Twinkle, Twinkle, "Killer" Kane (3 page)

Hesburgh turned to Lastrade and draped his hand over the coil as though casually, inadvertently. “General,” he droned, “who selected ‘The Little Flower’?”

Lastrade, catching his hat, leaped once more unto the breach. “The Kaplan VII,” he responded with vigor. “We do damn near
everything
with computers these days. Saves money-money-money.”

Hesburgh’s hand was sliding gently, oh, so gently, along the coil.

“Computers are much more reliable,” continued Lastrade. “In fact, they’re perfect. They’ll overlook no detail, no matter how small; foresee every possible contingency.”

“Not
every
possible contingency.” Hespurgh tugged, eyes wild, yanking the coil out of the wall.

Lefkowitz died.

Chapter 3

The sere brown hillocks of Malibu Canyon were vaguely thinking green from the early fall rains as the Air Force command car sped along between them. Heavy-lidded and moody, deep in brood, Brigadier General Sheridan Syntax gazed out his window. Brows bushy and wise, lips thin and pursed, he sat stiffly and erect as though copying some image of a coloring-book soldier. He had deep, sunken eyes, and a nose like Savonarola’s—hawklike, ever-twitching—spouted outward from a face that never altered its expression: that of a man forever waiting for the simultaneous translation.

Suddenly Syntax jerked his head with a birdlike motion, fixing the man beside him with a stare reserved for floggings and incredible breaches of discipline.

“Could I have that again
clearly,
‘Little Flower of the Tarmac’?” He spoke crisply and with outrage.

Colonel Kane looked befuddled. He spoke in a voice soft and mild, barely a notch above a whisper.

“That was my stomach, General Syntax. It rumbled.”

“Oh.” Syntax continued to pin him with a searching, probing stare; seconds thudded past on tiny leaded feet.

Then, “Yes,” Syntax continued. “Well—yes, that’s all right, I suppose you (pause) couldn’t
help
it. Not your
fault.
You needn’t feel that it’s (a longer pause)
unmilitary.
No!” Then he jerked his head to the side again and brooded out his window.

Kane looked out the other side. He was not a small man. And he exuded a subtle aura of fluid, rippling power. Yet his movements, even the slightest, were as graceful as a puma’s. His face was rugged and dark; his hair, silver-gray. And his eyes were soft brown, but gently glowing with some mystery, profound and submarine. He breathed out a sigh.

Syntax turned to him again. “You needn’t feel embarrassed,” he said. “It’s (pause)
unwarranted.
”

And again he looked away. Then, “Just forget that I’m a General and that your stomach just rumbled…”

Kane waited, was about to speak, when Syntax continued, “—in a
command
car. Life is too damn short.”

Kane said nothing. Syntax grunted, staring silently out at the hills; then made a quiet statement of fact: “My toes groan.”

“Sir?”

“My toes, they (pause) groan; rub together in my sleep; make these (pause)
groaning
sounds. Same—same as your stomach.”

For a moment Kane locked stares with him. “I see,” he said at last.

“I can’t
help
it!” yipped Syntax.

“I know,” soothed Kane. “I know.”

“
Golf
shoes,
golf
shoes: years and years of
golf
shoes: cleats ripping and tearing! Poor damn toes, why they never knew what hit ’em! Understand?”

“Of course. Understanding is my job.”

“It is?” puzzled Syntax. Then, “Oh! Wait, it’s, well … nevertheless you’re … no. No,
yes!
That’s (pause)
right!
You’re a psychologist!”

“Yes, sir, I am.” Kane noticed a redness flushing the driver’s neck; a twitching of the ears; back muscles tightening under a starched khaki shirt. Very little escaped his senses; they were everywhere at once. He guessed that the driver was struggling desperately to keep from laughing out loud.

Syntax’s voice was the single low note of an organ playing a dirge. “You’re a very lucky man, Kane,” he mused funereally. “Pretty
rare
in the service, Colonel, working at a job you know, uh … something
about.
I mean, it sometimes … doesn’t always … well … you know, I
flew.
I was a flier!”

“You were a flier.”

“Yes, I said that. Was I … what?… or was it—Oh, no, no, no—I was a flier. Right. That’s right. Then later on in my career they mixed up my … um … well—what happened … they put me in charge of (pause) psychological warfare. Didn’t have a
clue,
Colonel, not a bloody
clue.
Why, I didn’t know the psych from the (long pause)
war!
”

“Ah, but obviously you learned,” said Kane. “With study and concentration any man of high intelligence can complete any mission. Everyone knows of your accomplishments.”

“Yes,” mused Syntax, “my accomplishments.” He cleared his throat. “I, uh, pioneered the principle that a five-hundred-pound sack of propaganda leaflets dropped from an altitude of, oh, say twelve thousand feet would drive a North Korean soldier roughly eight feet into the ground.”

“Very impressive,” said Kane, checking the back of the driver’s neck.

“You’re lying,” uttered Syntax, softly and without malice. He sulked out the window. “I’m a misfit. Most of us are. But we survive…”

Kane waited until he was sure that Syntax had finished. Satisfied, he spoke. “Might we—?”

Syntax overrode him. “—by following one golden rule—‘Don’t make waves’!”

The command car halted smoothly at the iron-gated entrance to a deep-set wooded estate. An air policeman stepped smartly out of a sentry box, saluted. General Syntax returned the salute. The air policeman pressed a button and the gates whirred open. The command car beetled through and parked at the edge of the large courtyard that fronted the Slovik mansion.

Kane looked mildly puzzled. “Here, sir? This? Is this Air Force property?”

Syntax pierced him with his stare. “Kane, you question my leadership? Planning on writing a book?” He was sensitive on the subject. A rival British general had recently published a volume that was more than sharply critical of Syntax’s planning of air strikes during World War II. Syntax, in stunning rebuttal, had dismissed it with two words: “Jealous bastard!” The rest was silence.

“Why, no,” deferred Kane. “Not at all, sir, not at all. But this mansion looks like—”

“Yes! Yes, it does!” interrupted the General. “
Is!
It’s Bela (pause)
Slovik’s
house. Modeled it after the one in all his
vampire
 … movies. His old studio took it over and—well—uh—yes! Loaned it to, you know, to the
Air Force
—loaned it to
us
for letting us help them with that movie, that (pause) ‘The Longest
Night’
 … or ‘Journey’… or something.”

“I see.”

The driver had gotten out and was hauling luggage out of the trunk. Kane stared out at the courtyard. It was empty, quiet. He mused over the gargoyles, the still-lowered drawbridge. “Looks rather ideal for the mission,” he said. “Peaceful—therapeutic.”

And then the sky fell down. A bugle blared “Assembly,” the mansion door burst open, and out into the courtyard poured the inmates of the colony: Captain Manfred Michael Cutshaw and assorted “failsafe” crewmen. Pell-mell, they raced, like feverish lice, all but the one named Fairbanks, who had elected to swing down on a rope that was secured to a mansion turret. He ululated shrilly like a griefstricken Tarzan searching abortively for Jane in Astoria, New York.

The inmates shoved and muddled, forming a less than military line, while Captain Groper bore down on them rapidly, a worried eye on the command car. “Dress it up, you monkeys, dress it up!” Groper roared.

“Dress it up!” echoed Cutshaw. “Have you men no couth at
all?
”

Groper fronted the men. “Captain Cutshaw, shut your mouth! Fairbanks, chuck away that pigsticker!”

“Chuck my lucky
sword?
” yelped Fairbanks.

Groper quickly moosed forward, wrested the sword from Fairbanks’ hand. The inmates hissed and booed him.

“Unfair!” shouted one.

“Resign!” shouted another.

Cutshaw lifted his arm at a turret. “Get that hunchback out of the belltower! We’ve had
enough
hot lead on our necks!”

From the command car, Kane and Syntax watched quietly, unmoving.

“Thought-provoking, isn’t it,” drawled Syntax at last.

“Yes. Indeed.”

Syntax pointed out Cutshaw. “There’s the world-famous Moon pilot.”

“The one with the golden earrings?”

“No. The one giving Groper the ‘arm.’”

“I see.”

The driver, having stacked the luggage, now opened the door for Kane. Syntax roused himself to vigor. “Well, my boy,” the General sparked, striving for savage good cheer, “I wish you good luck—yes—good luck. This is out of my …
water.
Uh, depth—depth! But I envy you this …
challenge.
Yes, I do. The … computers say you can do it, get them … back on the job. We’re behind you all the … well … you know.”

“Yes, sir. Thank you.”

“Laryngitis?”

“Sir?”

“Do you always talk in a whisper?”

“Yes.”

“Good! Good! Keep it! It’s (pause)
soothing!
” Syntax fumbled in his pocket. That’s … well … what did you say?”

“Not a thing, sir.”

“Good. Don’t … well—you know…”

“I shall do my very best, sir.”

“Yes, yes, do. Just … relax and be yourself; your ‘Little Flower’ self. Mind that nickname?”

“Not at all, sir.”

“Hard to tell if these men are batty or … not. Just give them tender, loving, uh, care. It’ll win you your choice of new assignments.”

Some furry thought in quiet hiding gently stirred in Kane’s eyes—deep, deep.

“Onward and upward!” brappled Syntax.

Kane slid out of the car, turned and saluted Syntax smartly. “Goodby, sir.”

“Goodby. And remember—don’t make waves!”

Kane turned and walked slowly to the perimeter of the wood, where he stood watching Groper severing ties with his nervous system. Syntax, in the car, mopped his brow with a deep-blue sleeve as he glanced, with naked terror, at the madly muddling men. He leaned into his driver, croaking, “Get me the hell out of here as fast as you can!”

Kane watched, turning his head, as the car screeched away. Then he reached for a cigarette, looked to the men tormenting Groper. On his face there was no expression; it was a fixed and graven mask. But in the eyes there was movement: subtle greenish flecks spinning in a whirlpool of brown.

“Attention!” bellowed Groper. “Dammit, attention!
Attention!
”

“I want my Ho Chi Minh decoder ring!” pouted the inmate wearing the face guard. “I sent in the box-tops! Now where in the hell is the freaking
ring!
”

“Whoever he is behind that mask, he’s a pain in the ass,” said Morris Fairbanks.

“Readyyyyyy!” shrieked Groper.
“Front!”

The men responded. Groper called the roll.

Kane sensed a presence, someone standing near him. He calmly blew out a match and flicked it away; then slowly turned his head and saw a middle-aged captain wearing freshly starched khakis, shirt open at the neck. In his hand he gripped a stethoscope. His expression dour and somber, he was staring at the inmates, sadly shaking his head. Then he turned and looked at Kane, offered his hand in friendly greeting. “I’m Fromme—Captain Fromme. I’m the medic here at the Center. Colonel Kane, I presume?”

Kane stared at the doctor’s hand and, after a fleeting hesitation, acquiesced in the breach of protocol, the lack of a salute. He shook the hand warmly. “Pleased to meet you, Doctor Fromme.”

“Hm. Remind me to check that throat.”

Kane smiled thinly. “It’s my manner, not my throat. Don’t give it a thought.”

“Suit yourself.” Fromme looked to the inmates with somber, grave compassion. “Poor sons-of-bitches,” he murmured bleakly.

“Could you direct me to my quarters?”

“Oh, just follow the yellow brick road.”

“What?”

“Just follow the yellow brick—”

“SERGEANT FROMME, FALL IN!” bawled Groper. He was pointing to the “doctor.”

Kane’s glance flicked quickly to Groper; to Fromme; to Groper; then to a man clad only in underwear, framed in the mansion doorway.

“Damn you, Fromme, get out of my uniform!” the man in the underwear bellowed. He stomped toward Kane and Fromme like a bull with no religion.

A deadpan sergeant, crisply uniformed, popped in front of Kane, clicked his heels and smartly saluted. “Sergeant Christian reporting for duty, sir!”

“And blasted well about
time,
Kildare!” Fromme greeted the sergeant icily. He pointed an index finger at Kane. “Now, will you get this man into surgery or do you plan to let him stand here
bleeding
to death while you and your buddies play
soldier!
What the hell is this—a hospital or a nut house!”

Even as Fromme was concluding this thought-provoking statement, Sergeant Christian was escorting him forcibly away. The man in underwear had arrived and, passing Fromme, deftly ripped away the stethoscope; then shouted at Sergeant Christian: “This time don’t let him wrinkle the pants!” Then he turned to Kane and saluted: “Captain Norman Fell, M.D., sir!”

In the background Kane heard Cutshaw roaring, “Sergeant Christian,
unhand
that man!” Kane looked to the inmates as they took up Cutshaw’s cry: booing, hissing and shouting together, “Release Sergeant Fromme!”

“Gloreyoskey, Zero, let’s return the salute!” Fell’s speech was thick and slurred.

Kane turned and looked at him blankly. He stood weaving in his underwear, hand still crooked in salute: it was the hand that held the stethoscope. His eyes were crimson smears and he hiccupped gently, almost demurely. Kane stood motionless. “Captain Fell, have you been drinking?”