The Devastators (22 page)

I said, “Sure. I’ll get McRow for you.”

“McRow!” She made a face. “What do I want with McRow?”

“But—”

“Oh, I am sure Dr. McRow is a terrible fellow and a menace to the world, and we probably do have people working on it—maybe some right in here—but it is not my business. Besides, you will take care of McRow anyway, won’t you, darling?”

I said, “I intend to try. But—”

She smiled faintly, lying there. “I am afraid I lied to you, a little. You see, I was not sent to Britain to save the world. I was sent to perform an execution that was, shall we say, a little overdue.”

“Basil?” I said.

“That is right, Matthew. Basil. I was going to trade you for him; that was my agreement with the Ling. I would deliver you to her, and she would deliver Basil to me.”

“From what I’ve heard, she was going to double-cross you on the payoff,” I said. “You might have expected that.”

“Why? When she is finished here, she will have no more use for him, and he is not a man one keeps around for pleasure. I thought there was a reasonable chance the bitch might keep her word. But now you will get him for me, won’t you?”

I hesitated. “I can’t promise—”

“I would not believe your promise. What are promises to people like us? But you will get him for me without promises, to soothe your bourgeois conscience when it feels badly about the girl you shot.”

“Yeah,” I said sourly, “the girl who fed me a Mickey so she could throw my unconscious body to the wolves. The girl who thought she was so damn irresistible I couldn’t bear to hurt her.”

Vadya laughed softly. “I would know better, next time, if there was to be a next time, would I not? You had better go now. Here is your gun; I took it. It has four chambers still loaded. Goodbye, Matthew.”

I couldn’t think of a farewell phrase that wouldn’t sound sloppy, so I just took my revolver from her hand, got up, fetched the keys from the dead guard, and unlocked Crowe-Barham’s cell. I looked down at the Russian-type weapon under my aim: the PPSh41, which stands for, approximately, Pistolet Pulemet Shpagin Type 41, Shpagin being the guy who designed the ugly little beast.

I said, “You know this Shpagin monstrosity,
amigo
?”

“I know it,” Les said.

“Well, I’m not much good with these squirters. You take it, I’ll use my old S. and W. Come, let’s go… What is it?”

Les was frowning. “But aren’t you going to turn them loose?”

He gestured toward the cages, or maybe toward the waiting people in them. I regarded him grimly, remembering that he’d always been handicapped, for this profession, by a lot of childish attitudes. I’d hoped he’d outgrown them, but apparently not.

I said, “Be your age. We’ve got work to do; we don’t want the place all stirred up by hordes of… oh, hell.” I stepped back and dropped the keys on Vadya’s chest. “She’ll turn them loose in a little while, when she gets her strength back.”

I winked at Vadya, and she winked back at me, and I knew we were in no danger of being embarrassed by prisoners released prematurely. I mean, what the hell, we were supposed to be secret agents, God help us, not the International Red Cross.

Les was at the hall door with the burp gun poised. He gave me a nod to let me know the coast was clear, and stepped out into the passage. I followed. We headed down the slanting corridor, and stopped abruptly, as Les signaled me back against the wall. Somebody was coming out of Madame Ling’s office, at the lighted landing below. Les poked me with his elbow. I leaned out far enough to see the man stop under the light: Basil.

He was carrying something that looked like a thin gray metal file box. I raised my revolver and lowered it again. A shot now would alert the place. Promises to the dying were all very well, but the interests of the living came first—and technically speaking I had made no promises. Basil tucked the box under his arm and disappeared down the stairs that led to, among other things, the cove where a boat could be landed at low tide, or so I’d been told.

After he had gone, we moved cautiously down to the landing. Voices, and the sounds of bustling activity, reached us from the foot of the stairs. I sneaked forward far enough to look down. Cages and cages of rats were being carried from somewhere inside the rock toward the water’s edge. I slipped back to join Les.

“Did you happen to learn where McRow normally hangs out?” I whispered.

“His laboratory and quarters are supposed to be down there somewhere. The caves just above high-water level are supposed to be quite extensive. But the only way into them leads past the landing area, which seems to be fairly well occupied at the moment. I say, old chap.”

“Yes?”

“Which of us gets him?”

I glanced at the man beside me. “After I’m through with him, you’re welcome to him.”

“Unfortunately, my orders are to take him alive, if possible.”

I grinned. “Maybe I should have left you locked in that cell. My orders happen to read otherwise.”

He laughed. “Under the circumstances, I can probably convince the establishment that abduction was not possible. One more question, if you don’t mind.”

“Yes?”

“Did you really shoot her, old fellow? The lady upstairs?”

“Yeah, I shot her,” I said. “I’m known far and wide as the lady-killer from New Mexico… What’s that?”

The sound of a cry had leaked through the heavy door of Madame Ling’s office. I put my ear to the panels and heard, of all things, McRow’s pleading voice inside. Caruso in his finest moment had never sounded better, to my prejudiced ear.

“No, no, I had no intention of betraying… Of course I approve of your… Yes, yes, of course I will do everything I can to help.”

I looked at Les, who whispered, “What Vadya said about your luck does not seem to be exaggerated. There’s our pigeon. Shall we step inside and pluck it?”

I nodded. “In case you haven’t been in there, there’s a pair of switches behind the desk. If anybody reaches the black switch, we’ll all be knee-deep in bubonic rats. The red one just blows up the joint. I’ll take the left flank, if you don’t mind. I think that thing of yours ejects to the right, and I shoot better when I’m not being showered with hot empties… Cross your fingers. I hope this door’s unlocked.”

It was. It burst open under our combined weight, showing us Madame Ling seated at the desk, while McRow sat in the chair I’d occupied earlier in the day. He was being worked on by the dark-faced man. There was no one else in the room.

It was a fairly simple business. I mean, the conventions are quite clear on who shoots what in a situation like that, just as when two men hunt together: the one on the left takes the birds flushing left, and vice versa. The dark-faced man was going for his gun, showing a commendable turn of speed. I shot him first, since he was the more dangerous of my two birds. That gave McRow time to rise and bolt for the bedroom door, an easy straightaway mark, and I dropped him in the doorway and swung back to make sure of the dark-faced man, who was still trying to get the gun out. He might have made it and then again he might not, but I saw no reason to wait and find out.

Only then did I realize that I hadn’t heard the Shpagin fire. I swung right and saw, incredibly, Madame Ling still very much alive, standing by the desk with her hand in the air. I mean, the woman should have been dead all of five seconds by now. She looked me straight in the eye, and gave her silvery laugh, and hit the black switch behind her without a backward glance, before I could get my revolver clear around. Then the burp gun went off at last.

Sudden bloodstains blossomed on the silk tunic, and the woman slid to the floor, still smiling faintly. I jumped forward, over her body, and yanked at the switch, but it was a one-throw proposition; having done its work, it no longer functioned. I thought I could hear, far above, the whirring of the motors turning the gears that turned the long metal rods that wound up the chains that opened the cage doors. There was, obviously, only one thing left to do, before the rats got out and disappeared among the tunnels and cracks that honeycombed this rock. I’m no braver than the next man, but I seemed to hear Vadya’s voice in my ear, scornfully:
He did not have the courage to die in a situation that required his death.

Perhaps I was a little braver than Basil, at that. Anyway, I grabbed the red switch and pulled hard. Nothing happened.

When it became quite apparent that nothing was going to happen, at least not right away, I turned from the wall to look at Les, who stood there with the muzzle of the burp gun pointed at the floor, looking sick. I looked at the gun in my own hand. There was one live cartridge left, I knew, and I had an impulse to use it. He knew what I was thinking.

“I… I just couldn’t, old chap,” he whispered. “I mean, she’d put her hands up, don’t you know? I simply couldn’t do it, in cold blood. Go ahead and shoot.”

“Cold blood, hot blood!” I said. “Oh, Jesus Christ! What’s temperature got to do with it?”

There was a little silence between us, during which I became aware of a faint ticking sound behind me. I went back and touched the box of the red switch. It was trembling faintly, as if alive: somewhere inside, clockwork was functioning. Well, that figured.

“I should have guessed,” I said. “She wouldn’t have a switch that would blow her to hell instantly. There’d be a time-delay, anything from five minutes to half an hour, enough to let her get clear once she’d pulled the handle. Enough to let the rats get well dispersed before the place went boom… You’d better go watch the hall. I’ll be with you in a minute. Now you’ve pulled that trigger once, maybe it will come easier next time.”

He looked at me without resentment, and moved dully to the door, which made me feel lousy. I mean, the thing was done; there wasn’t any sense in rubbing his nose in it. I grimaced, and looked down at the slim woman on the floor, still smiling faintly in death. I went over and checked McRow. He was dead, too. At least that much had been accomplished, for what it was worth now. The dark-faced man was dead. It occurred to me that I never had learned his name or nationality, not that it really mattered. I got the gun from his shoulder holster.

The stuff on the desk caught my eye. I went over and looked for some papers of significance, secret formulas, instructions telling how to destroy the world, or save it. There was nothing that looked significant. There was still, however, a little pile of my belongings. I took time to slip my watch on my wrist and clip my folding knife to the neck of my pajama jacket. It had been given me by a woman of whom I’d been quite fond, and I didn’t want to lose it if I could help it. Without pockets, I had no place to transport the rest of the stuff, so I just left it there.

As I started for the door, the Shpagin opened up with a short burst that echoed up and down the rock corridor outside. Les glanced around as I reached him.

“They’re alerted, but I can hold the stairs as long as I have ammunition,” he said. “Did you get that other man’s gun? Give it to me.”

Something had happened to him, now that he was getting to shoot at men. His load of guilt had slipped away; he looked almost happy. I gave him the extra pistol. “Now you run along, old chap,” he said. “Back the way we came. Turn right outside the observation ward. There is a passage there that leads to the cliff face, I am told. It is covered with painted papier-mâché or canvas so it won’t show to seaward, but that shouldn’t be much of an obstacle. Can you swim?”

“More or less,” I said. “Look, I—”

“One of us must get away to give the warning. You are not going to pick this moment to turn noble, my dear fellow? After all, I already have the symptoms; I am doomed. You still have a chance, if you get away. Cheerio.”

I looked down at him, crouching there. It seemed to me I was leaving a lot of doomed people behind. Again, there was nothing to say that didn’t sound corny. I heard the Shpagin give another burst as I loped up the corridor. I almost fell when I stepped on something small and soft that squealed loudly; you wouldn’t think there was that big a noise in that small a body. Obviously Madame Ling’s black lever had done its work. The rats were loose.

I kept an eye out for the sentry from above, who was bound to have heard the racket. I saw him come into sight outside the observation ward, ducked back, waited until he was well silhouetted against the light, and dropped him with the last shot in my revolver. Below, the burp gun cut loose again.

I had a momentary thought of Vadya as I passed the ward in which I’d left her, but I knew she wouldn’t expect me to stop for her and I didn’t. She was in no condition for a high dive and a long swim, anyway. It would kill her just as dead as Madame Ling’s high explosive. The corridor leading to the cliff was cold and dark, and I had company in it. I told myself that I couldn’t catch anything from a rat that I hadn’t already got from a hypodermic, but the scurryings and squeakings didn’t help the morale.

Then I ran into the end of the corridor, bruising my knuckles on some kind of a wooden framework. There was canvas between the timbers. I cut at it with the knife, and daylight flooded the tunnel. Madame Ling’s luck would have been in if it hadn’t already run out: the sunny weather of the morning had given way to rain and fog. I thought I saw the shape of a vessel of some kind, far out at sea, but I couldn’t be sure. I looked down.

It wasn’t an encouraging sight. I mean, out west where I grew up, water was something you used for diluting your whiskey a little when you outgrew soft drinks and didn’t feel like beer. Otherwise, except for purposes of cleanliness, I’ve never had much truck with the stuff. Oh, I learned to swim after a fashion in a pool liberally laced with chlorine, and I got some small-boat training along with weapons, codes, ciphers, drugs, unarmed combat, and all the rest of the stuff when I joined the outfit. But water has never been my favorite element.

I can’t tell you the height of the drop, exactly. It wasn’t quite as impossibly high as Madame Ling’s casual mention had suggested, but then nothing she’d said had turned out to be quite the way she’d said it. It was a good two stories down, maybe three. There were sharp rocks below, on which black water broke into foam. I’d have to go well out to clear them. To the right, around a shoulder of rock, was the cove; to the left was nothing but sheer cliff, with no landing place visible, and the whole thing was due to explode any minute, anyway, if Madame Ling hadn’t been bluffing about her destruct circuit. I didn’t think she had been, time delay or no. All I could do was swim out to sea and wait for the place to blow and then hope I had strength enough to get back ashore somehow.