The Terminators Page 17

  XIX.

  WE didn't get to meet the Invisible Millionaire immediately, but there were a couple of hard-looking characters to greet us at the door beneath the flying-bridge porch. They had the sharply tailored, south-European look the syndicate boys favor but I didn't take it too seriously—any more than I took Denison's wide-brimmed hat seriously, now that I realized it was supposed to put you in mind of safari headgear, not Buffalo Bill's chapeau. We all play these little imitative games when we want to appear kind of tough and special.

  "Any problems?" Denison asked.

  "Everything's been quiet, Mr. Denison," said the taller and darker of the pair.

  "Take these two back into the store-room and lock them up with the skis," Denison said. "Watch out for the man, he's tricky. He'U skewer you with a ski-pole if you give him half a chance. I'll be back down as soon as I've seen L. A."

  It was almost worthwhile being taken prisoner, the amount of flattery I was getting. Denison headed for a nearby flight of stairs. The shorter and blonder of the hard boys said he'd better stay on the door; Mr. Kotko wouldn't like it left unguarded. The taller one had already pulled out a big Browning automatic, the first honest-to-God firearm I'd seen on this job aside from my own revolver and Denison's. This was the 9mm Hi-Power, as they call it, using the long, he-man nine, not the short ladies' job chambered by my confiscated Llama. It would shoot thirteen times before running dry, fourteen if you stuffed an extra round up the spout before ramming home the magazine. Very handy if you've got thirteen or fourteen stupid men coming at you single file. ...

  The store-room was cut into solid rock, being at the rear of the house where it backed against the hillside. As Denison had indicated, it was used primarily for ski equipment, presumably belonging to the folks from whom the place had been rented. At least I figured it was rented. Desolate northern Norway didn't seem like the kind of place Mr. Kotko would pick for one of his permanent love-nests—he liked to maintain his well-publicized privacy in fairly public places, as I recalled. And if he'd just come here temporarily with an illicit oil deal in mind, it seemed unlikely that he'd have prepared himself for winter sports, the season for which was still a month or so away.

  I wondered if the skis were employed locally or if they were put on the train by their owners and hauled up to Abisko in Sweden, on the craggy backbone of the Scandinavian peninsula, some thirty miles east of us, assuming we'd been deposited somewhere near Narvik on the coast. The fact that there'd been hardly any snow in the cow-pasture in which we'd landed, indicating a fairly low altitude, made this a reasonable assumption. As for the skis, that was just idle curiosity. Skis weren't likely to figure prominently in the forthcoming activities. At this time of year we could hardly expect to glide away swiftly into the sheltering blizzard—anyway, for all I knew, my diminutive companion was strictly useless on skis, for all she'd gone to school in Switzerland.

  I had plenty of time for cogitation. Taking Denison's warning literally, our escort established us against the rear wall of the room, facing the rock, with our hands flat against it. Then he proceeded to remove every last ski-pole in the place, quite a job since he used only one hand and never turned away from us, keeping us always covered with the Browning. When he had ail the sharp, spear-like metal poles stacked against the wall in the hall outside, he went out, slammed the door shut, and turned the key in the lock.

  I lowered my arms, looked at my hands, and rubbed them together to get rid of the traces of the chalky, calciminelike white paint, if that's the right word, with which the whole storeroom was finished.

  "How are you on skis, Miss Elfenbein?" I asked.

  "As a matter of fact, I'm rather good on skis, Mr. Helm," she said. "But that is not much use to us here, is it? Even if we could get free, the snow was melting almost as fast as it fell, when we came in."

  "I know, I was just talking," I said. I looked at her curiously. "You haven't been saying very much."

  She shrugged a little defiantly. "What was there to say? 'Release me, sir, or I will scream for help'?"

  I grinned. "Good girl."

  "Thank you. But if I were a good girl, I would be back in the conservatory in Switzerland, making little marks on music paper. If I were even merely an intelligent girl, that is where I would be." Her slight accent seemed to become stronger under stress. She shook her head ruefully. "And it is not as if I were passionately fond of my parent, Mr. Helm. How can you love a man you disapprove of, who never paid you any attention until he needed a housekeeper and an accomplice in crime."

  "But you came when he called," I said.

  "He is my father. My mother was dead; there were only the two of us," she said softly. "And he did need me. I suppose that is the point. After all these years he looked at me, at last, as if I were a human being and not just an obnoxious pet my mother insisted on maintaining. He asked me to help. And of course I had always wondered about . . . about the glamorous and exciting things he did. . . . Exciting!" Suddenly she was crying. The tears ran down her cheeks unchecked as she said, "I most certainly c-came to the right p-place for excitement, d-didn't I, Mr. Helm? This should be exciting enough for anyb-b-body, d-don't you think?"

  Well, that made two of them. Diana had been looking for risk and excitement, too.- Maybe a whole generation was, after all the years of concentrated safety and ecology. Maybe there was a worldwide backlash against the protection-and-purification zealots. I wondered what Diana was thinking about it now, and I decided that what Diana was thinking wasn't anything I really wanted to wonder about. I held out my handkerchief.

  "Blow and wipe," I said. "Let me help you off with that raincoat, you won't need it in here."

  "But what are we going to do?" she wailed. "How are we going to get out of here?" Then she drew a long, ragged breath. "I'm sorry. I did not mean to be a baby. . . . What is the matter, Mr. Helm?"

  I'd started laughing; I couldn't help myself. She'd asked how we were going to get out and I had suddenly realized that the last thing I wanted was out. I was exactly where I wanted to be, or at least I was within one flight of stairs of where I wanted to be. Everything was working out great, thanks to the kind of cooperation of my old comrade-in-arms, Paul Denison. I was amazed at my own stupidity in considering, even for a moment, making a fight of it at the Svolvaer airport.

  "Mr. Helm—"

  I controlled my unseemly hilarity, with an effort. "It's all right, I'm not hysterical, Greta," I said. "You don't mind if I call you Greta, do you. Miss Elfenbeia? It's all right. I just. ... I've been so busy being mad at myself for getting caught that it never occurred to me. . . . Hell, I couldn't have worked it better if I'd planned it,"

  "What do you mean?"

  "Well, look," I said, "there I was standing on the bleak, lonely Lofoten Islands with the documents everybody wanted, and what could I do with them? Knowing, because you'd told me—well, I'd done a little guessing, too—that he'd deliberately pulled the rug out from under me, I could hardly turn them over to the guy I was supposed to be working for, Captain Henry Priest. Sure, I’d arranged for a plane to get me out of there, over to the mainland, but what could I do there? Except try to find my way to Mr. L. A. Kotko, the man to whom the stuff was consigned? That might have taken some doing, since I had no idea where he was staying; I didn't even know if he'd actually arrived in the area. But along came my good friend Paul Denison and hauled me straight here by helicopter express—"

  I stopped, hearing quick footsteps in the hall. There was a sudden, loud, clattering sound.

  "What the goddamned lousy hell?" That was Denison's voice. It sounded angry.

  "I'm sorry, Mr. Denison. You said not to let him near any ski-poles, so I took them all out and stacked them—"

  "Oh, for Christ's sake!"

  There was more clattering as Paul kicked poles out of his way. The lock rattled. The door burst open. My good friend Denison marched inside, looked for me, found me, glared at me, and strode up to me and knocked me down.

  "Y
ou bastard!" he panted, standing over me. "You bloody bastard! I should have known when you let yourself be taken so easily. . . . Where are they?"

  "What?"

  He kicked me in the hip. "Don't what me, you son-of-a-bitch! Where are the real data: Ekofisk, Frigg, Torbotten? Where are the real plans of the Sigmund Siphon? What sneaky place did you find to hide them. . .."

  And there it was, the whole damned jigsaw puzzle with the last piece in place. I should have guessed, of course, but I hadn't. It wasn't the brightest operation of my life, not by a long shot. I reminded myself that it could still be the last operation of my life, if I didn't pull myself together and start applying a few brains to the problem, if I could find some to apply. Denison was still frothing at the mouth and roaring like an enraged grizzly.

  "Denison!"

  The voice sounded weak and distant, but it silenced him abruptly. He drew a long breath.

  "Yes, Mr. Kotko," he called.

  "What the devil are you doing? I ordered you to bring them up here fast!"

  "Yes, Mr. Kotko." He kicked me again, in the same place. "You heard the man. Move! You, too, girl!"

  I got up and, with Greta following, limped through the door, over the fallen ski-poles, and up the stairs to meet Lincoln Alexander Kotko, a privilege reserved for only a few.

  XX.

  It was a big, paneled room, self-consciously and expensively rustic—knotty-pine luxury, Scandinavian style. One wall was glass, looking out onto the elevated veranda and the valley; but the stormy day outside didn't yield quite enough light despite the large opening, so some lights were on. Kotko was waiting for us behind the big pine table that, littered with papers, was apparently serving him as a desk.

  He wasn't a bad-looking fellow, for a gent in his fifties. He was quite tall, within a couple of inches of my own height and he had no middle-aged protuberance amidships. Obviously, he was proud of his lean, hard figure, making a point of displaying it in snug, wine-colored stretch pants and wine-colored turtleneck, very sporty. His deeply tanned face was handsome in a hawklike way, with a blade of a nose and kind of hooded brown eyes—an impressive gent, until he opened his mouth. I'd thought his voice had sounded weak because of the distance. I'd been wrong. It was weak and pitched a little too high; a boy's voice in a man's body.

  "Have you searched them thoroughly?" he demanded in that thin voice.

  Denison said, "Not yet, Mr. Kotko. I—"

  "Well, get at it! Do I have to tell everybody their business around here? Search them now!"

  "Yes, Mr. Kotko." I noticed Denison wasn't using the great man's initials. He spoke to the tall guard who'd accompanied us upstairs: "See if the girl's got it on her, Wesley. You're looking for papers, any kind of papers. I'll handle this one."

  He did a thorough job, working his way downwards, until he came to my socks and stopped. I saw him throw a quick glance up at me. His face had paled slightly.

  "What is it? Did you find something, Denison?" Kotko was watching us.

  "No, sir. I'm just trying to untie this damned double knot in his shoelace. . . . Okay, you, step out of them." He checked the shoes and placed them on the rug in front of me. He glanced up once more. His eyes were oddly pleading. "That's all. You can put them on again, but don't try anything, Helm, or you'll regret it."

  He stepped back a little. I put my feet into the shoes and bent over to knot the laces. Still bending, I smoothed my left sock—one of the snug, nylon-reinforced, elastic knits—over the tiny .25 Colt pistol I'd taken off Norman Yale. Denison should have found it earlier, of course; but his success in reading my mind and anticipating my escape plans had made him overconfident and careless. He'd been so sure he knew what weapons I was carrying—the two I'd shown him before our slugfest under the railroad tracks—that he'd even overlooked the trick belt I was wearing, although it was a fairly standard gimmick even seven years ago.

  I saw him remember it now, and dismiss it from consideration. Chiefly an escape tool, it was not a factor here. The little automatic was a very different matter, but the trouble was, he simply could not afford to disarm me under Kotko's watchful eye. Denison's privileged position was already in danger. The papers he'd brought were unsatisfactory. The Sultan was displeased. If Paul should discover the popgun on me now, and confess that he, the royal bodyguard, had permitted me to come armed into the Presence, as he'd called it, it would be the end of everything he'd worked for. It was safer just to leave me the weapon and hope that I'd find no occasion to use it; or that he could shoot me down fast if I did, and palm the toy gun before anybody else caught a glimpse of it.

  "Nothing? On either of them?" Kotko's voice was harsh. "Well, bring them here, Denison. You get back downstairs, Wesley. They had coats when they came in, didn't they? Check those, and any place in this house where they could have hidden it or thrown it. Tell Gerald to report as soon as he finishes searching the helicopter. . . . Bring them closer, I said, Denison!"

  The tall guard disappeared into the comer stairwell, that was protected by a handsome pine railing. Denison ushered us forward. Greta, with a pink spot of humiliation in each cheek, was pulling up her slacks and smoothing down her sweater. Denison lined us up neatly, facing his employer, like two naughty sailors brought to the ship's captain for punishment.

  "You're Elfenbein's daughter?" Kotko snapped at Greta, after looking us over deliberately. "Well, that means nothing here; we are not intimidated by minor crooks. Your father has chosen to interfere in our business. If you have to suffer the consequences, that's your misfortune. You are the one who received the documents this morning from the Norwegian contact, isn't that right? You had them first, before this man got hold of them?"

  Greta licked her lips and nodded.

  "Yes, that was the plan that was reported to us," Kotko said. I blinked slightly. I hadn't heard wrong. The man was actually employing the royal, or editorial, we to refer to himself. He went on: "You received them, Miss Elfenbein, and then, presumably, this man took you prisoner and confiscated them. On or near that hill beside the Svolvaer airport?"

  Greta nodded again. The touch of color had faded and she looked quite pale. "Yes," she whispered. "Yes, that is correct, Mr. Kotko."

  "They were the right papers?"

  "I ... I don't know. I didn't look. I wanted to quickly get away from there, first." She licked her lips again. "Even if I had looked, I would not have known whether they were right or wrong. I do not know anything about oil, Mr. Kotko, and I do not read Norwegian."

  His eyes narrowed. "If you didn't look at them, how do you know they were in Norwegian? According to our information, this man had the material that was picked up in Trondheim, earlier. You never saw that, either. You never saw any of it."

  Greta said carefully, "The information was supposed to have been collected by Norwegians. A Norwegian had drawn up the plans. At least that was what we were told. Papa and I. We ... we naturally assumed those people would be writing in their own language."

  "Well, you were right!" Abruptly, Kotko slammed the flat of his hand down on the papers before him. "At least these documents are Norwegian—Norwegian gibberish! Obviously dummies, made to be substituted for the genuine material. Where do you think the substitution occurred, Miss Elfenbein?"

  "I didn't—"

  "No, of course you didn't. All these documents are fakes, not just those you picked up this morning. That means the substitution must have been accomplished by someone who had all of them in his possession. Tell me, Miss Elfenbein, was this man out of your sight at any time after he took—"

  Well, you can cut the dialogue to fit: the standard, stupid, interrogation procedure, getting nowhere because there was nowhere to go in that direction, no matter how much infallible logic and deductive genius was displayed by everyone concerned. The answer was right on the desk, but it was an answer Mr. Lincoln Alexander Kotko wasn't ready to face. Sooner or later I'd have to persuade him of the truth, but he had a lot of blustering to get out of his system first, and
I left him to it. I was studying a phenomenon I'd discovered back in the shadows by the big, lighted fireplace.

  I'd thought, after the guard was sent downstairs, that there were only the four of us left in the room: Greta and I, Denison and Kotko. Gradually, I'd come to realize that there was a fifth person present. Under normal conditions, she wouldn't have gone neglected so long. I'm usually fairly quick at spotting slender but well-proportioned blondes, but the comer was dark and my attention had been elsewhere. Her presence didn't really surprise me, of course. Kotko might not have brought skis to Norway, but if his reputation was to be relied upon, he wouldn't have made the joiimey alone.

  Her hair was long and silvery, almost white. She seemed to be average height or slightly above, but it's hard to judge the vertical dimensions of a girl sitting down, or a man for that matter. Her horizontal dimensions were adequate and interesting. She seemed to have a good complexion but her eyes were painted in an exaggerated way. The elaborate makeup went oddly with the fact that her nose was definitely snubbed, or retrousse as we say in French.

  She was wearing a costume that seemed more suited to the Riviera in summer than Norway in the fall: a shirred, blue, elastic halter that left her midsection bare—someday somebody's going to have to explain to this innocent lad what's so fascinating about navels—and thin white pants riding so low on her nicely rounded hips that it seemed unlikely they'd stay on if she stood up. The pants, snug enough above, flared into yards of material below. One of the things that intrigues me about Women's Lib is how the ladies complain so bitterly about the impractical sheer stockings and unsafe high heels forced upon them by masculine tastes, and how, allowed free choice, they immediately insert themselves into impractical white trousers that will show every smudge, dangerously wide enough to trip them headlong down the first flight of stairs they come to.