by Dean Koontz
Nothing.
He waited.
Something. Or was it? Yes, there it was again. A rasping sound. Not loud. Like a plastic credit card or some more sophisticated tool working between a door-jamb and a lock. It stopped. Silence. Ten seconds. Fifteen. Were they inside? No, too quiet. Twenty . . . And then more rasping, very soft and distant . . . They were good, but they weren't good enough. A fairly loud click! Silence again. Half a minute of dead air: just the rain hissing on the roof, hissing like background static when the radio dial moves off a channel. Then a creak. The kitchen door opening . . .
Canning went to the bedroom closet, stepped inside, and quietly slid the door shut in front of him. He held the Colt at his side, aimed at the door, gut level.
He didn't want to kill anyone, not even one of these fanatical bastards who called themselves Committee-men. He hoped they'd take one look through the apartment and decide he wasn't there. They hadn't come to get anything but him; therefore, if they thought he was gone, they would have no reason to search through drawers, cupboards, and closets. No reason. No reason whatsoever. If they knew enough to come after him, they also knew he was scheduled to leave Washington within the hour. They couldn't know which airport or airline he was using, for if they had known, they would have made the hit at the terminal or would have planted a bomb aboard his flight. Just as McAlister had said. So they must have come here out of desperation. Because they had tumbled to his identity so late in the game, this was their only chance to nail him. They would half expect him to be gone. When they found the rooms dark and deserted, they'd shrug and walk out and—
The closet door slid open.
Shit! Canning thought.
He fired two silenced shots.
The Committeeman grunted softly, one word, a name: "Damon!" He must have been calling his partner. But he spoke so softly that even Canning could barely hear him. Then he doubled over, clutching at his stomach, and began to fall into the closet.
Moving quickly, stealthily, Canning caught the dead man and eased him to the floor. He let go of the corpse, stepped over it, and went out into the bedroom.
The other agent wasn't there.
Canning listened and heard nothing.
He went into the living room and, when he saw that the front door was standing wide open just twenty-five feet away, faded into the shadows by the bookcases. He hesitated for a moment and was about to move toward the door—then held his breath as the second agent came back in from the landing. The man —Damon?—closed and locked the door.
"Freeze," Canning said.
Because he already had his gun drawn, Damon evidently decided that he could regain the advantage. His decision was made with the rapid thought and fluid reaction that identified a first-rate agent. He turned and got off three silenced shots in a smooth ballet-style movement.
But he was shooting blind. The bullets were all high and wide of their mark. They ripped—with dull reports—into the spines of the hardbound books which lined the wall shelves.
Also at a disadvantage because of the extremely poor light, Canning fired twice, even as the other man was finishing his turn and getting off his third shot.
Damon cried out, fell to his right, and rolled clumsily behind the sofa. He was hit, probably high in the left arm or in that shoulder.
Canning went down on one knee. He heard Damon curse. Softly. But with pain. Then: deep breathing, a scuffling noise . . .
"I don't want to have to kill you," Canning said.
Damon rose up and fired again.
It was close—but not nearly close enough.
Canning held the Colt out in front of him and moved silently through the shadows. He crouched behind an easy chair and braced the barrel of the pistol along the chair's padded arm. He watched the sofa.
Overhead, thunder cracked and the rain battered the roof with great fervor.
Ten seconds passed.
Ten more.
A minute.
Suddenly the agent scuttled out from behind the sofa and waddled toward the gray light that spilled in from the kitchen. At the doorway he was perfectly silhouetted.
Canning shot him.
Damon's right leg buckled under him, and he collapsed onto the kitchen floor, failing to choke back a scream.
Cautiously but swiftly, Canning got up from behind the easy chair and went after him.
Damon rolled onto his back and fired through the living-room doorway.
As he reached the kitchen Canning saw the gun coming up at him, and he threw himself to the left. When he heard the whoosh! of the silencer an instant later, he pitched himself back to the right and fired twice, at point-blank range, straight down into the man who lay before him.
When he finally let out his breath, Canning sounded like a bellows.
Lightning flashed again, revealing the bloodied body and the open, sightless eyes.
Canning took the magazine out of the Colt and replaced it with a fresh one. He slipped the pistol back into its holster.
"Dad, have you ever killed anyone?"
"What kind of question is that?"
"Well, you work for the CIA."
"Not everyone at the agency wears a cloak and carries a dagger, Mike. Most of us just sit at desks and page through foreign technical journals, looking for bits and pieces of data, clues that someone else can work into a puzzle."
"You're not a desk man."
"I'm not?"
"You aren't the type."
"Well, it isn't easy to—"
"Have you ever killed anyone?"
"Suppose I have."
"Suppose."
"And I'm not saying I have."
"Just suppose."
"Do you think it would have been in self-defense —or do you think your father's a hired assassin?"
"Oh, it would be in self-defense."
"Well, thanks."
"Technically."
"Technically?"
"Well, Dad, if you'd chosen to work for someone besides the CIA, if you were a civilian, then foreign undercover agents wouldn't have any reason to kill you. Right? If you were a lawyer or a teacher, your job wouldn't require you to kill anyone in self-defense. So even if you did kill only in self-defense—well, you chose the job that made it necessary . . . So you must have enjoyed it."
"You think I could enjoy killing a man?"
"That's what I'm asking."
"Jesus!"
"I'm not saying it was a conscious enjoyment. It's more subtle than that."
"I've never enjoyed it!"
"Then you admit to murder?"
"No such thing."
"Wrong term, I guess. You admit to killing."
"We agreed this was a purely theoretical discussion."
"Sure."
"Mike, you try to see everything as black and white. The agency isn't like that. Neither is life. There are shades of gray, shadows. I don't see any point discussing this with you. You don't seem mature enough to think about those grays and shadows."
"Sure. You're right."
"Don't be so damned smug. You only think you've won."
"Gee, Dad, I didn't know this was a contest. I didn't know I could win or lose."
"Sure."
Canning stepped over the corpse, went to the kitchen door, and looked down at the courtyard. The two potted cherry trees shivered in the wind. So far as he could see, no other men were waiting out there.
He locked the door, reached for the light switch, thought better of that, got a flashlight from a drawer by the sink, and went to search the dead men. Being careful not to get blood on his clothes, Canning first attended to the agent who was sprawled on the kitchen floor. He found a wallet full of papers and credit cards in the name of Damon Hillary. There was also a thin plastic case which was full of business cards for Intermountain Incorporated. Intermountain was an agency front. He went into the bedroom and dragged the other man out of the closet. This one, he discovered, was named Louis Hobartson and was also an employee of Inter
mountain.
In the bathroom he washed the blood off his hands. He used a wad of tissues to wipe smears of blood from the wallets, flushed the tissues down the commode. He checked himself in the mirror to be certain that his suit hadn't been soiled.
He looked at his watch: three-fifteen.
In the bedroom again, he neatly laid back the covers on the bed, lifted the mattress, and slipped both wallets far back on top of the box springs. He dropped the mattress, pulled the bedclothes in place, and smoothed out the wrinkles. Now, if the Commiteemen retrieved their men before he had time to tell McAlister to come after them, Hillary and Hobartson would not disappear without a trace.
He took his suitcases out of the closet and carried them back into the living room.
He took his raincoat from the front closet and struggled into it on his way to the living-room windows. Parting the velvet drapes half an inch, he saw that the LTD was still parked across the street, the driver still looking this way. Canning glanced at his wrist-watch: three-eighteen. When he looked at the street again, a taxi was just angling in beside the curb downstairs. The cabbie gave three long signals with the horn.
Canning left the apartment, locked up, carried his bags downstairs. At the foyer door he hesitated, then opened it, pushed through, and hurried to the cab. Without getting out in the rain, the cabbie had thrown open the rear door. It was a high-roof, British-style taxi; therefore, Canning didn't have to lift his suitcases in ahead of him. He stepped in, cases in hand, and sat down, wondering if the man in the LTD would be crazy enough to try to shoot him right out here on the street.
Reaching over the front seat, the cabbie pulled the door shut for him. "The dispatcher said National Airport."
"That's right. I have a four o'clock flight."
"You cut it close."
"Nice tip if we make it."
"Oh, there's no chance we'll miss."
As they pulled away from the curb, Canning saw the LTD fall in behind them.
That's all right, he thought. The bastard can't drive and shoot at the same time.
To make a successful hit in a public place like an air terminal, you had to have at least two men: one to do the shooting and one to either cause a distraction or drive the getaway car. This man in the LTD could do nothing but follow him, see which flight he boarded, and report back to the boss.
Canning realized, however, that The Committee would probably soon learn the Otley identity and his entire itinerary. Within an hour after they left Washington, agents in California—perhaps the same ones who had murdered the Berlinsons—would be outlining a plan to kill him when he changed planes in Los Angeles.
At four-ten the jet lifted off, and by four-twenty it was above the storm. From his window seat Canning watched the city, the countryside, and then the clouds fall away from him.
"Suppose you'd been a German during the Second World War, someone who had the opportunity to get close to Hitler with a gun. Would you have shot him?"
"Gee, Dad, I thought you didn't want to talk about this sort of thing any more."
"Would you have shot Hitler?"
"This is stupid. Hitler was dead before I was born."
"Would you have shot him?"
"Would you have shot Genghis Khan?"
"You have two possible answers, Mike. Say yes, and you'd be admitting that given the right conditions, you could kill a man. Say no, and you'd be implying that you have no duty to protect the lives of innocent people whom you might have saved."
"I don't get your point."
"Of course you do."
"Tell me anyway."
"The right thing would have been to kill Hitler and save the millions of people who died because of him. Yet, in shooting him, you'd still be a murderer. In other words, a moral act is often a compromise between the ideal and the practical."
Mike said nothing.
"It seems to me that morality and expediency are two sides of the same coin, a very thick coin that more often than not lands with both faces showing."
"Do you feel very moral when you kill?"
"We're not talking about me or—"
"Oh, this is still 'theoretical,' is it?"
"Mike—"
"Hitler was one of a kind, Dad. A man as dangerous and crazy as he was, a man who needs killing as badly as he needed it, comes along once in a century. You're trying to take a unique case like Hitler and generalize from it."
"But he wasn't unique. The world's full of Hitlers— but few of them ever make it to the top."
"Thanks to men like you, I suppose."
"Perhaps."
"Do you feel heroic when you kill one of your little Hitlers?"
"No."
"I'll bet you do."
"I'm . . . surprised. Shocked. I'm just beginning to see how much you . . . hate me."
"I don't hate you, Dad. I just don't feel much of anything at all where you're concerned, not anything, not one way or the other."
An hour into the flight, Canning gave his forged State Department credentials to a stewardess and requested that she pass them along to the pilot. "I'd like to speak with him when he has a few minutes to spare."
Five minutes later the stewardess returned. "He'll see you now, Mr. Otley."
Canning followed her up front to the serving galley. The galley—now that the flight attendants were dispensing before-dinner drinks from a bar cart in the aisle—was reasonably quiet.
The pilot was a tall, paunchy, balding man who said his name was Giffords. He returned Canning's papers, and they shook hands. "What can I do for you, Mr. Otley?"
"If I read the departures board correctly back at National, this flight goes all the way to Honolulu."
"That's right," Giffords said. "We let off a few passengers in L.A., take on a few others, and refuel."
"How long is the layover?"
"One hour."
"Are you booked solid for Honolulu?"
"We're usually overbooked. And there's a waiting list for the cancellations. We hardly ever have an empty seat on the Hawaiian run."
"I'd like you to make an empty seat for me."
"You want to bump someone?"
"If that's the only way, yes."
"Why is this so urgent?"
"I'm sorry, Captain Giffords, but I can't say. This is highly classified State Department business."
"That's not good enough."
Canning thought for a moment. Then: "I'm carrying an extremely important message to a man in China. It can't be delivered by phone, mail, or telegram. It can't go in the scheduled weekly diplomatic pouch. I didn't use a government plane because it was easier to keep the mission a secret if I flew on civil airlines. Somehow the wrong people learned I was the messenger, and they want to stop me at any cost. An attempt was made on my life just before I left Washington. It failed only because they didn't have time to set it up properly. But if I change planes in L.A., as planned—"
"They will have had time to set it up there, and they'll nail you," Giffords said.
"Exactly."
"This is pretty wild stuff for me," Giffords said.
"Believe me, I don't find it routine either."
"Okay. You'll have a seat to Hawaii."
"Two other things."
Giffords grimaced. "I was afraid of that."
"First of all, I have two suitcases in the baggage compartment. They're tagged for Los Angeles."
"I'll instruct the baggage handlers to retag them and put them aboard again."
"No. I want to get off for them and bring them back to the check-in counter myself."
"Why?"
"I've got to try to mislead the men who're waiting for me. If they know I'm continuing on to Hawaii, they'll just set up something in Honolulu."
Giffords nodded. "Okay. What's the other thing?"
"When we land, get in touch with the airport security office and tell them there's a damned good chance that the next Pan Am flight to Tokyo will have a bomb aboard."
Giffo
rds stiffened. "Are you serious?"
"That's the flight I'm supposed to take out of L.A."
"And these people, whoever wants to stop you, would kill a planeload of innocent people? Just to get you?"
"Without hesitation."
Watching Canning closely, Giffords frowned. He wiped one hand across his face. But he failed to wipe the frown away. "Let me see your papers again."
Canning gave him the State Department documents.
After he had looked those over, Giffords said, "You have a passport, Mr. Otley?"
Canning gave him that.
Once he'd paged slowly through the passport, Giffords handed it back and said, "I'll do what you want."
"Thank you, Captain."
"I hope you realize how far out my neck is stuck."
"You won't get it chopped off," Canning said. "I've been straight with you."
"Good luck, Mr. Otley."
"If I have to rely on luck, I'm dead."
He was the last one off the plane. He took his time strolling the length of the debarkation corridor, and he found his suitcases waiting for him when he reached the baggage carrousel.
Picking up his two pieces of luggage, he turned and looked at the busy crowd ebbing and flowing through the terminal. He paid particularly close attention to everyone in the vicinity of the Pan Am facilities, but he couldn't spot the men who had to be watching him—which meant they were damned good.
He turned his back on the Pan Am check-in counter and walked across the terminal toward the main entrance. He walked slowly at first, hoping he could get at least halfway to the doors before he alarmed the Committeemen who were surely watching him. Gradually he picked up speed and covered the last half of the lobby at a brisk walk. He glanced back and saw two obviously distraught men hurrying through the crowd, well behind him. Smiling, he went through the main doors.
Outside, he got into the first taxi line.
"Where to?" the driver asked. He was a young, mustachioed man with a broad scar on his chin and a broad smile above it.
Canning opened his wallet, which was thickened by five thousand dollars in U.S. currency and Japanese yen. This was the operational fund that McAlister had included in the packet that contained the Otley identification. Canning handed the driver a fifty-dollar bill and said, "There's a hundred more for you if you'll help me."
