The Penultimate Truth

19

He had been summoned by a frantic, half-insane vidcall from the ancient Stanton Brose; hysterically, Brose's image on the screen wavered with the kind of pseudo-Parkinsonism agitation possible only in a neurologically damaged structure, one bordering on senility.

"Webster, they killed one of my men, my best men!" Nearsobbing, Brose confronted Foote, completely out of control, the random spasms of his limbs fascinated Foote, who watched fixedly, thinking to himself, _I was right. My precog hunch. And right away_.

"Of course, Mr. Brose, I'll go personally." He held his pen poised. "The name of the Yance-man and the location of his demesne."

Brose spluttered and blubbered, "Verne Lindblom. I forget; I don't know where his demesne is. They just called me, his death rattle; it went off the second they got him. So his leadies trapped the killer, he's still there in the villa--the leadies are outside the doors and windows, so if you get there you'll find him. And this isn't the first assassination; this is the second."

"Oh?" Foote murmured, surprised that Brose knew about the death of Runcible's engineer, Robert Hig.

"Yes; they started with--" Brose broke off, his face rolling and unrolling, as if the flesh, starved, were shriveling away and then seeping back, refilling the emptiness, the hollows of the skull. "My agents on Runcible's staff reported it," he said, more controlled, now.

"Is that all you can say? Verne Lindblom was--" Brose snorted; he wiped at his nose, his eyes, dabbed at his mouth with loose, wet fingers. "Now listen, Foote; pay attention. Send a commando team of your best people to California, to the demesne of Joseph Adams so they don't get him next."

"Why Adams?" Foote knew, but wanted to hear what Brose had to say. The participants of the special project--the existence of which he knew, the nature of which he did not--were being taken out, one by one; Brose saw the pattern, so did Foote. With his pen, Foote made the note out: _c-team for A's dem. Now._

"Don't inquire of me," Brose said, in his deadly ancient voice, "'why' anything. Just do it."

Correctly, stiffly, Foote said, "Immediately. I'll come to the Lindblom demesne; a commando team, my best, to support Yance-man Adams. We will be with Adams from now on, unless, of course, he has already been destroyed. Did he, like Lindblom--"

"They all," Brose quavered, "have death rattles. So Adams is still alive, but he won't be unless you get there right away; we're not set up--my people are not prepared--any more to protect themselves. We thought it went out when the war ended; I know their leadies clash over boundaries, but nothing like this, like the war--it's the war all over again!"

Webster Foote agreed, rang off, dispatched a commando team of four men from his substation in the Los Angeles area; then ascending to the roof of his corporation's building, followed by two of his specially trained leadies who lugged heavy cases of detection equipment.

On the roof a high velocity inter-hem heavy-duty old wartime military flapple waited, already chugging, started by remote from Foote's office; he and his two specially trained leadies boarded it and, a moment later, he was on his way across the Atlantic.

By vidphone he contacted the Yance-man Agency in New York City and from it learned the location of the dead man's demesne. It lay in Pennsylvania. By vidphone to his own GHQ in London he asked for and obtained--presented visually to the screen for him directly to examine--the folio on Yance-man Verne Lindblom, to refresh his memory. No doubt about it; Lindblom had not been merely _a_ builder, one of many, but _the_ builder of the Yance-organization. The man had had absolute come-and-go use of Eisenbludt's facilities in Moscow

this, of course, Foote had ascertained in the original investigation of the "special project" of which Lindblom had been a vital part. The investigation, he thought tartly, which had failed to turn up any useful thing.

Except that Brose's despair and babyish concern, extended to anticipate the sequential next-step death of Joseph Adams, confirmed that the assassinations so far, Hig's and then Lindblom's, were the result of the involvement of both men in the special project; Foote perceived this clearly, perceived the weaving strand that passed from Hig to Lindblom and now, potentially, next to Adams--and, he reflected, may have involved a deliberately fatal assault on Arlene Davidson, last Saturday, but in a manner which at the time had seemed natural. In any case Brose had blubbered the admission that this was a sequence involving the participants of the special Agency project--Brose's project--and this meant that Hig was, obviously now, a Brose agent on Runcible's staff. So Foote's insight had been authentic; the murder of Hig had not been directed toward Runcible at, say, the instigation of Brose; the murder of Hig, as proven by the death of Yance-man Lindblom, had aimed at Brose for its ultimate target. The ruling Yance-man himself. All this now ceased to be conjecture; it had become history.

And still Foote had no idea what the special project was... or rather had been, For now, it would appear, the project had been properly aborted. Evidently it had not involved great numbers of members; perhaps Adams was the last, excluding Brose himself, of course.

That clanged loudly in Foote's professional mind. Adams, a part of the project, now under the protection of Footemen commandos, might under the stress of these circumstances be persuaded to blab to one of Foote's expert personnel the nature of the special project... a venture, Foote had no doubt, which was intended to make Runcible the target. Runcible was to have been the slaughtered goat, but--it had not quite worked out that way. The 'dozers in Southern Utah continued; Runcible had not been interrupted. But Brose had been: completely so.

In fact Foote could not recall ever having seen Brose--or anybody--so messy in their emotionality. So out of control. Foote thought, _This special project must have been a critical endeavor. Could it conceivably have been directed at the absolute and total elimination of Louis Runcible? In other words, could we have witnessed here the instigation of the final showdown between Brose and the fabulous empirebuilding conapt constructor? Instigation--and rapid collapse!_

_My lord_, Foote thought mildly, _my field rep, in talking to Louis Runcible, and I myself in vidphone conversation with him, obtained no impression that he was preparing such enormously precise and effective steps by which to protect himself. Louise Runcible had seemed utterly unaware--even unconcerned--as to what was being prepared to ensnare him... how then could he have responded so decisively, and in such short a time?_

And Runcible had not comprehended the meaning of the death of his employee, Robert Hig; that had been apparent on the vidphone.

Therefore, Foote realized, it is possible, even probable, that Hig and then the Yance-man Lindblom, and before that the Yance-man-woman Arlene Davidson--none of these were dispatched at Runcible's instigation, or even with his knowledge.

The safety of Louis Runcible is being shored up, Foote decided, but not by the man himself.

An additional figure unglimpsed by me, by Runcible, by Brose-- the additional figure--has entered the arena and is competing for power.

He thought, I'm glad I'm content with what I have. Because, had I begun to overreach myself, as Brose has done in this special project, I might have found myself the target--_and the marksman, if this is accurate_.