The Spy in the Ointment

26

As we turned in at the gate, Ten Eyck laughed and said, “Home at last!” He was becoming his old self again.

I wasn’t yet, so I had nothing to say. He didn’t seem to notice.

We arrived at the manor — which had the shocked, open, stupid look of an assault victim — and Ten Eyck stopped beside the truck. All three of us got out and entered the house.

Inside, there was wreckage everywhere. Drapes had been pulled down from the tall windows, chairs and tables had been overturned, carpets bunched against walls, lamps smashed on floors, two legs of the grand piano buckled. One of Sun’s Eurasians lay sprawled head-downward in a swastika shape on the staircase.

Sun himself appeared from a room on the right. He seemed about to salute Ten Eyck, but restrained himself. Instead, he said, “All secure, Mr. Eyck. Had to kill all the guards and two of the servants, but everybody else is still alive.” He had a smear of something on his left sleeve.

I stood there, listening and watching, wondering about Angela, and I couldn’t understand why I hadn’t managed to escape sometime, somewhere, somehow before coming here. The fly was in the spider’s parlor now for sure.

Ten Eyck said, “Where’s my — where’s Ten Eyck?”

(It was hard for me to keep in mind that Ten Eyck was known to all the others by a different name, and that none of them knew his relationship with the owner of this house. Here in the heat of it all it was apparently getting just as hard for Ten Eyck to remember.)

But Sun didn’t notice the near-slip; I suppose he too was distracted by battle. Starting off, he said, “We’ve got him back here.”

Ten Eyck hesitated. “You gave him the injection?”

“Of course,” said Sun. “He’s sleeping like a baby.”

“Good.”

“They both are,” Sun added, and my stomach closed up like a hole in the sand.

Ten Eyck said it for me: “Both?”

“There was another guy with him,” Sun said. (My stomach opened up again.) “Younger one.” He laughed, saying, “Suppose it’s that black-sheep son of his?”

“That would be amusing,” said Ten Eyck, and we all smiled, each for a different reason.

“Well, come on,” said Sun, and started off again.

Ten Eyck followed Sun, I followed Ten Eyck, and Lobo followed me. (I’d tried to motion Lobo ahead of me, hoping I might be able yet to duck away, but Lobo’s stolid insistence on being last thwarted me.)

As we walked, Ten Eyck said, “What were our casualties?”

Sun shrugged apologetically. “Eight,” he said. “Three killed, five wounded.”

Ten Eyck said, “We can’t take wounded. You know that.”

“Of course. They’ve been taken care of.”

“Good.”

We found Marcellus Ten Eyck in a smallish room that badly showed the scars of the recent battle. Only one piece of furniture was still upright and unscratched, a pink chaise longue with golden legs. On this, like a parody of Charles Laughton, old man Ten Eyck sprawled unconscious.

The other one, the putative black-sheep son, also unconscious, was dumped in the corner like a bag of dirty laundry. I went over, wondering who it could be, if it might be someone I knew — though Marcellus Ten Eyck and I hardly had many friends in common — and I looked down at the peacefully sleeping face of Murray Kesselberg, boy attorney.

Now what the hell was he doing here? So far as I knew, he’d never even met Marcellus Ten Eyck.

Then Sun said it: “There was a woman here, too. In the bedroom upstairs.” Said it slyly, with a grin, a knowing eye. “A real nice piece.”

Amusement and surprise showed in Ten Eyck’s face, and for an instant he seemed on the verge of saying why-the-old-rascal, but instead of that he said, “Was there? Show her to me.”

“Right,” said Sun, and came perilously close to saluting again.

“Is she asleep?” Ten Eyck asked him.

“No. We only had two shots. I’ve got her outside here. I’ll be right back.”

Sun left. Ten Eyck, gazing at his unconscious father with the fondness of a carnivore looking at meat, said reflectively, “Eight casualties. That leaves fourteen. Our work is cut out for us, Raxford.”

I said, “It is?”

“We have fourteen to dispose of,” he said. “Not here, of course. Later on, at the hideout.”

“Right,” I said.

He glanced at me, gave me a crooked grin; it looked like a scythe. “We’ll make a good partnership, Raxford,” he said. “A pair of predators.”

“That’s us,” I said, and looked tough.

Then Sun came back, followed by two of his Eurasians, holding between them the girl they’d found here. Let it not be Angela, I prayed.

It was Angela.

Brother and sister stared at one another, both stunned beyond belief. Then Ten Eyck turned, his eyes drilled me, he said, “Raxford?”

“Uh,” I said.

“Raxford,” he said. “What are you?”

I opened my mouth.

I closed my mouth.

I ran.