He hesitated at the base of the escalator, wondering if he could chance another look at his watch. Glancing upward at the Eye and Beam in the ceiling above the escalator, he decided against it.
Figuring that it was about fourteen minutes to zero, he boarded the escalator. Four flights to the pumproom floor. He had estimated about two minutes a flight.
The trip up the escalator seemed agonizingly slow, slower, so it seemed, than he had figured it to be. On each of the three intermediary landings, he had to resist a strong impulse to check his watch—but the Eyes and Beams overlooking every landing restrained him.
Finally, Johnson reached the fourth landing, stepped off the escalator. I’ve simply got to check the timing now, he thought. He glanced about the corridor in front of him with the air of a harried Ward late for an appointment with some malevolent minor Ministry official, and quickly checked his watch. An Eye on the wall observed him, passed the datum on to the Guardian. But apparently, the computer found the move innocuous, Johnson thought, noting with relief that he was still alive.
Five minutes to zero. Which gave him a little more than five minutes to get to the area of the pumproom door—and getting there too early would be as bad as getting there too late.
He started down the long corridor, past door after numbered door, Beam after Beam, Eye after Eye, tracing the path he had to follow in his mind: down to the end of this corridor, right turn, follow that corridor to the end, make a left, and then another fifty yards to the pumproom door.
Johnson walked slowly, feeling the Eyes of Mercury Guardian on his neck, imagining that they could see the lasegun and the vial of nerve gas concentrate through his clothing, imagining that every Beam he passed was about to pop, imagining that he was walking too slowly, that it was suspicious, but knowing that being forced to wait around by the pumproom door for long minutes would certainly be fatal. …
A Guard passing him going in the pposite direction looked straight through him, two Maintenance men passed by, nodded, and then he passed a large cross-corridor which intersected his at right angles.
He saw Guilder, one of the agents of his six-man squad, coming down the cross-corridor, and another agent, Jonas, about ten yards behind him. He studiously ignored them, walked past the intersection without changing stride, knowing without looking that Guilder and Jonas were turning into the corridor behind him, following him towards the pumproom at long intervals.
Now he reached the end of the corridor, a T-intersection, turned right into a more crowded corridor, dozens of Wards, several Guards moving along it in both directions. Good! He and Guilder and Jonas would not form a pattern moving in the same direction through such a crowd … and yes, there was Wright, about twelve yards in front of him, moving past those two Guards. The individual paths were beginning to converge as planned.
Johnson continued along the corridor, increasing his pace slightly, so that he was beginning to gain ground on, Wright, and by the time he had reached the next T-intersection, Wright was only about eight yards ahead of him. He paused for a moment as Wright turned left, risked a quick glance at his watch—three minutes to zero.
Johnson turned left, continued to close with Wright, who was now slowing his pace somewhat. As he made the turn, he was able to see that Guilder and Jonas were only about six yards apart now, and that Guilder, the foremost, was making the turn less than eight yards behind him. It was coming off! They were all converging perfectly!
He looked down the long corridor, saw Eyes and Beams along both walls at regular ten-foot intervals, door after white-painted door. About thirty yards down, he could see one dark door, naked dull-gray lead plating, with a red sign above it that he knew read “Authorized Personnel Only” and an Eye and Beam directly below the sign—the pumproom.
Beyond the pumproom, at the far end of the corridor, he saw two men coming toward him on the opposite side, the side on which the pumproom door was located—Poulson and Smith, with perhaps ten yards between them and the gap slowly closing. And now Ludowiki turned the corner, not five yards behind Smith! Perfect! Perfect!
Johnson increased his pace as Wright slowed down, timed it so that he and Wright and Poulson and Smith and Ludowiki would all come together outside the pumproom door at the same time, less than two minutes from now, with Guilder and Jonas catching up to him at the same moment. …
Now, Johnson thought, just about now, the men in the square should be charging across the street and up the ministry steps. He could see it in his mind’s eye. …
The agents in the park suddenly charging as one man through the crowd of Wards, bowling some over, perhaps, panicking the rest The hundred and fifty League agents reaching the base of the steps, laseguns drawn, firing at random, perhaps getting halfway up the steps unopposed before Guards erupted from the main Ministry entrance. …
And the furious gunbattle that must now be raging between the League agents and the Guards, bodies blackening, rolling down the steps, Wards screaming, running for cover, the air filling with the sickening, sweet smell of charred flesh. …
And above him, the Council Chamber being sealed off, while in the pumproom, now only a dozen yards in front of him, the pumps whirring into life, feeding life-giving air into the Council Chamber as they would feed death in another few minutes. …
Any moment now, Johnson thought, as he came within ten yards of the pumproom door, as Wright slowed to a near-halt but five yards in front of him, as he saw Smith and Poulson and Ludowiki near the pumproom door, as he heard Guilder’s and Jonas’ footsteps close behind him, the second diversion should begin. …
He visualized the fifty League agents suddenly bursting into the corridors surrounding the Council Chamber above him. He could all but see the scores of Beams popping, the ring of corridors becoming deathtraps of radiation, his men falling, willingly giving their lives in the cause of Democracy as. …
He and the six agents converged just outside the pumproom door. He imagined the image being picked up by the Eye above the lead door, being relayed to the Guardian deep in the nether bowels of the Ministry. …
Johnson whipped out his lasegun, saw his six men doing the same.
Then heard a quick series of tiny explosions and dull clicks as plugs were blown from Beams all along the corridor, fell to the floor. He saw the plug of the Beam above the pumproom door burst outward ahead of a puff of white smoke, and he knew that invisible, deadly radiation was flooding the corridor, and then. …
Vladimir Khustov looked contentedly around the Council Chamber—at the white-paneled walls concealing a foot of lead, at the small grills along the baseboards through which air could be pumped, at the tv monitor before him on the walnut table, at the portable control-console-communicator beside it, at the silvery tanks with their regulator in the far corner of the room. Khustov smiled contemptuously as he scanned the nervous faces of his fellow Councilors, at the bland, robotlike mask that was the face of Constantine Gorov, at that cretin Torrence, pouring himself still another bourbon from the carafe on the silver tray in the center of the Council table.
Khustov laughed, poured himself a small vodka, sipped at it, savoring the sting of it on his lips.
“I fail to see the humor of this situation, Vladimir,” Torrence whined, downing half his drink at one gulp. “We’ve spotted scores of known League agents outside the Ministry and we can assume that they’re armed. And more of them inside the building itself. The whole place is crawling with League agents, and plan or no plan, I don’t like it.”
Coward! Khustov thought contemptuously. Torrence is worse than a coward, he’s an anachronism, a creature better suited to the ghastly millenium before the Hegemony, when we were divided up into hundreds of nations, each one at the others’ throat—that’s when he belongs. A fool can see that Jack only serves Order because in this age, it’s his only path to power. He doesn’t understand Order at all. If he did, he’d understand the futility of opposing it; he doesn’t understand how futile the League’s attempt is be
cause he can’t really believe that all is under absolute control. He probably doesn’t even believe that complete Order is possible—or he wouldn’t waste his time and effort in endless political maneuvering. If he really understood the Hegemony, he’d realize that the whole structure, the Guards, the Guardians, everything, is aligned against him and for me.
By serving Order, by insuring peace and prosperity, Vladimir Khustov knew that he also served himself—for the entire Hegemony, every planet and rock that men would ever see, every last Ward, was a pattern of absolute, unchanging Order, and he, Khustov, was at its center. He served the Order well, and the Order reciprocated. It was the best of all possible worlds, and no Torrence could upset it. …
“The plan,” Khustov said evenly, “is totally foolproof. The Guards are waiting for those League agents in the square and I guarantee not one of them will gain the Ministry entrance—and if they did, what good would it do them? How could they possibly expect to fight their way through a whole building filled with Eyes and Beams and Guards?”
“That’s the whole point,” Torrence said, downing the rest of his bourbon and pouring himself another in one continuous motion. “Not even Johnson’s stupid enough to believe that those men could actually accomplish anything. So they’ve got to be a diversion, a decoy. It’s the other League agents, the ones in the building, that worry me. Who knows what they’re up to? You’re playing it too cagy, Vladimir. We know that there are at least forty League agents in the building, and some of them are pretty high up in the League hierarchy. Why don’t we just play it safe and pop every damned Beam in the whole building and get’em for sure right now?”
“I’m surprised,” Khustov said, “that you, Jack, with your … uh … propensity for finessing, can’t see through Johnson’s finesse. The men outside the building are obviously there to make us believe that the men in the Ministry, when they attack, are the real thing. But just as obviously, if you think about it, Johnson must know that the men in the building can’t accomplish anything either. What can they do, try to storm this Council Chamber? The moment that happens, the Chamber is sealed off and the corridors surrounding us are flooded with radiation. We could be safe without a single Guard in the entire building, and Johnson has to know it. So it’s a double-finesse—both groups are decoys.”
“But what’s the point?” Torrence said. “Who cares whether they’re decoys or not? Let’s just kill ’em!”
“The point,” Khustov said, “is that we’re after bigger game. I want Johnson himself, and I want him alive. There is much to be learned from studying him under … the, ah, proper investigatory procedures. I want to destroy the Democratic League, but I want to go further. I want to learn why men persist in such insanity so that measures can be taken to insure that no such organization will ever form again. We’re very close to total control. We already control environment. The next logical step is to control heredity. I hope that we may learn enough from studying the correlations between Johnson’s mind and his genetic makeup to be able to breed such rebelliousness out of the race. Then Order will really be total.”
“Here you are babbling about Order and control,” Torrence sneered, “and what are you doing? You’re risking our lives as bait. And you’re betting them on being able to read Johnson’s mind! How can you be so sure? What about what Gorov would call ‘random factors?’ ”
“He has a point,” Gorov said. “Your plan is internally sound—yet it does depend on knowing exactly what Boris Johnson plans to do. Perhaps. …”
Khustov laughed arrogantly. Fools! he thought. Even Gorov, who at least should know better.
“I’ll prove it to you all, if it’ll make you feel any better,” he said. “Gather around this monitor, and I’ll show you exactly what the League is up to. Even you ought to believe your own eyes, Jack.”
Muttering, and with Torrence grimacing and taking his drink with him, the Councilors arose, and gathered in front of the monitor, flanking Khustov.
“I’ve had this hooked into the Guardian circuit so we can see anything any Eye in this building sees,” Khustov said. He flipped a switch on the control console, pressed one of several score buttons on the face of the device. The television screen showed a view of the park opposite from the Ministry as seen by an Eye high up on the facade above the entrance.
“Here we have Johnson’s outside men,” Khustov said, “safely hidden in a crowd of Wards—or so they think. But of course, they’ve underestimated the data banks of the Guardian. Enough of them are on the records here to show up as Hegemonic Enemies in a thorough facial check-out. They will no doubt make the first move, and then. …”
Khustov pressed another button, and now the screen showed a crowded corridor somewhere within the Ministry. “The agents here …” he said, and changed the view again to show another, similar corridor. “And here …”Yet another corridor. “And here … and so forth, will begin the second diversion, an all-out attempt to storm the Council Chamber. And probably at that very moment, Mr. Boris Johnson. …”
Khustov changed the view again, and now the screen showed the pumproom door, and perhaps ten feet of corridor on either side of it. A collective gasp went up from the Councilors gathered around the monitor, for Boris Johnson himself had just appeared in the field of vision of the Eye that the screen was now connected to.
“The Beam! The Beam! Blow the Beam!” Torrence shouted. “We’ve got him! What’re you waiting for?”
“I tod of visou,” Khustov said. “I want him alive. … Look at that-more League agents converging on the pumproom. Now even you can see that he’s doing exactly what I said he would, Jack. Two diversionary attacks, and then Johnson and those few men break into the pumproom. The attacks cause us to seal the Council Chamber, and then Johnson drops some gas into the air line. One must admire Johnson’s courage, I suppose—were it not based on such utter stupidity. No doubt he is counting on his agent Daid in the pumproom to get the door open for him before the radiation in the corridor can kill him and his men, after the Beam pop.”
“And of course you’ve removed Daid?” Cordona said.
“Quite the contrary,” replied Khustov. “Daid will be permitted to get the door open so that Johnson can walk right into our little mousetrap.”
Khustov switched over to the outside Eye again. “Now all we do is wait,” he said. He and the Councilors idly surveyed the scene in the square for a few moments.
Suddenly, a wave of men charged out of the crowd of Wards, across the street toward the Ministry steps.
Khustov laughed. “The trap is about to be sprung,” he said, throwing a switch on his control console. “I’ve just sealed off the Council Chamber. We’re on internal air supply now, just as Johnson wanted. However. …”
He threw another switch. “And now,” he said, “I’ve sealed off the air lines from the pumproom. We’re as self-contained in this Chamber now as if we were in a spaceship.”
Khustov walked quickly over to the tanks in the corner of the room, fiddled with the regulator.
“There,” he said smugly. “We’ve got enough air in these tanks for two hours. Now let Mr. Boris Johnson do his worst. He’s quite finished.”
As the plugs of the Beams in the corridor popped, as he stood with his six men by the pumproom door, lasegun drawn, Boris Johnson tried to think only of what should now be going on inside. Seconds ago, Daid should’ve yelled to one of the Guards that he heard someone trying to break into the pumproom. The Guard would’ve grumbled no doubt, but he surely would feel constrained to check. Any moment now, the door should swing open. Any second … and if the door didn’t open in another second or so—
The lead door opened a crack, began to slowly swing inward. As soon as it was open wide enough, Johnson jammed his foot inside.
He heard a curse from the other side of the door, then felt the pressure of someone trying to close the door on his foot; then he and four of the agents crashed against the door with the full weight of their bodies.
> The door flew open, revealing a dazed Guard sprawled on his behind in the doorway, lasegun still in hand.
e="3">Before the Guard could move, Johnson and four or five of the others caught him with lasebeams. His body was burnt to a heap of loose black ashes in a fraction of a second, and as the heap of ashes began to disintegrate, the agents rushed into the pumproom, and Wright, the last one inside, slammed the lead door shut behind them.
Safe! Johnson thought. Home free! We’re inside and we’re alive!
He took a quick, deep breath, surveyed the situation. The pumproom was small; maybe twelve by twenty feet, There was a battery of pumps along the far wall opposite the door with five stunned men in Maintenance coveralls standing by them. The short, wiry man looking on knowingly must be Daid.
Between the door and the pumps was an untidy collection of crates, metal boxes, spare parts and assorted junk. Between the pumps and the piles of equipment five Guards stood watching the technicians. As the door was slammed, they had whirled, drawn their laseguns, and for an idiotic, timeless moment, Guards and League agents stood facing each other.
Johnson hit the floor in a diving roll, firing as he fell. A Guard screamed, blackened, went down as Johnson met the floor and rolled behind a large metal box. He heard a scream behind him, looked back and saw that Guilder had been hit—his whole arm and half his right shoulder burned away.
The other League agents had hit the deck, rolled behind the sparse cover, and were firing away at the exposed Guards. Another Guard screamed, burned and fell as two lasebeams converged on his chest.
The three remaining Guards dove for the floor, tried to protect themselves by keeping the League agents pinned down behind the crates and machinery.
Johnson saw lasebeams hit the front of the metal box behind which he crouched, felt it heat up as two of the Guards concentrated their fire on it.
Then he heard another scream. Ludowiki had run from cover at the three Guards; he had been hit in the left shoulder. He crumpled and fell, but as he fell, he caught one of the guards in the face with a searing red lasebeam. The Guard’s head vanished in a cloud of black, oily smoke. Jonas jumped from cover as the two remaining guards momentarily turned their attention to Ludowiki.
Agent of Chaos M Page 11
