Chain Reaction

by Nicholas Guild

  “It’s a bomb. They plan to drop it from an airplane, and it will explode a hundred feet or so above the ground. A city the size of, say, Manhattan would be more or less completely destroyed, and our own estimates are that it would probably kill ninety percent of the population within a two-kilometer radius. Such a weapon would of course decide the war. I’m sure you can appreciate why we would prefer to gain possession of it ahead of the Americans.”

  “Why are you telling me this?”

  “As I said, madam, because we must all understand where we are.”

  With what seemed like a single impulse, both of them looked at Erich Lautner, who straightened up suddenly, as if he had been caught in some shameful act. He took a handkerchief out of his pocket and wiped his face, glancing back and forth between von Niehauser and Jenny and then, finally, down at the body on the floor.

  “You must see, madam, that for Herr Lautner and myself this is no insignificant business. He wishes me to keep you alive because he would prefer that when the police find your husband they should not immediately go looking for him. They will figure everything out eventually, of course, but by then the two of us will be far beyond their reach—you see, we plan to leave for Germany at once. He thinks your murder would be an embarrassment, and there is something to what he says. So, if you will allow it, we will take you with us. You do not strike me as an hysterical woman, so, if you refrain from forcing me to kill you, you might even survive to return to this charming place.”

  With the slow sweep of his arm, he seemed to take in more than just the room, or even just Santa Fe, New Mexico. The gesture implied the whole country, what she might consider home, life itself.

  “But I want you to understand the full extent of your lover’s guilt,” he went on, quite as though Erich were in another room. “We met in my quarters last night, and he gave me a very considerable amount of information on the Los Alamos project, and after he left I made detailed notes. I carry them with me—here.” The point of his middle finger rested on his left shirt pocket.

  “If I am caught, this material will be found on my person and will be quite enough to make sure Herr Lautner is convicted and hanged for espionage, but I want you to know all this so that he won’t have any notion that there is any course open to him but coming with me. If you die, you see, his involvement in both your and your husband’s death will be plain enough. And if we let you go, I’m sure I can count on you to do the patriotic thing and go straight to the police. Either way, if by then the both of us aren’t aboard a ship headed for Germany, he can bid farewell to his life. So you are useful to me, madam, as a guarantee that there will be no turning back.”

  The smile never left his face. He could speak of murder and spying and a bomb that could kill millions of innocent people, and still he could smile and call her “madam” and be as polite as the man who took your order at Macy’s. Perhaps he was the one who was crazy. What kind of a person was it who could do such things, and think such things, and smile and not seem to care?

  “I am a warrior, madam,” he said, in the tone one might have used talking to a child. “And I am used to dealing with unpleasant choices.”

  . . . . .

  “What should we do about him?”

  “Do?” Von Niehauser cocked an eyebrow and let his gaze follow Erich Lautner’s arm down to the lump of bedspread in the middle of the floor. “Oh, that. Why should we do anything about that?”

  “Are you mad, von Niehauser? You forget, this is my room! It is registered in my name! How long do you imagine it would be before the police sent out an alarm and had me arrested?”

  “Did you bring your car?”

  “Yes, of course I brought my car. What has this to do with my car?”

  The two men stared at each other for a moment, and then von Niehauser shrugged his shoulders and turned aside. “Very well, then. Put him in my room. Try not to cover yourself with blood.”

  Lautner didn’t seem to know quite what to do. After hesitating for several seconds, he leaned over at the waist, and stumbled and nearly fell as he tried to pick up Hal’s body. He was breathing hard. He stood there, crouched, a pleading look in his eyes. Finally von Niehauser knelt down and folded the bedspread around the corpse, so that everything was concealed. Then he picked up the bundle and set it lightly in Lautner’s arms.

  “Put him in the bathroom,” he said. “Be sure to listen for the lock clicking shut behind you, and hang out the ‘Do Not Disturb’ sign.” He opened the door, made sure there was no one outside in the corridor, and stepped back to allow Lautner to pass.

  “He’s dead, Erich. He can’t hurt you.” As he spoke, there was a malicious narrowing of his eyes.

  Thus, for a few moments, Jenny and von Niehauser were left alone together, at opposite ends of the narrow bedroom. Jenny remained in her chair, giving the impression she thought of herself as confined there for life.

  “I have not been mistaken, I trust. He was your husband?”

  Von Niehauser made a slight movement toward the door with his left hand.

  “Yes.”

  “I assumed as much. My apologies, madam.”

  Her head jerked up angrily and she searched his face for some indication that he was mocking her, but his expression was grave and composed.

  “Thank you.”

  There was one of those awkward silences that happen to people when they have too much to say to each other. Even when she wasn’t looking at him, Jenny could feel his eyes on her. They seemed to burn right through.

  “What are you going to do with me?” she asked finally, when she thought she might not be able to stand it another second. “Are you going to kill me, or what?”

  “I don’t really know—either that, or let you go as soon as you can do us no more harm. I would prefer that, but it’s for you to decide.” He smiled. The smile was somehow reassuring, as doubtless it was intended to be.

  “And all that about the bomb—was that true?”

  “Yes.”

  Neither of them had moved when Lautner opened the door and stepped back inside the room.

  “There’s still some blood on the rug,” he said, staring stupidly down at a dark reddish smear shaped like the footprint of some large reptile.

  “Clean it up, idiot.”

  . . . . .

  Lautner’s car was parked on a side street, about half a block from the hotel. They didn’t all go together; von Niehauser led Jenny back to his room, where the bathroom door was mercifully shut. He picked up a small suitcase and a long leather sleeve that pretty obviously held a rifle of some sort. Then he walked her down the corridor, and across the lobby, and outside onto the sidewalk. All the time he kept a painful but unobtrusive grip on her arm, just above the elbow.

  “Don’t try to run away,” he said to her quietly. “Your husband’s automatic is in my belt, and if you force me to I’ll kill you before you’ve had a chance to run five yards.”

  It wasn’t so much a threat as a simple statement of fact, delivered in a voice that compelled belief. Thus for Jenny there were no decisions—the hand around her arm was like iron; she couldn’t have gotten free anyway. All she had to think about was how to keep from falling down.

  “You drive.”

  He stood by the curb, still holding Jenny by the elbow, watching Lautner move around the front of the car to the driver’s seat. Then he opened the front door on the passenger’s side and helped Jenny inside. Then he got in the back.

  “Nothing’s changed,” he said, leaning forward so that he was speaking almost directly into her ear. “If we stop at a crosswalk, and you open your door, you’ll be dead before your foot hits the pavement.”

  The car lurched forward and then squealed to a stop as Lautner put on the brakes. He was gripping the steering wheel so tightly that his knuckles were white.

  “Slowly, Erich. No one is after us. And when we are out of town, I want you to remember the wartime speed limits and not exceed forty miles per hour. We shouldn’
t like to be stopped by the police.”

  On the outskirts of Santa Fe there was a jewelry shop with a clock the size of a frying pan in the window. As they passed Jenny could see that it was only a little after eleven-thirty—she had thought somehow that hours must have passed, but they hadn’t. Forty minutes ago she had been thinking about squaring things with her husband and preserving what they would have after Erich Lautner had left town. And now Erich was leaving, and her husband was dead behind a locked bathroom door, and she had been kidnapped by a German spy who seemed to have stolen the secret of how to blow up half the world—her half.

  Maybe she really would go crazy.

  She had never been anywhere south of Santa Fe, so she was surprised to see how flat the country was. From Los Alamos you had the impression that everything was mountains, as far as the eye could see, but Highway 25 was like an ironing board. Here and there in the distance a pile of loose boulders would thrust up two or three hundred feet through the sandy ground—there was no graduation; they were just suddenly there, as if someone had left them behind by accident—but the road simply skirted around them, almost ignoring their existence. You had the feeling that you could have taken the car out of gear and coasted all the way to Albuquerque.

  There was only the desert. Sometimes a line of barbed wire would run parallel alongside for a mile or two, but there was no indication of why anyone would want to enclose such barren ground: no houses, no cattle, no trees, nothing. The cold had long since withered the grass, so there was only the infrequent patch of snow, usually no larger than a bedsheet, to break the yellows and pale reds of this landscape.

  Truly God must have forsaken her here, she thought. There was hardly another car on the road. It was the war, of course; people weren’t supposed to travel long distances by car. Every ten or fifteen minutes something, usually a truck, would swoosh by in the opposite lane, but they never passed anyone going in their direction. In the long straight stretches you could look backward and forward and see yourself alone from one horizon to the other.

  Even when they came into Albuquerque, it wasn’t very different. In the city itself—she supposed you had to call Albuquerque a city—there was plenty of traffic, but they left that behind as soon as they got away from the cross streets.

  And besides, what difference did it make? There wasn’t a second when she couldn’t sense von Niehauser’s eyes on the back of her neck. The man had a way of making his silent presence felt, just as surely as if he kept a strand of wire around your neck and you could feel the tugging of his fingers.

  And Erich—Erich, the accomplice, the German spy since before the beginning of the war—Erich was even more afraid than she was. The flesh under his jaw was puffy and sallow, and he was sweating and breathing through his mouth. His eyes kept flickering up to the rear view mirror—not to check the road behind them, but because of the man sitting in the back seat. What frightened him most, capture or flight?

  “And all that about the bomb—was that true?”

  “Yes.”

  It was with a certain bitterness that Jenny Springer remembered how she had looked down on her husband because he had not contrived to take a more direct role in the war. She had seen all that as brave men in uniforms who fought their hand-to-hand way up a silver beach in Italy, and here the biggest battle of all was being waged within a few hundred miles of her front door. And Hal had been the very first casualty, without ever even knowing it.

  “Turn on the radio.”

  It was the first time anyone had spoken in over two hours.

  Erich’s head jerked around to stare over his shoulder—perhaps he hadn’t believed his ears. But it was Jenny whom von Niehauser had been addressing.

  “Please, madam,” he said, smiling sadly, the lines around his eyes so deep they reminded you of the cracks in a plaster wall. “It will be a long journey. Would you perhaps see if you could find a little music?”

  She tried, and after a few seconds of fumbling she found a station out of Socorro that was playing a scratchy recording of Glenn Miller’s “Tuxedo Junction.” Von Niehauser didn’t seem to object.

  They listened to the strange, throaty sound of the orchestra, and Jenny remembered having read somewhere that Glenn Miller had joined up and was over in England, playing concerts for the troops. Everybody was doing his bit, it seemed—even Hal had done his bit—and here she was, too frightened even to open her mouth.

  There was no one else. Von Niehauser was taking the secret of this grotesque weapon with him, over the border into Mexico, and there was no one else to stop him. No one else even suspected.

  The music stopped after a few minutes, and an announcer read the weather. “. . .Patrol has issued a travelers’ warning. Hazardous conditions will prevail over the southern part of the state. So this might be a good weekend to stay home and conserve gas, folks. Ha, ha, ha.”

  Suddenly, and for the first time, Jenny felt a glimmer of hope.

  “I have to go to the bathroom,” she said.

  25

  “Very well, madam.” Behind her she could hear the crinkle of the map von Niehauser kept on the seat beside him. “Lautner, there is a place a few miles ahead, called Hot Springs. We will need to stop for gasoline at any rate.”

  So it was to be as easy as that.

  They never did see Hot Springs. Only the sign, and a side road, and a Standard Oil station that looked like it would tumble down with the first soft breeze—the pumps were the kind that worked by hand, and you measured the gas by watching the level drop through a glass container in the top.

  “You will accompany madam to the toilet, and you will wait outside the door until she is finished,” von Niehauser said in his quiet voice as the car slowed to a stop. Erich nodded stiffly. “And you will bring her back to the car. Remember what will happen to you if she gets loose, my friend.”

  “You folks want y’r oil checked?”

  The attendant looked about seventy years old and at least three weeks from his last shave. Engine grease had worked its way into the cracks in his gaunt, weathered face, and his eyes were nothing more than pinpoints of smeary blue. He was wearing jeans and scuffed, stained boots and a heavy parka with a hood that made him look faintly like a Dominican friar. Jenny dreaded what the bathroom would be like.

  “That won’t be necessary,” von Niehauser said, leaning forward until his head was nearly next to Lautner’s. “If you could just fill the tank.”

  “Sure, pal.” He glanced through the windshield and frowned when he saw Jenny sitting on the front seat. “Facilities ‘r in the back, if anybody’s int’rested.”

  It was probably about a forty-foot walk from the car to the rear of the station, and there was a steady, biting wind from the south that made you pull your coat around your shoulders. There was only the wind and the high pitched grind of their shoes on the sand, nothing else. Jenny kept her eyes on the ground in front of her and tried to forget that she was a prisoner under guard.

  “Try not to be too long,” Erich said. His collar was turned up and the cold had brought tears to his eyes—at least, one assumed it was the cold. He stood with his back to the wind.

  The “facilities” were remarkably clean. The linoleum floor was worn with polishing, and the sink fairly gleamed. There was a little bar of soap, still in its paper wrapping, lying on a glass shelf under the mirror. Jenny picked it up, hesitated for an instant as she seemed to weigh it in her hand, and then peeled off half the paper.

  MURDER. BLUE PONT., LIC. 254767—was that right? She hoped so. CALL POLICE.

  She stood staring at the mirror. Was there anything else she should add? She had thought at first of writing “spies,” but she was afraid they might think that was a practical joke. They might still think so.

  God, she hoped that old coot would get the urge pretty quick.

  She was almost ready to leave—in fact, she had her hand on the doorknob—when she remembered to go back and give the toilet a flush. She waited, her heart pound
ing, leaning with one hand against the wall. That was a close one.

  She went back, picked up the soap again, and drew a line under the word MURDER. And that would have to do it—she couldn’t see what else there was that she could possibly add. She had had her moment of liberty, and this was the best use of it she could manage.

  As she turned the knob, as soon as she heard the latch click back open, she felt the door rush in on her. The edge caught her in the shoulder; it bounced off and slapped against the wall. And there was Erich, standing in the washroom doorway. He looked up at the message on the mirror, and he grinned.

  “I knew you would try something,” he said, stepping inside. He pushed the door closed behind him. “It is lucky for you, my dear, that von Niehauser doesn’t know you as well as I do. He wouldn’t understand this.”

  It was a tiny room, and Erich was pressing hard against her. She could feel the edge of the sink, sharp against her buttocks. Possibly that was all that kept her from falling down.

  She couldn’t stand to look him in the face, but there was hardly any choice. He kept his hand on her arm, kneading it with his fingers until the muscle ached. It was hard to breathe.

  “What are you going to do?”

  “Do? Why should I do anything?”

  He was still grinning. She could see the yellowish stains on his teeth and smell his aftershave. She had to think. She. . .

  “You are such a clever girl,” he went on, reaching up to touch her face, catching her under the jaw when she resisted. “It might actually work, you know. And von Niehauser is mad—he’s crazy. If he thinks I’m going back with him to that. . .”

  And at last she understood. Good old Erich—he didn’t have any causes in this world. She should have known.

  “But there’s a price, you know. You have to tell them that he forced me. You have to help me get the notes back. But you’ll do that, won’t you, Jenny? We both have our secrets to protect, don’t we?”

  He thought he had her now—you could tell by the triumph in his voice. You don’t tell on me and I’ll return the favor. God, what a fool, to think that any of that could mean anything now.