Snark Page 10

  “Why would he want this?”

  “My friend, he works for the American government. What do you think he’s after?”

  It was a suspenseful ten seconds before Bulanin nodded. “It makes sense,” he said. “This Sussex Cyclops has his horrible fascination...”

  “More horrible and more fascinating if he can pin it on someone he could make say the Kremlin was behind it.”

  “The public would believe it. They think all spies are monsters.”

  “And you’re an expert, as I am. You know anybody could be made to say anything under the right circumstances.”

  “You are giving me,” Bulanin said, “more reason to kill you.”

  Trap sprung. “It doesn’t have to be that way,” Leo told him.

  “I was sure you’d be able to suggest an alternative.” Bulanin didn’t smile, just looked at Leo expectantly.

  “Kill Bellman,” Leo said.

  “Again? I think not.”

  “I can find out exactly where he is for you by late this afternoon. If you have him taken care of, it will be safer for me to retrieve the old man. You get what you want—your ambition, wisdom, and survival instinct are all happy—”

  “And you live.”

  Moustache or no moustache, Leo decided to risk a smile. “And I live,” he said.

  “You would still have the police to deal with. And you’d be at my mercy.”

  “I’m at your mercy now. And I’m not worried about the police. I told you from the beginning, what I’m hoping to buy with the old man is a welcome in Moscow. I am not ambitious—I like the game. I could be very useful to a man with ambition.”

  “Let’s go outside,” Bulanin said. “I would like a cigarette, I think.”

  Leo suppressed the sigh of relief he felt building. Home free. It was a shame to have to forego (again) his personal revenge on Driscoll. Bellman. But as Bulanin had said, this was a matter of survival. Let the Russians take care of Bellman.

  All Leo had to do was to find Sir Lewis Alfot by the time they did.

  5

  THE HARDEST PART AFTER the escape itself had been getting to the storage company in Hove. Sir Lewis had walked along the Kingsway through the night, cursing the cold wind and the age that made him feel it. He shivered, but he shouldn’t have shivered. It had been cold in Europe, too, and the Germans had been shooting at him on sight.

  No one here was going to shoot him. Only his friends were looking for him. Except, of course, for one young American kidnapper, perhaps. Sir Lewis wasn’t all that worried about him—if there was any justice at all, that young man would have other things on his mind. Sir Lewis smiled, but the wind got him cursing again. He pulled the hood up over his head and shrank back deeper into the anorak.

  It was foolish to worry about the cold. Bad tactics, demoralizing. If he wanted to be warm, all he had to do was stop at a phone box and dial 999, or ask a stranger to take him to the police. His face was well enough known. He had no doubt it had appeared in the newspapers and on telly frequently enough since they’d grabbed him. He’d find somebody to take him in. He could be welcomed with everything short of a fatted calf. If that was what he wanted.

  Which it was not. He was cold (don’t think about it, he told himself angrily) and he was tired, but he was alive, he was free, he was back in the hunt. He was the master of the hunt. The years behind the desk hadn’t dulled his enthusiasm for it, and he was pleased with himself to know that. If he went back now, he wouldn’t even have the desk, just chores to do for the Americans.

  The Americans. They were all right, couldn’t have staved off the Russians this long without them, but they had the annoying habit of wanting to teach their grandmother.

  Not that Sir Lewis wasn’t willing to learn. For example, the plan he was walking through the wind to execute had been inspired by the cinema comedian W.C. Fields. Sir Lewis would take a good idea where he found it.

  He had read it years ago in a magazine while waiting for a train. This Fields, it seemed, had a pathological fear of losing his money, being wiped out by another Depression, or by a lawsuit, or whatever. To hedge against that, he opened bank accounts all over America under feigned names, figuring they couldn’t all be wiped out.

  It had struck Sir Lewis as a natural precaution for an agent to take at the beginning of a risky operation, not just money, but clothes, gun, new papers, whatever he might need if he were forced to run. Prepared fall-back position, as it were. It worked for the military.

  So thirteen months before, when he first decided (reluctantly) that the Cyclops operation had become inevitable he had placed caches of supplies all around Sussex. Not anticipating failure, mind you—it was a poor planner who launched an operation without confidence—but in recognition of the fact that no one can anticipate everything.

  It was well he had. He certainly hadn’t anticipated some crazy lefties coming along to kidnap him. And even if he had done, he wouldn’t have dreamed that once having escaped from them, he’d decide to remain at large with no interference whatever.

  But Sir Lewis had spent most of the waking moments of his captivity thinking, and he didn’t like the pictures his mind showed him. The kidnappers had known his schedule too well—Sir Lewis hadn’t expected to be home that day, and the next day he was going to leave for his villa in Malta to tone down some of the language in his report. They’d grabbed him at the one opportunity they had.

  That might have been a coincidence. And it might have been a coincidence that the kidnappers had worked so well around his (unasked for) bodyguard’s schedule of patrol.

  Sir Lewis didn’t think so, as much as he wanted to. He wanted to because the alternative hurt too much. A leak in the Section. He felt as if his own child had betrayed him.

  Thinking of that made him so angry, he forgot about the wind.

  Within six hours of his escape from the kidnappers, he had money, a new suit, a suitcase, a toupee, a small revolver and ammunition, materials for disguise or demolition, and soft dental-appliance pads to wear in his cheeks to change the shape of his face. He had eaten two sausage rolls and a bag of crisps purchased at an all-night petrol station. When the sun came up, he had a proper breakfast, checked into a hotel, and slept the day through.

  That evening, he went out to a phone box and placed a call to Robert at the Section. Sir Lewis still was planning to solve this problem (all their problems) by himself, but he had to let Robert know that something was rotten in the Section. Robert hadn’t been the one who’d sent him packing. Queer or no, Robert was a good man, and deserved that much of a briefing.

  He spent the rest of the night making plans. The next day, he rented a car—he had a vehicle operator’s license in his new name with the rest of the stuff—and drove to the Advance. He wanted to watch it for a while, and see what Tipton had his men up to there.

  What he’d seen was Felicity Grace and some young man leaving the cottage.

  They got into a car he knew was Felicity’s and drove south, back toward Brighton. Sir Lewis followed.

  He thought of many reasons for following Miss Grace over the next several hours. Who was that she was with? Could she be the traitor? Sir Lewis doubted it, but then he would have doubted anyone could be. On the other hand, sooner or later, he might need some help, and Felicity was a good agent. He’d have to go home sometime, and she was as good a person to approach as any. It might also help him in his own work to know what she was up to, she and this young man he didn’t recognize.

  All rationalizations. Sir Lewis knew that, didn’t worry about it. He had a hunch, and he taught his people never to ignore a hunch.

  Now he sat in a hotel room across the hall from his former employee and her friend, listening, waiting for them to make a move. The hotel was nearly deserted. If there was any noise to hear, it was the wind, or it was the two of them.

  About eight o’clock he heard the door open across the way. Voices. A man saying, “How far is the marina? Should I have them call us a cab?”
Felicity replying, “No, we’ll take the bus. We could almost walk if it weren’t so cold.”

  Sir Lewis thanked God they weren’t going to make him walk the oceanfront again. He heard the door close, and a key turn in a lock. He waited a few moments, then followed them.

  6

  “NEXT TIME,” BELLMAN SAID, “we take a cab.”

  “We must have taken a wrong turn somewhere.”

  “Just one?”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” Bellman said. “It’s fascinating. The place advertises in the newspaper. They answer the phone, and take our reservation. They just neglect to tell anybody that the restaurant is somewhere that’s inaccessible at night.”

  “I’ve been here only in the daytime,” Felicity said. “It will be a damn long time before I come here again, too.”

  They were good-natured, which each considered to be something of an achievement. It was cold now, much colder than it had been during the day, and clouds rolled in, bringing with them a thin, misty drizzle, just on the point of freezing.

  The bus had let them off on a ridge above the ocean. Crossing the road and looking down, they could see the marina, a graceful fantasy of looping concrete quays, over- and underpasses for cars and pedestrians, and boat lights reflected in the still water of the harbor. They could even see the sign proclaiming the name of the seafood restaurant they wanted to get to.

  What they couldn’t do was get to it. They found a likely entrance to the marina, a ramp that took off from the ridge and soared over the water like a gray rainbow. Several ramps peeled off it. They chose the one on the left, since the quay the restaurant sat on seemed to be in that direction.

  Wrong choice—the way was blocked by a huge pile of sand which filled up the space between bridge supports. It had been left there no doubt to be used as construction material for new complications to the marina.

  They doubled back to where the roads converged, and tried again, this time coming to a tall wire fence on a wood frame, whose gate was uncompromisingly locked.

  “There’s the restaurant,” Bellman said. “Want to climb over?”

  “I could, you know.”

  “Never doubted it. I asked you if you wanted to.”

  “Let’s save it for a last resort.”

  They went back to the divergence. There were two approaches remaining. “Let’s take the one on the far right,” Felicity said.

  “That one looks like it goes to Hove, for God’s sake. Cornwall, maybe. The opposite direction entirely.”

  “Have you read Through the Looking Glass?”

  “Right. Let’s try it.” The path led them on an interesting walk to several locked gates, past large construction equipment, and through unlit tunnels that resembled nothing so much as drainage pipes.

  Bellman’s good nature was giving way to impatience, to say nothing of hunger. But there was more. The seeming irrationality of the layout, the dark, the quiet. The impression that someone was watching, enjoying their frustration.

  “If I didn’t think it would give you doubts about my manhood, I’d tell you how spooky this place was.”

  “There’s nothing wrong with your manhood. It is spooky down here.”

  They smiled at each other, amused by the idea of two highly trained intelligence agents afraid of walking around in the dark.

  “The old man who got off the bus when we did is probably at the restaurant by now. We should have asked him the way,” Felicity said.

  “If he was heading for the restaurant, he’s probably on dessert by now. Oh, no!” He pointed and started to laugh. Looming ahead of them again was the sand pile.

  “What’s that?” Felicity said.

  “It’s the sand pile that stopped us the first time we tried to get down here.”

  “I mean that noise.”

  Bellman listened to a faint tapping noise, regular but rapid, that soon sorted itself out into the footfalls of several joggers. Only a jogger, he thought, would want to run through a freezing drizzle through southeast England’s answer to a gigantic outdoor Laff-in-the-Dark, but if they were confident enough to run through here, they probably knew their way around.

  It was impolite, he knew, to ask a jogger to stop, but he could shout out a question, and perhaps get an answer yelled back over a shoulder, if any of them had enough breath.

  They came out from one of the pipe-tunnels, three of them, middle-aged, but golden-haired and obviously glowing with health. No problem with breath shortage. They were probably Finnish marathoners or something, tuning up for a race.

  “I’ll ask these guys,” he told Felicity.

  “Might as well do,” she said.

  “How do we get from here to the restaurant?”

  At which point somebody fired a gun. One shot. Bellman saw the little explosion on the side of the sand pile.

  The front runner of the joggers looked angry. He cursed in a foreign language (somewhere in Bellman’s brain a circuit connected—Russian) and then asked who fired the shot. At the same time, he reached under his sweatshirt and came up with a .357 Magnum. Bellman ran two steps toward the sand pile and dove for cover, wondering as he did so how far a Magnum would penetrate through sand. Felicity, he was glad to see, was already there, scrambling through the seam where the sand rested up against the concrete abutment of the overpass.

  A geyser of sand shot up a foot from Bellman’s head. He wished he was an armadillo, or a mole. The man was making dire predictions about the fate of the idiot who fired that first shot.

  Bellman was becoming one with the cold, wet sand, burrowing, climbing, trying to get around to the other side. Sand was in his shoes, his hair, his ears, his mouth, his eyes.

  He felt a hand on his wrist and fought free. Then he saw it had been Felicity, trying to pull him over to safety. And making an unnecessary target of herself.

  “Get your head down!” he told her.

  She did, but she reappeared a few seconds later. She had disappeared just long enough to go to her boot and come up with her gun. Now, as she had at the airport, she was taking careful aim and squeezing off shots.

  She winged one of them, which gave the other two something to think about, and gave Bellman time enough to make it to reasonable safety. He crouched beside her, hugging the sand, listening. Felicity pulled his sleeve and pointed to the restaurant about two hundred yards down an unobstructed quay. She mouthed the words phone and help.

  Bellman shook his head angrily. They couldn’t make it to safety before the joggers could get over the pile. They’d be naked to two, possibly three guns. Besides, what was to say they’d be safe if they made it to the restaurant? Who knew how many people these bastards would be willing to kill in order to get the two of them?

  They had to meet them here, and take them. Bellman tried to close his eyes to picture what was happening on the other side of the mound, but sand at the edges of his contact lenses made that agony. He could feel his eyes start to tear, and welcomed it. He’d just have to picture what they were doing with his eyes open.

  They’d come around the sides, one to the right and one to the left. Slowly, carefully, guns drawn. The wounded man, if he were able, would back them up from a distance, in case Felicity and he tried to come over the top, or if they somehow handled one of the Magnums and tried an end run.

  Okay. That’s what they were doing. Now, what the hell was he going to do?

  A preemptive strike. Bellman made some gestures to Felicity, but if she understood what he was going to do, she had gotten it entirely through telepathy. She did the right thing, though, stationed herself about two-thirds of the way toward the right wall, to give her gun hand a better advantage against the man coming over that side.

  Bellman wished he could wink at her. Instead, he drew the gun Felicity had given him, and nodded. He started climbing up the mound.

  As long as he was making wishes, he wished the damned sand pile could have been less flat on top. As it was, he was going t
o have to show altogether too much of his body before he could get a shot off.

  What couldn’t be changed had to be dealt with. He crouched as close to the top as he could, got the best purchase the sand would allow, then threw himself forward in a dive that plowed a furrow through the sand. As soon as he landed he reached out with both hands around the gun, raised himself on his chest, and snapped off two shots at the wounded man, who had been standing with his gun dangling nonchalantly from his good arm. Not smart. Bellman’s first bullet took him in the base of the throat, the second between the eyes as he fell. He never did let go of the gun.

  Bellman couldn’t take the time to admire his work. He pulled his feet up under him, and with a yell, launched himself feet first down the left side of the sand pile. A shot roared past his ear, but that was all the man (the lead jogger, Bellman saw) had time to do before Bellman landed on him.

  The impact knocked both guns loose, and they fought hand-to-hand in the treacherous footing. The Russian pushed off the abutment and sent Bellman sprawling. Bellman shook his head to clear his vision just in time to see a kick aimed for his face. He twisted and took the sneakered foot on his shoulder, where it did no harm. Bellman grabbed for the other foot, the planted one, caught it in both hands, pulled, and twisted.

  The Russian was thrown violently off balance and went down. His head smacked against the concrete on the way. Bellman was on him before the sand settled. He had his right arm around his throat and his knee in the small of his back. He pulled above and pushed below and waited for the crack.

  When it came it sounded like a gunshot. It took a full second before Bellman realized that what he had heard was a gunshot, simultaneous with the cracking of the spine.

  Bellman froze. A lorry went by on the road above. He wanted to call for Felicity, but he didn’t dare. If she’d been the one shot, he still had someone to deal with.

  He waited. Silence. He thought about the noise he’d heard, decided at last that it hadn’t been loud enough to be a Magnum.