Eye to Eye: Ashton Ford, Psychic Detective

by Don Pendleton

  "Not exactly, no. But we have refined our calculations to the closest possible...we think we know...look here, Ashton, we believe that we have ninety-eight chances out of a hundred to find absolutely no effect whatever."

  "And the other two chances?"

  "Well, one of those...we'll all get a lot smarter."

  "And the other?"

  "Catastrophe," she said quietly.

  "So we're going for a hundred to one shot, either way."

  She sighed. "Those are the numbers. Cold numbers, of course. There is no way to predict the warm numbers."

  "What are those?"

  "Those are you, my dear."

  I said, "I am the warm numbers?"

  "Yes. The personal equation."

  I said, musingly, "How good is Ashton, eh?"

  "That," she replied quietly, "is about what it comes down to. Or so it seems. Don't let me set you up for—I mean, if we strike out, don't try to take all the blame onto yourself. After all, we are simply..."

  I said, "Just place me in the dish, Laura. Don't worry about it. I'll either see eye to eye with this guy or I'll turn to salt. But does it really matter, in the long course, which way it goes?"

  "It could matter," she assured me, dark eyes sweeping me in warm waves. "In infinite ways."

  "Then I'll give the old middie try for eye to eye," I told her, sighing. "When do we start?"

  "Nightfall," she said. "We want minimum photon interference."

  "I'll answer that question for you now," I told her.

  "Which one was that?"

  "Love. Yes. You can. Love is a restless force. We don't have it. It has us. But it can't have you and me together, Laura. Not because it's wrong but because I'm weak. Too weak to cast off Holden."

  "He said he'd spoken to you," she murmured.

  "Then tell him that I tried but you changed your mind."

  "Why should I tell him that?"

  I explained, "I was in a little park last month, close to where I play tennis. Sat down just to enjoy the feel of the place for a minute or two. Little girl of about three came over to me, showed me a butterfly that was resting in the palm of her little hand. It was a very beautiful butterfly. Very beautiful little girl. Obviously delighted with her butterfly. As I was watching, she closed that little hand very tightly and killed the butterfly."

  "Oh dear."

  "Yeah. Knocked me out. I told her, 'You've killed it, honey. Why did you do that?' She began to cry, wanted me to fix it. I couldn't fix it. Dead is dead, isn't it."

  Laura said, "You love your allegories, don't you."

  I said to Laura, "Not nearly as much as Holden loves you.

  Why would you want to kill that? Or even bruise it? Not with me, kid. I'm too weak for that."

  She slid off her stool, patted my elbow, and went back to work.

  So. Okay. Better a lovable idiot than...

  And, of course, I had to stay in condition. For an eye to eye tussle with...who?—what? Didn't matter who or what. Mattered only that I knew who I was and where I was.

  The rest, I hoped, would take care of the rest.

  Chapter Twenty-Two: Intrusion

  There was less than an hour of daylight left and the preparations were proceeding at a feverish pace. The domestic staff had served up sandwiches and coffee for dinner on the run. Various items of heavy equipment, dismantled in the lab, were coming in piece by piece and being reassembled in the bubble.

  Esau had just begun an explanation of the alterations to the dome, now completed, and Holden was pacing about with hands behind his back in the midst of activity when something intruded on the beehive.

  "You see," Esau was saying, "we don't need the fine imagery required in focusing light rays. We're not trapping visible light. What we are going for here are..."

  I thought I knew what we were "going for," there, which is a good thing because the intrusion occurred right there. A rather large helicopter swooped down on us and made a fast pass at about fifty feet above the bubble. I couldn't get a good look at it directly overhead because of the alterations to the dome but I could see it clearly on the downrange, at a distance of maybe a hundred yards, and I could detect no markings—which made me feel pretty good in the initial reaction because my first thought was Souza, and he really had gone for the marines.

  But then it did one of those turns that only a helicopter can do, one of those swinging pivots in midair, and came right back at us. I was at the window, by now, and the view was excellent. The chopper executed another swinging pivot and hovered at fifty yards out, maybe a hundred yards up, giving me a beautiful starboard profile.

  Shit, it was a gunship, without markings of any kind, and that mother was armed. We were sitting ducks in that bubble. I yelled, "Out! Everyone downstairs! It's an attack!"

  She'd done a right-face in the air and I was looking right up her rockets.

  Everyone was just frozen in place, staring with stunned disbelief. I gave Esau a shove and made a grab at Holden just as something sizzling-hot flashed up into my peripheral vision and zipped into that hovering craft.

  The flash from the explosion that followed was bright enough to contract my pupils to pinpoints and send dancing lights along my optic nerves but there really was not that much of a blast wave and it was not a total-disintegration type of explosion. The chopper bucked upward and slipped away on its side for several hundred yards, then went down like a rock. Then there was a hell of a blast and shit was flying everywhere. It was during this particular moment of observation that I first noted the men up on the drive. One was still down on one knee, a long slender tube balanced on his shoulder. Several others were running toward the house...and one of these was Greg Souza.

  He'd finally found himself a working scenario, I supposed—and, God, he looked good enough to kiss.

  These guys were federal marshals. There were six of them, plus Souza—and one looked an awful lot like Fred, the observatory guy, in different clothing. I had to wonder how many others might look familiar if I'd spent more time at the observatory, but there was little time to wonder about it because they hung around just long enough to make sure that everyone inside was okay, then they took off down the hill toward the crash site, all but Souza.

  I overheard Souza tell "Fred" that he, Souza, would "call in the report," so there was more going on, here, than a private eye's response to a friend's "Code Red."

  He went to the telephone and spent a couple of minutes on each of two calls, then picked up a dried-out sandwich and munched it as I introduced him to the shaken scientists—all but Jennifer, who walked up and kissed him then ran out with dripping cheeks.

  There was still a lot of work to do and not much time left to do it, which Esau apologetically pointed out, so I walked Souza outside for a green-grass conference during which he consumed two more stale sandwiches.

  "Nobody," Souza told me, "asked who the bad guys are. Don't they care?"

  "They probably know," I replied, "but even if they don't know, I guess there's just not time or interest to worry about it. This is their last night in fairyland."

  "Yeh, I know," Souza said.

  "You seem to know a hell of a lot for a guy on a retainer," I told him.

  He grinned soberly and said, "Don't you want to know who they are? Russkies. All hell has broken loose. Their place over there in the Kazookas, their observatory—"

  "Caucasus."

  "Yeah, whatever. It blew up, or something—fire, I don't know. Anyway, severely damaged it, killed a bunch of people. We're damn near ready to go to war. They're accusing us of sabotaging their effort. These guys here were a suicide squad. Been in the country more than month, just waiting orders. Course, we had 'em under surveillance."

  I tried to tell him, "My Code Red was a panic error, but I guess—"

  "Yeh, shit, I been down here all the time. Took both your calls from down here."

  I said, "You set me up, asshole."

  "Couldn't think of a better guy," he told me. "
They wanted a psychic. They got one. Oh, and listen, don't worry about any stiffs that may be littering the landscape around L.A. That's all been cleaned up, very hush-hush, no need for you to worry about—"

  "I did not do it to Gavinsky, Greg."

  "Course not. He was there to cover your ass. They got to him. We had a mole. And—"

  I said, "Greg, are you telling me that you're still—?"

  "I'm telling you nothing and you know nothing."

  I was getting burned, again. I said, irritably, "Why the hell didn't you just level with me? That crap about Gavinsky. How'd you know I wouldn't do him?"

  "Just wanted to keep you away from home, pal. We had Hank there to backstop it, just in case."

  I said, "So you've known the game all the way."

  "Hell no. Still don't. Do you?"

  I said, "Not yet. But it's getting close."

  "Yeh, and I'm damned glad it is, too, let me tell you. This has been a very nervous assignment. My orders are to keep them secure and happy and no interference."

  I asked him, "How many people do you have on this mountain?"

  He said, "Hey, it's not all mine. I just hold the hands. The marshals corralled those two guys you shot up Saturday night. Don't worry, there's plenty of protection. And Pendleton is only thirty air-miles away. I hear they got a helicopter attack-group on alert over there, just in case. This is a hot case you got by the ass, here, pal."

  I asked, "Did Jennifer Harrel know that you are—”

  "Naw, naw, I'm just a pain in the ass private eye she had to put up with." He dropped his eyes. "Damn near lost her, didn't I, up there in Glendale. Shit, I had a crew parked right outside her door. Some crew. Those guys didn't even know there was a tussle until you came blasting out of there in your hot rod."

  I remembered, yes, a fleeting impression of a presence in the neighborhood. I told him, "Thought I caught a reflection of something up there, yeah."

  "Well, listen..." He pulled me a few steps farther from the house. "You need to keep an eye on Dr. Harrel."

  I felt something coming and I almost knew what it was going to be. But for some reason, Souza's attitude irritated me. I growled, "Yeah, I'll do that."

  He said, "No, really, keep an eye open. Could be dangerous to your health."

  "In what way?"

  "Either the lady has found herself a fantastic plastic surgeon..."

  "Yeah?"

  "Or she's a ringer."

  Now I was really irritated, despite the fact—or maybe because of the fact—that he'd struck a chord way down in my gut. I guess I attacked him the way I'd been attacking myself. I growled, "That's ridiculous, Greg. She's right here in the bosom of her own science community. Unless you're saying all of them are ringers. And what the hell would that buy?"

  "All I'm saying," he insisted, "is that she does not check out. Something else. She's been bucking you all the way. Didn't want you into this. Lectured me for five minutes about what she called the pseudo sciences while we were waiting for you the other morning."

  My irritation was dying under its own weight. I told him, "If she's ringing it, Greg, it's the dumbest ring I've ever heard of. Also there's the matter of—damn!"

  He read my mind and said, "The fracas at Glendale? Yeh, I been thinking about that, too. Wondering if she'd staged it just for you. Maybe you barged in at an indelicate time. Could they have heard you coming?"

  "Could have seen me coming," I told him. "All the way from Catalina."

  He said, "Well, it's a worry. Keep it in mind. She'll be taken into custody as our first official act, tomorrow. Then we'll know what—oh, something else. Couple of L.A. cops are sitting back here on the road. Came down to talk to our Dr. Harrel. It's that Cunningham girl."

  That one jarred me. I said, "It's making less and less sense, Greg. Are you saying that... ?"

  "Naw, I'm not saying anything. Just the cops are here and they want an interview. They're about to wrap the case, along with about nine other identicals, and think they have their man. But you know L.A. Very thorough. And apparently there's some little question regarding Cunningham and Harrel. I guess Harrel may have been the last one to see her alive—other than her killer."

  I said, "Goddamn it."

  He said, "Yeah. Walk up the road with me? Let's try to keep these guys happy awhile longer."

  The sun was setting as we took that stroll, and that seemed somehow symbolic of something or other. I was feeling heavy in the heart and leaden in the feet, my thought processes whirling.

  Well, after all, it had been a dizzying case right from the beginning. And, it seemed, was getting nothing but dizzier.

  The L.A. cops were nice guys. One of them, a Sergeant

  Richardson, I knew vaguely from another time. They were understanding and cooperative, and we just stood there beside their car, the four of us, in relaxed conversation. Souza had already done his federal number on them and they understood that something large was on the pike here.

  They were given to understand that I was "inside" the case and that Jennifer as well as Professor Donaldson would be available for "an interview" in the early future, although that stuck in my throat somewhat since I had seen no evidence whatever of Donaldson's presence there.

  Souza walked me halfway back to the house. As we were parting, he cautioned me again about Jennifer. I assured him that I would keep the eyes open, then I told him that I was getting ready to participate in an experiment with the scientists. I was feeling really ragged, so his response did nothing to help that. "Just hope you know what you're doing, pal. Sounds like the Russkies blew themselves to hell."

  I told him, "I haven't the foggiest notion what I'm doing, Greg. Haven't even met this Donaldson, yet. Have you?"

  He said, "No, but the way I get it, he talks regularly with Washington by phone."

  Jennifer was still in my craw. I said, "Damn it, Greg, how could this woman be anyone but who she says. She's been working with these people since... since..."

  He said, "Just since this, I get it. She and Donaldson are the only locals, except for old man Summerfield and his wife."

  I asked him, "What do you know about them, Greg?"

  He replied, "Not a hell of a lot. Haven't seen the file. He's got a lot of bucks, I know that. Been like a patron of the sciences for quite a few years."

  I said, "Maybe there isn't any Donaldson."

  "There damn sure better be," he growled.

  We stared at each other for a moment, then I took a deep breath and said, "Guess I have to see this through, Greg. Let's just play it where it lays."

  He gave a loud sigh and said, "Well, I have the easy part. Just have to keep the lid on for..." He looked at his watch. "...for another fifteen hours. Then this entire mountain becomes a military zone."

  I said, "That's what the other side did, isn't it? What did it buy them?"

  He replied, "Just tell me if it's really flying saucers. I want to see one."

  I chuckled soberly and told him, "So keep your eyes open and your pecker up, pal. You might see most anything. Did you notice what they've done to the bubble?"

  Just then Fred hove into view, red of face and huffing with exertion. Souza got the first word in as we turned to greet him. "Check out?" he inquired tersely.

  "Not much left to check," the marshal replied. "Major fear now is a forest fire. Crews on the scene, though, so... Did you call it in?"

  "Sure I called it in," Souza said. "Just hope you got enough for a positive ID of some kind."

  Fred said, "How would we get that, Greg? Even if anything comes through the fire... Want a KGB badge?"

  Souza grinned as he replied, "I'd settle for that."

  "He'd settle for that, sure," Fred told me with a solemn wink. To Souza: "Forget it, they came to kill and be killed. There'll be nothing in those ashes to deposit on the Kremlin's doorstep." He went on up the drive, halted and turned back to inquire, "Coming?"

  "Be right there," Souza replied, then said quietly to Fred's depart
ing back, 'To kill and be killed. Crazy world. Crazy." He looked at the domed roof, then said to me, "Damn thing does look like a saucer, don't it."

  "It is," I told him.

  "What?"

  "Well... a dish, anyway. Culture dish."

  "What's that mean?"

  "It means," I replied, "that maybe we have not yet seen the start of crazy."

  Chapter Twenty-Three: Jinnshine

  They had an arrangement of concave mirrored surfaces set up in irregular spacing all about the perimeter of that great room. Each was maybe three feet wide and nine feet high, must have been twenty or more of them, mounted via ball sockets onto heavy, wheeled frameworks and controlled from an electronic panel that was located in the bar area. Connecting electric cables snaked all over the floor, apparently to avoid some very precise geometric arrangement of the furniture. A large, heavily upholstered and comfortable looking chair was placed at the precise center of all that; it was presently covered with some sort of plastic sheet that appeared to be coated with a metallic reflecting substance.

  I could not help but be struck by the geometric arrangement. My mind leapt back to the browsing at Holden's bookshelves and the presence there of occult books; this arrangement bore a striking resemblance to the sorcerer's magic circle, or mandala, with the round glass walls forming the outer circle and the furniture arrangement serving as geometric designs within the circle. I picked out two sharp equilateral triangles, superimposed in opposition to form a six-pointed star, and there was a "circle within the circle" effect created by a large round plastic sheet—similar to that adorning the central chair—which had been placed over the carpet to cover the center of the room.

  I asked Esau, "Where the hell did you guys come up with this arrangement?"

  "We are trying," he replied, "for a precise focus. Some minor refinements may be necessary as we go along. We shall have to wait and see."

  Wait and see, my ass. I knew what this was. I said, "Why don't you just ask Merlin about that?"

  He gave me a patient smile and replied, "I am still having difficulty with you, Ashton. I never know when you are joking."