Shared despair is squared; shared hope is cubed (or better).
—Lady Sally McGee
Distantly I listened to the sounds he made, and deciphered them. He was handcuffing people to things. Shortly he got to me. He cuffed my wrists behind me, and my ankles to the bracing rod of the pipe truss. That was funny. How come he happened to have six pairs of handcuffs? Oh, of course. He was using ours. Thoughtful of us to have fetched them for him. That implied that he had taken my weapons too. A pity. I'm always losing guns I like.
He rolled me over with his foot, and I got my first glimpse of him. Not a very good one; the light was poor and he was not in the center of my field of vision, which I could not move. He appeared to be in his fifties, balding and thin to the point of gauntness, with a beak that would have made a good head for a splitting wedge. I wished vaguely that I could see it used so. Arethusa and Pris were both cuffed by the ankles to the other truss, on their sides so they wouldn't be lying on their cuffed wrists. Damn civil of him.
He slid the needle in slowly, and so my magic skin accepted it.
An antidote to whatever hypnotic gas he had piped through the holes in the manhole cover. We had forgotten that we were not the only ones in this game who played with hi-tech toys . . .
Goody: now I could be terrified again.
I sat up stiffly, and used that stiffness as excuse to move around enough to take inventory. Sure enough, my gun was gone, and my knife and brass knuckles and sap and belt and the contents of all my pockets. If I had fetched wallet or ID he'd have had that too. I didn't even see the book. He squatted near me, carefully out of my reach, and when he saw that my eyes were tracking, he said, "'Allo."
Oh Christ, I thought, a Frenchman.
Look, I apologize, okay? I try to be as little bigoted as a New York private eye can be. Stereotypes are an excuse to keep napping. I have known good and bad in all races, colors, creeds and nationalities. Except the French. I know it's just my personal experience; I'm sure there are lots of very nice French people. But every one I ever chanced to meet was crazier than a shithouse rat. I don't know, maybe it has something to do with having had their asses consistently kicked by their neighbors for something like two centuries straight. They tended to come in two flavors: invincibly ignorant and right wing, or intellectual and more Marxist than Stalin. Both kinds were, even by New York standards, colossally rude. The only thing they seemed to agree on was that France, a place where Jerry Lewis is a genius and the urinals are kept out on the sidewalk, had produced the planet's only true civilization.
Of course, The Miner could be French Canadian. The only two Québecois I'd ever met were both decent guys, no more snobbish toward Americans than any other Canadian.
I remembered my erstwhile employer, only a matter of days ago, asking me if I was related to that Inspector Clazoo. It now seemed a reasonable question.
"Not now, Cato, you fuel," I grunted.
He got the reference and frowned. Swell: I'd annoyed him.
"I nearly 'ad a 'eart attack when I first saw you," he complained. "'As anyone ever told you that you resemble—"
"Only every third person," I said wearily. Yeah, that must have shaken him up a little, all right . . .
I saw that I was on the other side of the pipe now, on the access side. I wondered how he had handcuffed Ralph. I glanced around, and didn't see Ralph anywhere. Interesting. Did hypnogas work on a German shepherd? Was Ralph alive and active somewhere above? Or was he dead in the corridor? I knew his tooth-transceiver didn't trans . . . but did it ceive? I touched my tongue to the radio seed. "Okay," I said. "We're cuffed. Now what happens?"
"Now I ask you questions," he said.
"Isn't this the place where the villain has his big speech?" I said. "You're supposed to try to justify yourself now."
One side of his mouth smiled. "I have read the same books, and seen the same films. The primary purpose of this speech is to give the 'ero time to get free and kill the villain. As I am not a villain, I must decline this honor."
"You're sure?" I said. "The way I read you, you've been dying to gloat to somebody about this for at least five years now. Think of me as a preview audience."
"I 'ave no interest in the opinions of others," he said. "Certainly not Americans."
"I was only born here," I said. "Actually I'm Irish." Whenever I wasn't speaking, I had my tongue on that seed. It was hard to say why. It didn't seem reasonable that Ralph could still be alive. Looked at one way, Lady Sally's office was only a few yards away—it seemed I ought to be able to raise her with a loud shout. But in fact she was well outside the one-mile range of Tesla's radio seed. I gave myself strict orders not to be seen glancing at my watch, not to let him guess that I was expecting eventual relief—but I sure wished I knew how soon eight A.M. would be here.
He snorted. "You 'ave my sympathy." He turned and went to the toolbox, which had been moved well out of my reach.
The moment his back was turned I snuck a look at my watch, which thank God had a luminous display. Jesus Christ—a little after five! Almost three hours until relief. Five hours since I had kissed Arethusa.
Maybe he was Canadian. Even at a dead run, with a military jet, he could not have gotten here from Europe this quickly. Toronto, maybe. No, Ottawa. The Canadian mine would not be in Ottawa, not if one of the terrorists was Québecois.
I took what comfort I could from her gentle snoring.
The Miner straightened up from the toolbox with a blowtorch in his hand. "Now for the questions."
He lit the torch with a clicker. The chamber brightened slightly. He adjusted the flame to a fuel-wasting bright tongue that shivered impressively, making the shadows shimmer.
I had never thought to ask Lady Sally whether her magic body armor was proof against extreme heat, but I had the dismal certainty that I knew the answer. Impact was the only thing specified on the warrantee. As Tom Waits said, the large print giveth, and the small print taketh away.
I had a major problem here. A Miner problem, if you will. Not only were all the lies I could think of wildly implausible . . . so was the truth. I could see myself trying to convince this guy that on the other side of that wall over there was a Brooklyn whorehouse run by a redheaded time traveler with terrific legs.
Rats are less fussy than cats. They'll accept their meat overcooked. Templeton was going to have his revenge.
"If I were you," the Frenchman said, raising his voice slightly to be heard over the hiss, "I would answer candidly. It will 'asten your death, and so we will both be 'appy."
I lied quickly. "I will answer any question you ask fully and responsively and with great honesty if you'll answer me a couple of quick easy ones, first."
He glanced at his own watch. "Ver' quick."
"You've been fairly sophisticated so far. Why not use scopolamine? Nothing else you've done is crude."
By God, the flattery got to him, canceled my Clouseau reference, won me a tiny morsel of goodwill. "I am sorry. One of life's infernal details, a side effect of the gas I used on you. For the next twenty-four 'ours or so, scopolamine would kill you. I regret the crudity, but I must know what you know. I promise I will kill you the moment I am sure you 'ave been 'onest and . . . q'est-ce que vous dit . . . forthcoming."
"Did you kill my dog?"
He nodded sadly. "I believe so. I could find no pulse in 'is t'roat. The dog's metabolism is so small, you see." He gripped the torch, and shadows danced. "To work."
"One more," I begged. "How did you take us?"
"Ah," he said, "of course you would wish to know. Pressure switches under the floor of the corridor trigger the gas. Then an alarm is sent."
Shit! A simple mechanical linkage, too unsophisticated to alarm Tesla's Talisman. By the time it had started to glow, no one was awake to push the button.
"What if a legitimate maintenance man came along?"
"I know the schedule of maintenance, and shut the system down at those times."
"And what if he opened that inspection plate?"
"'E would find that 'e lacked the proper tools. It is now sealed with European bolts. If I found wrench marks on them at my next inspection, I would prepare an accident for 'im."
With a wave of horror, I realized that my friends had gone down within seconds of assuming radio silence at my command! They had lain there unconscious, yards away from me, for hours—for however long it had taken The Miner to come investigate . . . while I sat in the dark, reading Donald Westlake.
Shrewd work, General Taggart, sir. Armed only with invulnerability, a death ray and a magic talisman, you managed to cobble up a fiasco.
In my mind's ear I seemed to hear Lady Sally say contemptuously, You don't want me—I'll give you a chit to see the chaplain . . . and then say lovingly, Arethusa is your luck . . .
My luck was out cold. Her other body was not as heavily drugged but still drowsing under a sleeping pill, and the consciousness that might have roused it and raised the alarm was wholly stunned. This Frenchman intended to kill her local body. Would her hypnotized self manage to find its way back home to Brooklyn? I had never had time to question her closely about the effects of separation on her telepathy . . .
Don't depend on your luck, said an old Master Sergeant in my mind. (Very old: he'd been in Nam over a year and a half when I met him.)
Okay, what were my assets?
As far as I could see they totaled two, both potential rather than immediately available. If I could con him into reviving Arethusa—say, by claiming that only she possessed certain crucial information—then maybe she could make the mental leap to Brooklyn (if you see what I mean), shake her other body awake, and bring armed reinforcements within minutes. Wouldn't he be surprised when she came through that wall? Which suggested my only other asset: sole possession of the knowledge that a section of wall opened onto Lady Sally's office. If I could only fling something through that wall!
I no longer had any items on me to throw even if I hadn't been cuffed, and the toolbox was out of reach, and with my ankles cuffed too I could not even kick a shoe that far. Even if I could, what were the chances that Lady Sally was in her office at five o'clock in the morning? If she came in and found a shoe on the carpet, would she interpret its significance?
All this went through my head in the few seconds The Miner gave me to absorb the humiliating ease of my defeat. Then he was approaching me with that blowtorch and I stopped thinking about abstract hypothetical situations. "Thank you," I said, and continued quickly, "Well, I won't hold you any longer, uh—" I paused, doing it in the way that triggers someone to insert their name so they won't hold up your sentence.
He didn't bite. "You may call me 'Doc,'" he said.
He set my own flashlight on the truss, to illuminate his working area: me. It was now theoretically possible, if I heaved up and twisted at just the right instant with great luck and skill, to grab my flashlight and shine it in his eyes. Even in fantasy, I couldn't see myself lobbing it over that pipe and into just the right section of wall. With one hand tied behind my back, maybe, but . . .
"All right, I didn't expect you to fall for that one. But at least tell me this: are you the Master Maniac, or just a stooge?"
He frowned, offended.
"I have the right to know who kills me," I said.
"True," he conceded. "And I know you are not wired. Very well. Yes, as you 'ave guessed, I am the Chief of Surgery. But now you must tell me 'oo you are, and very quigley."
"Certainly, Doc. My name is Ken Taggart. I'm a licensed proctologist. I clean out diseased assholes."
He sighed. "Mr. Taggart, I tell you again that I refuse to follow your movie script. You will not be the smart ass and waste my time. I am reluctant to begin burning you so soon, because you must answer many questions before you die. So the next time I find one of your answers unsatisfactory, I will kill one of your friends." He produced my own gun and held it where I could see it.
Ah. That sounded promising. If he shot one of them, the bullet wouldn't hurt them any, and the ricochet might just hit him . . .
Okay, my move was to be the wisecracking detective. Simon Templar. Make him mad enough to blaze away. Perhaps a wild bounce would thunk into Lady Sally's desk and bring the Marines.
"I didn't know you did it retail, dear heart," I said cheerily. "Murder, I mean. I thought it took numbers of a million and up to give your little reptile-brain an erection."
His face tightened, and he slapped me hard on the side of the face with my gun. It's a heavy weapon. Thank God I had instinctively tried to roll with it, and so simulated the natural motion he expected from a man slapped that hard. If he figured out the invisible body armor, he would not waste time shooting us. I had the presence of mind to register great pain nearly at once. I could not simulate a bruise, but the light was poor. "My, I must have touched a sore spot. Do you know, I actually believe you might have thought about doing that even if I weren't helpless."
To my disappointment, he got a grip on himself. "You will tell me what agency all of you work for now," he said tightly.
"I'm sorry to disappoint you, Doc," I said. "But the God's honest truth is, we're freelance. Well, inexpensive lance, but we're doing this on our own time."
"And you carry weapons so arcane that I do not even understand what they do." He closed his eyes and shook his head slightly. "Very well," he said.
He went to where Pris and Arethusa lay side by side, breathing in slow rhythmic swells. He bent and placed the barrel of my gun in Pris's mouth and pulled the trigger.
My heart broke in that instant, and a man with a broken heart is a dangerous opponent.
The sound it made was unique and horrible, a muffled, wet bang that took a long time to fade. Her brains and the slug did not erupt from the back of her head, because the useless magic body armor worked just as well from the inside. Instead the slug whanged around in there churning everything into mush until chance sent it down into her body cavity. Things emerged from her ears, nostrils and mouth, and both her eyes bulged from internal pressure. None of this struck him as unusual; he was not familiar with handguns, just A-bombs.
The Miner removed my gun and made a face, wiped the end of it fastidiously in Pris's hair.
"God damn you," I roared, "I told you the fucking truth."
"Ridiculous," he said. "How could you have stumbled onto this?" He climbed over Pris and squatted by Arethusa.
"It started out theoretical," I said desperately. "This could be done. Why hasn't anyone tried it? How do we know no one has? If someone did, how might one find out? We deduced you."
"I do not believe it," he said. "How?"
"Neutron reflector," I improvised frantically. "We got to thinking about design and placement as a single problem, and realized that a water main would be an ideal environment for a nuke. Then I studied a city services map and looked for good places to leave one."
"And how do you finance this 'obby?" he snorted.
"I'm rich—" I tried.
He snorted. "You are not and never 'ave been rich. Never mind, I see you will not answer this question until I begin with the torch. Instead, answer this one: 'ow did you succeed where your friends failed, and enter this chamber without setting off the alarm?"
"I had a gas mask then," I said, knowing it wouldn't stand up.
He shook his head. "I 'ave looked quite carefully. There is no such mask here, and no way it could 'ave been removed. Even if there was, it is not necessary to breathe the gas to be affected by it." He put the gun into Arethusa's sweet slack mouth.
"Wait!" I roared. "For God's sake, Doc, wait! My wife's the only one who can explain that, I swear!"
It was the best I could come up with. I had no plausible lie, and the truth would not serve.
He started, and stared from me to Arethusa. "Neither of you wore a ring."
"We just got married, I swear to God. Wake her up, she'll tell you everything you want to know. She's the brains of the outfit; she's a genius electrical engineer, a disciple of Nikola Tesla. She located your mine with a gadget she built: it detects radio receivers that are located underwater, by the resonance or something. The little trumpet things you thought were weapons. We used them to wreck your radio trigger."
He removed the gun from her mouth. "That is the first thing you've said that is remotely plausible. Very unlikely, but possible."
"She really is a genius, Doc, I swear. She's the one that's rich. Give her some of that stuff you injected me with and she can tell you anything you want to know."
He set the torch down and tapped the gun against his palm. "A student of Nikola Tesla. And she is truly your wife?"
"Do you want to hear me beg? Okay, I'm begging: if you've got to kill us both, do me first."
He ran his tongue across the inside of his lower lip, making it pooch out briefly. "I begin to believe for the first time that you may actually be independents," he said slowly. He was thinking aloud, reasoning it out for himself. "Or if you are affiliated with an intelligence agency, you are acting without authorization. They would not send a 'usband and wife. I also believe that you do not know my name or location, or you would not have tried to set a trap for me 'ere. So even if you have other confederates, the maximum risk they represent is the loss of this single bomb. I do not think there is any way it can be traced back to me, and I can always reset the frequencies . . ."
I let my eyes widen in horror. "Oh Jesus Christ, you've got other mines? Where?"
"Thank you, Monsieur Taggart," he said gently. "That was the last thing I 'ad to know."
He stood up and shot me three times in the torso. The ricochets were frighteningly loud, but I reacted convincingly, pitching sideways and twisting so he wouldn't notice that the new holes in my clothes were dry. Maybe he didn't count the ricochets, or maybe he just assumed the slugs had gone clean through me. Whatever, he bought me as a corpse.
I held my breath and prayed.
And heard the sound I feared most of all to hear.
The rustle of his trouser legs as he squatted back down again.
I knew then, the instant I heard that silken whisper in the darkness, I had gambled, and failed. My heart died, and a man without even a broken heart is a very dangerous antagonist.
Frozen helplessly in my limp sprawl, I heard again that hideous muffled liquid thud-d-d as a .45 slug smashed Arethusa's brain to jelly.