Skywatcher

by Winona Kent

  It took ten to make him cry out. He couldn’t help it. He could feel a tiny rivulet of blood begin to trickle down the middle of his back, burning hot.

  “That’s better,” Berringer said, obviously pleased with Grosch’s work. “You just say whatever comes into your head. Don’t hold anything in. Tell me how it’s going. Got any bright ideas yet? Any more clever answers?”

  Robin opened his eyes and looked at the man who was staring at him with a quizzical expression on his face. Miserable vermin. He was enjoying this—they both were. Robin swallowed the blood that had been pooling in his mouth since Berringer had hit him.

  “Why don’t we start right at the beginning, hmmm? Maybe that’ll jog the memory a little. We know you were given the robot by a woman—Rosie Mladenovicki.”

  “How do you know that?” Robin said, stalling—stalling—

  “You were observed. Don’t concern yourself—the person who saw you isn’t familiar to you. We know you decided to be inquisitive and take the robot apart. We know you discovered the film. And we know you developed it—all because we found you with the prints. Correction—copies of the prints. Now, who has the originals?”

  Robin didn’t say anything. He could never implicate his brother.

  “How about the translations? They were very good. Who provided those?”

  Or Giselle.

  Berringer reached across and gave the rope a few extra twists around the hook in the wall, pulling Robin onto his toes, stretching his arms tight, and forcing his head back, so he was staring at the roof.

  “That a little better? More comfortable? I’ll let you down eventually. Before you pop your sockets, anyway. I’m a humanitarian. How’s the back?”

  “It hurts,” Robin said.

  “Good, good. It’s supposed to. My friend Mr. Grosch does one hell of a job, don’t you think? He’s good at what he does—he’s had lots of practice. Now, where were we, hmmm? Ah—the prints. Did you develop them all by yourself, or did you have help?”

  “I did them by myself.”

  “Talented individual. And where were you off to with your little packet of documents this afternoon? Going to meet a friend? Going to engage in some undercover espionage work of your own?”

  “I was going home.”

  “So you said. Who did you have lunch with?”

  Robin dragged his head forward and anchored it against his arm. “That was my father,” he said evenly, looking at Berringer. “He’s an actor. You leave him out of this.”

  Berringer spread his hands, grinning. “Just asking,” he said. “Just curious. You didn’t give the robot to him by any chance, did you?”

  “You’re insane,” Robin whispered.

  Berringer stepped away from the wall and grabbed him by the jaw, his eyes blazing. “I take exception to that remark. I am not insane. Grosch may get a little crazy every once in a while, but not me.”

  Robin could hear his heart hammering, exploding in his ears. “Did you push that woman out of the window at UBC?”

  “No.”

  Berringer released his grip and went back to the wall. “Grosch, my friend, it’s time to warm this lad’s shoulders again. Ten more, I think. And ten for good measure. He’s an intelligent fellow; we’ll get answers out of him yet.”

  Evan parked the Chevette on the street and walked back along the block to the Hot Shot video outlet. It was a genuine store: a large red neon sign running the length of the building flashed on and off into the wet night; the windows were slightly steamed; and inside, racked up in the white glare of overhead fluorescents, was the largest collection of Beta and VHS movie rentals he’d ever seen. He had to hand it to the Vancouver branch—when they set up an operation, they went all out.

  He opened the door and wandered inside. One or two rather dubious-looking individuals stood over at the far wall, studying the adult section. Evan did a circuit of the racks displaying the other Beta movies, making note of a couple of his own achievements, prominently propped up between Night of the Living Dead and Eating Raoul. Interesting. In most places they filed him under drama or adventure. Some perversely minded operative in the back had obviously decided that his best two pictures from the past five years belonged with the horror flicks.

  Picking up both cardboard boxes, he sauntered through the shop to the rear, where there was a Live and Let Die poster taped to a door, just below a large black-and-white PRIVATE sign. He knocked and entered.

  The woman he had spoken to on the telephone was sitting behind a desk, reading Robert Ludlum. A name-plate identified her as Donnie Mulligan.

  “I’ve got a bone to pick with you,” Evan said.

  Donnie glanced up, then grinned. “Mr. Harris?”

  “Yes, and what am I doing on the same shelf with The Attack of the Killer Tomatoes? I play a social deviant, not the last of the B-grade cult heroes.”

  “I am sorry.” She took the cardboard sleeves solicitously and scribbled a note on a Things To Do Today memo pad. “We’ll fix it.” She scrunched her nose a little. “Temporary help. You know.”

  She put the two boxes in her “out” tray, fastening the memo to the top with a large pink plastic paper clip, then grinned mischievously at Evan.

  “I’ve got your vigilante movie,” she said. “Would you like Part One, Two, Three, or Four?”

  “You think they’d run out of cities to destroy after the first two, wouldn’t you?” Evan answered. He sat down in one of the two comfortable leather-and-chrome chairs in front of the desk. “I suppose I should take all of them, since I’ve put you to all that trouble. Can I rent a machine?”

  Donnie laughed, wrinkling her nose again. “I’ll make sure they look after you at the front,” she said. “I’m very pleased to meet you, by the way. I’ve been a fan since your Spy Squad days. And afterwards, too, of course. Although I was always madly in love with Jarrod Spencer.” She flashed her eyes at him. “What can I do for you this morning?”

  Evan leaned forward. “I’m looking for a fellow by the name of Wade Berringer. An independent. He usually works with a partner—Grosch. I don’t know his first name. Ever heard of either of them?”

  “As a matter of fact, yes.” Donnie rolled her chair back and pulled a file out of the middle drawer of a cabinet against the wall. “We’ve been keeping an eye on them for a few days now—ever since we lost Ms. Mladenovicki.” She rolled forward to the desk again. She paused. “I was very sorry to hear about her death, Mr. Harris. I understand you two worked together quite closely.”

  Evan nodded. There wasn’t a lot of point in saying anything. Certain risks were always assumed in this profession, and, crass as it seemed, there was nothing further that could be done about it. He’d sent flowers to the funeral, with a card bearing only his first name. It wouldn’t mean a thing to anyone, but details like that didn’t much matter anyway. It was the gesture that counted.

  Donnie opened the file. “We’ve assigned several people to keep an eye on Berringer and Grosch. Randy Lundberg’s on shift at the moment—he’s due to call in at half past two, if you feel like waiting.”

  Evan glanced up at the clock on the wall. Thirty minutes. He shook his head. “Where is he, do you know?”

  “Burnaby, watching Berringer’s house. Here’s the address.” She wrote it down on another slip from the memo pad. “Would you like me to let him know you’re on your way over when he calls in?”

  Lundberg, Evan thought. Brash young fellow—he’d met him once. “Good idea,” he said. “He might shoot me by mistake.” There had been that incident last summer—

  “You’re sure you don’t want to wait?”

  “No. Thanks. There is some urgency in my getting over there. How far is Burnaby?”

  “At this hour? You can probably do it in twenty-five minutes.” Donnie took out a street atlas and drew a line in pencil from the video shop’s location downtown, across False Creek and angling southeast, bisecting the city. “Randy should be in the schoolyard opposite Berringer’s ho
use. He’s driving a black Prelude.” She handed the street atlas to Evan. “Don’t get lost, now.”

  “I’ll try not to. Thank you for your help.”

  “That’s what I’m here for.” She put the file folder away and picked up Robert Ludlum again. “Escapist fiction,” she said. “I’m quite an avid fan. Don’t forget to ask about your VCR at the front.”

  It was dark in the garage, and very cold. Robin shifted his weight onto his right foot, trying to keep his injured one out of the oil and dirt on the floor. The rafter above him creaked as the rope swayed.

  The temptation to give them what they wanted had been overwhelming. In a few more minutes—half an hour—the pain would have driven him past caring. He’d have capitulated.

  It never came to that on television. Jarrod never betrayed anybody.

  Jarrod didn’t have a family. Jarrod barely had an existence beyond his spying adventures.

  Jarrod wasn’t even real.

  Robin shivered. At least he could say, with some degree of dignity, that he’d hung on. His back was on fire: The pain blazed across his flesh, raging and searing, all-consuming. After a certain point, it wasn’t even recognizable as pain anymore. It was a disconnected agony, like spears that soared in and out of his consciousness, in and out—

  He heard himself cry and hated himself for breaking down, now, here, on his own, in the dark.

  “Give me another hour,” Grosch had said, his voice clipped and hard, and accented with German, weaving in and out of Robin’s mind like ink spilled into a great churning pan of water. “I’ll have him talking.”

  “I’m tired.” Berringer’s voice was petulant. “Why don’t we leave him here to think it over, hmm? He can catch up on his beauty sleep later. We want the brain in working order. We want him to reach certain decisions.”

  Grosch grunted. “What if I am unable to break him?”

  “I find that highly unlikely, Grosch.”

  “Mara will certainly not be pleased.”

  Mara…Mara…the name spun space-tracks through Robin’s mind. Mara…

  “Mara will have to be patient. She has faith in us, my friend. Otherwise, she wouldn’t have hired us.”

  They seemed to be walking around as they talked; their voices shifted from Robin’s right to his left side.

  “She is far too concerned about her ultimate reward—the ecstasy of life in the service of the Shirda.”

  There was another laugh—sarcastic and cutting this time—and then Berringer was beside him, holding the bloodied strap up to his face. “How are we, hmmm? Bearing up all right? Ready for more?”

  He studied the half-closed eyes and the stubborn mouth, firmly set, and then patted Robin on the head.

  “Want me to cut you down?”

  Robin swallowed. The word wouldn’t come out.

  “Can’t hear you. What did you say?” He moved closer, taunting him.

  Robin’s voice caught in his throat. He wants me to beg…he wants me to break…His breath came out in a ragged sob: “No.”

  Berringer straightened up. “No?” He glanced at Grosch, then shrugged. “OK.” He started for the door. “See you in the morning, hero.”

  They’d left, quickly and silently, switching off the light as they shut the door.

  He listened to his breathing, and to the steady beat of his heart, and to the ceaseless patter of the rain on the roof outside. I could die here.

  That wasn’t a very pleasant thought. Come on, come on. You’re a long way from dying.

  What did Jarrod do? When he was about to be dropped into the bottomless pit, or dissolved by creeping mounds of caustic foam, or smeared with honey and eaten alive by giant marauding African ants?

  Shit, he didn’t know what went on in Jarrod’s head.

  Jarrod was rescued by Mandy or Huff, that’s what. The scriptwriter bailed him out, five minutes before the final commercial.

  He rested his cheek against his arm. How could anybody save him when they didn’t even know where he was?

  You’re not going to die, he thought, talking to himself, talking to the thing deep inside that controlled life, spirit, courage. You’re not going to die…no more black thoughts…you’re going to be all right…no more black thoughts…no more…

  Evan pulled under a streetlight and consulted the atlas. Where the hell was he? Off Central Park, obviously—there it was, on his right, steamy and black, with tall fir trees whose tops were lost in the low-lying clouds. The whole trouble was, the road Donnie had picked to take him from Kingsway down to Beechcroft didn’t appear to go that way anymore. Drastic things had been done to the topography of the place: an overhead rapid transit line had been erected, streets blocked off where the map showed them open, new diversions created.

  He turned the atlas upside down. Well, all right—if he went that way, it might work out. He started the engine again and splashed off into the rain.

  Beechcroft was at the bottom of a very long, steep hill, a rural-looking road with no sidewalks and houses set back from the pavement, surrounded by woodsy trees and uncut grass. Evan squinted at the addresses in the darkness. There was the school: a low white building. And there was Lundberg’s black Prelude, hiding in a shadowed corner of the parking lot. He circled the block and drove onto the school property from the rear, angling up beside the Prelude with his headlights off.

  Lundberg reached across to unlock the door. “Coffee?” he asked, proffering a large silver thermos, as Evan climbed inside.

  “No thanks, I’m hoping to salvage an hour or two of sleep when I finish here.” He closed the door. “What is that noise?”

  “ZZ Top,” Lundberg shrugged. “I always take my tapes on surveillance. Helps pass the time. You know.”

  Evan didn’t say anything. Far be it from him to quote dogma from the security handbook. No wonder that other agent—unarmed and returning from a mission to buy coffee and donuts—had nearly had his ear shot off in August. Lundberg was too busy listening to “Legs” to pay attention to who was coming up behind him in the dark.

  “Anything unusual over there?” he asked, nodding at the house with the satellite TV dish in front of it, chained to a small flat-bed trailer.

  Lundberg checked his notebook. “Not really. One of them went for Chinese food a couple of hours back. Lights on, lights off. I heard some glass breaking while I was switching tapes, but I didn’t see anything. Could have come from any one of these houses.”

  “How many are in there?”

  “Berringer, Grosch, and some kid.”

  “Some kid?” Evan was instantly alert.

  “Yeah—went in with them late this afternoon.”

  “Willingly or unwillingly?”

  “Hard to say,” Lundberg answered. “He seemed a little out of it. Strung out on something, I figured. They carried him most of the way.”

  “Blond? Jeans, brown jacket?”

  “Could be…Yeah, I guess so.”

  “Still in there?”

  “Sure. Why?”

  Evan had the car door open. “I need you,” he said. “Can you tear yourself away from ZZ Top for a few minutes?”

  “I guess so. Where are we going?”

  “Across the road.”

  “Hey, hold it. I’m supposed to maintain surveillance—not intercept.”

  Evan glared at him. “Switch that tape off and come with me,” he said. “I’m only after the boy—I don’t give a damn about Berringer and Grosch.”

  Lundberg considered Evan’s proposal. Personal business, obviously. “OK,” he said. “Ten minutes.”

  The lights were out in the house. Evan and Lundberg sprinted down the side of the parking lot, keeping to the shadows thrown by the fence and trees on the school property. Crossing the street, they waded into the wet grass. Evan motioned Lundberg around to the back, then peered into the first window he encountered. Living room. Grosch snoring peacefully on the couch. He trudged along to the second window. Bathroom? Kitchen.

  There was
a rickety fence built across the easement between Berringer’s bungalow and the yard beside it. Beyond was a jungle of a garden, all weeds, wild bushes, and long grass, bent sideways by the rain. Evan hopped over the fence and walked around to join Lundberg at the back.

  “Anything?”

  Lundberg shook his head. “There’s the broken window,” he said softly, indicating the window belonging to the first bedroom. A sheet of plywood had been nailed over the frame, only partially covering it. “Nobody inside. I checked. Berringer’s in the second bedroom. No kid.”

  Evan studied the glittering shards on the ground, then picked up a piece of the glass and peered at it, shielding it from the rain with his hand.

  “What?”

  “Blood.” He passed it across to Lundberg, and glanced at the jungle of weeds overgrowing the backyard. “What’s that down there?”

  Lundberg squinted through the mist. “I dunno. A garage or something. Wanna check it out?”

  Evan nodded. He led the way through the tangle of undergrowth, wishing he’d thought to ask if Lundberg had a flashlight. For a senior agent, he was notoriously bad at keeping himself equipped. He hated carrying a gun, and absolutely despised the idea of having to use one. Consequently, his government-issue Beretta spent most of its traveling days tucked into the false bottom of his suitcase, hauled out only when scrupulous airport personnel demanded an explanation for the shadow on the X-ray machine. He’d come out unarmed tonight, too.

  There was a window in the garage. Evan peered into it, unable to see anything through the grease and dirt. He tried the door; it opened easily, squeaking a little as it swung on rusty hinges. The light switch was just inside. He touched the plate, then thought better of it, and took a moment to let his eyes adjust to the murkiness. Lundberg was right behind him, gun out, eyes scanning the yard for sudden movement. There was a noise—a creak in the roof—a sound.

  “Robin?” Evan whispered, stepping into the darkness.

  The sound, again.

  “Watch the house.” Evan hit the light switch. “Oh no—”