The Eiger Sanction (4 page)

At all events, he did the thing. He never knew what was in the envelope, but he later heard that the Italian had been picked up by agents of his own government and imprisoned for conspiracy.

When he returned to New York, he found an envelope waiting for him with two thousand dollars in it. For expenses, the note had said.

In the ensuing months, he performed three similar messenger jobs for CII and received the same liberal pay. He was able to buy one painting and several sketches, but the church was still beyond his means. He feared that someone else would buy his home—he already thought of it as his. The danger of this was really rather remote. Most of the Long Island religious groups were abandoning traditional churches in favor of A-frame redwood boxes more suited to their use of God.

The climax of this work—a testing period, he discovered later—came in Paris where he was passing the Christmas vacation advising a Texas museum on purchases—attempting to convince them that small paintings could be as valuable as big ones. CII set up an assignment, a simple matter of introducing damaging material into the notebooks of a French government official. Unfortunately, the mark walked in while Jonathan was at work. The ensuing battle went badly at first. As the pair grappled and wrestled around the room, Jonathan was distracted by his attempt to protect a Limoges shepherdess of rare beauty which was in constant danger of being knocked from its fragile table. Twice he released his hold on the Frenchman to catch it as it toppled, and twice his adversary took the opportunity to belabor his back and shoulders with his walking stick. For many minutes the struggle continued. Then suddenly the Frenchman had the statuette in his hand and he hurled it at Jonathan. With shock and fury at the wanton destruction of a thing of beauty, Jonathan saw it shatter against a marble fireplace. He roared with rage and drove the heel of his hand into the rib cage just below the heart. Death was instantaneous.

Later that night Jonathan sat near the window of a cafe on the Place St. Georges, watching snow swirl around scuttling passersby. He was surprised to recognize that the only thing he felt about the episode—other than the bruises—was a deep regret over the Limoges shepherdess. But one thing he decided irrevocably: he would never again work for CII.

Late one afternoon shortly after the beginning of the second semester, he was interrupted in his office work by a visit from Clement Pope. His dislike for this officious flunkey was immediate and enduring.

After Pope had cautiously closed the office door, checked into the cubicle reserved for Jonathan's assistants, and glanced out the windows to the snow-dappled campus, he said meaningfully, “I'm from CII. SS Division.”

Jonathan scarcely glanced up from his papers. “I'm sorry, Mr. Pope. Working for you people no longer amuses me.”

“SS stands for Search and Sanction. You've heard of us?”

“No.”

Pope was pleased. “Our security is the tightest. That's why nobody has heard of us.”

“I'm sure your reputation is deserved. Now, I'm busy.”

“You don't have to worry about that Frog, buddy-boy. Our people in Paris covered it up.” He sat on the edge of the desk and paged through the first papers he found there.

Jonathan's stomach tightened. “Get out of here.”

Pope laughed. “You really expect me to walk out that door, pal?”

Jonathan judged the distance between them. “Either the door or the window. And we're four stories up.” His gentle, disarming smile came on automatically.

“Listen, pal—”

“And get your ass off my desk.”

“Look, buddy—”

“And don't call me 'buddy' or 'pal.' ”

“Man, if I weren't under orders...” Pope flexed his shoulders and considered the situation for a second, then he rose from the desk. “Mr. Dragon wants to talk to you.” Then, to save face, he added, “And right now!”

Jonathan walked to the corner of his office and drew himself a cup of coffee from the urn. “Who is this Mr. Dragon?”

“My superior.”

“That doesn't narrow the field much, does it.”

“He wants to talk to you.”

“So you said.” Jonathan set the cup down. “All right. I'll make an appointment for him.”

“To come here? That's funny!”

“Is it?”

“Yeah.” Pope frowned and made a decision. “Here, read this, pal.” He drew an envelope from his coat pocket and handed it to Jonathan.

Dear Dr. Hemlock:

If you are reading this, my man has already failed to persuade you by sheer force of personality. And I am not surprised. Naturally, I should have come to see you in person, but I don't get about well, and I am most pressed for time.

I have a proposition for you that will demand very little of your time and which can net you upwards of thirty thousand dollars per annum, tax free. I believe a stipend like this would allow you to purchase the church on Long Island you have been yearning for, and it might even permit you to add to your illegal collection of paintings.

Obviously, I am attempting to impress you with my knowledge of your life and secrets, and I do so hope I have succeeded.

If you are interested, please accompany Mr. Pope to my office where you shall meet...

Your Obedient Servant, Yurasis Dragon

Jonathan finished the letter and replaced it thoughtfully in its envelope.

“Well?” Pope asked. “What do you say, pal?”

Jonathan smiled at him as he rose and crossed the room. Pope was smiling in return when the backhand slap knocked him off balance.

“I told you not to call me 'pal.' Dr. Hemlock will do just fine.”

Tears of anger and smart stood in Pope's eyes, but he controlled himself. “Are you coming with me?”

Jonathan tossed the letter onto his desk. “Yes, I think I shall.”

Before they left, Pope took the letter and put it in his pocket. “Mr. Dragon's name appears on paper nowhere in the United States,” he explained. “Matter of fact, I don't remember him writing a letter to anyone before.”

“So?”

“That ought to impress you.”

“Evidently I impress Mr. Dragon.”

Jonathan groaned and woke up. The sunlight had gone, and the greenhouse garden was filled with a gray, inhospitable light. He rose and stretched the stiffness out of his back. Evening was bringing leaden skies from the ocean. Outside, the chartreuse undersides of leaves glowed dimly in the still air. The fore-voice of thunder predicted a heavy rain.

He padded into the kitchen. He always looked forward to rain, and he prepared to receive it. When, some minutes later, the storm rolled over the church, he was enthroned in a huge padded chair, a heavy book in his lap and a pot of chocolate on the table beside him. Beyond the pool of light in which he read, dim patterns of yellow, red, and green rippled over the walls as the rain coursed down the stained glass windows. Occasionally, the forms within the room brightened and danced to flashes of lightning. Hard-bodied rain rattled on the lead roof; and wind screamed around corners.

For the first time, he went through the ritual of the ancient elevator in the Third Avenue office building, of the disguised guards outside Dragon's office, of the ugly and hygienic Miss Cerberus, of the dim red light and superheated interlock chamber.

His eyes slowly irised open, discovering misty forms. And for the first time Dragon's blood-red eyes emerged to shock and sicken him.

“You find my appearance disturbing, Hemlock?” Dragon asked in his atonic, cupric voice. “Personally, I've come to terms with it. The affliction is most rare—something of a distinction. Genetic indispositions like these indicate some rather special circumstances of breeding. I fancy the Hapsburgs took a similar pride in their hemophilia.” The dry skin around Dragon's eyes crinkled up in a smile, and he laughed his three arid ha's.

The parched, metallic voice, the unreal surroundings, and the steady gaze of those scarlet eyes made Jonathan want this interview to end. “Do you have anything against coming to the point?”

“I don't mean to draw this chat out unduly, but I have so little opportunity to chat with men of intelligence.”

“Yes, I met your Mr. Pope.”

“He is loyal and obedient.”

“What else can he be?”

Dragon was silent for a moment. “Well, to work. We have made a bid on an abandoned Gothic church on Long Island. You know the one I mean. It is our intention to have it torn down and to convert the grounds into a training area for our personnel. How do you feel about that, Hemlock?”

“Go on.”

“If you join us, we shall withdraw our bid, and you will receive a sufficient advance in salary to make a down payment. But before I go on, tell me something. What was your reaction to killing that French fellow who broke the statuette?”

In truth, Jonathan had not even thought about the affair since the morning after it happened. He told Dragon this.

“Grand. Just grand. That confirms the Sphinx psychological report on you. No feelings of guilt whatsoever! You are to be envied.”

“How did you know about the statuette?”

“We took telephoto motion pictures from the top of a nearby building.”

“Your cameraman just happened to be up there.”

Dragon laughed his three dry ha's. “Surely you don't imagine the Frenchman walked in on you by coincidence?”

“I could have been killed.”

“True. And that would have been regrettable. But we had to know how you reacted under pressure before we felt free to make this handsome offer.”

“What exactly do you want me to do?”

“We call it 'sanctioning.' ”

“What do other people call it?”

“Assassination.” Dragon was disappointed when the word dropped without rippling Jonathan's exterior. “Actually, Hemlock, it's not so vicious as it sounds to the virgin ear. We kill only those who have killed CII agents in the performance of their duties. Our retribution is the only defense the poor fellows have. Allow me to give you some background on our organization while you are making up your mind to join us. Search and Sanction...”

CII came into being after the Second World War as an anode organization for collecting the many bureaus, agencies, divisions and cells engaged in intelligence and espionage during that conflict. There is no evidence that these groups contributed to the outcome of the war, but it has been claimed that they interfered less than did their German counterparts, principally because they were less efficient and their errors were, therefore, less telling.

The government realized the inadvisability of dumping onto the civilian population the social misfits and psychological mutants that collect in the paramilitary slime of spy and counterspy, but something had to be done with the one hundred and two organizations that had flourished like fungus. The Communists were clearly devoted to the game of steal-the-papers-and-photograph-something; so, with a kind of ambitious me-too-ism, our elected representatives brought into being the bulky administrative golem of the CII.

The news media refer to CII as “Central Intelligence Institute.” This is a result of creative back-thinking. Actually, CII is not a set of initials; it is a number, the Roman reading of the 102 smaller organizations out of which the department was formed.

Within two years, CII had become a political fact of alarming proportions. Their networks spread within and without the nation, and the information they collected concerning the sexual peculiarities and financial machinations of many of our major political figures made the organization totally untouchable and autonomous. It became the practice of CII to inform the President after the fact.

Within four years, CII had made our espionage system the laughingstock of Europe, had aggravated the image of the American abroad, had brought us to the brink of war on three occasions, and had amassed so vast a collection of trivial and private information that two computer systems had to be housed in their underground headquarters in Washington—one to retrieve fragments of data, the second to operate the first.

A bureaucratic malignancy out of control, the organization continued to grow in power and personnel. Then the expansion unexpectedly tapered off and stopped. CII computers informed its leaders of a remarkable fact: its losses of personnel abroad were just breaking even with its ambitious recruiting operations at home. A team of analysts from Information Limited was brought in to study the astonishing attrition. They discovered that 36 percent of the losses were due to defection; 27 percent were caused by mishandling of punched computer cards (which losses they advised CII to accept because it was easier to write the men off than to reorganize Payroll and Personnel Division); 4 percent of the losses were attributed to inadequate training in the handling of explosives; and 2 percent were simply “lost”—victims of European railroad schedules.

The remaining 31 percent had been assassinated. Loss through assassination presented very special problems. Because CII men worked in foreign countries without invitation, and often to the detriment of the established governments, they had no recourse to official protection. Organization men to the core, the CII heads decided that another Division must be established to combat the problem. They relied on their computers to find the ideal man to head the new arm, and the card that survived the final sorting bore the name: Yurasis Dragon. In order to bring Mr. Dragon to the United States, it was necessary to absolve him of accusations lodged at the War Crimes Tribunal concerning certain genocidal peccadillos, but CII considered him worth the effort.