"What the hell's going on here, Mongo? I've got my neck stuck out a mile."
"It's for a good cause. Garth, this is Ronald Tal and Ambassador Malakov. Gentlemen, my brother."
Garth nodded to the Ambassador and gave Tal a long, cold stare. "I talked to you on the phone," he said, perfunctorily shaking Tal's hand before turning back to me. "You didn't tell me the Feds would be here."
"Which boathouse is Rafferty in?"
"That's Rafferty in there with the machine gun?"
"It is. Where is he?"
"The one on the left," he said, jerking his thumb in that direction.
"Garth," I said, "Tal and I have to get down there."
"I will go too," the Ambassador said anxiously. "I go where you go."
"You'll get your heads blown off," Garth said. "It's quiet now. You should have been here five minutes ago."
"He won't shoot when he sees who it is," Tal said.
Garth snorted. "That's what you say."
It was suddenly very still. Somewhere in the distance the raucous whine of a powerboat carried clearly over the water; there was something disquieting, ominous about the sound.
"Garth," I said, "at least get us to Lippitt."
Garth took me by the elbow, led me around the barricade, and pointed twenty yards farther down the beach to where Lippitt and two other men were squatting down behind another barricade made up of the old, rotting husks of row- boats. All three had automatic pistols.
Lippitt!" I yelled. "Let us come down!"
Lippitt's bald head snapped around; the pale eyes found and focused on me. He hesitated a moment, then signaled to Garth, who was still holding me. His hand left my arm. Tal, Malakov, and I hurried across the sand. The two agents with Lippitt gave us a cursory glance as we dropped down behind the rowboats, then turned their attention-and their guns-back to the boathouse.
"What the hell are you trying to do?" I said, grabbing Lippitt's arm. "Didn't Rafferty explain his plan?"
"He didn't explain anything. He was the one who started shooting." He paused. "What's Malakov doing here?"
"Rafferty wants to negotiate," I said. "Malakov got a call too."
"Negotiate what, for Christ's sake? He's five years too late! Besides, we've tried to talk to him. He won't answer, and he won't let any of us come down. He may have gone crazy."
"He's not crazy! He's been buying time until we could get here. He called Tal, and I've spoken to him before. Maybe he'll talk to one of us now."
Lippitt rested one knee on the sand and looked at me. "When did you talk to him?"
"A few days ago, but I didn't know he was Victor Rafferty. He's been using the name Elliot Thomas. He's been working as an engineer at the U.N. The sketch of the Nately Museum was his. The paper must have dropped out of his pocket, or he just forgot and left it on the table. He's ready to give himself up … under the auspices of the U.N."
Speaking in a low monotone, Tal outlined Rafferty's plan to Lippitt. Lippitt's face was totally impassive as he listened. The sound of the powerboat was much louder now, coming closer. Far out in the water I could see sunlight glinting off its metal hull.
Tal finished as Lippitt absently began drawing figures in the sand with his finger.
"What do you think?" I said to the agent.
"I don't know," Lippitt said without looking up. "You're suggesting that the United States give up-"
"You can't have him, Lippitt," Tal broke in impatiently. "Your only alternative is to kill him, and I don't think you want to do that. He won't let anyone use him; he gave up everything to make that point, and he's not going to change his mind now. What he suggests is the only way."
"I can't authorize something like that on my own, Tal," Lippitt said quietly.
"I know. But what do you think of the idea?"
Lippitt erased the drawings in the sand, glanced up, and said in the same soft tone: "It could work. What's your reaction, Malakov?"
The portly Russian slowly nodded his head. "I too must have authorization, but what Rafferty suggests does… seem to be a viable alternative."
I hadn't realized I'd been holding my breath until it came out of me in a long sigh. My stomach hurt.
Tal stood up. "I'm going down there. I'll tell him what the two of you just said, and I'll see what he has to say. In the meantime, you can contact your superiors."
Lippitt shook his head. "It's going to take a lot longer than a few minutes to make this kind of decision."
"How much longer?"
"At least a couple of days. I'll go to Washington myself."
"Let him come with me in the meantime," Tal said quickly. "The important thing is to get him out of that boat house, right?"
"What if our government says it's no deal?" I asked Lippitt.
"I don't know," Lippitt said evenly. "No promises."
"Do not take us for fools," Malakov said tightly. "One of my men must accompany Rafferty at all times until a decision is made."
"Whatever you say, Mr. Ambassador," Lippitt said coldly. "One of my men will be along too."
"Let's see what Rafferty has to say," Tal said as he stepped out from behind the rowboats, in full view of the boathouse. He cupped his hands to his mouth and yelled: "Rafferty! It's Tal! Don't shoot! I'm coming down!"
There was no answer, no sound at all from the direction of the water except the steadily increasing roar of the speedboat. The craft was close now, no more than three or four hundred yards offshore, and it was making me nervous.
Malakov grabbed Lippitt's elbow. "How do you know he's still in there? He may have slipped away from you again!"
"He's surrounded," Lippitt said, jerking his arm free. "I've got men with rifles on the roofs of the other boathouses; there's no way Rafferty can get out of there without being shot. Rafferty may be a lot of things, but he's not invisible."
"Okay," Tal said softly, "I'm going down."
"Hold it!" I yelled as I stood and pointed toward the water. "What's that boat out there doing?!"
Lippitt tore the binoculars from the neck of the agent squatting next to him and raised them to his eyes. I watched the muscles in his jaw and neck begin to quiver. He threw the binoculars to one side, then turned to the crowd of police and agents behind him. "Shoot that boat out of the water!" he yelled. "Goddamn it, blow it away!"
Immediately the air was filled with the din of automatic- weapons fire. Two agents sprinted out onto the sand and began firing down at the water, their guns braced against their hips.
"There's no one in the boat!" Lippitt shouted. I could barely hear him above the clatter of the weapons. "It's a drone, radio-controlled! Somebody wants to blow Rafferty up!"
The pilotless boat zigzagged as the rain of bullets fell into the water around it; there were dozens of hits, but the boat kept coming. It wasn't going to stop until it hit the boat house.
"He's got to see it coming," Tal said through clenched teeth. "Why doesn't he get out of there?" He again cupped his hands to his mouth and yelled. "Thomas! Rafferty! Get out of there! Run!"
A bearded figure immediately recognizable as Elliot Thomas suddenly appeared in the doorway of the crumbling boathouse. He was carrying an automatic assault rifle. He seemed to be groggy as he staggered out onto the sand, fell back against the side of the house, and began firing up the beach in our direction. Bullets whined in the air, chewed up the sand, thwacked into the wooden barricades.
Lippitt yelled, "Hold your fire!"
I caught a flash of movement out of the corner of my eye. It was Garth sprinting toward the boathouse, his arms pumping. Tal's reflexes were faster than mine. He tackled Garth at the knees and both men went down. Garth took a swing at Tal's head, missed, then tried to struggle to his feet again as Tal hung on to his legs. I tried not to think of the bullets singing around my head as I ran forward, jumped on Garth's back, wrapped my arms around his neck.
"You can't just let that man die down there without making an effort to get him out!" Garth shouted, cla
wing at my arms.
"It's too late," Tal said quietly.
The boat hit the rotting wood structure and exploded. It was something a lot more powerful than dynamite, probably plastique. The force of the blast shook the ground around us. The entire boathouse quivered for a moment, lifted off the ground, then disintegrated into bits and pieces of wood and metal. Instantly flames shot up into the temporary vacuum, burning with the white-hot glow of phosphorus or napalm.
Someone had wanted to make certain the job was done right.
23
There was numb, shocked silence in the aftermath of the explosion. The silence, broken only by the fierce crackle of the flames, lasted almost thirty seconds and seemed an eternity. Then Lippitt suddenly sprang forward and punched Malakov in the mouth. The stunned ambassador sat down hard on the sand and put a trembling hand to his bleeding mouth.
"You fucker!" Lippitt growled. "You killed him! I should blow you away!"
Malakov struggled to his feet and spat blood. His face was purple. "We didn't kill him!" he shouted, ignoring the gun aimed at his heart. His voice trembled with outrage. "It was your people who must have done this thing! You're a fucker!"
They glared at each other across a distance of less than a yard. Then the tension was suddenly broken when two men with rifles came running up the beach from the direction of the remaining boathouses. One man's arm hung limp, and the other appeared to have singed hair. Otherwise they seemed to be all right.
"Excuse me," Tal said weakly. "I think I'm going to be sick." He walked shakily down the beach toward the undamaged boathouse on the right. He was holding his left arm tightly against his side; his shirt on that side was stained with blood, and the dark patch was spreading. No one else seemed to notice.
Garth nudged me. "All right, brother, let's hear it from the top."
"Huh?" I wasn't really listening. The apparent chaos suddenly did not seem so confused, not in light of some of the things that had begun to bother me. Had Lippitt ordered the killing? It seemed highly unlikely, considering Lippitt's ambiguous feelings toward Rafferty, and Malakov just hadn't had time, even if he'd had the inclination. Then who had arranged the explosion?
Rafferty.
He'd staged an apparently fatal end for himself, just as he'd done five years before. But this time he'd arranged for the entire world to look on.
"I want to hear the whole story, Mongo," Garth was saying. "I want to know what happened here."
"Over steaks and drinks, Garth. Just give me a few minutes."
Tal had disappeared from sight into the boathouse on the right. I went after him.
The boathouse was dark and smelled of still, dead air. Tal was standing at the opposite end, silhouetted by the late- morning light streaming in a window. He was smoking a cigarette-the first time I'd ever seen him do so. The smoke curled up around his head like a halo, or a mist from hell.
"I'll be damned," I said, the dank air muffling my voice. "Here I've been following you around all this time and I haven't found a single hamburger wrapper. You certainly did go through some changes, didn't you?"
I instinctively held up my hand and shied away as I felt an almost imperceptible tingling in my head. It was a sensation I'd experienced before and hadn't been able to put my finger on. This time I'd been looking for it.
"I assume you can control what you do," I said. "I'd appreciate it if you'd respect my privacy."
The tingling stopped. Tal was still silhouetted against the window, and I couldn't see his face. I wondered what he was thinking.
"How did you manage the fingerprints on the pencil? That was good. It threw me off the track right at the beginning."
Tal said nothing. He continued to smoke.
"You know that I know."
" What do you know, Mongo?"
"I know that you're Victor Rafferty. That was the French agent who died in the boathouse. Elliot Thomas was the 'Frenchie'-an American working deep undercover for France." I pointed to his side. "You're bleeding, but there aren't any bullet holes in your shirt. You've been favoring that side since yesterday; you ripped open an already existing wound when you tackled Garth. My guess is that Thomas-or whatever his name really was-finally caught up with you. After all, he'd been at it a long time, and he'd really been digging ever since the Nately Museum went up. He knew, just as your ex-wife knew, that Victor Rafferty had designed that building. Somehow, you got on Thomas' list of candidates; when he got around to checking your background, your cover didn't hold."
Tal remained silent.
"God only knows how Thomas did it," I continued, "but he must have gotten the drop on you. Unlucky for him: Thomas didn't make out any better than Lippitt did five years ago. You've been keeping Thomas on ice for the past few days; Rolfe Thaag's been baby-sitting him while you put this plan into operation. You knew what was in my mind, so you had every reason to think I'd buy it. I can't point to any one thing that convinced me; it's the sum of a lot of little things. Considering the fact that you've been winging it for the past few days, you've done damn well. But then, you read minds, don't you?"
"I don't know what you're talking about, Mongo," Tal said quietly.
"Now you're just playing out the string, hoping I'll back off. I won't. Putting Thomas in that boathouse down there was pretty murderous for Victor Rafferty, but you certainly had cause. He's been trying to kill or capture you for years. That would try my patience too."
Tal still hadn't moved, and I stayed where I was, firing long-range verbal artillery. I hated to admit it, but I was afraid to go closer. I liked Ronald Tal, but I didn't know this stranger at the other end of the boathouse.
"When did you arrive at these conclusions, Mongo?"
"Don't you know? Why don't you look in my head and find out?" I waited, but Tal said nothing and there was no tingling sensation. "It suddenly occurred to me on the beach that I was being had. Call it deja vu once removed. Why the hell should Victor Rafferty have come out of that boathouse like it was High Noon? It didn't make sense. Thomas was dazed; the man didn't even know where he was. He was like a man who'd just recovered consciousness-or who'd had a few mental circuits burned out. He died trying to carry out his duty, which was to kill you. That's why he fired up the beach."
"I understand that you think I'm Victor Rafferty," Tal said calmly, "but you're wrong."
"No, I'm not. 'In the world of diplomacy, information is the most valuable commodity.' Remember when you told me that?"
"I remember. What does it prove?"
"Nothing. I just want you to know that I know the truth. You see, that's precisely what you've been doing all this time: providing Rolfe Thaag with that valuable commodity. All his diplomatic success springs from you."
"What about the fingerprints on the pencil?"
"All right, that is troublesome. Let's speculate. You had advance warning of who I was and what I wanted when Abu called. You immediately probed my mind when I walked into your office and found out everything there was to know; up to that point, anyway. You started setting me up from that very moment. You put a contingency plan into motion. My guess is that the pencil was Rolfe Thaag's. You'd probably covered the tips of your fingers with cellophane tape. Even dried glue would do the trick. Then you set the pencil down right in front of me; you knew I'd take it, just as I'd taken the protractor from Elliot Thomas' office. You knew I was suspicious of you, and you decided to knock me out of the box right at the beginning."
I tried to see Tal's face, but he was still framed against the circle of muddy light. He didn't move. "You have fantastic control over your emotions," I continued. "I suppose that's just one more thing you had to learn in order to survive. I'm sure you knew that Richard Patern had used your design for the Nately Museum, but you probably didn't suspect that you were in danger of being discovered until I walked into your office. And you never blinked an eye. But you knew what could happen, and you started keeping a close watch on things. You were too late to save Abu, but you were probably
trying to find a way when he was killed."
Tal dropped his cigarette to the floor and ground it out under his heel. Then he walked forward and stopped in front of me. His face was impassive, but his black eyes shone brightly in the dim light. He was still holding his side, but the bleeding had stopped. "Rafferty and I don't look anything alike," he said. "Wasn't he quite thin? I must be at least thirty pounds heavier, and I don't think you'll find that much fat on me."
"Anabolic steroids could do that; the drugs, combined with a heavy conditioning program, would build you up. You not only managed to change your physical appearance, you radically altered your whole behavior pattern; you must be some natural actor. Then there would be plastic surgery, hair transplants, and voice training. The works, and all within the space of a year or so. That's cutting it close, but it could be done. It was done. I'm betting you looked different-pretty shaky-when you first showed up at the U.N. That-finally-may have been what tipped Thomas off once he thought about it and started making inquiries. I'm going to do some heavy checking on that myself."
Tal lighted another cigarette. His face hadn't changed, but his hand shook slightly. He saw that I noticed, quickly ground the cigarette out, and put his hands in his pockets. The masquerade was over, and Ronald Tal-Victor Rafferty knew it. I wondered why I didn't feel better about the whole thing.
"You could stay on top of what was happening simply by being around the right people-like me-at the right time. You were hoping against hope that I and the others would conclude that you had died, but you needed me in order to keep in touch with people you wouldn't ordinarily come into contact with."
I paused and was once again aware of the tingling in my mind. It was slight, but it was there. Tal's eyes had narrowed.
"You got worried when you found out I wanted to bail out of the case," I continued. "You already knew at that time that the Russians had Foster and your ex-wife, and you had to stay plugged into the situation until you could figure out what to do. I was your plug.
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