Who’s Who, in the New York Public Library. It rang a bell, but there would be time enough later to sort it out. Yegorov maintained a good pace for a man his age. He clearly had no suspicion of being followed, but Austen kept about three-quarters of a block behind him and on the other side of the avenue just to be sure it stayed that way.
The wind had died down, and Yegorov seemed to be enjoying himself as he pushed along through the crowds of Sunday strollers. After a few blocks he dropped the pretense of needing his cane and simply carried it in his hand. Wherever he was going, it obviously wasn’t such a great distance that the old man entertained any thoughts of taking a taxi. So much the better.
It was in front of the window of the Doubleday bookstore that Austen remembered the night he had followed another man down Fifth Avenue, but that had been—how long?—close to six years ago. It was easier to do these things, he discovered, in broad daylight.
Because he had missed breakfast, and because his comparative youth was beginning to tell as he gained on Yegorov, he stopped to buy a hot dog from a street vendor, paying for it with a dollar bill from his overcoat pocket. It wasn’t for several seconds, as he walked along eating the hot dog and absent-mindedly fiddling with the coins that were still in his hand, that he realized the vendor had short-changed him. Apparently he must have looked preoccupied—something to take care of, since hot dog vendors weren’t the only people with eyes.
They reached Central Park and Yegorov, who had been stopped by a light, stood staring at the street sign. There was something in his gestures that suggested a certain impatience, as if he felt himself close to his goal.
All at once Austen experienced a horrible premonition.
Ten little red Indians, he had said. Just braves now, but someday all of them will be chiefs. The old man had told them himself, and everyone had been too dumb to listen.
Now, as Austen himself had once done, Yegorov was following a well-worn trail to the doorway of one of America’s most badly frightened worthies.
Ten little Indians, Who’s Who—possibly the same volume he had looked into himself—the link with Howard Diederich. Why hadn’t he seen it before?
“He’s at Fifty-ninth and Fifth,” Austen whispered into the walkie-talkie. “Pull up within range, George. I’m going down to Madison, and if he starts down Sixty-first be ready to grab him off. But don’t touch him until you hear from me.”
“Are you onto something, Frank? Are you—”
But Austen had no time to listen now. It was all coming true, like a bad dream, and he was running down Fifty-eighth Street so he could be in position. He wanted to be ready—and he knew now that it was going to happen. The ten little Indians were standing in a line.
He started up Madison and was at the corner of Sixty-first when he saw Yegorov again, coming toward him down the side street, looking around at the buildings as if searching for a house number. That was exactly what he was doing.
“Can you see me, George?”
“Yes—we can see you. We’re waiting just at the corner of Park. Do you want us to go for him now?”
“Not yet. I have to be absolutely sure. When you see me raise my arm, come and scoop him up.”
Austen and the old man were kitty-corner from each other now, and unfortunately the traffic light broke for Austen first. He had to cross the street, right under Yegorov’s nose, and keep on going—he could hardly hang around staring open-mouthed. But he took his time, and as soon as he could be sure that Yegorov had crossed behind him and was around the corner, he doubled back and started down the street after him. He wasn’t more than twenty feet away when Yegorov began to slow down and seemed to be curving in toward one of the brownstone houses on that side. Number sixty-seven.
He wished to hell now he had taken that damned gun of George’s.
“Just keep walking, pal,” he breathed, coming up directly behind his quarry. He pressed the blunt tip of his walkie-talkie into Yegorov’s back, hoping it would fool him for a couple of seconds. “Just keep going—there’s nobody home to you there.”
And it seemed to work, at least for three or four paces. Or maybe Yegorov was just biding his time. Because, just as Austen began to feel they were safely clear and started to signal George to move in, the old man spun and caught him on the arm with his cane.
The blow took him just on the elbow. He hadn’t known such exquisite pain was possible; all the way up to his neck he felt as if every nerve in his arm were being twisted and wrung like a washcloth. The whole arm was in agony and at the same time just so much dead weight. He couldn’t have moved it for worlds.
The next one was to the side of the face, on the cheekbone. Then, almost simultaneously, a thrust to the pit of the stomach. He could watch the pavement coming up at him and know, simply as a fact without any inherent interest, that he was falling.
Well, fine. He would just lie down there on the sidewalk for a while and take a short snooze. His head was buzzing like a beehive, and he just wanted a little peace and quiet anyway. A little peace and. . .
“Are you okay, Frank? We got him—he’s in the car. Come on, let’s get out of here. Yegorov’s fine—he’s in the car, and we’ve got the leg irons on him. Come on, Frank. You’re bleeding all over the curb.”
VII
“He’s out of town. Hell, he’s out of the country, in the Bahamas, nursing his tan, and he won’t be back until Tuesday night. Why’s it so important, after all these years?”
Austen didn’t answer immediately. Sitting in his room at the Eighth Avenue Holiday Inn, holding an icepack to the side of his head, he found it awkward and uncomfortable to talk on the telephone. In the few seconds before George Timmler had come screeching to the rescue, practically running him over as the car crowded up onto the sidewalk, old Yegorov had worked him over good. He seemed to hurt everywhere, and it had been necessary to call in a doctor to stitch up a wide gash in his scalp.
“Look, Marty, don’t ask for answers that would only embarrass you. I want to know his flight number, and I expect you to get it for me. And then I expect you to forget that you even know my name.”
There was a brief silence, during which Marty Eilberg was doubtless trying to decide whom he was more afraid of—Frank Austen, behind whom loomed the powerful and dreaded figure of Simon Faircliff, or his employer, Chester Storey.
“I’ll have to phone you in a few minutes,” he said finally. “I’ll have to go to my office to check.”
“No—I’ll phone you back, Marty. At. . .” Austen checked his watch, holding the receiver to his ear with his shoulder, “seven-fifteen. That gives you forty-five minutes, plenty of time. You be there when I call.” He hung up and grinned at Timmler, who was sitting in a chair on the other side of the room. “How was I, George? Do you think I’ll ever make a real hood?”
“You’re an idiot; you ought to be in a hospital bed. Who the hell is this guy, anyway?”
The icepack was so cold that it was beginning to bother Austen more than the bruise on his cheekbone, which had swelled the whole left side of his face and might, so the doctor had warned, be sitting right on top of a fracture. The doctor had also thought he belonged in a hospital, but for the moment there was simply too much to do.
“Marty Eilberg used to work on Faircliff’s senatorial staff, and after he got fired I arranged for him to get a job with Chester Storey, the man whose house Yegorov was headed for when we picked him up—when you picked him up. Just then I needed picking up myself.” He grinned a second time, but it didn’t make his bruise feel any better, so he stopped. “Anyway, he’ll deliver, and when Storey arrives at Kennedy I want you to have somebody there to snag him the minute he steps off the plane. I don’t want him to have a chance to talk to anybody.”
“Fine. You want to tell me what this is all about?”
“Not particularly.” Austen smiled wearily. “Anyway, you wouldn’t believe me.”
. . . . .
At nine-thirty Tuesday night, Michael Star
kman and Earl Rutledge were standing just outside the security station at the entrance to the Eastern Airlines passenger gates at Kennedy Airport. They waited there because the metal detector at the security station would have revealed that they were both armed and, although they were also provided with dummy FBI credentials, it was no part of their orders to attract that kind of attention. The subject of the evening’s exercise was supposed to simply disappear, without a trace or a murmur.
Both men appeared stoically calm, perhaps even a trifle bored—this sort of thing was nothing new to either of them—but between them stood a third man whose manner, if anyone in that busy, crowded place had taken the trouble to look, might have revealed a certain disquiet of mind. Marty Eilberg, who had been hustled out of his New York apartment, wasn’t at all used to such treatment. He had the distinct impression that these friends of Frank Austen’s were not nice people.
“Just finger your boss for us when he comes through,” they had said. “Leave the rest to us and do as you’re told, and you won’t have a thing in the world to worry about.”
Sure.
The announced arrival of Flight 277 from the Bahamas was an event none of them seemed to notice. The mob of people who began streaming through looked browned and happy and slightly uncomfortable in their heavy clothing, as if they remained unconvinced that Long Island in February wasn’t just as balmy and tropical as Nassau. Among them, in the second wave, was a man in a charcoal-gray overcoat, his pudgy hands gripping the handle of a briefcase and no hat on his head, across the top of which just a few strands of hair were visible. It was Chester Storey.
“That’s him,” Eilberg whispered hoarsely, making a furtive attempt at raising his arm to point, as if afraid someone might see.
“Fine,” the man standing to his right said, not even moving his eyes. “You did that just fine. Earl, why don’t you escort our friend here back to the car while I deal with Mr. Storey.”
The other man nodded and led Eilberg away, like a keeper with a tame imbecile. Starkman waited a few seconds longer and then walked up to the man in the charcoal overcoat. He put his hands into his own overcoat pockets, stepped in front of him, and smiled.
“Mr. Storey, if you’d come with me, please,” he said, taking his right hand out of his pocket and holding up a badge case that he kept open with his thumb. Storey stopped dead in his tracks, staring at the shiny gold badge as if he had never seen anything like it in his life.
“What’s this all about?” he asked finally, swallowing hard.
“Everything will be explained at the proper time, Mr. Storey. Now if you’d just come with me, there’s a car waiting.”
“What about my luggage?” Chester Storey glanced around as if looking for a way to run. But he wouldn’t make any kind of scene at all. Michael Starkman knew the type.
“We’ll have someone see about the luggage, Mr. Storey. Just come along now.”
The car parked in front of the terminal was a dark blue Buick, about as nondescript a vehicle as it was possible to imagine. Eilberg and Earl Rutledge were sitting in the back, and Eilberg was staring out through the rear window, his eyes large with dread. Starkman opened the front door on the passenger side and took Storey’s arm to keep him from bumping his head as he climbed inside. He went around the front and got in himself, locking all four doors behind him with a switch located next to the steering column. None of the doors except the driver’s had a handle on the inside. During the trip into Manhattan, no one said a word.
Frank Austen and George Timmler were there to meet them when the Buick pulled into a basement garage on West Forty-eighth Street. Timmler rang down the steel curtain that closed off the only entrance. Starkman got out from behind the wheel, went around and opened the door for Chester Storey, and escorted him over to where Austen was standing, beside a closed van with ambulance markings on the side.
“Good evening, ‘Bernard.’ It’s been a long time.” Austen smiled and watched Starkman, who was standing directly behind his prisoner, jam a hypodermic needle into Storey’s arm. Storey turned around to see what had happened and then slipped quietly to the floor.
“Put him in the van.”
Starkman nodded. Austen walked over to the Buick and climbed into the seat recently vacated by Chester Storey. He leaned over the backrest, supporting himself on his right elbow—the one he could still bend—and looked at Marty Eilberg.
“My friend here is going to sit with you for about an hour,” he said quietly, motioning with his head toward Rutledge. “Then he’s going to let you go. Tomorrow, if anybody asks where Mr. Storey is, you tell them he called and said he had to go out to California on business and would probably be away for a couple of weeks. If they ask where in California, you tell them he didn’t mention it. If it turns out that we’re able to return Mr. Storey, I guarantee you there won’t be any problem about your role in this.”
“If you return him?” Eilberg’s hands, which were pressed down against his lap, writhed like something in its death agony.
“Whatever happens isn’t going to be your problem, Marty. Just keep your mouth shut and stick to your story about the phone call. And don’t cross me on this, because if you do, nobody’s going to know what you’re talking about. Nobody will ever have heard of Chester Storey.
You understand, Marty? Nobody has to take a fall, but if anybody does it’s going to be yourself.”
Marty Eilberg nodded stiffly, as if the joints of his neck had somehow rusted together, and Austen got out of the car.
Five minutes later, with Timmler behind the wheel, they were making their precarious way toward the Holland Tunnel and the road south. There were just the two of them in the van’s front compartment; Michael Starkman was in the rear with his patient, who was strapped to a cot and could be expected to remain unconscious for several more hours.
“Have you got Yegorov in his old room?” Austen asked. He had a splitting headache—the same one he had had for two days now—and the lights from the oncoming traffic weren’t helping any. But he was forcing himself to go over every step of what had happened, and what was going to happen. He didn’t want to overlook anything or do anything careless; it was too important this time.
All my sons, my little boys. And the old man had gone straight to the brownstone on East Sixty-first Street, as if he had expected to be welcomed with open arms. He had looked up the address in Who’s Who, so he had known the name, and no one had told Yegorov a new name in forty years.
How old could Storey have been when Yegorov dropped out of circulation? Twenty? Twenty-one? And yet Yegorov had known his name, had known that he would find it in the lists of the great and powerful. Just braves now, but someday all of them will be chiefs.
Timmler nodded. Yes, the colonel was back home.
“Then when we get back to Fishing Bay put Storey next door, where he’ll have that one-way window. Leave him in there for at least an hour after he wakes up and starts moving around. I want him to have a good look at Yegorov. Then he’s to be put in another room, the smaller the better, where he’ll be all by himself. He’s to be fed, and that’s it. No one is to say so much as a word to him, or even look him in the eyes. I want him to feel nice and isolated, and I want him to have plenty of time to think, particularly about Yegorov. Then maybe, when he’s had about five days of that, he’ll be ready to tell us what the fuck’s going on.”
. . . . .
It didn’t take five days. After only four it was judged that they didn’t dare leave him in isolation any longer, and Austen was sent for. Timmler had remained behind at Fishing Bay to keep an eye on things, and he was waiting on the veranda of the main house when Austen drove up.
“We did it just the way you laid it out,” he said, waiting with his hands thrust deep into his trouser pockets while an attendant took Austen’s coat. “He hasn’t eaten since the day before yesterday; he doesn’t even move. He just lies there on his bed, staring at the wall. This morning I got worried and had a doctor go loo
k at him, and the verdict is that he’s withdrawn into a deep depression. You’ll have to be the one to decide what to do with him now.”
“Is there any chance they can snap him out of it?”
“Oh, sure. Doc says it’ll just take a shot of amphetamine and he’ll be good as new—for a while. Once the stuff wears off, though, there are no guarantees.”
They were walking down a cement stairway to the basement, where the detention cells were, and Timmler took a key out of his pocket to unlock the door at the bottom. Beyond that door, the haunted house took on the more prosaic aspect of something between a hospital and a prison.
“What happened before he went into his slide? Did he just withdraw, or did he give any indication of what was bothering him?”
“You should have been here.” Timmler laughed in a way that suggested the very farthest thing from amusement. “Just as a precaution, we had his room wired, and about twenty minutes after he came around from the shot we gave him in New York he started screaming like he’d just seen the devil. He was scared to death. We moved him to another cell, and he settled down a bit, but all the rest of that morning you could stand outside his door and listen to him sobbing. And then nothing. He just turned his face to the wall. We haven’t had a sound out of him since.”
“Hasn’t he said anything?” They were almost to the cell door, and Austen stopped and put his hand on Timmler’s elbow.
“One word—’soroka’. He said that several times. We don’t know what it means either.”
“Get the doctor. Let’s bring our friend back to life and see how he likes it.”
VIII
Chester Storey sat on the edge of the bed, wiping his nose. His eyes were red and watery, and he was sagging badly as he leaned forward, bracing his left arm against his knee, but he was awake and coherent, which by itself was a considerable improvement. They had even gotten him to eat something. He was as ready as he would ever be.
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