by Tom Clancy
“The camp commander was an enemy of my country. So are you. You got one minute.”
Hicks looked at the knife that Clark was turning in his hand. and knew that he had no chance at all. He’d never seen eyes like those across the coffee table from him, but he knew what they held.
Kelly thought about the previous week as he sat there. remembering sitting in the mud generated by falling rain, only a few hundred yards from twenty men who ought now to be free. It became slightly easier for him, though he hoped never to have to obey such orders again.
Hicks looked around the room, hoping to see something that might change the moment. The clock on the mantel seemed to freeze as he considered what was happening. He’d faced the prospect of death in a theoretical way at Andover in 1962, and subsequently lived his life in accordance with the same theoretical picture. The world had been an equation for Walter Hicks, something to be managed and adjusted. He saw now, knowing it was too late, that he was merely one more variable in it, not the guy with the chalk looking at the blackboard. He considered jumping from the chair, but his visitor was already leaning forward, extending the knife a few inches, and his eyes fixed on the thin silvery line on the parkerized blade. It looked so sharp that he had trouble drawing breath. He looked at the clock again. The second hand had moved, after all.
Peter Henderson took his time. It was a weekday night, and Washington went to bed early. All the bureaucrats and aides and special-assistants-to rose early and had to have their rest so that they’d be alert in the management of their country’s affairs. It made for empty sidewalks in Georgetown, where the roots of trees heaved up the concrete slabs of sidewalk. He saw two elderly folk walking their little dog, but only one other, on Wally’s block. Just a man about his age, fifty yards away, getting into a car whose lawnmower sound marked it as a Beetle, probably an older one. Damned ugly things lasted forever if you wanted them to. A few seconds later he knocked on Wally’s door. It wasn’t fully closed. Wally was sloppy about some things. He’d never make it as a spy. Henderson pushed the door open, ready to reprove his friend, until he saw him there, sitting in the chair.
Hicks had his left sleeve rolled up. His right hand had caught on his collar, as though to help himself breathe, but the real reason was on the inside of his left elbow. Peter didn’t approach the body. For a moment, he didn’t do anything. Then he knew he had to get out of here.
He removed a handkerchief and wiped the doorknob. closed the door, and walked away, trying to keep his stomach under control.
Damn you, Wally! Henderson raged. I needed you. And to die like this—from a drug overdose. The finality of death was as clear to him as it was unexpected. But there remained his beliefs, Henderson thought as he walked home. At least those hadn’t died. He would see to that.
The trip took all night. Every time the truck hit a bump, bones and muscles screamed their protest. Three of the men were hurt worse than he was, two of them unconscious on the floor, and there wasn’t a thing he could do for them with his hands and legs bound up. Yet there was satisfaction of a sort. Every destroyed bridge they had to drive around was a victory for them. Someone was fighting back; someone was hurting these bastards. A few men whispered things that the guard at the back of the truck didn’t hear over the engine noise. Robin wondered where they were going. The cloudy sky denied him the reference of stars, but with dawn came an indication of where east was, and it was plain that they were heading northwest. Their true destination was too much to hope for, Robin told himself, but then he decided that hope really was something without limit.
Kelly was relieved it was over. There was no satisfaction in the death of Walter Hicks. He’d been a traitor and coward, but there ought to have been a better way. He was glad that Hicks had decided to take his own life, for he wasn’t at all sure that he could have killed him with a knife—or any other way. But Hicks had deserved his fate, of that one thing he had no doubts. But don’t we all, Kelly thought.
Kelly packed his clothing into the suitcase, which was large enough to contain it all, and carried it out to the rented car, and with that his residence in the apartment ended. It was after midnight when he drove south again, into the center of the danger zone, ready to act one last time.
Things had settled down for Chuck Monroe. He still responded to break-ins and all manner of other crimes, but the slaughter of pushers in his district had ended. Part of him thought it was too bad. and he admitted as much to other patrolmen over lunch-in his case, the mercifully unnamed three-in-the-morning meal.
Monroe drove his radio car in his almost-regular patrol pattern, still looking for things out of the ordinary. He noted that two new people had taken Ju-Ju’s place. He’d have to learn their street names, maybe have an informant check them out. Maybe the narcs from downtown could start making a few things happen out here. Someone had, however briefly, Monroe admitted, heading west towards the edge of his patrol area. Whoever the hell it was. A street bum. That made him smile in the darkness. The informal name applied to the case seemed so appropriate. The Invisible Man. Amazing that the papers hadn’t picked that one up. A dull night made for such thoughts. He was thankful for it. People had stayed up late to watch the Orioles sock it to the Yankees. He had learned that you could often track street crime by sports teams and their activities. The O’s were in a pennant race and were looking to go all the way on the strength of Frank Robinson’s bat and Brooks Robinson’s glove. Even hoods liked baseball, Monroe thought, perplexed by the incongruity but accepting it for the fact it was. It made for a boring night, and he didn’t mind. It gave him a chance to cruise and observe and learn, and to think. He knew all the regulars on the street now, and was now learning to spot what was different, to eyeball it as a seasoned cop could, to decide what to check out and what to let slide. In learning that he would come to prevent some crimes, not merely respond to them. It was a skill that could not come too quickly. Monroe thought to himself.
The very western border of his area was a north-south street. One side was his, the other that of another officer. He was about to turn onto it when he saw another street bum. Somehow the person looked familiar, though he was not one Monroe had shaken down several weeks earlier. Tired of sitting in his car, and bored with not having had anything more than a single traffic citation tonight, he pulled over.
“Yo, hold up there, sport.” The figure kept moving, slowly, unevenly. Maybe a public-drunkenness arrest in the making, more likely a street person whose brain was permanently impaired by long nights of guzzling the cheap stuff. Monroe slid his baton into the ring holder and walked quickly to catch up. It was only a fifty-foot walk, but it was like the poor old bastard was deaf or something, he didn’t even hear the click of his leather heels on the sidewalk. His hand came down on the bum’s shoulder. “I said hold up, now.”
Physical contact changed everything. This shoulder was firm and strong—and tense. Monroe simply wasn’t ready for it, too tired, too bored, too comfortable, too sure of what he’d seen, and though his brain immediately shouted The Invisible Man, his body was not ready for action. That wasn’t true of the bum. Almost before his hand came down, he saw the world rotate wildly from low-right to high-left, showing him a sky and then the sidewalk and then the sky again, but this time his view of the stars was interrupted by a pistol.
“Why couldn’t you have just stayed in your fuckin’ car?” the man asked angrily.
“Who—”
“Quiet!” The pistol against his forehead ensured that, almost. It was the surgical gloves that gave him away and forced the officer to speak.
“Jesus.” It was a respectful whisper. “You’re him.”
“Yes, I am. Now, what the hell do I do about you?” Kelly asked.
“I ain’t gonna beg.” The man’s name was Monroe, Kelly saw from the name tag. He didn’t seem like the sort for begging.
“You don’t have to. Roll over—now!” The policeman did so, with a little help. Kelly pulled the cuffs off his belt an
d secured them to both wrists. “Relax, Officer Monroe.”
“What do you mean?” The man kept his voice even, earning his captor’s admiration.
“I mean I’m not going to kill any cops.” Kelly stood him up and started walking him back to the car.
“This doesn’t change anything, sport,” Monroe told him, careful to keep his voice low.
“Tell me about it. Where do you keep your keys?”
“Right side pocket.”
“Thank you.” Kelly took them as he put the officer in the backseat of the car. There was a screen there to keep arrested passengers from annoying the driver. He quickly started the patrol car and parked it in an alley. “Your hands okay, not too tight on the cuffs?”
“Yeah, I’m just fuckin’ fine back here.” The cop was shaking now, mainly rage. Kelly figured. That was understandable.
“Settle down. I don’t want you to get hurt. I’ll lock the car. Keys’ll be in a sewer somewhere.”
“Am I supposed to thank you or something?” Monroe said.
“I didn’t ask for that, did I?” Kelly had an overwhelming urge to apologize for embarrassing the man. “You made it easy for me. Next time be more careful, Officer Monroe.”
His own release of tension almost evoked a laugh as he walked away quickly to the rear. Thank God, he thought, heading west again, but not for everything. They’re still rousting drunks. He’d hoped that they’d gotten bored with it in the past month. One more complication. Kelly kept to the shadows and alleys as much as possible.
It was a storefront, just as Billy had told him and Burt had confirmed. an out-of-business store with vacant houses to the left and right. Such talkative people, under the proper circumstances. Kelly looked at it from across the street. Despite the vacant ground level, there was a light on upstairs. The front door, he could see, was secured with a large brass lock. The back one, too, probably. Well, he could do this one the hard way . . . or the other hard way. There was a clock ticking. Those cops had to have a regular reporting system. Even if not. sooner or later Monroe would be sent a call to get somebody’s kitten out of a tree, and real quick his sergeant would start wondering where the hell he was, and then the cops would be all over the place, looking for a missing man. They’d look carefully and hard. That was a possibility Kelly didn’t want to contemplate, and one which waiting would not improve.
He crossed the street briskly, for the first time breaking his cover in public, such as it was, weighing risks and finding the balance evenly set on madness. But then, the whole enterprise had been mad from the start, hadn’t it? First he did his best to check out the street level for people. Finding none, Kelly took the Ka-Bar from his sheath and started attacking the caulking around the full-length glass pane in the old wooden door. Perhaps burglars just weren’t patient, he thought, or maybe just dumb—or smarter than he was being at the moment, Kelly told himself, using both hands to strip the caulking away. It took six endless minutes, all of it under a streetlight not ten feet away, before he was able to lower the glass, cutting himself twice in the process. Kelly swore quietly, looking at the deep cut on his left hand. Then he stepped sideways through the opening and headed for the back of the building. Some mom-and-pop store, he thought, abandoned or something, probably because the neighborhood itself was dying. Well, it could have been worse. The floor was dusty but uncluttered. There were stairs in the back. Kelly could hear noise upstairs, and he went up, his .45 leading the way.
“It’s been a nice party, honey, but it’s over now,” a male voice said. Kelly heard the rough humor in it, followed by a female whimper.
“Please . . . you don’t mean you’re . . . ”
“Sorry, honey, but that’s just the way things are,” another voice said. “I’ll do the front.”
Kelly eased down the corridor. Again the floor was unobstructed, just dirty. The wooden floor was old. but had been recent—
—It creaked—
“What’s that?”
Kelly froze for the briefest moment, but there was neither time nor a place to hide, and he darted the last fifteen feet, then dived in low and rolled to unmask his pistol.
There were two men, both in their twenties, just shapes, really, as his mind filtered out the irrelevancies and concentrated on what mattered now: size, distance, movement. One was reaching for a gun as Kelly rolled. and even got his gun out of his belt and coming around before two rounds entered his chest and another his head. Kelly brought his weapon around even before the body fell.
“Jesus Christ! Okay! Okay!” A small chrome revolver dropped to the floor. There was a loud scream from the front of the building, which Kelly ignored as he got back to his feet, his automatic locked on the second man as though connected by a steel rod.
“They’re gonna kill us.” It was a surprisingly mousy voice, frightened but slow from whatever she was using.
“How many?” Kelly snapped at her.
“Just these two, they’re going to—”
“I don’t think so,” Kelly told her, standing. “Which one are you?”
“Paula.” He was covering his target.
“Where are Maria and Roberta?”
“They’re in the front room,” Paula told him, still too disoriented to wonder how he knew the names. The other man spoke for her.
“Passed out, pal, okay?” Let’s talk. the man’s eyes tried to say.
“Who are you?” There was just something about a .45 that made people talk, Kelly thought, not knowing what his eyes looked like behind the sights.
“Frank Molinari.” An accent, and the realization that Kelly wasn’t a policeman.
“Where from, Frank?—You stay put!” Kelly told Paula with a pointed left hand. He kept the gun level, eyes sweeping around, ears searching for a danger sound.
“Philly. Hey, man, we can talk, okay?” He was shaking, eyes flickering down to the gun he’d just dropped, wondering what the hell was happening.
Why was somebody from Philadelphia doing Henry’s dirty work? Kelly’s mind raced. Two of the men at the lab had sounded the same way. Tony Piaggi. Sure, the mob connection, and Philadelphia. . . .
“Ever been to Pittsburgh, Frank?” Somehow the question just popped out.
Molinari took his best guess. It was not a good one. “How did you know that? Who you working for?”
“Killed Doris and her father, right?”
“It was a job, man, ever do a job?”
Kelly gave him the only possible answer, and there was another scream from the front as he brought the gun back in close to his chest. Time to think. The clock was still ticking. Kelly walked over and yanked Paula to her feet.
“That hurts!”
“Come on, let’s get your friends.”
Maria was wearing only panties and was too stoned to do any looking. Roberta was conscious and afraid. He didn’t want to look at them, not now. He didn’t have time. Kelly got them together and forced them down the stairs, then outside. None had shoes, and the combination of drugs and the grit and glass on the sidewalk made them walk in a crippled fashion, whimpering and crying on their way east. Kelly pushed at them, growled at them, making them move faster, fearing nothing more grave than a passing car, because that was enough to wreck everything he’d done. Speed was vital, and it took ten minutes as endless as his race down the hill from SENDER GREEN, but the police car was still there where he’d left it. Kelly unlocked the front and told the women to get in. He’d lied about the keys.
“What the fuck!” Monroe objected. Kelly handed the keys to Paula, who seemed the best able to drive. At least she was able to hold her head up. The other two huddled on the right side, careful to keep their legs away from the radio.
“Officer Monroe, these ladies will be driving you to your station. I have instructions for you. You ready to listen?”
“I got a choice, asshole?”
“You want to play power games or do you want some good information?” Kelly asked as reasonably as he could. Two pa
irs of sober eyes lingered in a long moment of contact. Monroe swallowed hard on his pride and nodded.
“Go ahead.”
“Sergeant Tom Douglas is the man you want to talk to—nobody else, just him. These ladies are in some really deep shit. They can help you break some major cases. Nobody but him—that’s important, okay?” You fuck that up and we’ll meet again. Kelly’s eyes told him.
Monroe caught all the messages and nodded his head. “Yeah.”
“Paula, you drive, don’t stop for anything, no matter what he says, you got that?” The girl nodded. She’d seen him kill two men. “Get moving!”
She really was too intoxicated to drive, but it was the best he could do. The police car crept away, scraping a telephone pole halfway down the alley. Then it turned the corner and was gone. Kelly took a deep breath, turning back to where his own auto was. He hadn’t saved Pam. He hadn’t saved Doris. But he had saved these three, and Xantha, at a peril to his life that had at turns been both unintentional and necessary. It was almost enough.
But not quite.
The two-truck convoy had to take a route even more circuitous than planned, and they didn’t arrive at the destination until after noon. That was Hoa Lo Prison. The name meant “place of cooking fires.” and its reputation was well known to the Americans. When the trucks had pulled into the courtyard and the gates were secure, the men were let down. Again, each man was given an individual guard who took him inside. They were allowed a drink of water and nothing more before assignment to individual cells that were scattered around, and presently Robin Zacharias found his. It wasn’t much of a change, really. He found a nice piece of floor and sat down. tired from the journey, resting his head against the wall. It took several minutes before he heard the tapping.
Shave and a haircut, six-bits.
Shave and a haircut, six-bits.
His eyes opened. He had to think. The POWs used a communications code as simple as it was old, a graphic alphabet.
