by Jeff Sutton
"I suggested it might have been an illusion," Kane offered.
"You believe so? I don't."
"A man springing from the ground?" Kane smiled. "What better explanation can you give?"
"I can't say, but nothing about that bird is normal, Bert. The touch of the weird characterizes him. I'm ready to believe almost anything."
"You're talking about Androki; I'm talking about the fellow Anita saw."
"It's the same thing; it all comes back to Androki. Anita's a fairly levelheaded girl, Bert. If she's frightened, I believe she has good reason to be frightened. I also believe it's something more than just some yahoo springing up from the earth." Maxon glared at him. "Sure, it's that, but I believe she also senses how Androki might react if he discovered how much she knew, or even suspected. If you grant that, then it follows that she knows he's dangerous."
"Does it?"
"Following those premises, yes." Maxon nodded vigorously. "Right now she's in a battle of greed versus fear; she's scared but she also hikes her sinecure. How many gals would lightly toss over a multibillionaire, even if they knew he was weird? He's Jags and mink coats and bags full of money—"
"I know all that," Kane interrupted wearily.
"I doubt very much that she'd squawk unless she was personally threatened."
"You don't give her much credit."
"She's a product of the age," Maxon responded.
"I'm not that cynical, Gordie."
"Is it cynicism or objectivity?" Maxon viewed him over his coffee cup. "At times I'll admit that the question is debatable. But you only fool yourself when you view the world through polaroid glasses that filter out all but the good and the pure."
Kane asked mockingly, "Does it always have to be one or the other? How about your vaunted gradations of gray?"
"I'm not tarring everyone," the psychologist objected.
"It sounds as if you are."
"Does it? I didn't mean to give that impression, but that bird Androki bothers me. He walks in a distorted world. He gives with one hand and takes away with the other; but if you'll notice, in the end it all adds up to profit for Androki."
"You're quoting Senator Blaire," Kane accused.
"He did say that." Maxon grinned. "But he's digging up the dirt, Bert."
"Is he, or is he taking advantage of his congressional immunity to say whatever benefits him to say? Quite a number of people hold to that view."
"I'm certain he's sincere," Maxon returned. "What's Blaire getting out of the deal? Nothing but a shove toward the exit. He's being crucified. If he were profiting by it, I might say your point had merit, but he's not; he's getting gunned right and left. Can you deny that?"
"I'll have to admit it," Kane acceded.
"Something's got to break. This thing with Androki can't go on forever. The world just can't take the tension." Maxon finished his coffee and got up. "I just hope that I'm around when they ring the curtain down on him. Even then he'll probably pop back for an encore."
Later, reviewing the conversation, Kane realized that much of Maxon's bitterness toward Anita had stemmed from hurt. The two had been quite close friends for a long time. But since joining Androki, Anita had almost completely severed her relationship with Maxon, just as she had with all her faculty friends.
Not that Maxon was entirely wrong, he reflected, but the psychologist usually was quite tolerant of human foibles, regarding them as the inevitable products of a nature still largely in its primitive stage. The harshness of his condemnation revealed that the hurt was far deeper than he would admit.
Kane was deep in his work when Ronson of the history department opened the door and peered in, then came inside. Kane glanced up, waiting. Ronson's face, thin and .sparrowish under closely cropped gray hair, held a wooden expression. "Hear about Anita?" he asked.
"Anita?" Kane had a startled foreboding.
"She was killed on the coast highway up near Malibu. It was on the three o'clock news."
"Anita Weber?" he asked disbelievingly.
Ronson nodded. "She was traveling at a high rate of speed when another car shot alongside her, cut her off on a curve. She went over an embankment."
"Purposefully?" he asked harshly.
"According to eyewitnesses the act was deliberate. The other car didn't stop." Ronson hesitated. "She was a fairly close friend of mine, too. I thought you'd like to know."
Kane clenched his fists, feeling a quick pain. "Thanks for telling me," he said tonelessly.
"I'm damned sorry, Bert." Ronson went out quietly and closed the door behind him. Kane walked to the window and looked out. Spring was in the air. It was in the buds and new shoots and soft unfoldings of flowers; it was in the fleecy filaments of cloud that trailed across the azure sky. Spring was a time for birth, not death, he thought.
Anita had been murdered; that was starkly clear. It had been a deliberate, cold-blooded killing. Yet it was also an act of haste, for it had been carried out in the open, in the presence of witnesses.
He heard the door open and turned. Gordon Maxon was standing there, his thin face cold and emotionless. Only his eyes showed anger.
"I just heard about it," Kane said.
"He killed her," Maxon gritted.
"Someone did."
"Androki!"
"We don't know that," Kane answered wearily.
"We know it but we can't prove it; that's what you really mean."
"That's about it, Gordie."
"I'm going to prove it, at least to my satisfaction."
"How?"
"I'm no criminologist but I understand probability—"
"The law doesn't," Kane cut in. "You'd need absolute proof. Even then you'd be faced with the task of convicting a few billion bucks. That's not easy in an American court."
"I thought you said I was the cynic?"
"The time has come for realism," Kane answered. "You know he had her killed and I know he had her killed, but does anyone else know it? That brings up the question: How do we know it? We know it at an emotional level, and that's all. We know it because we sense it and feel it, but we don't know it through any sequence of reason."
"Not true," Maxon snapped. "We're talking about ten or eleven murders, each of which can be linked to Androki in one way or another. What is the probability of that as a happenstance? Damned small."
"There are degrees of culpability," Kane objected.
"Come off it, Bert. Don't make like a lawyer."
"What do you want me to say?"
"Someone ought to kill that bird while we still have a world left," Maxon retorted. "I never believed that I'd advocate murder but I've just made an exception."
"You're talking nonsense."
"Perhaps; I don't know." Maxon looked suddenly defeated. "I'm tired, angry, frustrated, baffled. I know there's a murderer on the loose and I don't know what to do about it. Apparently the police don't either. What is the answer? You tell me."
"I don't know, Gordie."
"How long can this go on?"
"I can't answer that."
"Someone has to stop him."
"That's not our job, Gordie."
Maxon stared at him. "Anita was a damned intelligent girl. A bit footloose, perhaps, but a good kid. What did she find out about Androki, Bert? Whatever it was, it was no little thing. But if she could find out, so can I. It might be evidence based on statistics but I'll sing it to the high heavens."
"What do you hope to gain by that?"
"I don't know.; I really don't. But if I can make the world aware of what he really is…" He turned and left, closing the door quietly behind him. Kane heard his footsteps receding in the hall; then the silence swept back.
Charles Dorrance finished reading the decoded message from Philip Conrad, then scanned it again more slowly. His eyes lingered on the last paragraph:
. Anita Weber killed when car forced off coast highway by pursuing vehicle … Hasselwaite tailing Weber vehicle observed accident… trailed fleeing
car but lost it in metropolitan traffic . . . Hasselwaite identified vehicle as one observed earlier in front of agency manning Kane listening post … details to follow. …
He let the message flutter to the desk and leaned back, locking his fingers behind his head. Staring at the ceiling, he pondered this latest in the web of murder. Bertram Kane's bugged apartment had proved interesting indeed. So, Anita Weber had come running back to him with a tale of seeing a man spring from the earth and get shot down. An illusion, of course, but what had she seen?
He kicked the question around in his mind. Whatever it was, it had panicked the girl, but not enough to cause her to leave her job. That indicated that she had seen no imminent danger to herself. Yet two things were certain: whatever she had seen had led to her murder, and that murder was linked to John Androki.
Not that anyone could hang it on him, he thought. The killers would be hoodlums, far down the line. Doubtless they were completely ignorant of any details other than the bit of profit paid for the job. As for the man shot on Androki's lawn, he very much doubted that anyone would ever find the body.
There was one other consideration: the information Kane had gotten from the girl would place his own life in jeopardy. Not that he already wasn't on the firing line, but this might hasten the day. Not that Dorrance could interfere; Kane was too valuable as a clay pigeon.
Now what would Androki do? The noose was tightening • and Androki sensed it; his actions were becoming too frantic. Once he had turned to murder, he had paved the road to his own destruction.
Dorrance reflected that murder wasn't his concern unless it threatened national security. Did Androki's string of victims fit that category? Not yet, but the man certainly was a threat to a national security in other ways. Not only was the nation's foreign trade structure being turned topsy-turvy, but he was seriously undermining the State Department along a score of fronts. And yet, with all that, he had the feeling that John Androki was racing too fast.
He was a man racing into the sunset.
XIII
Kane awoke to the ringing of his telephone. In the late hour it sounded harsh and demanding. He felt a quick premonition; there was something about the jangle of a phone in the late hours that held a touch of terror. Springing from bed, he hurried to the nightstand to answer it.
"Bert?" Maxon's voice came imperatively through the line.
"What is it?" he asked anxiously,
"I've got it, I've got it!"
"Got what?" he cut in. A sense of expectancy gripped him.
"The answer to John Android." The psychologist's voice held a vibrant, confident note. "I've been thinking about it ever since I heard about the guy that sprang from Androki's lawn. Of course he did; that's where they all sprang from. At least as a figure of speech. Anita saw it and knew that she saw it; that's what bothered her. She saw something that looked absolutely impossible. But it's not, Bert. We've been looking in the wrong direction; we were a hundred and eighty degrees off—"
"What are you talking about?" he broke in. Maxon's words sounded crazy.
"Androki, what makes him tick? Can you come over?"
"Now?" He glanced at the desk clock; it was a few minutes after midnight. "What's it all about?"
"I know who and what Androki is, Bert! That's what I've been trying to tell you. I know it beyond the shadow of a doubt. I know what he's trying to hide, why he's murdering people right and left. It's crystal clear if you look in the right direction."
"Then be clear," he exclaimed.
"I'm trying," Maxon insisted. "I puzzled it out and every piece fits. Cantrup, Freyhoff, the whole works. And I know the answer to those three unidentified guys…"
"The ones who were murdered?" he interrupted.
"Yeah, they were agents. There's no hokum about that. They were trying to stop Androki—"
"What do you mean by agents?" he cut in.
"I can explain everything, Bert. It's all tied up with the Bornji transformations."
"Well, explain it," he demanded irritably. Maxon was talking in circles.
"Come over and I will," Maxon returned insistently. "I've put the whole ball of wax together and it makes a beautifully coherent picture. It's the logic of pattern, Bert; each piece fits!"
"Deductive reasoning? We've been through all that."
"What's wrong with inference if you have sufficient evidence?" Maxon demanded. "Sure, we've been through it before but we never had the key. Now we have it. It explains why Androki wears a halo of murder. He has to murder people to protect himself, and the more he's exposed, the more he has to murder. That's the ultimate silencer, Bert. Murder leads to murder. He'd murder me if he knew what I've deduced; he'd murder you if he knew that I told you. And it's why he murdered Anita. She saw too much."
"Saw what?" he demanded.
"Saw a man spring up from Androki's lawn!"
"Have you been drinking?"
"I only drink on the campus, you know that." Maxon sounded miffed. "But I want to get this story out, Bert. I don't want to be the only one to know it. Someone has to stop that guy."
"Okay, I'll come over," he promised wearily. He replaced he phone testily, staring at the clock. Was this another- of Maxon's brainstorms? He'd been having them regularly since turning his focus on John Androki. Still, murder was rampant, and it did center on the man.
Dressing, he pondered Maxon's words. Not that anything the psychologist might have discovered could do much good. It was too late for Anita; and too late for David Cantrup, Martin Freyhoff and Leonard Bernardi. It was too late for a lot of people. Aside from that, Maxon could never obtain the kind of proof that would be needed to convict Androki. Could anyone? At least they hadn't; not in the nearly three years since John Androki had first risen into prominence.
Three years! The time startled him. But it was true. At first Androki had been only a name; then, almost explosively, he had blazed across the public sky. Now he was shaking the world. Gordie was right: someone had to stop him.
As the headlights of his car picked through the gloom of the sidestreets, he wondered again at the urgency in Maxon's voice. But Maxon also had sounded confident. It would be totally unlike him to call at such a late hour unless the matter were imperative.
Perhaps he had stumbled onto something. Perhaps his long months of patiently gathering and fitting together the pieces had produced a provable pattern. Provable? He very much doubted that. Yet Maxon had called the three unidentified murdered men agents.
He debated it uneasily. Maxon had been absolutely positive; his assertions had been delivered as statements of fact. That, too, would be unlike him unless the assertions were based on fact; he was too careful an investigator to go off half-cocked. When he speculated, he labeled it as such. But not tonight.
What else had he said? "We've been looking in the wrong direction." What had he meant by that? Was someone else involved in the murders? Irritably he dismissed the idea; Maxon had pointed the finger squarely at Androki and at no one else. To complicate matters, he had wrapped the whole thing up in the Bornji transformations.
He turned onto an elm-lined lane, slowing his speed as he approached the apartment building where the psychologist lived. The light from Maxon's second-story window splashed a bright rectangle across the lawn. An amber globe shone softly in the deep recess of the porch. He pulled up at the curb behind a parked car and got out.
As he started toward the walk, he realized the engine of the car ahead was running; it reached him as a soft purr. Sensing movement inside the car, he halted. Instantly he had the tingling sensation of danger. "They'd 'murder you too!"—Maxon's words screamed in his mind.
Wheeling, he cut across the lawn, consciously keeping to the shadows as he hurried towards the porch. Nerves, he thought abashedly. He took the front steps with a single bound and leaped toward the door.
Thup! He heard what sounded like a muffled explosion behind him as something nicked his ear. A small hole miraculously appeared in the door glass a
t eye level. Gunfire! He hunched his body, twisted the doorknob and lunged forward, sprawling headlong into the hall. Rolling to one side, he scrambled to his feet.
Two sharp splats came from the edge of the door and slivers of wood stung his face. Someone was trying to kill him! The thought slammed like a fist into his consciousness. Hurling his body toward the wall, he kicked the door shut and crouched, diving toward the stairs. Thup! Thup! This time the muffled explosions came from above.
Half-crouched, he dashed up the stairs, his feet drumming on the carpet. Springing into the upper hallway, he saw that Maxon's door was partially open; the sight brought a sudden caution. His heart thudding, he moved quickly forward. Through the opening, he glimpsed Maxon's body sprawled on the floor.
"Gordie!" He shouted the name as he leaped into the room. At the same instant he saw the intruder, a small, ugly man with a black gun in his hand. The gun was pointed straight at him.
He leaped frantically to one side, twisting his body as the thup came again; something struck him a violent blow in the shoulder.
He recovered his balance and dove toward the intruder, striking out blindly. Thup! Thup! He scarcely felt the bite of the bullets as he struck the smaller man, hurling him backward. Kane sprawled forward, then leaped up and kicked savagely at the hand that held the gun. His shoe crunched against flesh and the weapon flew off to one side. The intruder bounded up and rushed through the doorway.
Kane sprang after him, bursting into the hall just as his assailant's head and shoulders disappeared from view down the stairwell. Kane staggered, then caught himself, swaying in a siege of sudden weakness. The walls and floor seemed to reel around him.
"Bert!" Maxon's voice croaked from the apartment. Kane turned, catching his balance again. The harsh squeal of tires sounded from the street, followed by the crackle of gunfire. The whine of an engine filled the night as the staccato crash of gunfire erupted anew.
