“The dog-faced woman,” I said.
“Uh-huh. We didn’t know that for sure, since even Jamie wouldn’t know the switching personnel, but we inferred it, and when we found she’d been recently certified and changed to that switch and watch, it was pretty easy to figure.”
I nodded. “I figured if Jamie was their hitter, then her boss had to be Cranston. Too bad, with a name like that.”
“That beach house, which in our world would be on the Sonoma County coast north of San Francisco, is a training center for younger operatives. He runs it because it’s a quiet world and a stratified one, and so it’s pretty easy to train people there without much danger of exposure. Now that I think of it, it’s kind of odd that Cranston seemed happy there for so long and never pressed for promotion or reassignment, but that’s hindsight. We probably have a large percentage of senior staff that get in a life they really like and want to stay.”
“Cranston had it pretty good,” I noted. “With some amenities hidden from the rest of the folks, I could get used to that lifestyle myself.”
“Still has, but not for long,” Markham noted. “So far we’ve covered all the entrances and exits, and he hasn’t been tipped that Jamie was caught. If he finds out, he’ll skip, and he has the means to do it. He’s pretty wary; I doubt if we could con him into coming down to headquarters line, since he’s always had to fight to get an appointment there before, and he’s sticking pretty close to his house until this is done. He built the place, and it has a staff of twenty-four plus various students. We have no idea how many are really competition, and we don’t know what’s built into that house, but he has a flag stop in there, that we know. That’s how he got you two back here. Our worry is, if we slip-up and can’t take him, he can use that flag to enter the Labyrinth. We don’t know how desperate he’ll be. Some of them are pussycats, some are kamikazes. We don’t want to lose him if we can avoid it. We want his boss, and he’s the only one who knows who that is.”
“But you’re going after him.”
“Sure. Want to come? We sure can’t use anybody from the local organization there. We don’t know who’s who.”
Brandy looked at me. “Want to go?”
“I shrugged. “More getting shot at. Yeah, all right. I can see that you do. I have a bad feeling about this, though. Every time we’ve gotten involved in this activity, something nutty happened. We’ve been lucky so far, but how long can it last?”
“Don’t mind him,” Brandy told them. “He’s always like that. That’s his way of saying he wouldn’t miss it for the world.”
I looked at him. “The fact that we’re invited seems to imply a few. things. First of all, you really don’t expect to nail him alive, so you can afford a couple of rank amateurs along. Second, you want to check us out.”
“You’re wrong. I do want him alive. I could have him killed pretty easily. That’s why this is delicate. He is under no such restrictions.”
The place was heavily guarded, but we had enough people to take out the major spotters and replace them convincingly with our own people. The trouble was, there were so many people in and around the house, and so many potential traps, that a full reconnaissance just wasn’t practical. For the same reason, we couldn’t come in through his basement flag stop, since we didn’t know his alarms there and couldn’t know what signals the automated equipment would give if an entry were made. What we could do, however, was issue a command that effectively shut down the flag stop from the Labyrinth side. Since McInerney and his cult were never in on Cranston’s treason, since they deliberately remained ignorant of what was proper and what was not, we used the Oregon station for our own entrance, then had that temporarily shut down as well just in case.
Cranston’s beach house location had been ideal for hiding the Company school and Company activities, but its very isolation in this world also made it relatively easy to cut off. Brandy and I were again dressed all in black, but this time professional outfits that were a lot nicer than that plastic, which the Company had been shipping to some other world from ours, that had gotten us into the plant at the start.
It was quiet and fairly still, but we slipped into the main hall and saw one of those liveried butlers making his way downstairs with a tray full of dirty glasses and dishes. We crept up to him, and I held him while Brandy took the tray and set it down. The gun in his back made him very cooperative.
“Company security,” I whispered. “Cranston still awake?”
He nodded. “Y—yes.”
“You have an intercom or speaking tube to reach him?”
“Yes—in the pantry.”
“Anybody else in the pantry?”
“No, not at this time of night. Please—what is this all about?”
“If you have to ask, then you wouldn’t believe the answer or you already know it. Either way, just don’t sweat it, and do what you’re told. If anything bad happens to us because of you, something awful’s going to happen to you first. Understand?”
I had real hopes it’d be the guy who slipped us the mickey, but you can’t have everything. The kitchen and pantry area was dimly lit and deserted as promised, though, and the tubes were all there—and all nicely labeled. He could still double-cross us if Cranston wasn’t in his study and somebody else was, but it was his funeral if he did and he knew it.
“Mr. Cranston, this is Jameson,” the butler said into the tube after giving a whistle, “I think you had better come down to the library, sir. There’s something wrong that I think you’d best attend to in person.”
“You said that just like we told you,” I said approvingly. “Good night.”
He looked puzzled. “Good night?” he echoed, and Brandy hit him with the juice right in the rump through all those clothes. That stuff, whatever it was, was quick. Maybe three or four seconds and he was down for the count.
We hurried into the library and concealed ourselves behind the drapes, guns at the ready. Cranston might just as likely send his people in first and we knew it. He didn’t, though, coming down the stairs and walking straight into the library. He stopped and looked around, puzzled. He was wearing that same silk dressing gown we’d seen him in on the train.
“Jameson?” he called.
“Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men?” I asked, stepping out, pistol pointed at him.
“De shadow do,” Brandy responded, and stepped out herself, also armed.
“I thought it was Helen Gurley Brown,” I responded.
“Horowitz?” Cranston was genuinely surprised. I think he might have expected somebody, but not me. “Both Horowitzes?” He paused a moment, then sighed. “I surmise from this that Jamie blew it. She always was a hotheaded little psychopath, but she had the most experience in a world similar to yours of anyone available to me right then. I assume the house is surrounded?”
“Yes.”
He sighed again. “Mind if I get dressed first, then? Where can I go?”
“Yes, I mind, and I don’t want to find out where you can go. Hands where I can see ’em, please. Now, just turn and walk the eight feet or so to the front door, and the nice men outside will take care of you.”
Brandy glanced at me. “Pussycat,” she whispered.
At that moment a series of shots rang out, ricocheting all over the library. We jumped and tried to find the source, but in that split second Cranston was gone.
We ran out into the hall after him. There was the sound of people moving around upstairs, and lots of queries and complaints, but I was pretty sure Cranston hadn’t gone back up. He was headed for the flag stop, and as we saw in the pantry, you got there through the wine cellar.
Our own people were entering and taking up positions, so that left us to give chase. I had no idea who’d fired those shots, but whoever it was, wasn’t apparent, and also, thankfully, was a lousy shot. It was probably some kind of automatic device triggered somehow by Cranston.
We had just entered the wine cellar when the bottles started t
o vibrate and there was the sound of loud and very big machinery beyond them. One of Markham’s men came in behind us. “That thing’s been shut off! He can’t be going in!”
“Well, he’s doing it!” Brandy shouted back.
“Don’t lose us!” I said to the agent. “And make sure your switches are secure! I’m going in after the son of a bitch!”
“We’re going in!” Brandy responded, and we went down the corridor, smashing some wine on the way, just in time to see the figure of a man in a silk gown enter what was unmistakably a small version of the Labyrinth. There was a fair amount of electronic equipment here, and some panels were exposed that had been built into the cellar wall. Somehow, Cranston had broken the seal and reopened the siding, giving him an opening to the first switch point. Brandy and I ran right into the blue lines of folding and twisting squares, running at full speed.
The trick was to keep Cranston in sight, because if we lost him he could go anywhere. That meant keeping no more than one cube length behind him. Fortunately, he’d stumbled very early on that dressing gown, while we were in good shape and dressed for this. We had sight of him, but we had been warned not to fire a shot in the Labyrinth unless we were in the same cube as Cranston and couldn’t miss. Otherwise, the bullet would exit into some world and keep going until it was spent or hit something—or somebody.
Cranston reached the switch point, the same point where we’d been directed to him by the dog-faced woman, and that was what I was counting on. No matter what, he’d have to run in place for a while until the switch was set and thrown, and that would give us a chance to be in the same cube as him. He’d thought of that, though. Now he stopped, turned, and showed that we weren’t the only ones with guns. His was a shiny, crazy-looking thing but I had no doubt that it was lethal and that Cranston would have no moral compunctions about shooting into an adjacent cube.
I hesitated, but Brandy stopped, braced, and fired anyway, disregarding instructions. Then again, better a chance of a stray shot somewhere than a shot in me, I thought, and stopped to aim my own.
Brandy’s volley struck home at least once, though. Cranston reeled and fell back, his own shot, an emerald-green beam, going wild, and when he recovered there was an ugly red stain on his left side. He’d finally have to get a new dressing gown, after all.
And then he was gone, exiting through one of the intersecting cubes, and we rushed forward. Brandy again saved me, because she immediately saw that the only way Cranston could have turned his stop back on, let alone made it past here, was if somebody in his crew had taken over the switch again. She ran in and immediately fired her last shots in the clip at the transfer cube, not even looking at who she might be shooting. By the time I got there, there was the figure of a small, middle-aged man reeling back with a number of holes in him, while another figure lay slumped over the controller board.
Cranston had to have his own communications channel through the Labyrinth; he’d activated it as a precaution before coming downstairs, and obviously when he reached the cellar he gave the orders to take out the switchman. We should have covered that, but we’d been assured by those who were supposed to know that the flag stop was closed off.
Brandy pointed up, unable to convey sound in the medium, and I looked and saw a fleeing figure, tiny but in the cube. We concentrated on it and went for it, entering just as he exited to the next spot.
Now, though, it was getting tougher. There were worlds showing on some of the cube-faces, worlds that were dark, worlds that were green, worlds that were desert, worlds that were blasted heaths. There were sometimes as few as six facets, sometimes many more, showing, but all but two always showed worlds, exits into reality. The Labyrinth twisted and wound about, but there was only one way to go, to stay in it. We only kept up because Cranston had been slowed by his wounds. He was losing blood fast, and he couldn’t keep this up very long. He knew it too, better than we, and he risked a look back to see us gaining on him.
Then, unexpectedly, a very dismal and dark cube-face came up to his right and he took it. We ran in, now only twenty or thirty seconds behind him, and exited out onto a world. Wherever it was, the exit point was outdoors and in the midst of a violent thunderstorm with tremendous wind gusts and driving rain. It was warm, but that didn’t make it any less miserable.
Thunderstorms, I thought as the rain soaked through me in a moment. Why is it always thunderstorms?
We were on a beach with tremendous waves coming in, and up between the beach and dense growth was maybe a couple of hundred feet worth of driftwood. It was a sea of dead trees, jagged and twisted and not very wet. I never saw anything quite like it, but it sure as hell made it hard to spot Cranston. We both stopped.
“It must be a safe house, something like that, for them!” I shouted to her over the roar of the storm. The lightning and thunder were fierce. “Somewhere here he’s got enough to hole up until his buddies check here and pick him up!”
“Not without a doctor, he don’t!” she shouted back. “Move in and get some shelter behind that driftwood! So long as we’re between him and the Labyrinth, he’ll have to come to us. No use trackin’ him in this storm!”
She was right; we could do nothing until the storm passed, but we were in better shape than he was. Even if there was a superhospital just beyond the jungle line over there, he’d never get through with that wound in his side, not in this crap. I doubted if even we could. He was just taking a breather and trying to get some temporary treatment for his wound. I knew how he felt. My left arm was still killing me off and on—mostly on, right now—and this hadn’t done it any real good. They’d told me to keep from using my left arm for a while and not to get the bandages wet.
Our shelter was more theoretical than real, and that storm showed no signs at all of letting up. Only the realization that there were green trees here kept me from thinking that this was a world of perpetual storms. I couldn’t even tell if it was light or dark, but the frequent and violent lightning flashes, some hitting within our line of sight, gave the whole place an eerie sort of strobe-light effect.
Then, slowly, the storm started to fade, the wind going down to less-than-gale force, the lightning growing more intermittent and further away, and the rain almost completely stopping. Brandy took her reserve clip off its belt clasp and pushed it into the pistol-grip bottom. She looked up at the sky. “It’s still night,” she said. “I think we wait ’til mornin’.”
“Suits me fine,” I replied.
“I’m sorry, but I cannot wait that long,” came the gasping voice of Lamont Cranston from above us. We turned as one and looked up at him, as he stood there, that crazy gun pointed down at us. He had removed the dressing gown and tied it around his midsection in an attempt to stem the bleeding, and it wasn’t doing the full job. If we looked like hell, Cranston looked like a walking dead man.
“If you want to commit suicide, go ahead,” I told him, “but don’t include us in this.” His gun was wobbling, and he looked strangely not quite at us, a fact Brandy, too, couldn’t miss.
“I’ll make it,” he gasped. “I’ve been worse off than this before. Just throw the guns out there in the sand.”
We did it. It didn’t seem worth a move. I was wondering how much longer he could remain perched on that huge driftwood log. The rain had stopped, but the logs were wet and there was a really strong runoff at the bottom. I wasn’t sure which would kill us first—Cranston’s gun or possibly the shifting logs.
“I know a little about wounds, Cranston,” I said. “Air Force training and police training. I can help you a little. Maybe keep you alive until help arrives. You may have been worse off before, but you were younger then, and in much better shape.”
“Maybe—I won’t—make it,” he managed, wavering, “but I’m—going to do—what I should’ve done—when I first—laid eyes—on you.”
He was right above us, very close, but Brandy and I were both in a depression between the logs in front of him. I slowly moved my ha
nd toward my belt and got my own backup ammo clip. Brandy, noticing, suddenly moved away from me to my left, and I took the clip and threw it at Cranston as hard as I could. It hit his chest and bounced off, but it made him, for the slightest moment, forget his balance. He fell, backward, away from us, and we heard him cry out. I went for the guns, but Brandy moved to one side, climbed up, then looked down. “Forget it, Sam, unless there’s wild animals around.”
“Huh? What?”
I returned, but with the guns, and climbed carefully up on the logs and looked down at Cranston. He’d fallen on a sharp, slightly twisted tree limb and it had gone right through his chest. He looked pretty gruesome, but he also was very dead.
“It’s a mercy,” I told her. “He was walking dead anyway and he knew it.”
She sighed. “G.O.D. just wasn’t on his side,” she said.
I helped her down, and we started back toward the Labyrinth. I took Brandy’s hand and squeezed it. “Case closed, babe. End of the line. But it sure was a hell of a ride.”
She squeezed my hand back. “Sure was. I’m sorry I had to kill him, though. It ends the trail to the big boys.”
“Doesn’t matter. You don’t nail that type with Cranstons. Not in this league. It’s like Big Tony. He took over when somebody killed Larry Groziana. Norton was ready to take over from him, and there are a hundred Nortons in the wings waiting for anyone of ’em to slip. They’re like weeds. That type’s the worst that’s in all of us, but you can’t even pull ’em out by the roots. No matter what, they always grow back, and the little guys never notice the difference. A hundred loan sharks will take up where Little Jimmy left off. A hundred Cranstons, and their Jamies, will rush in to fill that void. In the meantime, the dope’s still sold, the girls still sell themselves, the gamblers still get taken. I think that, deep down, is what makes some cops go on the pad and others quit like me. It’s when you wake up one day and you realize that it never ends. Only the faces change, and the victims.”
The Labyrinth Of Dreams Page 26
