The Spy in the Ointment

17

I said, “Why?” It wasn’t a clever thing to ask, it wasn’t a question in character, it wasn’t a question I should have expected an answer to; the word merely popped out of me, like a cat out of a bag.

But Ten Eyck didn’t seem to notice that my mask had slipped. He was, for the moment at least, too caught up in the pleasure of thinking about his own schemes to notice a false nuance from his audience. His smile phosphoresced and he said, “Each of us has his own reasons, Mr. Raxford. For some, an ideal. For others, more practical considerations. In your own case, you will be taking part in expectation of the assistance I will be able to give you later on.”

“Of course,” I said. “Naturally.” Thinking back to the meeting, I said, “That’s why you started discussing the United Nations and plastic bombs.”

“Certainly. It is my intention to bring the two together.”

He had made a joke, ha ha. We smiled at one another like brother cobras in a pit. Little did he know he was smiling at a cobra suit worn by a rabbit! The rabbit, settling his cobra suit more securely around himself, said, “There were other things you talked about at the meeting, too. China, and Congress, and the Supreme Court.”

“Ah, yes,” he said. “As to Congress, the Supreme Court, all that, I had originally intended to set a prior bomb in Washington, probably in the Senate, leaving evidence pointing to the Communist Chinese. The United States, it seemed to me, would surely call an extraordinary session of the General Assembly in order to accuse China, filling the UN Building to the brim. Remember, I want it full.”

He was completely out of his skull, of course, but in quite the wrong way. If only he’d chosen to go catatonic, to sit unmoving and unresponsive, staring at a wall, how much simpler life would have been for everybody. But no, not him; Tyrone Ten Eyck had to be actively insane.

I said, “But could you make a frame like that stick?”

Smiling, glimmering, he said, “I have the excellent but expendable Sun Kut Fu for that purpose, he and his Eurasian Relief Corps.”

“Are they Chinese Communists?”

“They think so. The Red Chinese themselves have more sense than to be connected with such lunatic-fringe organizations. Mao and his government severed all relations with the Eurasian Relief Corps over a decade ago, but that won’t make any difference. Let the American Senate be destroyed, let Sun and his friends be found — fuses in hand — amid the wreckage, and the conclusion in the American mind will be inevitable. The dirty Red Chinese did it! Hotheads will demand instant retaliation, atomic attack on Peking, which by the way could use it, if only for slum clearance purposes. A filthy city. However, more rational Americans will urge restraint, will recommend a formal complaint to the United Nations. And so on.” He waved his hand carelessly. “But of course all that’s changed now.”

“You have a new plan,” I suggested.

“A definite improvement,” he said, “from every point of view.” He tapped white ash from his gnarled cigar. Smiling, glinting, he said, “And all because of you. Isn’t that odd?”

“Because of—”

Behind me, the door burst open. Ten Eyck all at once was on his feet, dumping the table in my lap, flinging his chair side-arm at the doorway, leaping to the side wall and producing from within his black cloak a black Luger; all in a second, less than a second. He had lived this nerve-racking life, it seemed, for a long while, and had learned its lessons well.

The table had toppled me off my own chair onto the damp concrete floor. I struggled upward, peered over the table — now lying on its side — and saw in the doorway a terrified and shaking Sun Kut Fu, his hands high in the air. “D-don’t shoot,” he stammered. “It’s me.”

“You idiot.” Ten Eyck’s voice rasped; at what a price had he learned his survival techniques. He called, “Lobo!”

Lobo appeared in the doorway, and that banana-cluster face managed to look sheepish. “He run past me,” he mumbled.

Sun Kut Fu, his hands still high, said, “I had to tell you, Mr. Eyck, I had to tell you. Federal agents! They raided the temple!”

Oh, for Pete’s sake! Not seeing me for a couple of hours, not hearing from me, P and his boys had gone running to the rescue. And I wasn’t even there any more!

Ten Eyck had already slipped his Luger away again. “We’ll go the other way,” he said. “Come on, Raxford.”

“My shoes!”

“You’ll get another pair,” he said. “Come along.”