The Mammoth Book of Short Spy Novels (Mammoth Books) Page 27

  “Search him first, and then search the house. Then take up the trail of the car. He wouldn’t have taken it far. He was back too soon . . . Still, he wouldn’t have left it parked on the street. He’d know we’d spot it. He must have left it in the garage that’s down . . .”

  Major Brane interrupted, courteously. “Pardon me, it is in the garage. I left it there and tore up the ticket. I didn’t know you were here, at the time, Brinkhoff, or I would have saved myself the trouble.”

  The bearded man gave a formal inclination of the head. “Thanks. Now, since we understand each other so thoroughly, and since you have shown such a disposition to cooperate, there’s a possibility we can simplify matters still further. We can make a trade, we two. I’ll trade you the girl for the check.”

  Major Brane smiled, the patronizing, chiding smile which a parent gives to a precocious child who is trying to obtain some unfair advantage. “No. The check will have to be eliminated from the discussion now.”

  “We’ll get it eventually.”

  “I hardly think so.”

  “That which is going to happen to the girl is hardly a pleasant subject to discuss. You see there are very major political issues involved. You, my dear Major, and I, have long since learned not to grow emotional over political matters. Unfortunately, some of my subordinates – or perhaps I should refer to them as associates – are still in the emotional stage. If they feel that major political issues have been shaped by the theft of a check, and that this girl is the guilty party . . . “He broke off with a suggestive shrug.

  Major Brane sighed. The sigh seemed to be almost an incipient yawn. “As you, yourself, have so aptly remarked,” he said indifferently, “we have learned not to grow emotional over political matters.”

  The bearded man sneered. “I thought you came here for the girl.”

  “I did.”

  “You don’t seem anxious to save her from an unpleasant experience.”

  Major Brane made a slight gesture with his shoulders. “I was employed to recover the check. I thought it might be a good plan to throw in a rescue of the girl for good measure.”

  The bearded man suddenly lost his semblance of poise, his veneer of culture. He took a swift step forward, his beard bristling, the strong white fangs behind it contrasting with the jet black of the beard.

  “Damn you! We’ll get that check out of you. We’ll fry you in hot grease, a bit at a time. We’ll pull off the skin and stick burning cigars in the flesh. We’ll . . .” He choked with the very vehemence of his rage.

  This time Major Brane yawned outright. “Come, come!” he said. “I thought we had outgrown these childish displays of emotion! We are playing major politics, we two. If you have lost the check, you have lost the fight. Torturing through vengeance won’t help you any.”

  “It’ll make you suffer! It’ll eliminate you from any future interference. You’ve blocked too many of my plans before this!”

  Major Brane nodded. It was as though he considered an impersonal problem. “Of course,” he muttered politely, “if you look at it that way!”

  The man turned his dulled silver eyes morosely upon the others, who had been standing at sullen attention. “Search him. Then the house. Then the streets.”

  The men came forward. They were thorough about the search and not at all gentle. Major Brane assisted them wherever he could. They pulled his pockets inside out, took away all of his personal belongings, searched his shoes, his coat lining, the lapels of his coat, under the collar.

  Then they divided into two groups. One searched the house, the other group the street. The man with the beard remained with Major Brane, glowering at him, the nature of his thoughts indicated by the dark of his skin, the closed fists, the level brows.

  Major Brane regarded him speculatively. “The girl is here?” he asked.

  His answer was a scornful, mocking laugh.

  “I merely asked,” said Major Brane, “because it is so greatly to your advantage to see that she doesn’t come to harm. I telephoned, of course, to friends of hers before I returned to the house.”

  The bearded man gave a sudden start. Despite himself, he changed color. “Yes?” he asked. “And just what do you expect her friends to do?”

  Major Brane pursed his lips. “Probably,” he remarked, “they would not be so unwise as to storm the house; but they are well versed in certain matters of indirection. You might have some trouble in leaving the house.”

  The dulled silver eyes regarded him scornfully. “You lie!” said the man who went under the name of Brinkhoff.

  Major Brane made a gesture with the palms of his hands, a deprecating gesture, partially of apology.

  “Sometimes,” he said, “I despair of you, Brinkhoff: You have a certain shrewdness, yes. But you lack perspective, breadth of vision; and you are unspeakably common!”

  That last remark was like the lash of a whip.

  “Common!” yelled the infuriated man. “I, who have the blood of three thousand years of royalty in my veins! Common, you scum of the gutter! I’ll draw the sight of this gun across your cursed face! Just a taste of what you can expect . . .”

  He leaped forward, swinging his arm so that the sight of the gun made a sudden, sharp arc. But Major Brane’s forehead wasn’t there when the gunsight swished through the air. Major Brane had flung himself backwards in the chair; and as he went over, he watched the sweep of the arm, elevated his foot with every bit of strength he could muster. The foot caught the wrist of the enraged man, sent the gun swirling through the air in a lopsided flight. The chair crashed to the floor, Major Brane rolled clear.

  Brinkhoff saw his danger and jumped back. His bony, capable hand went to the back of his coat collar, reaching for the hilt of a concealed knife.

  He caught the knife, jerked it out and down. The light glinted from the whirling steel. Major Brane flung his arms out in a football tackle. For a moment it seemed that the downward stroke of the knife would strike squarely between Major Brane’s shoulders. But the Major was first to reach his goal, first by that split fraction of a watch tick which seems to be so long when men are fighting for life and death, yet is the smallest unit of measured time.

  The Major’s weight crashed against the shins of the man with the dulled silver eyes. The impact threw him back. The stroke of the knife swung wild. The two men teetered, crashed. The man with the beard shouted, squirmed.

  Outside, the hallway pounded with running feet. There were other voices calling down from an upper floor.

  Major Brane swung his fist. Brinkhoff’s cries ceased. Instantly, Major Brane was on his feet, as lithely active as a cat. He swooped toward the chair which lay on the floor, lifted it bodily, held it poised for a moment, and then flung it straight through the glass of the window.

  The chair smashed a great jagged hole in the glass. There sounded the crash, the tinkle, of falling glass fragments. Then the chair topped outward and vanished into the night. There came a thud from the ground below.

  Major Brane jumped for a closed door on one side of the room. He flung it open and found that it led, not to an adjoining room as he had hoped, but into a closet. The closet was well filled with stacks of papers, papers that were arranged in bundles, tied with tape.

  Major Brane leaped inside, scrambled atop the bundles, pawed at the door, trying to get it closed. He had but partially succeeded when he heard the door of the room burst open, and the sound of bodies catapulting into the room.

  Of a sudden, the sounds ceased. That, reasoned Major Brane, perched precariously atop the slippery pile of documents, would be when the others who entered the room and took in the situation, the unconscious form of Brinkhoff sprawled on the floor, the window with its great jagged hole.

  “Gone!” a voice cracked, and added a curse.

  “Jumped out of the window . . .”

  “Quick! After him. – No, no, not that way! Close the block! Signal the others! He’s got fifty yards the start of us. Turn on the red lights. Hu
rry!”

  Once more, feet pounded in haste. Major Brane could hear excited shouts, comments that were called back and forth.

  A small section of the lighted floor of the room showed through the half-open door of the closet. Major Brane watched that section of floor for a full two seconds, to see if there were any moving shadows crossing it. There were no shadows. The room seemed utterly silent.

  Major Brane strove to step quietly from his perch, but a packet of documents tilted, slid. Major Brane flung himself back, lost his balance, put out his arms, and crashed through the closet door into the room.

  Brinkhoff lay sprawled on the floor. A man was bending over him, and that man had evidently been in the act of going through Brinkhoff’s pockets when Major Brane, catapulting from the closet, had frozen him into startled immobility.

  He looked at Major Brane, and Major Brane took advantage of his first moment of surprise. He rushed. The man teetered back to his heels, jumped backward in time to escape the momentum of that first rush. Major Brane landed a glancing blow with his left. Then he caught himself, turned, and lashed out with his right.

  He realized then that the man with whom he had to deal was one who was trained in jujutsu. Too late he strove to beat down the other’s left. It caught his right wrist; a foot shot out; a hand darted down with bone-crunching violence.

  Major Brane knew the method of attack well enough to know that there was but one possible defense. To resist would be to have his arm snapped. The hands of the other were in a position to exert a tremendous leverage against the victim’s own weight. Major Brane therefore did the only thing that would save him. Even before the last ounce of pressure had been brought to play upon his arms, he flung himself in a whirling somersault, using the momentum of his rush to send him over and around.

  He whirled through the air like a pinwheel, crashed to the floor. But even while he was in midair, his brain, trained to instant appreciation of all of the angles of any given situation, remembered the gun which had been kicked from Brinkhoff’s hand.

  Major Brane whirled, even as the flashing shape of his opponent hurtled at him. His clawing hand groped for and found the automatic. The other pounced, and the automatic jabbed into his ribs.

  “I shall pull the trigger,” said Major Brane, his words muffled by the weight of the other, “in exactly one and one-half seconds!”

  The words had the desired effect. Major Brane had a reputation for doing exactly whatever he said he would do, and the figure that had been on top of him flung backwards, hands elevated.

  Major Brane, still lying on the floor, thrust the gun forward, so that it was plainly visible.

  From the yard, outside the window, could be heard the low voices of men who were closing in on the spot where the chair had thudded to the ground.

  “Don’t move!” said Major Brane.

  The man who faced him, twisted back his lips in a silent snarl, then let his face become utterly expressionless.

  Major Brane smiled at him. “I wonder,” he said, “what you were searching for, my friend?”

  The man made no sound.

  “Back against the wall,” said Major Brane.

  The man hesitated, then caught the steely glitter of Major Brane’s eye. He backed, slowly. Major Brane raised himself to his knees, then to his feet. His eyes were almost dreamy with concentration.

  “You want something,” mused Major Brane, “that Brinkhoff is supposed to have on him; but you don’t want the rest of the gang to know that you want it. You’d yell, if you were really one of them, and take a chance on my shooting. The answer is that you’re hostile. Probably the others don’t even know you’re here.”

  The man who stood against the wall had been breathing heavily. Now, as Major Brane summed up the situation, he held himself rigidly motionless, even the rising and falling of his shoulders ceasing. It was as though he held his breath, the better to check any possible betrayal of his thoughts through some involuntary start of surprise.

  Major Brane moved toward the unconscious form of the man who went under the name of Brinkhoff. From outside came a series of cries; rage, surprise, disappointment, shouted instructions. – The attackers had found that they had been stalking only a chair that had been thrown from a window.

  Major Brane remained as calmly cool as though he had ample time at his disposal.

  “Therefore,” he said, “the thing to do is to search until I find what you were looking for, and . . .”

  His prisoner could stand the strain no longer. Already the thud of running feet showed that the others were coming toward the house. The man blurted out in excellent English:

  “It’s in the wallet, in the inside pocket. It’s nothing that concerns you. It relates to another matter. My government wants it. They’ll kill me if they find me, and they’ll kill you. Let me have the paper, and I’ll show you the girl.”

  Major Brane smiled. “Fair enough,” he said. “No, don’t move. Not yet!” His hands went to Brinkhoff’s inside pocket, scooped out the leather folder, abstracted a document The man against the wall was breathing heavily, as though he had been running. His hands were clenching and unclenching. A door banged somewhere in the house, feet sounded in the corridor. Brinkhoff stirred and groaned.

  Major Brane paused to cast a swift eye over the documents which he had abstracted from the leather folder. He smiled, nodded.

  “OK,” he said. “It’s a go. Show me the girl.”

  “This way,” said the man, and ran toward a corner of the room. He opened a door, disclosed another closet, pressed a section of the wall. It opened upon a flight of stairs.

  Major Brane followed, taking care to close the closet door statements on that slip of paper. We assume they have a photostat of those letters, too. Nothing in the letters contradicts those three statements. You are not to repeat them so often that the Jacksons will become suspicious. Just often enough to implant them firmly in memory. Then we shall wait for one of those false statements to reappear either directly or by inference, in the next letter you get from your husband.”

  “And if they do, it will mean that – ”

  “That the army’s report of your husband’s death was correct. And that the Jacksons have been working one of the nastiest little deals I have ever heard of. Very clever, very brutal, and, except for your courage, Mrs. Aintrell, very effective.”

  With forced calmness Francie said, “You make it sound logical, and it might be easier for me if I could believe it. But I know Bob is alive.”

  “I merely ask you to keep in mind the possibility that he may not be alive. Otherwise, should that second letter prove to be faked, you may break down in front of them.”

  “She won’t break down,” Clint said.

  Francie gave him a quick smile. “Thank you.”

  “Just be patient,” Osborne said. “Keep turning data over to them. Skip a day now and then to make it look better. We’re trying to find their communication channel. When we find it we’ll want you to demand the next letter from your husband. Maybe we can have you risk threatening to cut off the flow of data unless you get a letter. But get friendly with them now, and work in that information.”

  That night Francie walked down the shore path to the Jackson camp. She saw Stewart through the window in the living room. He let her in. Betty sat at the other end of the room, knitting.

  “A little eager to deliver, this time, aren’t you?” Stewart asked. He shut the door behind her and she gave him the folded packet. He glanced at it casually.

  “Is something on your mind, Francie?”

  “May I sit down?”

  “Please do,” Betty said.

  Francie sat down, sensing their wariness at this deviation from routine. “This is something I have to talk to you about,” she said. “I – I know I’d never have the nerve to consciously try Here in the heart of San Francisco, he had stumbled into a spy’s nest, perhaps the headquarters for the lone wolves of diplomacy, the outlaws who ran ahead of the
pack, ruthlessly doing things for which no government dared assume even a partial responsibility.

  Major Brane stepped out into the cellar. He could see a pair of legs coming down the cellar stairs.

  Major Brane observed a can of gasoline. The automatic he had captured barked twice. One shot splintered the stairs, just below the legs of the man who was descending, caused him to come to an abrupt halt. The other shot ripped through the can of gasoline.

  The liquid poured out, ran along the cement floor of the cellar, Major Brane tossed a match, stepped back into the room which had been used as a torture chamber, and closed the door.

  From the cellar came a loud poof! then a roaring, crackling sound.

  Immediately, Major Brane dismissed the cellar from his thoughts and turned his attention to the room in which he found himself. The girl had arranged the clothing about her, had found a coat. She regarded him with glittering eyes and silent lips.

  Major Brane pursed his lips. There seemed to be no opening from the room; yet he knew the type of mind with which he had to deal, and he sensed that there would be an opening.

  The crackling sound was growing louder now. Major Brane could hear the frantic beat of panic stricken feet on the floor above. Then there was an explosion, followed by a series of explosions, coming from the cellar. Those would be cartridges exploding.

  Major Brane upset a chest of drawers to examine the wall behind it. He picked up a hammer and pounded the cement of the floor. He cocked a wary eye at the ceiling, studied it.

  The girl watched him in silence.

  The fire was seething flame now, crackling, roaring. The door of the room in which they found themselves began to warp under the heat.

  Major Brane was as calm as though he had been solving a chess problem, over a cigarette and cordial. He moved a box. The box didn’t tip as it should. It pivoted instead. An oblong opening showed in the wall as the swinging box moved back a slab of what appeared to be solid concrete.