddy.”

Van Natta changed his tack. “Just how much does John III know about all this? You did meet with him, I happen to know, before you came to my office today.”

Bedford grinning teasingly, maliciously, and said, “One hell of a lot more than you ever will, my sharp-eared friend, until … unless … ? Aw, c’mon, Van, give me the agreements I want, huh? You’re plainly drooling to know what my scheme is, and besides. Harel does have definite assets for your project, you know that.”

Van Natta shook his head stubbornly, his face mirroring his heritage—that of less than two hundred ill-armed men who, from the dubious advantage of a crumbling abode-walled mission, had laced a disciplined army of six thousand and had killed or wounded at least a quarter of them before being overcome. “From all you’ve said about him, Jim, the man could be really dangerous if thwarted, and I cannot expose my people to that. And that’s not to mention the possibilities of him deciding to try his stinking blackmail gimmick on my project, too. You know, I’ve got some key people who were born overseas and/or have relatives in foreign countries, also.”

Bedford frowned. “Van, the man is only dangerous to those he can scare with his size and his bluster, his tantrums. I know that for fact, believe me.”

But Van Natta still looked dubious and started to shake his head, so Bedford blurted, “You know he has three broken bones in his right hand, broken metacarpals?”

Van Natta nodded slowly. “Yes, he told the people in my Sacramento office that a piece of heavy equipment misfunctioned in his lab and broke them; that’s why his résumé was dictated to a voicewriter there.”

A smile flitted across Bedford’s face. “Well, he lied, Van. The piece of equipment that broke those bones and damaged his right wrist, and split both his ears, as well as bruising him up quite a bit in other places, was none other than an antique rattan walking stick that was once the property of my great-grandfather.

“Harel had made to attack me with his cane once before, and when once I had the goods on his real background and knew I could put him on the run, I brought my cane to a meeting with him and the rest of the core group, then deliberately angered him to a sufficiently high pitch that he again attacked me with his blackthorn stick.”

Van Natta winced. “Jim, Jim, men has been killed with canes, you know. Why did you take such a chance?”

Bedford chuckled. “I was never in any real danger, Van, not from Harel. He handles his stick as if he were a troglodyte with a club.”

Van Natta allowed himself a brief smile. “And you handled yours like a sword, probably, like the Olympic-class fencer you were not too many years ago.”

“Speaking of which, Van,” asked Bedford almost casually, “do you still hold those black belts?”

“Why, of course,” responded the blond scientist. “Why?”

“Then,” said Bedford, “Harel poses no danger to you so long as you make certain he has no access to firearms and doesn’t sneak up behind you. Sandy O’Malley will be in your group, too, won’t she? Van, can you imagine what she would leave of that tub of lard if he tried to get rough with her?”

At this, Van Natta was moved to real, honest laughter. “And she looks so tiny, so helpless, so fragile, too. Remember when those punks tried to force her into an old car in the south parking lot that time, Jim?”

Grinning at the memory. Bedford replied, “And she rammed the head of the biggest one through a closed window? Yes, I remember it well. It could’ve gotten sticky, too, if John II hadn’t said his few words on it—a few words was all the old man ever needed to say to clear up almost anything short of a full-fledged shooting war. The cops just could not bring themselves to believe that little Sandy had committed all the carnage they found on the scene.

“So. with two like you and Sandy around, I just can’t see an unarmed Harel being any danger to you, out on your island, Van. So say you’ll take him on and handle him in the way I’ll outline and I’ll tell you all I told John III. Okay?”

In Kyoto, Dr. Hara was really enthusiastic about the new project, especially so when he told her of his accidental buying of the two Panthera spelaeus replications. But, far more important to him and to the Project feethami, she agreed to present his request for funding to the board of the investors she advised on replication matters and seemed most confident of a sizable amount of forthcoming monies.

He boarded his plane for Washington, D.C., in much better spirits than when last he had left Japan. Despite the favorable reception and heartening words of the Japanese scientist, there was still the possibility that the investors would entertain reservations about investing any meaningful amounts in a project that was just now barely off the ground, a project that had been a failure in Canada and had been once delayed by his own group. Therefore, he felt it wise to shake every money tree within his reach.

When his Uncle Taylor saw the three-dimensional prints of the two spotted lions, the snow leopards and the white jaguar, he smiled broadly enough to reveal almost every tooth and nodded his head with its thick mane of snowy hair—both teeth and hair looking even whiter in contrast to his tanned face.

“Dammit, Jim, that’s where you should’ve been headed all along, you know. I have high regard for our fine Israeli allies, always have, and my voting record bears me out, too; I’m certain that in a number of ways this Israeli scientist is a very smart, a brilliant man, but his act of steering all of you off on that damned bison business was stupid … but I suppose even the best of us make mistakes, it’s part of being human.”

James Bedford laughed. “I doubt you’ll lose any Jewish-bloc votes over criticizing him, Uncle Taylor. He’s an Israeli only because he was sent there, planted there deliberately by the Russians, you know. His real name is Dr. Vladimir Markov, he took his doctorate in Russia, only studied in Israel until he had managed to get himself invited to join the dwarf fauna project and then left that one suddenly and for no reason that any of them can understand to emigrate here and bull his way onto the Stekowski group’s board.”

“James,” said the senator quietly, “I sincerely hope that you have access to substantial documented or documentable proof of these terrible slanders of this man, this immigrant scientist from one of our most faithful and loyal allied nations. Even here, within my private office, we are certainly being overheard by someone … likely, by a number of someones; privacy no longer exists here, not for anyone.”

Nodding, James Bedford took from his case a metal cylinder, set it before his uncle and scribbled rapidly on a scrap of the senator’s heavy, embossed notepaper. “Full files here. Reports from U.S. & foreign sources, agencies, mine too. Harel/Markov no longer connected with my group; report anything to any you feel should know. I’ll know where to find him if & when.”

When he had read the note, Senator Taylor Bedford nodded once. Arising, he stepped over to the small marble hearthed fireplace, struck a long, wooden match and lit a corner of the note. He held the blazing paper by one corner until it became imperative to let it go, then used the small brass shovel to thoroughly pulverize the ashes of it.

With his uncle’s agreement to do his very best to acquire at least some federal funding for Project feethami and the senator’s personal check for a midrange six-figure sum to tide his nephew over until dividend time arrived, James Bedford departed for his hotel. Tomorrow he would take his pictures and pitch to South Florida.

When he reached the street, however, his uncle’s promised car had not arrived, so he approached one of the dozen or so well-armed guards, showed his permanent pass to the building and asked about the promised transport.

The guard, who wore the stripes of a sergeant, smiled. “Don’t you worry none, Mr. Bedford, sir, he’ll be here. See, that motor pool’s a good half a mile away, and with this traffic the way it is—and it seems like it gets worser every minit of ever day of ever year, too—it’s goin’ to take him time for to get over here is all. A body’s got to learn patience in D.C., anymore.

“You best get out there t’other side of the inside barriers, though, so’s he can see you, sir.”

Bedford wove his way out between the overlapping ranks of thick concrete blocks placed to prevent any vehicle larger than a two-wheeler from getting anywhere close to the front of the building. All similar buildings in the national and many state capitals had been thus protected since a spate of terrorist car and truck bombings several years before. No one to date seemed to know just who had ordered the bombings, though several different terrorist groups had claimed “credit” for them.

As he stepped between two of the outermost row of blocks, so as to be easily spotted by Sloan, his uncle’s driver, a dark-blue, highly polished stretch limo slid smoothly to a stop before him to an ear-splitting screeching of tires and blatting of horns to its rear.

A red-faced man stuck his head and shoulders through an opening in the top of the sedan immediately behind the limo and shook a knobby, hairy fist, roaring, “Damn your whores ass, you mutha! Move that long-ass fucker!”

But Bedford did not move, not an inch, for this was not Uncle Taylor’s car; his was a lovingly rebuilt and refurbished antique, a Lincoln V-l2 limousine, and this one was a Mercedes.

Abruptly, the nearest rear door opened and a broad-shouldered man with big, craggy features emerged to hold the door, gesture and say in accentless Standard American English, “your car may well be an hour getting here, Mr. Bedford, and it looks like it may rain. Won’t you share my car to your hotel?”

More and still more vehicles of all conceivable descriptions had joined the growing line behind the halted limo. Regardless of the almost solid line of traffic passing in fits and starts along the two outer lanes, vehicle after vehicle of the stalled lane was endeavoring to worm its way in among those still moving at all, their attempts accompanied by the sounds of still more screechings and honkings and shouts and the impacts of metal on metal now and then.

As Bedford stood and stared at his supposed benefactor, an utter stranger to him, he saw a bicycle messenger zip up between the halted line and the moving lane of vehicles. Obviously a young man who expected to die quite young, he thought.

A police traffic copter suddenly swooped in from somewhere behind; so low was the aircraft that only by dint of flattening himself against one of the flanking blocks of concrete did Bedford keep his feet in the powerful propwash.

The craft banked around and came back over, thankfully not so low on this pass, its loudspeaker booming, “DS Limo BU-20560-ND, you are blocking traffic. Resume forward movement at once, please. You must make another pass for your passengers. This is an urgent order. Move at once.”

Bedford felt a tentative touch on his elbow and a voice to his mar said, “Mr. Bedford, sir, you better get in; ’less you do, the car’ll have to go ’round agin.”

Turning slightly. Bedford said, “Sergeant, this is not Senator Bedford’s car, not the one he ordered for me, nor is this man any member of his staff.”

“Is that so, sir?” said the sergeant, stepping past him in the direction of the halted limo and standing man. “And it ain’t no car I recanize, either, come to think of it. A’right, mister, lets see some ID, and damn quick-like, too.”

Making a movement toward one of the breast pockets of his dark suit coat, the standing man, smiling affably all the while, suddenly snapped his fingers, nodded wordlessly, then bent as if he might be reaching for something inside the rear compartment of the limo. But then, abruptly, he had stepped fully inside and slammed the door behind him, and the long vehicle was moving as fast as the traffic conditions would allow.

Pulling a communicator unit from his belt, the sergeant read off the numbers and letters stenciled on the rear of the limo’s trunk as well as those on its license plate. After a moment, he thumbed up the screen protector, read what appeared on it, then whistled soundlessly.

“Mr. Bedford, sir, I’m goin’ to have to ask you to come back inside with me, to our headquarters, downstairs. I think you just was about to be snatched by somebody for some reason, ’cause them D.C. vehicle numbers is s’posed to be on a five-ton truck and them Diplomatic Corps license plates was not an hour ago stole from the Thai Embassy along of the Toyota car they was on.”

It all took some time. Senator Bedford was obliged to render his personal assurances in writing and seven copies worth of it to the effect that his bona fide blood nephew, James Bedford, was of sound mind, reliable judgment, and even temperament and was fully trained and proficient with firearms before the federal permit could be issued on a priority basis. Only when the card actually emerged from out of the machine in the building guardroom was he allowed to give James physical possession of the stainless PPK .380 caliber pistol and its two magazines of cartridges to stow in the shoulder harness under his coat.

With the guardroom officer’s permission, he and his nephew were allowed to use one of the “safe rooms” of the facility—a room completely unmonitored by any source or agency, fully shielded against any sort of outside intrusion and constantly checked around the clock, every day, lest it be rendered unsafe.

Inside, Taylor Bedford threw his arms about his nephew and fiercely hugged him, saying, “God damn, boy. I’m glad you didn’t just clamber into that dammed car like too many other trusting souls might’ve done. How good a look did you get at the man who got out, eh? Did he speak with an accent? Could you tell what kind of accent it was?”

James shook his head. “No, Uncle Taylor, I think that’s what made me suspicious, too; he had no accent at all, not even any regional patterns or inflections, he sounded just like a newscaster. How did he look? Oh, average height, but with broad, thick shoulders. The only things remarkable about his face were that he had big features and fairly wide cheekbones, a deep cleft in the chin and what looked like a short, sanded scar to the left side of it. He wore a dark suit, white shirt, tie of some subdued hue, shiny shoes; the clothes were American cut. I think his eyes were blue, his hair was brown and parted to the right, his face had a very light tan where glasses hadn’t covered it, and that’s about all I recall … oh, except that he was missing the first joint on the middle finger of his right hand. I told it all to that lieutenant out there before you got down here.”

He paused, then asked, “You really think someone was trying to kidnap me for ransom?”

The senator shrugged, rubbed his forehead furiously with the heels of both hands, then shook his mane back into place before answering with another shrug. “Oh, hell, boy, it’s possible, you know that as well as I do. But probable? No. In some backwater of another country, maybe, just maybe, but not smack in the middle of D.C., not in this day and time, no way.

“What did the man say, James, can you recall that?”

The younger Bedford closed his eyes, thought, then said slowly, “ ‘Mr. Bedford, your car may be as much as an hour getting here and it looks as if … no, it looks like it may rain. Please share my car as far as your hotel.’ Or something like that. I think.”

The senator nodded, grim-faced. “Clearly, then, the bastard was completely aware that I had rung up Sloan to come for you, knew what you looked like and knew that you would be bound for a hotel at which you had already booked a room. As I told you earlier, upstairs in my so-called private office, boy, every place in the whole district and beyond has become a fishbowl, a goddam sieve, every place except the few rooms like this one … and it is always just a matter of time before technology advances another notch or two and compromises even them. It—”

There was a knock on the outer door. The senator unlocked and opened the inner door, then unlocked the outer. There was a whisper that James could not hear, and without a word, his uncle went out, closing the outer door behind him, When he came back in, after four or five minutes absence, he carefully closed and locked both doors before saying a word.

“James, immediately I heard about this business. I rang up some people, and that was them, calling on one of the guardroom’s scrambler phones. James, your room and effects had been very professionally searched before they got there. Your room had had at least four surveillance devices recently installed in it, your luggage had been bugged and, as well, had been fined with devices by which its movements could be tracked by anyone with compatible equipment. They removed everything,of course, but … but, boy, just what the hell have you gotten yourself into?”

“Have you had time to go over the files I left you, Uncle Taylor?” asked James, trying to ignore the cold chills racing up and down his back.

“No.” The senator shook his leonine head. “I’ve got it stowed away in one of the few relatively safe places I know of around here—one of several special pockets I have my tailor put here and there inside my clothing.”

“Okay, then,” said James, “here’s the gist of it.” And once more he told the salient features of the story.