Deathwish World

by Dean Ing

  The American said grudgingly, "I suppose in some respects you've made your point. Under some circumstances, assassination can be called for. But what happens when someone approaches you with a proposal to kill someone who doesn't deserve killing?"

  The Graf raised his eyebrows. He put down his glass of wine. "My dear Franklin, we are pragmatists, not mad dogs. Our interests are not only money. Suppose, for instance, that Mercenaries, Incorporated was approached by an enemy of the Prophet. As I told you, we support the United Church in its efforts to join all organized religions into a single worldwide state church, ending once and for all conflicts between faiths. Very well, not only would we refuse the contract, but we would inform Ezra Hawkins, the Prophet, about this foe of his, so that he could take steps to protect himself."

  "By hiring Mercenaries, Incorporated to eliminate the enemy?" Frank said.

  Peter Windsor chuckled. "You're catching on, dear boy.'*

  Following dinner, they sat for a time in the living room over coffee and cognac. The talk drifted, in deference to Frank, to stories involving his father. The Graf carried most of the conversation, since his relationship with Buck Pinell had extended over years, but Peter Windsor was also able to contribute a few anecdotes. Most of the stories were of a humorous nature and it came to Frank that combat veterans seldom talked much about actual combat itself. When it was shop talk, yes; something involving business at hand. But not as light conversation. Perhaps amateurs might brag of their exploits under fire, but professionals, no. And you couldn't get much more professional than Lothar von Brandenburg and Peter Windsor.

  When the party broke up, Margit offered to conduct Frank back to his suite. The winding corridors and stone stairways of the keep took some learning, and under the influence of the wines during the meal and the generous brandies following it, Frank wasn't sure he could find his way unaided. The Graf looked tolerant, Peter amused, as they said their goodnights. On the morrow, Frank was to be assigned a guide to show him the Wolfschloss in detail.

  As they strolled along the stone corridor, Frank decided that nicety wasn't called for.

  He said, "Your rooms, or mine?"

  She looked up at him from the side of her eyes. "I thought you'd never ask. Yours. You might never find your way bck to your own suite in the morning."

  And that was the full extent of their courting, then- preliminary love play. Margit was a businesslike woman, in her sex life as well as her secretarial work.

  In fact, she was as straightforward a woman as he had ever bedded, and at his age, Frank had seldom gone without horizontal refreshments when he had desired them.

  In his bedroom, she had stripped with flattering haste, and had pirouetted exactly once, to show off the woman's body, saying, "Like me?" before sliding into the emperor-sized canopied bed.

  His voice was on the thick side as he told her, "Yes," climbing out of his own clothes.

  "Good heavens," she said, teasing him, "is that for me?"

  "Yes," he said hoarsely, already rampant.

  Not for Margit Krebs were new variations of the world's oldest theme. She took her sex straight and lustily, somewhat surprising Frank, who had expected unique desires on the part of this sophisticated wanton. Perhaps that would come later, he decided as he performed for her. For the present, his lady wanted immediate basic action.

  And wanted it again, within minutes after they had both reached rapturous climax. He began to wonder if he had known what he was getting into, so to speak.

  Later, as they rested, both staring up at the rich cream-colored canopy above, he said, only partly in humor, "And what is a nice girl like you doing in this kind of work?"

  She followed along. "What's the classic answer to that? Just lucky, I guess."

  "Come on, come on. On the face of it you're the junior member of the staff that runs the toughest organization on Earth. Why would a woman like you want to hold down such a job? With your obvious ability you could get top positions anywhere. So why be the notorious Grafs secretary?"

  She looked at him strangely. "It's where the power is."

  "I don't understand."

  "The Graf is the single most powerful man in the world, darling. Not the wealthiest, not the one with the most political clout, but the most powerful. Others may not always realize that, but he is."

  "Why?"

  "Because he holds the life of every other living person in the palm of his hand."

  He thought about that for a long moment, before saying, "But that's him, not you."

  "The Graf doesn't operate in a vacuum," she told him patiently. "There is no such thing as a one-man dictatorship. Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini, Mao were the heads of teams. Without the team around them, they wouldn't have been able to cope. The same with Napoleon and Alexander the Great.

  Alexander would have been nothing but a headstrong, alcoholic youth had it not been for Nearchus, Parmenion, and other leaders trained by his father Philip. True enough, the Empire broke up upon his death, when the team started fighting among themselves. But while they were still a team, with him at the head, they were invincible. So it is with the Graf. He does not stand alone, making all decisions. He has a team. I'm part of the team. You might be, too."

  That quieted him.

  She said, a quirk of amusement there, "I should warn you about Lothar. I think perhaps he's getting a bit tired of Peter, who isn't quite as young and pink-cheeks as he used to be."

  That came as a surprise. "You mean he's gay?"

  She laughed. "What is your old American expression? He's as queer as chicken shit."

  "Not my cup of tea," he said gruffly.

  "You've already proven that, darling, though I do hope that you're up to proving it again." She reached over to stroke him intimately.

  Frank said, "Wizard, but hold it for just a little, eh?"

  "You mean that literally?" she said, wickedness in her voice.

  "You're a sexpot. Did anyone ever tell you that?"

  "Yes."

  He frowned again and said, "What ever happened to my father's estate? From what you people say, he must have been a partner for something like twenty years. When he died my mother refused to take anything except enough to educate me on. What happened to the rest?"

  "Why, I don't know, darling." She frowned as well. "And I should know. I'm supposed to know everything connected with Mercenaries, Incorporated."

  Chapter Seventeen: Lee Garrett

  When Lee Garrett reported to the office of Sheila Duff-Roberts early in the morning of the day after she had arrived, it was to find the Amazon-like secretary of the Central Committee of the World Club already deep in work. A cigarette, half an ash, dangled from the side of her mouth, and the smoke from it spiraled upward.

  Sheila looked up, did her sparse smile, and said, "Good morning, darling. I rather expected you to return here after your lunch with Jerry Auburn yesterday. Do sit down."

  Lee took the indicated chair and said apologetically, "We ran into some difficulty. By the time it was ironed out I felt exhausted and Mr. Auburn took me back to my suite."

  "Difficulty?"

  "He was attacked in the restaurant by a waiter, apparently a Nihilist. I've read about them, of course. But…" she shook her blond head "… good heavens, I didn't know it had gotten to the point where they were attacking prominent people right in the open."

  The other at last noticed the length of her cigarette ash and tapped it off into her improvised ash tray. Her eyes narrowed. "Nihilists! The bastards are really getting out of hand. Just recently they kidnapped one of our candidate members of the Central Committee and shot him when his wife couldn't pay a fifty million pseudo-dollar ransom. Something simply will have to be done. What happened?"

  "It was terrible. The man was about to shoot Jerry—Mr. Auburn—from behind. But something made him turn and, well, Jerry knows savate and…"

  "What the hell's savate?"

  "A method of fighting with the feet; an old French sport with some aspe
cts of karate. Jerry disarmed the man and had kicked him unconscious before the others arrived. The manager, of course, was extremely upset. He said that the waiter was a new man who had only been there for a few days. He called the police, of course."

  Sheila shook her head. "Trust Jerry to come up with something like that, fighting with his feet. Undoubtedly, he'll report on it later. With almost all of the Central Committee in Rome, we can't afford to run chances of assassination. Which reminds me: we're to have a party tonight. All of the Central Committee members and candidate members will be present. It will give you an opportunity to meet them and for them, of course, to get an impression of you. In the ballroom, beginning at nine."

  Lee frowned. "Candidate member?" she said.

  "Yes. You see, there are but ten members of the Central Committee, plus myself as secretary. Most of them are rather elderly. So, at any given time, there are as many as a score or so candidate members, waiting to be made full members upon the death or retirement of any of the present incumbents. One of the matters to be handled at this session is such a promotion. Grace Cabot-Hudson hasn't been active for some time, so she is being asked to retire to the position of Central Committee Member Emeritus and a new member will be appointed."

  In an angry movement of a well-manicured hand, she took up another cigarette and lit it, before going on. "And it's ten to one that it won't be another woman. Male dominance still prevails in the Central Committee. You'd think that at least half the members should be female, but no. The male ego we still have with us." She snorted. Then, "Well, be that as it may, dear, I'll see you at the party tonight. Have you met any of the other members, besides Jerry?"

  "I haven't had the opportunity."

  "I mentioned you to Fong Hui, who has just rocketed in from Hong Kong. He'd like to meet you. Fong is the only Oriental Central Committee member, though there are candidates from Japan, India, and Indonesia."

  "When did he wish to see me?"

  "This morning." Sheila Duff-Roberts touched a button on her TV phone.

  Almost immediately, a door leading to the back opened and a girl bustled through. She was a tiny thing, smaller than Lee Garrett and absolutely dwarfed by the Junoesque Sheila. She was a bit on the plump side, which didn't detract from her vivacity.

  Sheila said, "Lily Palermo, Lee Garrett. Lee is to be my new secretary, Lily darling, to replace Pamela. But you girls can get to know each other later. Right now, I'd like you to take Lee to Fong Hui's apartment. The old fuddy-duddy's expecting her."

  "Right away," Lily said. And to Lee, "My, you must have spent a fortune on that hair."

  Lee came to her feet and said to Sheila, "See you at the party, then."

  "Good-O, darling," Sheila said, already back at her work.

  As they started down the corridor, redundant with art as everywhere in the Palazzo Colonna, Lee said, touching her hair, "Believe it if you will but it's my own and I do it myself."

  "It's lovely," Lily told her and giggled. "You should have been at tüepartous last night. You would have been the hit."

  Lee made a moue. "Group sex turns me off," she said.

  The other looked at her from the side of her eyes. "I'm surprised that Sheila is taking you for her secretary then."

  Lee shrugged. "It was rather thrown at me, without my having much to say about it, though frankly, this whole World Club thing has its fascinating aspects."

  "Oh, it's the most wizard job you can imagine. You're right in the middle of the most important goings on in the world. You're really on the inside."

  Lee said idly, "Whatever happened to Pamela, the girl I'm taking over from?"

  "I don't know. She was awfully nice. Kind of a little serious, even more dedicated than most. Irish, and she still talked with that soft brogue they have."

  "What was her last name?"

  "McGivern. She wouldn't take anything from anybody, not even Sheila. They'd argue hammer and tongs."

  "Maybe that's why Sheila let her go."

  The little girl was silent for a moment, as they rounded a turn in the wide corridor. Then she said quietly, "Sheila never fires you from any of these jobs. She might transfer you to some other position, somewhere else. But she'll never fire you."

  "Why not?"

  The other wasn't quite happy at the question. "Well, I suppose if the computers selected you in the first place, you have more than usual ability, and the Central Committee doesn't want to waste it. Besides…" she hesitated for a moment "… you're in on so many top-secret matters that they wouldn't like you to blab them around." She rolled her eyes. "I can just see somebody who once worked for the Central Committee sitting down and writing a book about it."

  Lee thought about that. She already had several new things to think about this morning. For one, she had gotten the damnedest impression that Sheila had already known about the attack on Jerry Auburn before she had told her. But then, it was Sheila's job to know everything that happened pertaining to the Central Committee members.

  Lily brought them up to an imposing door, similar to that which opened into Sheila Duff-Roberts's salon. Once again, there was no identity screen. She knocked briskly, then reached down for the bright brass knob.

  She smiled brightly at Lee, said, "See you later, dear," turned and tripped briskly away.

  Lee entered, closing the door behind her. She blinked in surprise at the large room's decor. She had stepped from a Roman Renaissance corridor into a chamber which should have been eight thousand miles away, in a Chinese palace or mansion of the Ming dynasty. One had no doubts whatsoever that all of the exquisite furnishings, all of the art, and even the rugs, were genuine antiques. The whole room belonged in a Chinese museum.

  There were two occupants—an old man behind an intricately carved ebony desk, and a girl, certainly not over twenty, wearing a sleek, long, yellow, high-collared cheong-sam. She was kneeling upon a dais, plucking a thin Mandarin melody from a jong resting on the floor before her. Her slim fingers played over the instrument as though caressing a lover.

  The old man was frail with a wisp of a white beard and a bald head poised forward on his long neck with great natural dignity and grace. He wore the red-tasseled, crystal-topped cap and the navy-blue gown of the scholar.

  Lee said formally, after bowing, "May I trouble your chariot? My name is Lee Garrett."

  His aged eyes took her in for a moment, then the slightest of smiles appeared on his yellowish parchment face. "My chariot is untroubled. Pray take an honored chair."

  "I am totally unworthy."

  "The unworthiness is mine," he told her. "My office is favored by your visit."

  Lee sat across the desk from him and said, "It is a poor woman's delight."

  "The office shrinks in humble shame before your footsteps." Fong Hui shook hands with himself, keeping his delicately tapered fingers well within his long loose sleeves.

  The Chinese girl who had been playing the jong stood and trotted toward a rear door. She turned without speaking, bobbed several bows, and left.

  Fong took Lee in again, the faint smile still in his eyes. "I suspect that you would have been capable of going through the formal greeting of years past in the original Mandarin."

  Lee Garrett acknowledged the compliment. "Only awkwardly, Mr. Fong. My father was a diplomat. When I was a young girl he was stationed for two years in the People's Republic in Peking. He was an ardent linguist and always insisted that the family study the language of the nation to which we were posted."

  "Such talents will be welcome in the position Ms. Duff-Roberts tells me you are to occupy." He smiled faintly again and let his eyes go about the room. "Undoubtedly, you are surprised at both my office and my attire."

  "I have always been a great admirer of the art and culture of the Celestial Empire, Mr. Fong."

  His thin voice held a touch of exasperation. "And I have long been displeased by the increasing domination of the Western culture. But I wage a losing battle. The culture of the West sweeps everyt
hing before it—its modes of dress, its food, its manners and mores. An accident of history gave the European and North American powers domination over the world for at least the present, so that the habits of the West have prevailed to the detriment of other cultures, not neces-sarily inferior. As to dress, without doubt the Chinese cheong-sam and the Indian sari are far more flattering to the feminine figure than the awkward garb of Europe. And throughout the world now, all cities are beginning to look like Cleveland, Ohio, while such architectural gems as Angkor Wat in Cambodia and Kyoto in Japan are now no longer anything but museums on a grand scale."

  Lee said, "I agree with you, Mr. Fong. Even Rome now has its seven hills surrounded by sky-high condominiums and high-rise apartment buildings for the antlike existence of the proles, the slums of the welfare state."

  He was obviously enjoying her company. "My dear," he said, "you seem wise beyond your years. Perhaps some evening, after adjusting to your new atmosphere, you will honor me with your presence at dinner. My chef is from Shanghai."

  "I am overwhelmed, Mr. Fong. I consider Chinese cuisine the world's finest."

  The old man touched his wisp of white beard and said, "And now, my dear, tell me: what are your impressions of the World Club?"

  She said hesitantly, "I am somewhat overwhelmed. Its scope is much greater than I had thought. I am inclined to wonder whether it has bitten off more than it can chew. The problems seem insoluble to me."