Silent Partner

by Leigh Brackett

  “But—”

  “Whoever is mixed up in this, Hassani or somebody else, it has to be some kind of plot against the government, doesn’t it?”

  “Well, yes, but—”

  “Have you paid any attention at all to what’s been happening in the Middle East?”

  Tony looked uneasy.

  “Don’t feel too ashamed,” said Zacharian bitterly. “The boys in Washington haven’t done much better. The Commies have been able to parlay Arab nationalism into a massive Russian presence in the Socialist countries of Egypt, Iraq, and Syria. The Mediterranean is becoming a Russian lake, and they're looking hard at the Persian Gulf, thinking big thoughts. They support Jordan against Israel, while at the same time they try to bring down Hussein and his moderate, pro-Western regime. They support the militant Arab minority in Lebanon against the pro-Western Christian majority. They're having a field day. But up north they've got two big problems, Turkey and Iran, Moslem but non-Arab, democratic, strongly pro-Western, uninvolved in the Arab-Israeli bitterness and therefore a powerful force for stability. They’re a barrier and a balance wheel, and they're our allies. Anything that hurts either country hurts us, hurts the whole free world, could play hell all along the line eastward clear into India . . . and we're providing the guns. We can’t have this, Tony. If we don't stop it— Oh hell, why am I giving you a lecture! You don't care what happens in the Middle East or the Middle West, either, as long as it doesn’t bother you personally. But this does.” He gave Tony a shove toward the door. “So go on home and get thinking.”

  “Oh, Mr. Wales,” said Corbett, “I’d appreciate it if you’d spend a quiet evening indoors. Makes it much easier for us to keep an eye on you.”

  The full implication of Agnelli’s assignment finally got through the clutter in Tony’s head. “But,” he said, “hey, wait a minute. You said you were going to watch Byron and . . . them, and they don’t know I was— Who would—”

  “I don’t know that anybody would, Mr. Wales, but I’m not going to take any risks as long as there’s a possibility that you’ll cooperate with us.”

  “Meaning that if I don’t—”

  “What do you expect me to do, guard you for the rest of your life?”

  “Oh, God,” said Tony. “I’m going. And I may just not stop.”

  Behind his back Corbett nodded to Agnelli, meaning, “See he doesn’t try it.”

  The four of them went out and down the unidentifiable corridor to the elevators. Tony moved glumly, staring at his own feet.

  “Why would they give you their right names?”

  “Byron and Cornellis? You mean if they really were out to get me?” Zacharian shrugged. “They’d have to be legitimate to set me up. They’d know I wouldn’t buy a phony. And anyway, why not? Either I don’t live to tell about it, or they haven’t given a thing away. That’s why there’s been no attempt at bugging and why they didn’t try to follow the van. I’m good, Tony, and they know I’m good. I'd spot a bug or a wiretap, and I’d spot a tail, and I’d know. I’d be on my guard. They played it the smart way, clean. They just didn’t count on my making the tie-up with you.”

  “If they really were out to get you.”

  “Right. If they just came in to buy a rug—what the hell.” Tony shook his head. “What a business. I never realized people really did it. I thought it was just something you sneered at on TV or laughed at with James Bond.”

  Agnelli said bitterly, “That's the whole bloody trouble. Nobody believes in us.”

  The elevator took them down. George and Zacharian got back into the van and drove away. Agnelli put Tony into the back of another van, an unmarked one with nothing in it. Tony rode blind again for fifteen or twenty minutes. Then the van stopped, and Agnelli let him out. They were in a driveway behind a house, somewhere in Hollywood.

  Tony said pleasantly, “Do you do this kind of crap all the time?”

  “No,” said Agnelli. “You’re unusually privileged. They don't often bring people to the office.”

  There was a Chevy sedan in the drive, and Agnelli motioned Tony into it. He drove out onto a quiet street with old palm trees, got onto Santa Monica Boulevard, and began fighting his way toward the beach.

  “We try to keep our operational headquarters a secret,” he explained. “It's a pain having to move everything and find another cover. Sooner or later, of course, somebody or something slips, and we're off again.”

  Tony said, “Tough.”

  “Usually it is,” said Agnelli. “They'd like to have our files. So far they've killed four of our men trying to get them.” He smiled. “So you see, you're all right, Mr. Wales. If they ever ask you where we live, you won’t have anything to tell them.”

  They did not talk after that. Tony sat sullen and ugly, scowling at nothing. Agnelli drove, breasting traffic, heat, smog, carbon monoxide, and municipal buses with stoical fortitude. They came eventually to the cooler, cleaner air and the blue glitter of the Pacific under the sun. Agnelli turned onto Ocean Avenue, beside Palisades Park.

  He stopped for a traffic light, and Tony got out.

  Agnelli shouted, “Hey!” and grabbed for the swinging door.

  “I’ve got to walk,” said Tony. “I’ve got to think.”

  He walked. Agnelli swore and slammed the door shut and followed him, but he paid no attention to that. What he really wanted to do was run, but there were too many people about, sitting on benches in the sun or strolling or lying on the green grass. Eventually he came to the end of the park. at the pier bridge. He turned onto it. Below him the beach was still crowded, though the exodus was beginning as the sun got lower and the breeze fresher. Children dabbled in the thin edges of the sea. Farther out surfers bobbed on the swells. Tony walked straight out to the end of the pier and stood there gripping the rail, letting the sunlight drench him, cramming his lungs with the salt air and the stink of fish.

  Standing that way, he could almost make himself believe that the whole day since Zacharian's call had been a bad trip, something that had not really happened.

  Except that it was a very bad trip. It would not go away.

  Presently Agnelli came up behind him on foot and stood smoking a dozen feet away, leaning against the fence of the launching area. Tony did not see him. He was looking out beyond the breakwater and the rocking boats, at the wide free open nothing that went straight on over the edge of the world. He yearned to lose himself in it.

  But he couldn't. There were things dragging at him, holding him back. Byron and Cornelliss. Ellen Lofting. Harvey Martin, asleep in his narrow bed on Dartmoor. Zacharian. Corbett.

  And Karim Hassani.

  And himself, saying, “Look, Harvey’s our friend and he gets in, or there won't be any more Hassani-Wales. I'll break it up.”

  Suddenly to his horror he was crying, right there in public for everyone to see. He couldn't help it. If Karim had done this to him—

  Agnelli spoke close to him. “Mr. Wales, are you all right?”

  After a minute he could see and talk again. “I should never have had any friends.”

  Agnelli said nothing.

  “Go call Corbett,” Tony said. “Tell him I'll go to Iran, just as fast as he can get me there.”

  Agnelli looked surprised.

  “I have to know," Tony said.

  “I've got a radiophone in the car," Agnelli said. “Have you had your cholera shots? Well, under the circumstances they'll probably waive them."

  They walked back to the public parking lot where Agnelli had left the Chevy. Tony saw the people streaming by—windblown, sunburned, brown boys walking with their arms around brown girls in bikinis. They looked strange to him; they seemed to be on the other side of a glass wall. He sat watching the waves roll in on Muscle Beach while Agnelli made the call. He used to drink beer and play volleyball there with Harvey and Karim. He felt a hundred years old.

  “You've brightened Corbett’s whole day,” Agnelli said when he finished. “Get yourself packed." He too
k the Chevy screeching out of the lot.

  They parked in the tenants' garage underneath Tony's building and went up to the apartment—Agnelli alert and careful, Tony in a daze. He had almost forgotten about Sandra, but when he opened the door, she was sitting there on the sofa with a glass in one hand and a cigarette in the other, her eyes bright in her little hard face like shiny marbles. Fortunately she had her clothes on. She looked at Agnelli and smiled and shook her head.

  “This just doesn't seem to be my day. More business, Tony?"

  “Yeah.” He made the introductions. Sandra finished the rest of her vodka.

  “What about tonight?”

  “I’m sorry,” Tony said.

  “Well." Sandra rose, still smiling, and picked up her handbag. “Good-bye."

  “I’m sorry," Tony said again. “I have to take a trip, Sandra. I’ll see you when I get back.”

  “Maybe.” She went to the door. "Don’t hurry. Enjoy yourself. Oh, by the way—did you get your call?”

  “What do you mean? What call?"

  “At Zacharian’s. Some man was trying to get hold of you. I told him you’d gone there. Fine thing. I've been stood up before but never for an Armenian rug peddler. So long, Tony, and thanks for a lovely day.”

  She was halfway into the hall when Tony grabbed her and pulled her back.

  11

  Angry, just beginning to be alarmed, she stared at them. Agnelli shut the door.

  Tony said, “Who called? When?”

  She pulled against his grip. “What’s the matter with you? Let go.”

  “Who was it? What man?”

  “I don’t know; he didn’t leave his name.” Her eyes narrowed, became wary. “You’re in trouble, aren’t you? You and Zacharian, up to something. I should have—”

  “Oh, shut up.” He shook her. “When did the man call? What time?”

  “About ... I don’t know, one thirty, I guess.”

  “What did he say?”

  “Nothing. Just asked if you were here, and I said no, and he asked where—”

  “And you told him.”

  “Sure. Why not?” She looked from Tony to Agnelli and then at the door and back again.

  In a tight voice Tony asked, “How did he talk? Did he have an accent?”

  “He sure did. He sounded like a refugee from the Beverly Hillbillies—sugah. Now you let me out of here, or I’m going to start yelling. I don’t want any part of your problems, and—”

  Tony opened the door and pushed her out.

  Agnelli said, “What was all that about?”

  “I have to talk to Jake,” said Tony. He sat down at the small desk where the phone was and began to fumble in his book for Zacharian’s home number, which he had not used very often and could not possibly remember. His hands shook so that he could hardly turn the pages.

  Agnelli picked up the phone. He listened carefully, breaking the dial tone several times to hear it come on again. Then he dialed a number.

  “Your boy is in a flap,” he said. “Want to talk to him?” He listened a moment, then handed the phone to Tony. “Go ahead.”

  Stricken by a sudden thought, Tony said, “How do you know—”

  “That your apartment isn’t bugged or your line tapped? How do you think we earn our money?”

  “You mean you—”

  “Ever since Jake first got curious about you. We wished somebody would bug you because then we’d have been sure, but they refused to make it that easy for us. Want to complain about invasion of privacy?”

  “Oh, hell,” said Tony, and spoke into the phone. “Jake?”

  “What’s your trouble now?”

  Tony told him. Zacharian’s voice became alert and sharp.

  “Do you know anyone who sounds like that?”

  “No. It could be somebody I don’t know. I mean, maybe he got my name from somewhere and wanted to talk to me . . . but at one thirty, somebody calling up to find out where I was—”

  “Mm. It might just have occurred to the boys to check. And they seem to be pretty good at using one accent to cover another.”

  “But how?” said Tony. “How?”

  “You mean how would they connect you with the business at the shop? Assuming that they came to eliminate me and then got a whiff of trap, they’d wonder what had made me suspicious. Right?”

  “Yes, but—"

  “Well, Tony, why would you think they might want to eliminate me in the first place?”

  “Because you're a spy."

  “That isn’t reason enough in itself. We know a lot of them; they know a lot of us. It's only when one of us becomes a danger that they decide to take us out—or vice versa. So if your friends were there to kill me, it was because I was getting too close to pay dirt, and that would have to be through you.”

  “You mean . . . somebody's been watching me?"

  "Probably. And that would lead them to me, because I've taken an unusual interest in you since London. They'd start checking on me; then if they were sufficiently alarmed, they'd do something. Which would mean we are close, awfully close—if. But we can't be sure."

  “No,” said Tony. “Christ, no, we can't be sure about anything. But I'm going to Iran and get sure, and when I do, I’m either going to kill Karim or come back here and kill you.”

  “Fair enough,” said Zacharian. “Let me talk to Agnelli.”

  Tony gave Agnelli the phone and went to the kitchen, where the vodka was. He tipped the bottle, gulping. He heard Agnelli explaining arrangements to Zacharian. The vodka slammed into his middle like a piledriver. He felt hollow all the way down. Agnelli said, “Okay, I'll wait.” He hung up and came to the door.

  “He’s going to call Corbett. There may be a shift in the plan. Why don’t you go ahead and get packed?"

  “If that was one of them, and they know,” said Tony, “they’ll try to kill me, won't they?”

  Agnelli said, “Who knows? That's why we're here. Don't worry, Mr. Wales."

  “Worry?" said Tony. “Me? What's the use? I'm just the football. I don't call the plays; they do." He banged the bottle down and shoved past Agnelli, went into the bedroom, and began to pack.

  The phone rang. and Agnelli answered it. “Okay," he said presently. “Right.” He hung up and came to Tony. “We're going to wait till eight o'clock. It's dark then, and the rush hour traffic has cleared out." He looked at his watch. “Plenty of time. You got any food in this place?"

  “Some,” said Tony. “But who wants food?”

  "I do,” said Agnelli, and went to the kitchen.

  Tony finished his packing, showered, shaved, dressed, dug out his passport, arranged his topcoat and hat over his locked suitcase. “I travel, and I take it off my income tax, and I have myself a ball.” Agnelli was in the kitchen, munching on whatever he could find there. Tony took the vodka bottle and sat by himself. When eight o’clock came, he was smashed—and pliant as a doll.

  Zacharian came. Together he and Agnelli got Tony and his bag downstairs, Tony reasonably steady but stepping high, looking straight ahead, and saying nothing. The garage was dark, and Tony wondered vaguely what had happened to the lights.

  "Come on,” said Zacharian. “Get into the van.”

  He could see the shape of it, parked beside Agnelli’s car. George had the back door open. They pushed him toward it, and he planted his feet.

  "No,” he said, and turned toward the shadowy form beside him. “My old buddy Jake. He’s going to get me killed.”

  He got one arm free. Zacharian hit him a sharp blow with his open hand, and Tony went instantly to sleep.

  When he woke up, he was not in the van at all. He was in the back of Agnelli’s car, on the floor, covered with a blanket. Agnelli was shaking him and telling him to get out. He stumbled up into cold night air. They were on a dark road somewhere in the middle of nothing. Another car was pulled up beside them, and another man helped Agnelli get him into it. He wanted to ask them what it was all about, but it was too much troubl
e. He went back to sleep again.

  He was awake, red-eyed and fidgety, when the car turned into the entrance of a private airfield outside Palm Springs. It was still dark. The air was icy, dry, piercingly clean. The stars burned close to the ground. The car stopped in front of the small administration building. Tony got out and followed the driver in.

  Corbett was there with a third man, looking old and cruel and tired.

  "I’m glad you made it safely, Mr. Wales.”

  Tony shook his head. “I thought they put me in the van.”

  “Be glad they didn't. A truck sideswiped it on the freeway. It went into the fence and then was rammed by another car that couldn’t stop in time. The truck didn’t stop, of course. The van was demolished. Zacharian managed to walk away from it; George and the driver of the car weren’t that lucky. If you’d been in the van, you wouldn’t have been that lucky either. Am I getting through to you, Mr. Wales? George and Zacharian went out as decoys, so you are alive and George is dead and an innocent bystander is in the hospital. I hope you appreciate that.”

  Tony tried to speak, but he seemed to have run out of things to say. All he could manage was a sick expression and two names.

  “Byron and Cornellis?”

  “Oh, no. They were safe and sound at the hotel.”

  “Then it—it could have been an accident?”

  “If you believe in miracles, yes, it could have been. Either way it works out about the same for you, doesn’t it? George was a good man. I hope you're worth him.” He nodded to the man beside him. “He’s all yours, Markey." He went off.

  Markey, who looked like any ordinary businessman with a porkpie hat and attaché case, led Tony out to where a small jet of the company-executive type was warming up. Tony climbed in. The runway lights went up. The plane taxied out, and he was on his way to Iran, feeling like the wrath of God and wondering how you got to be worth another man's life.

  Wondering how all this could happen to someone who had never wanted anything except to stay out of trouble, to let and be let alone. The perfect pacifist.

  Wondering if he could stay drunk all the way to Teheran. Because it seemed certain that somebody had tried to kill him, and it was a new feeling, one that was going to take a lot of getting used to.