Count Backwards to Zero

by Brett Halliday

  “I’ll get it the next time it rings.”

  “Then about Sam. He was one of the people who helped arm Israel in the early days. I was his secretary before—well, before we moved on from there. It was an assignment, you see. I’m a lieutenant in the Israeli army, all right? To get that out of the way. I turned in reports on the various things Sam was doing. He keeps a dozen irons in the fire, sometimes working for us, sometimes for himself. And then somebody in the organization picked up on what was happening with Quentin. Dessau and Diamond were seen together, and we knew Diamond was working for the Arabs. When they separated, our person followed Dessau to Camberwell, where we found him having nightly meetings with an important British physicist.”

  “What level was Dessau on?”

  “He’s rather small time. If he ever did this sort of work before, it didn’t pay much. We assumed—I shouldn’t say we, because I hadn’t been brought in on it then—my people assumed that what was at issue was information, first about the British atomic capability, then later about the American. Quentin, of course, is cleared to visit any American facility, even the most secret. Then we learned that Diamond would be traveling to America with him on the same boat. At that point, that was all we knew. Sam was in France and I was free. I was sent along. The assignment was to strike up a friendship with Quentin and see if I could find out what was happening.”

  “With how many others?”

  “I was alone. That’s why I needed your help so badly. When Quentin—”

  Shayne interrupted. “Not that I have any reason to believe Diamond, but he told me you were having such a bad influence on Little that they decided to put you over the side. A routine cloak-and-dagger murder.”

  Then a surprising thing happened. Anne blushed. She had drawn the sheet to her waist, but a definite blush began spreading over the entire visible part of her body. She pulled the sheet to her chin, concealing as much of it as she could.

  “My God, it was terrible,” she said in a small voice. “I’ve never done anything like that, but only one of us was going to reach land, and as you see, here I am. Mike,” she said, turning toward him earnestly, “we’re at war. You realize that. That man was as much an enemy soldier as if he’d been wearing Egyptian uniform. I had to do it. I couldn’t stop to wonder whether or not I could. But it was awful.” She put her hand to her face. “And that’s my quota, for a full lifetime. He was as heavy as lead.”

  “Nobody helped?”

  “Who else was there? Quentin, of course. He was drunk. I thought about you—but no, clearly no. So that left me, and I did it. A grisly little man. He needed a shave.”

  “They’ll give you a medal,” Shayne said without sympathy.

  “They won’t know about it! I don’t intend to tell them. Somebody might order me to do the same thing again.”

  “Did it occur to you at any point that Little might be lying?”

  “Mike, I didn’t really believe it till that little man tried to kill me. I phoned Sam from Bermuda, and naturally he was excited. For someone in his business to get hold of that kind of bomb would be a tremendous coup. A figure of ten million dollars has been mentioned. I didn’t want to involve my organization directly, in case anything went wrong. Sam flew over and hired the necessary people. We didn’t want a gun battle on the streets of Miami, but we would have done it that way if we had had to. And then you walked aboard, my dear Mike, looking as though you’d eat the first person who asked you a simple question.” She kissed his shoulder. “One thing I’ve worried about. What did Quentin do when they let him through Customs without searching his car?”

  “Dessau convinced him it was deliberate, so they could find out who else was in on the plot, and round up everybody at the same time. Little’s the one person we don’t need to talk about. He’s dead.”

  She took a long breath and her eyes closed and opened. “The damn fool. I knew he hadn’t really changed his mind about dying. How did he do it?”

  “I didn’t say he did it himself. He was found knifed in an abandoned building.”

  She drew back from him slightly. “I see. That’s the reason for this. You think we did it.”

  “I know Diamond didn’t, because of the way it happened. You and Geller wouldn’t want to leave any loose ends. Quentin Little, alive, would be a very loose end. He couldn’t just report for work next Monday and forget about it. Sooner or later somebody in England would tally up their plutonium and find that seventeen pounds were missing. Your name would be mentioned. Now don’t get excited. I’m just checking out a possibility. You’ve already told me about another killing of exactly the same kind.”

  “I had no choice about that one!” She gave him an unfriendly look. “I’m beginning to understand. First sex. Then conversation, in the course of which I make an admission, which gives you something to use against me.”

  Shayne said gently, “You’re a professional, Lieutenant. So am I, and right now we’re both working. You told me about the guy on the boat so I’d think you trusted me. Little’s dead, but he’s still my client, and I want to know who killed him. Diamond thinks I did. That’s been helpful. He’s sure that if I get my hands on that gas tank I’ll have to turn it over to him. You know that won’t happen.”

  “What will?”

  “Anne, what would any patriotic American do with an atom bomb if he happened to find one in the street? I’ll turn it in and get my picture in the paper.”

  “I had a feeling you might sell it to us.”

  “If I’d sell it to you, I’d sell it to Diamond if he could come up with more money in a hurry. He raised eighteen thousand tonight without blinking.”

  “Mike, are you saying you don’t know where it is?”

  Shayne gave her a bleak look without replying, and reached for the cognac bottle.

  The phone gave a warning tinkle. It was at Anne’s side of the bed. He rolled quickly and reached past her to get it. He picked it up with both hands, one hand covering the mouthpiece.

  He heard Cecily Little’s voice.

  “Love, it’s fabulous! Money, money, money. I finally got to him. He practically creamed on the phone. You’re all right there?”

  A male voice answered with an assenting murmur.

  The girl went on, “What do we ask them for then, a hundred thousand? He’s good for more, but do we want to stand around twiddling thumbs while he raises it? Take it and fade, chum. That’s the policy. Get too greedy and you get caught. Twenty minutes, half an hour at the outside. Have everything ready. Bye-bye.”

  Hearing her hang up, Shayne threw the phone back and snapped, “Get dressed.”

  She scrambled away and felt for her clothes. “I didn’t hear much of that. Who was it?”

  Shayne drained his cognac. “Little’s daughter. Did he tell you about her?”

  “He talked about her all the time! Cecily?”

  “That’s the name she gave me. Did you know she was meeting him?”

  Her fingers, working on the buttons of her blouse, didn’t pause.

  “You caught him in one of his clear moments. Most of the time he rambled and mumbled. He was worrying about how the cars would be handled, would it be in an enclosed building or out in the open where everybody could see? I remember he said, ‘I don’t want Cecily—’”

  She thrust her feet into shoes. “What else? She was more on his mind than his son, certainly than his wife. How mature she was for her age, how much she’d appreciate the insurance money, how excited she was by his new job—”

  “He never said in so many words that she was going to be here to meet him?”

  “If he did, it didn’t make any impression. His conversation was out of Finnegan’s Wake most of the time.”

  Shayne, having dressed quickly, was waiting. She snatched up her bag and stuffed her stockings inside it. “Mike, we still haven’t come to terms.”

  “We’ll have to talk about it in the car. Relax. Walk slowly.”

  He didn’t open the door for
her until she forced a smile. “All right, I’m relaxed. But confused.”

  He left the key in the door. Getting into the Buick without haste, he waited till she was beside him, then backed out of the slot and returned to the street. At the Shell station on the corner, he backed behind two parked cars and turned off the lights.

  Taking the bag out of her lap, he examined her pistol. It was a short-barreled Smith and Wesson .38, fully loaded. He replaced it without comment.

  “About terms,” she said.

  “There aren’t going to be any. If the only way you can get hold of this tank is by shooting me, I know you’ll do it. But not yet. You still need me. And you need everything to break the right way. If that doesn’t happen, you’ll settle for keeping it away from Diamond. That gives us both room to maneuver—not much, but some. The FBI’s are beginning to gather. They always complicate things. I don’t mind explaining it to them later, but not while it’s going on. What about Sam Geller? Can we count him out?”

  “For now,” she said quietly. “He and Diamond really hate each other.”

  “How many others do you have available?”

  “Just three, really. I don’t understand why you’re letting me keep the gun. You don’t really trust me that much.”

  “I’ll explain it to you sometime.”

  “I think you want us to cut each other down to where you can handle us. That’s why you dumped Sam out of the car.”

  “You’re the one who did that. All I did was open the door.”

  “Mike!” she burst out. “I don’t know what this is for you! A contest, a way to make some money? You’ve been made to look like a fool, and so somebody else has to suffer. It isn’t a game for me, Mike. If our enemies get hold of this bomb, we’re finished. It’s such a tiny blob on the map, Israel! Sixteen miles across at the narrowest point. A bomb dropped on Tel Aviv would knock out the country. Whereas if we have it, if they know we have it, they may give up their crazy dreams about driving us into the sea, and come to the bargaining table.”

  Shayne’s attention shifted.

  A black Ford sedan, with plates identifying it as a rented car, had drawn up in front of the Flamingo Springs. The driver tapped his horn twice.

  “This could be Pierre Dessau,” Shayne said. “He went for cigarettes an hour ago and didn’t come back.”

  “Was that who she was talking to?”

  “No, no. Dessau’s the buyer. She’s a bright, observant girl. She noticed that her father was making some major repairs on his Bentley before he left, and I think she figured out the whole thing. If that car turns around, get ready to duck.”

  He was watching the stairs to the second floor of the two-level motel. A girl’s slight figure came out of one of the rooms, ran down the stairs and across to the Ford. As soon as she jumped in, the Ford backed out and reversed.

  “Down,” Shayne said.

  Anne dropped out of sight. Shayne lowered his head so it wouldn’t show in silhouette. The rented Ford came past. The man leaning forward over the wheel was unmistakably the six-foot-four-inch Dessau.

  Shayne cramped the Buick’s wheels sharply as the light changed. He left the gas station by the side entrance and made the left turn onto Biscayne through the green light. Dessau, ahead, was driving carefully with the moving traffic, and he was easy to follow.

  “Better start rounding up your people,” Shayne said. “You must have a number you can call.”

  “I do, but I’ll use a pay phone, if you don’t mind. You already know far too much about us.”

  He was separated from Dessau’s Ford by two cars, and the lights on this section of the boulevard were unprogrammed, changing at random. He gave the girl a quiet instruction and she reached over in back for a battered fishing hat. With the brim pulled low over his eyes, he passed the intervening cars and closed with the Ford.

  “I thought that was where they were probably going,” he said after a moment as the Ford slowed. “Good old Queen Elizabeth II.”

  “Mike, tell me what she’s doing! She’s going to sell it to Dessau? How did she get it out of the Oldsmobile?”

  “She has a friend aboard. I think we may see him in a minute.”

  The Ford parked. Shayne, half a block away, pulled into a crosswalk and quickly produced a small camera with a high-definition telephoto lens. A youth with long browning hair parted in the middle crossed from the pier. Shayne broke the camera open and loaded it with fast film.

  “There’s a phone on the other side of the street,” he said. “Don’t cross here. Go back a block. Their asking price is a hundred thousand. Not pounds, probably, but dollars. If you can double that you’ll be safe.”

  “You know I can’t get hold of that much money without Sam,” she said sharply. “We’ll have to take it away from them.”

  “Take your time. I won’t leave without you.”

  “I wish I could be sure of that. In fact, I think I’ll make sure.”

  She picked the key out of the ignition and walked away briskly. The youth, his hands in his pockets, was leaning down to talk to Dessau. When he straightened, his face caught the light from a streetlamp and Shayne took his picture.

  Shayne picked up his phone, and when the operator came on he said, “You were ringing me.”

  “Yes—a man at the Opa-Locka Airport, Mr. Buzz Yale. Can you talk to him?”

  “Yeah, get him for me.”

  Dessau came out of the Ford and Shayne made a picture of the two men walking together to the pier.

  “Mike, that airplane you wanted?” Buzz Yale said in another moment.

  “Give it to me.”

  “It’s a Lear Jet-Star on private charter. The times check. They filed a flight plan to Bogota, and then the client was called away at the last minute. It’s still on call.”

  “That’s the one. How many in the crew?”

  “Pilot and co-pilot. The client’s a woman—I thought you might be asking. I can get her name, but probably not without calling some attention to myself.”

  “I already know it. Where’s the plane now? I want exact directions.”

  “Outside Hangar Two. That’s in the General Aviation area inside the canal at the north edge of the field. Coming along the service road, it’s the second building on the right—the service road paralleling the main east-west runway.”

  “All this is fine, Buzz. Can you stay near the phone? I think there may be some activity out there soon.”

  “I won’t mind. It’s been a dull evening.”

  “Not for me,” Shayne said.

  Anne rejoined him, having taken the same roundabout route back.

  “Their car’s still there,” she said anxiously. “Did anything happen?”

  “Dessau and the boy went on board. Cecily’s waiting.”

  She looked at her watch. “Mike, that tank is heavy, isn’t it? Too heavy for one man?”

  “I’d say three or four hundred pounds. I had to jack it out.”

  She sat forward suddenly. A large rubbish container was being hoisted over the Queen Elizabeth’s side. While it was being lowered into a five-ton haulaway truck, Shayne used his telescopic view finder to watch the crew gangway aft.

  Presently Dessau and the youth appeared. The youth climbed into the truck cab beside the driver, and Dessau came out to the Ford.

  Anne was looking around nervously, watching approaching cars.

  “They couldn’t possibly be here this soon. Mike, you’ll have to help me.”

  “Don’t count on me,” Shayne said. “I’m planning to umpire.” He held out his hand. “The key, Lieutenant.”

  “Oh, God.”

  She found it in her bag and gave it to him.

  CHAPTER 15

  They had scouted the spot in advance.

  They were still a half mile from the incinerator, with the Florida East Coast tracks on one side, a line of warehouses on the other. Suddenly Dessau, in the black rented Ford, pulled past the truck and cut in too sharply, his directional si
gnals going. The legend on the back of the truck said: “Stay alert, stay alive.” Its brake lights flared.

  The truck cut its speed sharply to avert a collision. Dessau slowed gradually, keeping to the middle of the road and giving the truck behind him no room to pass.

  The sudden move had caught Shayne in the same block. When the truck bounced to a stop, its way blocked, Shayne did the only thing possible: he honked angrily, swung across the tracks on a warehouse crossing, and passed the blockade on a cinder road on the opposite side of the tracks.

  “Don’t look too interested,” he told Anne. “People hijack garbage trucks all the time in Miami.”

  Dessau had dismounted and was starting back. The truck driver came out on the step of his cab, a dark burly man in a T-shirt. The youth’s face shone palely through the windshield, and that brief glimpse gave Shayne the identification he needed. It was definitely the boy he had surprised in the hold of the Queen Elizabeth.

  Shayne returned to the paved road at the next crossing, and continued south. Anne was all the way around, peering out the rear window.

  “You’re torturing me, Mike,” she said desperately. “Turn around and go back.”

  “I keep telling you there’s no hurry. Let them dig out the tank first. That’ll take time.”

  The road curved to the right, following the angle of the shore. As soon as his taillights could no longer be seen from the vehicles behind him, Shayne cut back sharply onto a parallel road and began working back toward the warehouses.

  A locked gate, opening inward, barred his way. He backed off, came forward hard against the gate and burst it open.

  “Now that’s more like it,” Anne commented. “Mike, look. The odds aren’t bad at all. Forget the driver. He’s not part of this. Forget Cecily. That leaves two. If we surprise them we can do it without shooting.”

  “I didn’t say I didn’t want shooting. I’m just not planning to do any myself.”

  She made an exasperated sound and hit him. “Will you stop treating it like a game?”