by Greenberg
He was being taught the company’s products, its pricing policies, its distribution, and he had a crammed notebook full of scribbled facts. But the lunch periods had been more illuminating, because during those times he’d gotten to see more of the facilities. He dined in the company cafeteria with the various sales executives who were his tutors. Today Herr Doktor Staub had lunched with them too.
Nick’s mind was drifting over the lunch talk about research – Staub had been guarded, as usual – when the bathroom door opened.
Charity walked out. She was applying a pink comb to her hair. Nick tried a whistle. He got little response except a nod which indicated the bathroom was his. Still, this was curious. On their first two evenings Charity had appeared ready for bed clad in hideous baggy striped pajamas of mannish cut. Tonight she had put on instead a black sleeping gown, lined so as to be opaque, but short. Her calves were tanned and attractive. The gown’s front fell precisely away from the two ripe, high sharpnesses of her breasts.
“Don’t get notions,” Charity said. “I ripped the pajamas.” With her back to him she began to hang up her daytime things.
Nick grinned. “Oh, here I thought it was the softening up for the kill.”
The girl spun. “That’s not particularly funny. I don’t care to see anyone killed.”
With a twist of his hand, Nick flicked ash into a tray. “I meant the romantic kill.”
Charity’s auburn hair shone by the dim lamps. “That’s rather presumptuous of you, Nicky darling.” The darling was acid.
“I thought so, too.
“Oh, you did?”
“Yes; but I’d like to know your reason,” he said.
“I didn’t ask to have my honor defended the other night.”
“Aha!” Up he came off the bed, pointing a finger. “You’re still thinking about it.”
“I am not thinking about it! You’re trying to imply I owe you something which – ”
“Did I say that?” Nick cut in. “You said it. Been bothering you, has it?”
Charity flung back the coverlet on her bed. “Since we’re getting so damn psychoanalytical, why did you tackle that big, vicious creature?” Charity raised her feet, bending her knees to slip her toes beneath the covers. The brief black gown’s hem fell away for a second from the gently curving bottoms of her thighs. The view was exquisite, painful and over virtually at once.
“Was it,” Charity continued, “just another case of the Lamont temper breaking way out of bounds?”
Nick had an urge to hit her. “Listen, maybe I felt he shouldn’t paw you. Did that occur to you?”
“Yes. But I really think it was guilt. Thanks anyway.”
And, with a yank of the coverlet up over her bare shoulder, she turned her back toward him.
Nick closed his eyes. He saw it all again. The room in Gib. Tenderly’s pale face wrenching as the accidental bullet drove into his breastbone and brought death and surprise to his failing eyes. Nick jumped up and stamped into the bathroom, where he slammed the door and ran the tap loudly so it would disturb her.
When he came out again, yanking the knot of his pajama bottoms tight to secure it, he made a quick round of the room as he did every evening, checking for hidden listening gear. Even though Charity was sitting up watching him, he avoided her eyes.
Finally he crawled into his own bed, reached for the light. Across his outstretched arm he looked at her. Strange, drawn lines pulled down the corners of her warm, pink, mouth.
“Nick, that was a bitchy thing for me to say. About the guilt, I mean.”
“Forget it.” Yet he was oddly aware of a new, unfamiliar intensity about her.
“No, really. You’ve a tough enough job ahead without me complicating it. I do understand why you hit that filthy boor. Just to be decent. There’s not much forgiveness in me. I apologize. We’re none of us perfect. I had a bad marriage, I ruined – well, forget that. But do accept my thanks. Also the promise of truce. Nick?”
“Truce.” He snapped out the light immediately.
He didn’t want to look too long at the black-wrapped swell of her breasts above the coverlet, nor speculate on what tiny but definite change had come over her.
She settled down with small murmurs and rumpling bedding noises. Nick smoked one more cigarette, staring into the dark. He tried to concentrate on what he had to do.
His sales training wouldn’t last forever. The Chemotex research wing had to be destroyed. The gear was in the wardrobe, as part of their luggage. He had to transfer it to his attache case. Use it. By God, he would, and go back and shove a fragment of Chemotex’s blown-up steel up Wilburforce’s damn behind.
Well, he would come back.
After another 12 days, at the beginning of the third week, Nick Lamont had learned enough – or all he could. He was ready to move.
A means of entrance to the basic research wing had to be found. This he’d learned early. He’d been studying the problem since.
The central building of Chemotex Worldwide G.m.b.h. presented a face to the one main access road. That face was all tinted blue glass and aluminum. Structurally, the building resembled the crossbar of a gigantic letter T. Running straight back from the crossbar was the basic research wing. It was three floors high, exactly like the main headquarters section. But all the doors leading into it from the main building were guarded during the daylight hours, alarm-rigged at night, and were, in any case, made of thick steel.
So far Nick had not even seen Dr. Genther Yonov. But he saw many of the scientist’s white-coated research associates. They had their own private, treed and sodded exercise park at the rear of the downstroke of the T. They checked in and out through a rear gate in a high, electrified fence. Their cars were parked in a small, separate pool alongside the secondary road which ran off the main one and serviced the rear compoundlike area.
At noontime the scientists lunched in the fenced park much like highly educated animals. Other employees from the main building, as well as from the nearby but separate manufacturing buildings, lunched in the regular cafeteria. And so far as Nick could tell, there was no fraternization between those who labored for Dr. Sweetkill and all the rest.
At another lunch, Nick commented on the unusual arrangement.
“Necessary, necessary,” Herr Doktor Staub replied, munching a morsel of bun. “Here in Germany, as in your United States, industrial espionage is not unknown. Thus we must guard our most precious commodity, our brainpower.”
And crawling bottles full of bacteria for Eastern stockpiles? Nick wondered sourly.
Staub’s explanation made a glib kind of commercial sense, though. The security even included the extra precaution of having the entire factory hooked into a master fire and police signal system which connected to the headquarters of the two municipal services in the nearby village.
Penetration looked next to impossible until the night Nick became aware of Rathke’s evening habits.
On a crisp Monday morning Nick was ready.
He packed his attache case carefully. A small but potent automatic pistol was concealed inside a dummy text on chemical engineering. One large rectangular side of the case now contained jellied explosive layered between thin metal. Nick sweated as he carried this to his sales training class and gingerly opened the lid to take out his notepad.
A pair of sales engineers lectured at him all day. By evening, Nick was used to handling the case, which was good. Shortly after the works closed, he checked out the gate and walked down toward the regular employee car park.
The sun slanted low. The sea-blue roof of the waiting VW gleamed. Nick bent down to tie his shoe. Charity had been picking him up at the factory all the past week. Now, directly opposite the VW, Judith Yonov’s Mercedes was parked.
Charity was leaning from the window of the VW, directing a sunny and seductive smile at the driver of the Mercedes, Rathke. The man stood against the left front fender of the smaller car, a witlessly pleased expression on his thick face.
>
One of the sales engineers who’d lectured Nick that day emerged from the gate. Nick used the man’s presence as a pretext for a question. When they had exchanged goodnights, Nick turned round.
Sweat trickled down the back of his neck into his collar. He clutched the attache case handle and walked between small, puttering sedans leaving the car park, to the VW. The Mercedes was pulling away along the secondary road, going around the rear of the gleaming headquarters toward the research wing.
“How did it go?” Nick asked once the VW was in gear.
Charity was headed back toward the inn and the village. Smoothly she downshifted in the heavy factory traffic. “I must look the perfect bored wife,” she said. “I didn’t think it would work at all. But the poor beast evidently has so few brains – anyway, I was parked there as he drove past. I hailed him and apologized for your nasty behavior at the party. At first I think he was very suspicious. Then he smelled the gin I drank before I left the inn. When I petted his hand and gave him the smile business, I knew I had him. But it was crawly, touching him. He’s an absolute brute.”
They were speeding down the twisting road between fragrant pines. The peaked roofs of the village, gilt with sunset, appeared ahead. Nick felt obliged to say:
“Sorry to force it, but I was beginning to get desperate. Rathke’s the one key. The Yonovs live inside the research wing. He takes care of the Yonovs. So he can get in and out. It was a damn godsend when I got to noticing that he came back tanked from the village every afternoon about the time the factory lets out. Have you set it up?”
Charity’s pink tongue touched her coral-painted lips, nervously. “Yes, for this evening.”
Nick was conscious of the keen of the wind past the car. “How?”
“I’m just to be walking somewhere on the main street after dark. He thinks I’ll be waiting breathlessly because I have this fixation about large, powerful men with black boots – ” She shuddered. Before Nick could say anything else, she swung the wheel of the Volks sharply.
The small tires skidded on the shoulder, shooting gravel backwards. The sedan slowed to a stop. Other factory traffic streamed by, going downhill to the village and the sunset. They were cool sitting in the shadow of great, soughing pines.
Quite unexpectedly, Charity gripped Nick’s hand.
“I haven’t forgotten my uncle. But don’t let Rathke hurt you.”
Startled, Nick hooked up his eyebrow again. “Does it really worry you?”
“Damnit, don’t be flip. You’re a decent sort. You really are. Maybe a little flashy and – oh, I don’t know what’s got into me. Is it living in the same room with you every night for two weeks running? Or – damn you, stop staring.” And her arms, rough with the chic tweed of her suit jacket, came round his neck and her mouth came up firmly against his, moistening as her lips parted.
Nick thought, This is idiotic. You’re liable to be dead.
But as he kissed her two things hit home hard. One, he’d grown fond of her. Two, in some strangely chemical way, the same thing had happened to her regarding him. Somehow it made what he had to do this evening all the worse, all the more frightening.
Yet for a moment it was all swept away as he wrapped his arms around her in the shadowy car, hugged her hard while her mouth opened and she kept murmuring between deep kisses that she was a bloody fool who ought to know better. Nick touched her left breast. He felt it shudder, harden beneath the fabric of her suit. She pulled back suddenly.
Her eyes were bright with a quick, amazed passion she could hardly believe herself. With both her hands she clasped his big-knuckled right one to her breasts.
“I’m crazy for you, Nicky.” She was almost crying. “Damn fool blunder, isn’t it? I hope you come back. Please come back. Please.”
Then she tore away, almost angrily. She drove fast back to the village.
On one hand, Nick felt pleased that it had happened. On the other, he wished it hadn’t. Having it happen made him all the more conscious of the attache case bouncing lightly between his knees, layers of leather containing layers of steel and layers of steel sandwiching between them the jellied explosive he must use tonight.
The chimes in the village church stroked half-past nine.
Nick waited in a dark place as a shadow in the center of the dim street – Charity, walking – turned. The shadow was outlined by the sudden bursting brilliance of headlights.
The auto slowed. Charity walked over, white-faced in the leakage from the lights. She leaned smiling towards the driver’s side of the Mercedes.
Attache case in one hand, Nick glided from the shadows. He raced the distance to the Mercedes, yanked open the door opposite the driver and slammed inside. He shoved the automatic pistol square against the side of Rathke’s muscled neck.
“Drive to the factory or I kill you right now.”
In the dash light glare, Rathke’s lumpy face became by turns baffled, then dimly comprehending, then full of rage. Charity backed quickly away from the side of the gently humming car. Rathke cursed low, not too stupid to have failed to understand the betrayal. His immense right hand speared out through the open window.
Nick ground the muzzle deeper into the man’s neck flesh.
“Pull your hand back.”
Rathke did. Charity was by then out of range.
“Either start this thing going or you’re all done right here.”
Rathke turned his head slowly, hatefully, toward Nick. Then he faced front. He engaged the automatic drive lever. Charity floated out of sight. Were there tears shining on her face? Nick dared not look round.
He changed the position of the gun so that it prodded into Rathke’s ribs, while the Mercedes shot past the limits of the tiny village and up the winding road into the pines, toward the death works.
5
Perhaps the prospect of death made him euphoric. At any rate Nick found himself speaking in a fairly relaxed, conversational manner to Rathke as the Mercedes ground smoothly up the twisting mountain road.
“Now let me make one or two things clear before we hit the grounds, because unless you understand me, you’ll try something or other and there’ll be trouble. If there’s any trouble, this car is going to crash and you’re going to get it right along with me. Understand?”
No answer.
“I said understand?”
Rathke’s peaked cap threw shadows far down over his face. His lips twitched. “Ja.”
“I know this much. You work for Yonov. His quarters are in the research wing. So I figure you know how to get in without triggering the alarms. If there’s one single alarm, one goddam jangle of a bell, or light – anything – all you’ll get for your pains is your brains smeared over the dash. If I don’t do anything else I’ll pull this trigger. It’s all business between us as far as I’m concerned. Living or dying’s up to you.”
The brutish mouth worked at the corners, as if Rathke were bright enough to feel contempt for what Nick had said. It was not all business from Rathke’s end. His smallish eyes held a vengeful brightness in the dash glare. He hadn’t forgotten, or forgiven, the fight at the inn.
Nick had, though. He had because he had so much else to think about. For the first time in weeks, or months, or years, he didn’t give much of a damn about a new Jag or anything, except getting back to Charity. And now that it mattered, he had to work doubly hard to keep the tension-edge out of his voice, the nervous spasm out of his gun hand. Those who theorized that there were no frightened men in the trade were fools.
Ahead, the bonnet lamps of the Mercedes brushed across the high steeled crosshatching of the electrified fence. Rathke made a tentative reach with his left hand for a small red button on the dash.
“What’s that?” Nick said.
“Automatic signal. It will turn off and open the fence. We drive through when it opens.”
“It had better do that and nothing else.” Nick gestured with the gun. “Go on.”
Rathke’s splay finger pre
ssed the red stud. Somewhere under the bonnet, an electronic device sang low. Abruptly the massive gates in the high fence began to swing inward like a scene done in slow-motion frames. The Mercedes slid ahead along the service road.
The gates passed on either side of Nick’s field of vision. Then the black of the lawn where the research workers exercised during the day. The Mercedes rolled up to a rear door in the three-story building. Two blue fluorescent lights in an aluminum fixture over the door cast a ghastly glow. Nick had to risk passing through the lights.
“Out, bitte,” he said, mockingly, though he wasn’t feeling funny. The night had grown chill. The air bit at the bone. The pine smell all around was stingingly sweet. Rathke climbed from the car bent over, then straightened up.
“Do you know how to get inside with no noise?”
“Ja, I know.”
“You’d better.”
Carefully the chauffeur fished in his smartly tailored black uniform blouse. He produced a pair of aluminum keys which he jingled. Nick nodded for him to proceed. The attache case weighed heavy in Nick’s left hand.
Rathke slipped the first key into a lock, twisted. He withdrew the key, inserted the second one into a lock immediately below. Nick’s senses felt raw. He was trying to listen, watch, take in more than human senses could. At any second Rathke might be planning to trip some alarm.
Using his shoulder, Rathke nudged the glass-and-aluminum door inward. A long corridor stretched into a dwindling vista of metal walls with pastel-colored office doors shut on either side.
“The pilot plant area,” Nick said. “We’ll go directly there.”
“Then this stairway – we go up.” Rathke led the way.
Footfalls had a hollow, eerie ring. Service lights burned here and there in the stairwell. Inset in the walls Nick noticed one of the black pull-toggle devices he had seen in the main plant. These were the fire and police alarms which were connected to the village.
On the third floor Rathke went down a hall identical with that on the first. It seemed endless. More of the black pull-toggle alarms were spaced at intervals. Ahead, a steel door brightly lacquered in red loomed. It bore Keep Out warnings stenciled in German, English and French.
