The Terminators (25 page)

"Yes?"

I hesitated, and drew a long breath, and said it. "Look, 
amigo
, as far as I'm concerned, you can invoke the statute of limitations. I can't keep my mind on a vendetta after seven years. Okay?"

"Sure," he said. He grinned abruptly. "Sorry, maybe that's inadequate, Matt, but I can't help remembering there's a gent in Washington who's got a longer memory than you have."

I regarded him for a moment. "Are you still willing to take advice from the Old Master, Mr. Denison?"

"Any time," he said cheerfully.

"Then listen," I said. "You're through with Kotko, however it breaks. He's not going to forgive you, even if you make amends by saving his life. I presume you've had sense enough to cash in on your seven soft years. I figure you've made arrangements for a new life somewhere for when this one wore out, as it was bound to do. You've got only one thing to worry about, that somebody'll come looking for you who knows how to look, right?"

"Right on," Denison said. His voice was expressionless.

I said, "Well, use your brains, Mr. Denison. Think real hard. Once you're a long way from here, maybe you can figure out how you can throw a bone to that guy in Washington, something that'll make him drop your trail and forget you. 
Quid pro quo
, I think is the Latin phrase, Mr. Denison."

There was a little silence. At last Denison said slowly, "I think I see what you mean. I'll give it some consideration, depending on how things work out. But you really are a cold-blooded bastard, aren't you, friend Eric?"

"I hope so," I said. "It's got a lot of survival value.. Now I'd like that Llama pistol back, and the knife. And I want that big, impressive Browning Hi-Power and the shoulder holster your man Wesley is wearing, if only to keep him from getting brave at the wrong moment."

Denison studied me for a moment. Obviously he wanted to ask questions, like how I was going to handle it—certainly I wasn't going to hold off a bunch of tough old resistance fighters with a couple of little handguns, or big ones either—but it was my business and he didn't pry.

He said merely, "I'll get them to you."

"Before you go, tell me something," I said.

"What?"

"In Trondheim. Under that bridge, under the railroad tracks, remember? Did you maybe take a dive deliberately just to make me feel so good I'd leave you alone?"

He grinned. "You'll never know, will you, Matt?" he said. "So long now."

"So long, Denny."

I hadn't meant to call him that. It was a nickname I hadn't used, or thought of, for a hell of a long time. Holding Kotko's hat and coat, I watched him go. It was too bad. I'd had a lot of fun hating him for seven years— everybody's got to hate somebody—but the old enthusiasm was gone. I'd have to find somebody else to maintain my adrenalin level. Presently Wesley came hurrying up from the garage side of the house and handed me the armaments I'd asked for, with obvious resentment at having to give up his own pet cannon.

"He says five minutes. Even with the ventilation system, we can't stay in that garage much longer with the motor going."

"Five minutes, check," I said, glancing at my watch.

Wesley disappeared. I stuck the Spanish .380 under my belt, dropped the knife back into my pocket, and climbed into the shoulder holster supporting the Belgian 9mm. With my jacket back on once more, I donned Kotko's long, sweeping, dramatic, fur coat, and put the Cossack cap on my head. I looked into the mirror on the nearby wall, and found my appearance satisfactory. I'd got a nice tan in Florida and at a distance one tall, tanned gent with a big fur hat on looks pretty much like another, particularly on a foggy, snowy Arctic day. It might work—unless Sigmund remembered that I'd pulled more or less the same stunt once before on this trip, on a ship's gangplank, with slightly different personnel. 

I picked up the attach6 case that had been parked beside the table. It had the initials L. A. K. on it in gold. I descended the piney, rustic staircase to the door by which we'd entered this house. It seemed a long time ago.

Standing there, I opened the attache case and disarranged the neat business papers it contained so they stuck out a bit here and there. I closed it, but it wouldn't latch now; it wasn't supposed to. The sweep hand of my watch counted off the three hundredth second, but I waited until I saw the garage door under the other wing of the house slide up, and the shiny Mercedes inside begin to move. Then, holding the unfastened attache case to my breast, making a big deal of trying to close it as I ran, I hurled myself through the door and after the car that was already turning away from me.

"Denison, what the hell—" I yelled in a high voice. ''Denison, wait, come back here! Denison, you treacherous bastard—"

I faked a slip and went to my knees, dropping the case. Papers blew everywhere. I tried to gather them up, and stuff them into place, frantically; then I glanced at the receding car, and left the case, and ran, pounding through the thin, slushy snow down the tracks of the Michelin tires.

"Denison, you damned Judas—"

In the middle of the rear seat, through the rear window, I could see my own hat and the collar of my own raincoat, worn by Kotko. A struggle was going on up forward. Suddenly the car slid to a halt, the right front door opened, and the girl called Misty was shoved out to sprawl in the snow. A pale blue airplane-luggage suitcase followed her. It burst open upon impact. The tires spun, gained traction, and carried the big Mercedes away. When I came up, the girl was trying to reclaim her scattered belongings. I yanked her up by the shoulder of the blue ski-parka she'd put on over her thin Riviera costume.

"You bitch!" I shouted shrilly. "You were supposed to make them wait for me!"

"I tried. Line, I tried. Why do you think they shoved me out of the car—"

I swung the flat of my hand against her cheek, not really hard enough to knock her down, but she lost her footing in the slippery snow and fell maybe deliberately. It was too bad vaudeville was dead; we'd have made a great team. I turned and fled back to the house, stumbling in my frantic haste to reach shelter. Inside, I waited, panting. In a little while the girl came through the door, hugging her suitcase, from which trailed odds and ends of damp, snowy feminine garments. She was pretty damp and snowy herself. She leaned against the wall and drew a long, ragged breath.

"Wow! Did we have to be so damned realistic? Half my clothes are ruined. And if that's what you call pulling a punch, what happens when you really hit a girl, her head flying through the air like a volleyball? Do you really think they bought that corny act?"

I listened for a moment. "Well, nobody's shooting out there," I said. "The car must be pretty well clear by now. .. . What are you doing?"

"Look at me, I'm soaked from the waist down after flopping around in that mushy snow in these damned silk pajamas! Any law against a girl's putting on some jeans?" I put my hand on her arm, restraining her from groping through the stuff in the suitcase. "We're frightened silly," I said. "We're panicky, cornered rats, waiting for the cat to come through the door, remember? Do we worry about a little damp snow, for God's sake, when we're already wetting our pants in abject, incontinent terror? The play's the thing. What's a little pneumonia between friends. Miss. . . ." I stopped, and grinned. "What's your name, anyway?"

"Moreau," she said. "Misty Moreau. Mademoiselle Meestee Moreau if you want to be formal." I didn't say anything. I just stood there grinning at her. She made a face at me, and said, "All right, damn you, would you believe Janet Morrow?"

"Hi, Jan," I said. "I'm Matt. Let's go upstairs. Is there any more of that beer you were drinking. . . ? Damn it, I don't suppose drinking beer goes with our cowardly characters, either. Well, at least we can sit down and be comfortable while we await our dooms with fear and trembling."

Upstairs, the fire was still burning brightly, throwing out a lot of pleasant warmth; but the big, windowed room seemed very empty with just the two of us in it. Misty, or Jan, tossed off her ski jacket and went to the fireplace, spreading her wide, bedraggled pantslegs to the heat. Without removing the fur hat and coat, I sat down in Kotko's place behind the table that was still littered with meaningless scientific documents and imaginative mechanical drawings.

"The armed forces have a saying: only suckers volunteer," I said at last. "I didn't ask you to stay. Frankly, it didn't occur to me."

"You couldn't have put on such a good act without me, could you?" she said without turning her head.

"That's right. You made it a lot more convincing. I'm not complaining, just wondering. Do you love the guy?"

"Kotko?" She laughed without malice, "Who loves Kotko? Except Kotko."

"Then why—"

"The trouble with this lousy world is, there's too damned much taking and not enough giving. What the hell? I've taken enough off the guy, and I don't mean just an occasional poke in the eye. I mean, I've got it made, salted away, I'll never be hungry again, thanks to Lincoln Alexander Kotko. So it was time to give a little, understand? It was time for me to earn my lousy loot, so I could be happy with it. . . . Anyway, the poor bastard's got troubles enough without being shot."

"Troubles?" I said. "Like what?"

"Why do you think he hides out the way he does?" she asked, still speaking to the fire. "About ten years ago, when he went into seclusion, as they call it. Troubles like cancer, Mr. Helm. Cancer of the prostate. Under certain circumstances, they have to extract the whole works, if you know what I mean. Can't you hear all the beautiful people laughing if they knew? That's why he hid out, and shaved his head to look tough and sexy, and hired girls like me to make it look as if he still . . . well, you know. And maybe that's why . . . well, if you can't do anything else to a member of the opposite sex, maybe there's some satisfaction in roughing her up a bit occasionally. Okay. I'm durable. At that price, I can play a happy masochist as well as the next girl."

I said, "It's a funny damn' world full of funny damn' people."

"Talking about funny people, what's your Sigmund doing now, and why didn't he shoot you when you were outside there, right in his sights?"

I said, "Don't be silly. And have me—well, Kotko—die without knowing why? An essential part of the nemesis routine is having a nice little speech to declaim before you pull the trigger."

"And what's he up to now? Why doesn't he come?"

"He's waiting for Lincoln Alexander to lose his nerve and make a run for it. Sigmund is a good general. He'll sacrifice soldiers for a plan, but not for nothing. He's not going to rush a man behind four walls, a man who may be armed, as long as there's a chance of catching him in the open. That's why I didn't want to get so far from the house they could cut us off from it."

She turned to toast her backside. "But why are they with him, all those men? It's none of their business, is it? They're not fighting for home and country now. And where did they get their guns? Those were machine guns we heard, weren't they? They don't give those away for cereal boxtops, do they?"

I said, "It's a hard thing to explain to a young lady brought up on the popular theory that war is always evil, fighting is always bad, violence is always dreadful, and everybody hates it. The fact is, there are some people around, mostly men, who kind of like it."

"Well, sure. The same kind who go around in peacetime trying to find charging lions to shoot at, and fast sports cars to wreck."

"You've got the idea," I said. "Only there are more of them than you might think, and they're not all rich enough for African safaris. Take some aging citizens who've been leading worthy, conventional lives, most of them—gents who sometimes wake up in the night and remember how it was when they were young, hungry, cold, and scared, running through the mountains with the enemy at their heels. But alive and fighting back, remember that. Every so often, thanks to a certain man who knew how to lead, they'd get to turn on those bastards. They'd have the chalice to strike; strike hard. They'd see those hated uniforms go down before the chattering guns. . . . What can you strike at today in this dullsville world? What can you fight? How \l can you prove that you're alive?"

"Sounds like you know a lot about it," the girl said shrewdly.

"We're not talking about me," I said. "We're talking about a bunch of guys who remember a war and the individual who led them. And then they hear the name again, Sigmund. What do they care what he wants? If s a gleam of light out of the brave, bright past. So it's a private matter. He tells them so; I'm sure he told them so. He said, this is my fight, old comrades; it's not yours—unless you want it. And the sensible ones went back to their wives and kids, to their stores and farms and fishing boats. But a few stayed; enough stayed."

"The ones who are out there now," she said. "Well, my mother did tell me all men were crazy."

"You should have heard what my daddy told me about women," I said. "Well, the ones who decided to stay, they went down into the cellars, back into the barns, up into the attics; and they found the oilskin-wrapped packages they'd hidden away all those years ago when the stupid government told the resistance people to turn in their arms like good little boys and girls—hell, they'd fought the invaders with hoes and pitchforks once; they'd learned their lesson the hard way. Government or no government, they weren't going to be caught unarmed again, not ever. So they unwrapped the protective oilskin or plastic, and they wiped off the preservative grease, and they loaded up the magazines and rammed them home, click. Then they took a hike up the road and said, here we are, Sigmund, where's your cottonpicking trouble? However that reads in Norwegian. .. .Now, come over here beside me, Jan Morrow."

She'd heard it, too; the faint scratching sound downstairs. Her face was a little pale, but she came and said, steadily enough: "Sure. Here I am. What do I do?"

"I'll have my head down on my arms, on the table, a picture of hopeless despair," I said. "You'll be leaning over me, comforting me. You'll scream at them not to touch me, to leave me alone. But that's all you'll do. You'll let them push you aside and hold you there, and you won't make them mad by fighting back. It's not your baby, Jan Morrow. Understand?"