The Poisoners

XXIV

I awoke in a noisy, unsteady place that, after a little, I identified as the rear of a big van going down a paved highway at a good clip. There was a kind of erratic booming sound, the source of which I couldn't determine until I opened my eyes.

Then I saw that the tanklike mystery object I'd seen brought ashore was now looming above me, almost filling the cavernous space that was dimly lighted by a weak yellow bulb up forward. The jolting of the truck was causing the great metal cylinder to reverberate hollowly. I hoped they had it properly lashed and wedged into place so it wouldn't shift my way. It didn't leave too much room as it was.

I tried to sit up and discovered that my hands and feet were tied. My gun and knife were missing, of course; in fact, my pockets seemed to be quite empty. My hip was sore; and breathing now hurt me, not only in front where I'd been socked earlier in the day, but also at the side where I'd been kicked more recently, but I didn't feel too badly about that. I mean, I had my orders. Mac had indicated that we'd lost too many good men and women to Nicholas, and that something permanent ought to be done about him, by me. That being the case, it would have been awkward if he'd turned out to be a sweet, gentle, lovable sort of guy I couldn't bear to harm.

"How are you feeling, darling?"

I turned my head and there she was, my blonde betrayer, looking even more like a lady hippie with her long hair mussed and her white jeans smudged by the night's adventures. Not that it mattered. If I'd wanted an immaculate vision of radiant loveliness I could have turned on the TV, if I'd had a TV. At the moment, I much preferred a tousle-headed human being in grubby pants. As a matter of fact, a great deal-including my life-might depend at least in part on just how human this girl would turn out to be.

"Are you all right?" Bobbie helped me to a sitting position. "That's a potent injection you carry. You've been asleep for six hours."

"It works better, I guess, when the victim hasn't been to bed for a couple of days."

She made a face at me. "That wasn't a very nice thing to say! Whose bed haven't you been in for a couple of days? I seem to remember your indulging in a nice little nap in mine, quite recently, after… after some preliminary exercise. Well, if you're going to be so rude and forgetful, I'll just put you right back to sleep." She took my little case from her shirt pocket and opened it. "I'm supposed to keep you under. The Chinaman seems to have a lot of respect for you. He doesn't trust you awake, even tied and guarded."

I said, "The Chinaman. They don't call him that back in China, surely."

"No, and they don't call him Mr. Soo, either, and it's none of your business, anyway."

"Where is he? Where is everybody? He had a small army working for him at Bahia San Agustin."

"If what you're trying to find out is whether or not we're alone in here," Bobbie said dryly, "the answer is that we aren't. There are three men over on the other side of the generator; and three more up in the cab, so even if you overpower me, you've got your work cut out for you. The rest are riding in the jeep and your station wagon. They left Tillery's Chrysler behind because the tires were too soft-anyway, it was too closely associated with a lot of dead bodies that might be found, prematurely, by the Mexican authorities."

"And where are we?"

Bobbie hesitated, and shrugged. "I don't suppose it matters if I tell you. I think we crossed the border back into the U.S. a little while ago, using some kind of a cross-country smuggling route known to Warfel's men. At least the going was slow and rough for a couple of hours. You were lucky to be asleep. Now that's enough questions. Just lie down again like a good boy and let me squirt you with some more of this nice sleepy-stuff."

"Just one more question," I said. "What the hell is this overgrown stovepipe that's threatening to squash us?"

Bobbie frowned at me. "Don't you really know?"

"I said 1 didn't. You said it was the Sorenson Catalytic Generator. What does it generate?"

She said, "Don't be silly. It generates catalysts, naturally."

"Oh, naturally!" I said. "Excuse me for asking! What kind of catalysts… Wait a minute!" I stared up at the metallic flank of the cylindrical object that bulged out over us as we sat with our backs against the side of the truck. I noted that, while the convex cap at the rear was clean, the cylinder itself had a smoked, scorched look at that end, kind of like a jet engine exhaust. Apparently it had been subjected to fairly high temperatures. I said thoughtfully, "Sorenson was interested in air pollution, wasn't he? That's how he came to be an anti-auto nut. Do you mean to tell me he discovered something…

I stopped. Bobbie didn't speak. I said irritably, "No. That's too damn science-fiction screwy."

"What is?"

"If you're trying to tell me that's a smog machine…

"Not exactly, darling," Bobbie said. "It doesn't produce smog, not directly. It just generates a finely-dispersed catalyst that will cause smog to form if the necessary pollutants are present in the atmosphere. Dr. Sorenson's theory was that both elements-catalyst and pollutants-have to be present for active, visible, dangerous smog to form. He isolated and identified the catalyst, some kind of trace element that's present in just about anything anybody's likely to burn. Then, of course, for his experiments, he had to learn how to produce it in reasonable quantities. He discovered that we really don't know how lucky we are."

"What do you mean?"

"His experiments," she said, "indicate that the reason a lot of cities haven't been affected by smog problems yet, and those that have are still inhabitable, is that there just isn't enough of the catalyst to go around. Without it, the air can absorb quite a bit of pollution without significant effect. But if you were to supply all the catalyst needed, so that all the garbage we pump into the atmosphere would react or precipitate or whatever it does…

She stopped. There was a little silence, except for the rattling of the truck, and the drumlike reverberation of the cylinder.

I said, "And that's what Mr. Soo is doing with this gadget?"

"Yes. Of course, Sorenson checked out his theory on a laboratory scale, but that's considerably different from testing it under practical conditions."

"Practical conditions," I mimicked sourly. "You mean you're going to start that thing up somewhere, windward of a suitable metropolis, and let the stuff drift in and see if the sky turns brown and people start coughing and strangling…"

My voice kind of trailed off. I looked at her quickly, and she nodded.

"Yes, Matt. We have run it. On a ship off the California coast. And, darling, in Los Angeles the sky did turn brown in places-you were there; you saw it and smelled it! And in places people did start coughing and strangling. You told me that your dope-fighting girlfriend had a recurrence of an asthma condition that hadn't bothered her for years, remember?"

"I remember," I said. "But-"

"I don't know the exact figures," Bobbie said. "Maybe the Chinaman does, by this time. But I do know, from early radio reports that, although curiously spotty and erratic, it was, on the whole, one of the worst smog attacks recorded in Los Angeles. The ambulance services were swamped with patients suffering from serious respiratory ailments and the hospitals were overloaded. Of course, we didn't run it long enough to cause a real catastrophe. It's just a pilot model. We just wanted to see if it would work, and it did."

I frowned. "I see. And having used it successfully on Los Angeles, where conditions are generally pretty favorable for a test like that, I suppose the Chinaman is now going to try his gadget on a tougher subject somewhere inland. But where?"

"I can't tell you that. As a matter of fact, I don't know. 1 didn't have anything to do with the preparations for the second test."

I said, "No, I guess that was Beverly Blame's job, and Willy's. The two of them were supposed to have made several trips east together recently, according to our late friend Jake. The question is, how far east?" Bobbie made no comment, and I changed the subject: "This ship, now. It must have met Warfel's boat well out at sea and turned over the generator-also, I suppose, a nice big batch of Chinese heroin."

"Yes. Ten kilos," Bobby said. "That was his payment for helping with his boat and truck and men. Of course, he also had to promise to arrange things so that nobody'd suspect where the drug actually came from. Besides-" She stopped abruptly.

"Besides what?"

She didn't look my way. "Besides, that phony Bernardo installation he set up as camouflage also made a good cover for getting rid of Dr. Sorenson, poor man. I suppose it was necessary, but I wish they hadn't had to do it."

I glanced at her, and shrugged. "Oh, you'll get used to it, sweetheart," I said callously. "First Tillery and his friends, then Sorenson, then me. After a while, you'll find being accessory to murder coming quite naturally to you, no sweat at all."

Bobbie spoke without looking at me. "The Chinaman promised me you wouldn't be hurt. He said… he said he owed you a small favor."

"Sure, like his life. But Willy owes me something, too, or thinks he does. And Mr. Soo needs Willy and doesn't need me, so I'm not counting too strongly on his sense of gratitude." I waited, but Bobbie didn't speak. I went on: "So they ditched the good doctor after pumping him dry. Well, that figures."

"Yes. He was saving the world, of course."

"They all are. What was his angle?"

"Isn't it obvious? He wanted his generator used-by anybody he could persuade to use it, regardless of political affiliations-in order to make people realize just how much junk was in the air already. He wanted to make the situation look so bad right now that immediate, drastic steps would be taken…

I grinned. "And of course the Chinaman pretended to be burning with enthusiasm for the same great cause, and in a sense he was. I mean, what could be nicer for the communists than having us obligingly wreck one of our own biggest industries, and throw our own transportation system into complete chaos."

She gave me a reproving glance. "You sound as if you actually approve of the automobile!"

I said, "Approve, disapprove, nuts! Actually, I get a kick out of driving a good car, but that's beside the point. But I don't see anybody building a lot of new railroads and streetcar lines, with smogless power. Until they do, we're damn well stuck with the automobile, and probably with some form of the internal combustion engine, enthusiasts like Sorenson to the contrary notwithstanding. All we can do is detoxify it a bit and pray." I grimaced. "So they got his machine going, and then they didn't need him any more, and they certainly didn't want him talking, so they killed him. How?"

"I don't know." Bobbie's voice was dull. "He was really kind of a sweet little man. I don't want to know. All I know is that he was found dead last night in the flaming wreckage of the trailer laboratory-and of course, nobody's going to be very concerned about the death of a scientist, already considered something of a radical crackpot, who blows himself up refining heroin for the Mafia. Anyway, that was the plan, and I gather it worked very well. Your lady agent and her Mexican allies were just moving in to seize the laboratory when it went up. Fortunately nobody was hurt, nobody outside the trailer, that is,"

"I see," I said. "And Warfel and his ten kilos of horse? Ten kilos! My God, that's about twenty-two pounds, worth a couple of million dollars!"

"More than that, on the current market," Bobbie said. "If you're asking whether Frankie-boy was caught with the drugs when he brought the Fleetwind into its Long Beach marina, the answer is that he hasn't landed yet. That boat isn't very fast and he had quite a ways to go. But he knows the fuzz will be waiting for him, and I think it's very unlikely they'll find a single crystal of junk anywhere on board."

I sighed. "That's going to make my girlfriend very mad; she took this pinch very seriously." I hesitated, and went on: "So it was strictly a one-time operation? Frankie wasn't really setting up to make a career of smuggling drugs like the syndicate boys feared; he just wanted to get this one big batch into the country without tipping anybody off that he'd had unpatriotic dealings with the Chinese communists?"

"That's right. With so much heroin involved, he could afford to make elaborate preparations for a one-shot deal. And from the Chinaman's point of view, well, American dollars are hard to come by on the other side of the Pacific, but poppies grow very well over there. His government probably confiscated the stuff in the first place, so it didn't cost them anything. He could afford to offer a fancy price in drugs for Warfel's assistance, much higher than he could have bid in real money."

I asked, "Where's the heroin now, if Warfel hasn't got it on his boat? Could it be somewhere in this truck, perhaps?"

Bobbie laughed scornfully. "You've met Frank Warfel, darling. Can you imagine him trusting us with two million dollars belonging to him? Can you imagine him trusting anybody? No, he's taking care of it all by himself. But he knows that if his men don't get us safely across the border, the U.S. authorities will get an anonymous phone call that'll make it impossible for him ever to cash in on that shipment he hopes will make him rich; he'll be watched too closely."

"Sure," I said. "Well, according to you, we're safely across the border now, so Frankie's fortune is made." I glanced at her slyly, and went on: "Figuring our elapsed time, and guessing at our probable speed and direction, I estimate we should be somewhere near your dear old home town of Yuma, Arizona. Maybe you should stop and visit some of your friends and relations."

Bobbie grinned. "I told you I was born in China, darling. I don't know anybody in Yuma. I've seen pictures of the town and memorized a lot of maps and information, but I've never been there in my life."

I said, deliberately, "Well, that figures. A real Yuma girl, brought up that close to the border, would know that it was mescal, not pulque like you said, that's got the maguey worm in the bottom of the bottle." Bobbie looked at me sharply. I went on: "And a real Yuma girl, brought up in that dry, dry country, would know a little about desert driving. I mean, doll, when you try to blast your way through deep sand like you thought you could lick it with sheer horsepower, even a dumb guy like me starts to wonder where the hell you spent your formative years, since it certainly wasn't Arizona. And you were so insistent on getting that Chrysler unstuck; you didn't want it there, blocking the road for Willy and Mr. Soo. And, finally, no reasonably bright girl, dressing for dangerous adventures in the dark, would pick white pants and a light-yellow shirt-not unless she was making sure her hidden friends didn't open up on her by mistake."

Again there was silence except for the rattling of the truck and the rumbling of the metal cylinder above us. Bobbie was staring at me with something close to horror.

"You knew?" she whispered. "You knew? And still you let me… You let yourself be…" She stopped.

I said, "I took out a little insurance. There wasn't any cartridge in the chamber of that trick rifle of Jake's your man was holding on me, and I had the chopper right under my hand. If things had looked bad, I could have sprayed both you and the guy behind me before he realized he was trying to shoot back with an empty gun. And then, with Mr. Thompson's hundred-round squirter to help me, I'd have had a pretty good chance of shooting my way clear in the dark."

"But you didn't." She licked her lips. "Why, Matt?"

"Because there were things 1 wanted to know-if there seemed to be a reasonable chance of learning them without getting killed. And because you came to my defense like a little heroine when Willy started kicking me around."

She said, shocked: "Matt, you're crazy if you think I'm going to help you further just because I-"

"I figured there were some other things working for me," I said when she paused. "I figured Mr. Soo might feel a slight sense of gratitude; and in any case I knew he wouldn't have me killed at once because he's got some reason to think I know something dangerous to him. He'll want to find out if I really do, and if so, if I've told anybody else about it. That'll keep me alive for a little. But mostly," I said, "I'm counting on you."

"No!" she gasped. "No, you're crazy! You've got no right to expect-" I shrugged. "Okay, I've got no right. So don't help. Just watch Willy kill me, slowly, when the Chinaman is through with me. Willy will make it worth watching, I'm sure. He'll milk it for all the entertainment value possible."

She licked her lips. "What makes you think I care what happens to you, damn you?"

"You cared what happened to Sorenson. Aren't I a sweet little man, too?" I put the playful note out of my voice and demanded harshly: "How many people have to die before you've had enough, sweetheart?"

"Damn you!" she breathed. "Just because I kept him from kicking you to death… I had my orders. The Chinaman wanted you alive. That's absolutely the only reason I interfered!"

"Sure," I said. "Sure."

"You… you egotistical jerk! If you think you can blackmail me just because I went to bed with you in the line of business… These people have been good to me! They took me out of… out of conditions you can't even imagine. They educated and trained me-"

"Sure," I said. "The Chinese are in a bad spot when it comes to agents. There are lots of Russian girls and boys, for instance, who with a little training can be planted over here to blend with the U.S. background until needed, but a Chinese boy or girl is always a bit conspicuous in our society. Sure, they could make good use of a pretty blond kid of European or American parents, who'd got lost or left behind during one of China's numerous upheavals.

Her expression told me I'd come close enough to guessing her story. She said quickly, "Their reasons don't matter! The fact is, they saved my life and… and my sanity!"

"By running you through the brainwash machinery, and then training you to serve them as an agent in place? Well, I guess that's one kind of salvation. But I don't hear you holding forth about the great god Marx and our decadent capitalist society. Apparently the indoctrination didn't take-or has it worn off during the pleasant years you've spent over here playing American and waiting for orders?"

"I wasn't playing American, I am American!" When I didn't say anything, she went on less fiercely: "Well, my parents were. I think. Anyway, what makes you think my years over here have been so damn pleasant?"

I said, "I've been studying you pretty closely, doll, and I think what you most want to be in this world is a typical U.S. miss with love beads and long stringy hair throwing rocks at the pigs. You tried out a lot of roles on me, but that was the one that really carried conviction. Well, I don't know about the rocks and the pigs, but the rest can probably be arranged, if your services warrant my going to the trouble. At least I can probably clean the slate for you somehow, if I'm alive to do it. Think about it."

She said bitterly, "Now it's a bribe!"

"Call it a deal. It sounds better."

She had the hypodermic in her hand once more. "You'd better lie down, Matt. Otherwise you'll fall over when this takes effect, and I won't raise a finger to stop you!"