The Spy in the Ointment

24

“With my reputation,” he said, “I never dared finish them off myself. But now you’ve done for Angela, and the old man’s about to be killed by Sun Kut Fu. Nice?”

What a word. I echoed it, in some fashion or other: “Nice.”

Apparently there was something wrong with the way I said it (and why wouldn’t there be?), because he glanced sharply at me and said, “There’s something wrong? What is it?”

“Uh,” I said, trying to think coherently, and then found something to say. “How do you collect?” I asked him. “You said yourself, your reputation. You couldn’t show your face.”

He smiled, glinting and glistening, pleased with himself. Some kind of arrogant emotion had started in him at dinner, as he spoke of his family and childhood, and it was still building now; he was very nearly throwing off sparks. “You ask good questions,” he told me, out of his pleasure and pride and arrogance. “But I have good answers.”

“I’d like to hear them,” I said.

“Of course.” Smiling, watching the road, driving fast but well, he said, “I am living in Mongolia at the present time — at this exact moment, in fact — at Ulan Bator, in a pleasant house beside the Tola. When the news of the twin tragedy reaches me there, I shall return at once to my native land, heedless of my own safety, stunned by what the Reds and radicals have done to my dear sister and beloved father. I shall freely and publicly confess my past sins” — he laughed and gave me a low-voiced aside — “falsely accusing along the way several individuals to whom I owe a reckoning” — he snapped his fingers, to show his enemies being snuffed out — “and I shall co-operate fully with any and all authorities, swearing new and undying allegiance to the country of my birth, land of the free and home of the brave, the greatest little old nation on earth. I shall hire the best legal talent in the country, I shall wait out the inevitable storm of controversy, squelch the old charges, and at last I shall retire, a rich and safe and happy man.”

He glanced at me again. “Well? Is it beautiful?”

It was beautiful the way some snakes are beautiful. But could it really all go as simply as he described? He would have a lot of money to spend on it, and money does grease the ways, but...

But that wasn’t the point. He thought it would work, rightly or wrongly, and because of that belief he was on his way to Tarrytown to discover Angela and unmask me. Was there any way to talk him out of it?

I said, “What if someone finds out you were here in the States all along?”

“No one will,” he said. “A few individuals have seen my face, but none of them will survive past next Tuesday. Except yourself, of course.”

“Of course.”

“And you’ll be out of the country,” he said, “and unlikely to want to make trouble for me. Perhaps,” he added thoughtfully, considering the possibilities, “I’ll send you to my current employers.”

“The ones who want the UN Building blown up,” I said.

“More or less.” He glanced at me again, approvingly, and said, “I’m sure they’ll be pleased with you.”

We had once again skittered past the fact that sooner or later Ten Eyck intended to kill me, and that his current employers were unlikely ever so much as to hear of me, but I didn’t have time to think of that now. What I needed was something that would convince Ten Eyck not to kidnap his father, and so I was grasping at every straw that floated by. “These employers,” I said. “They know you’re here. Are you sure you can trust them?”

“Trust them?” The idea seemed to astonish him. “Of course not,” he said, then looked thoughtful for a minute. “I hadn’t intended,” he said slowly, “to do anything about them; at least, not right away. But perhaps you’re right.”

Within me, hope soared like a bird.

Ten Eyck promptly shot it down. “Perhaps,” he said, “it would be best to take care of them at once, when they pay me.”

I said, “Isn’t it a country that hired you? A government?”

“Ah, no,” he said, smiling. “Have I given that impression? No, there are two individuals...” He tapped his fingernails on the steering wheel. “Perhaps,” he said. “Perhaps.”

“Maybe you should tie up all the loose ends,” I suggested, making one last try, “before you kill your father.”

“Oh, no,” he said, shaking his head. “An opportunity like this won’t come twice. I’ll have time for the rest later.”

So it was hopeless. Which meant, since I couldn’t dissuade Ten Eyck, I’d have to get away from him, sound the alarm. We were on a highway at the moment, driving along at better than fifty miles an hour, far too fast for me to make a leap for it, but sooner or later we’d have to go through a town, be stopped at a traffic light or some such thing, and then I’d be off like the rabbit I was.

In the meantime, there was still one thing more I might accomplish. We were at last talking about Ten Eyck’s employers; maybe I could find out who they were and why they wanted the destruction of the UN Building. I cleared my throat, licked my lips, did a Humphrey Bogart twitch with my right cheek, and said, “One thing I don’t understand. Why do two individuals want to blow up the UN Building?”

“They don’t,” he said. He smiled at me and said, “That was my own idea.”

“But you said—”

“You want to know?” He shrugged. “It can do no harm,” he said. (I knew what he meant by that: snick. I also knew I’d chosen just the right time to ask him questions. He was usually reticent, too damn reticent, but starting at dinner tonight this tension, arrogance, emotion, high nervousness had been building and building in him, and he seemed to use talk to ease the pressure. Why else the anecdotes, this willingness to answer questions? The coming showdown with his father was straining his control.)

“My employers,” he said, “wish the elimination of seven men, but do not dare attract suspicion toward themselves. The seven must either appear to die of natural causes, or to have been murdered for reasons totally unconnected with either my employers or their goals. Seven such natural deaths would, perhaps, be stretching coincidence beyond its tolerance, so murder must be the answer. Murder with misdirected motive.”

“Not easy,” I said, encouraging him.

His smile phosphoresced. “Everything is easy,” he told me, “once the proper method has been found. These seven men have one thing in common: all, from time to time, are to be found at the UN. If the UN Building is demolished, killing several hundred, including men of much more global significance than any of my targets, the death of the particular seven will go almost unnoticed.”

It’s good the interior of the car was dark, because I’m sure my true feelings showed themselves at least briefly on my face. In order to kill seven men cleverly — for pay! — Tyrone Ten Eyck thought nothing of killing several hundred men and women who meant nothing to him for good or ill, for profit or loss, but who were merely extras on the set of his scheming.

He filled my silence, luckily, with more words of his own, saying, “If, besides that, the explosion is obviously the work of a coalition of American lunatic-fringe organizations, suspicion cannot possibly touch my employers.” He smiled in my direction, proud of himself, saying, “Do you like it?”

“It’s — imaginative.”

“Imagination is the key to everything,” he told me, and I could hear the tension buzzing in his voice.

I said, “But you told me you wanted the UN Building full, that’s why you were going to blow up the Senate, why we’re kidnaping your father.”

“Ah, well,” he said. “The problem is, three of my seven targets are not regularly to be found at the UN. Special circumstances are required to bring them there.” He nodded in satisfaction. “We’ll provide the special circumstances,” he said.

I began to chew my knuckles.