Planetary Agent X

by Mack Reynolds

  Metaxa came to a sudden halt in his delivery and said into his order-box, “Irene, what ever happened to that investigation on Space Freightways? I told you I wanted an immediate report.”

  Ronny Bronston couldn’t make out her answer, but he caught the snap in her voice. He grinned inwardly.

  “All right, all right,” Metaxa snapped back. “But tell that loafer to get a move on.” He grunted and turned back to Ronny.

  “At any rate, the colonists of Palermo managed to foul up their whole project through sheer lack of sophistication. Planted in their number were a handful of the very Maffeo they thought they were getting away from. In less than two generations, the outfit was in control.”

  “In what way?” Ronny said.

  “In the most brutal way,” Metaxa told him sourly. “You can look up details later. What interests us is that at this time the planet is stagnating under what amounts to a modern form of robber baron feudalism. A handful of bully-boys on the top, a terrified peasantry working their lives away on the bottom.”

  “They’re members of UP?” Ronny said. “Why’d we let them in? As long as they were outside, we could have dealt with them. A few agents could have drifted in and pulled some…”

  Metaxa was nodding. “Because we were stupid, and they were smart, instinctively smart. Luigi Agrigento, current head of the Maffeo, saw the handwriting on the wall when nearby planets began also to be colonized. He petitioned to join UP and was admitted after the usual mild routine. He understood perfectly well that given membership, Articles One and Two of the United Planets Charter protected him from outside interference.

  “And if he’d left it at that, he probably would have gotten away indefinitely with his usurpation of power on Palermo. But that wasn’t the Maffeo way, and never has been. Last year, one of his victims, named Giorgio Schiavoni, managed to stow away on an Avalon trader which had stopped off at Palermo, and after various difficulties wrangled his way here to Earth, where he presented himself at the Commissariat of Interplanetary Affairs and told a rather bloodcurdling tale of suppression on his home planet. He claimed to represent a majority of the planet’s population and requested aid. The Palermo Embassy, of course, put up a howl, invoking Article One.”

  Ronny said harshly, “Some of our member planets need interfering with.”

  Ross Metaxa glowered at him, took up his bottle and poured himself another jolt. “Bronston, if you ever express that opinion publicly, you’re out. You’re out so fast, and so hard, you’ll never get a place in UP again, not to speak of this department. Don’t ever forget, Ronald Bronston, that the job of Section G is to advance member planets in their socio-economic systems, their political systems, on certain occasions in their religious systems—but that if we let that fact out, we’re sunk. Needless to say, Palermo is one of the worlds that would prefer to stay just as it is, threat from aliens or no threat. At least, that’s the way Luigi Agrigento and his Maffeo see it. The majority of the peasantry would have other views.”

  “And that’s where this Giorgio Schiavoni comes in, eh?”

  Metaxa’s heavy face worked. “That’s where he used to come in. Schiavoni did the unforgiveable, given the Maffeo philosophy. He talked. Yesterday, he was shot down leaving the apartment we had assigned him over in the Pittsburg area.”

  Ronny stared at him. “Shot down! You mean a man was assassinated right here on Earth?”

  “Exactly. Luigi Agrigento’s hand was evidently long enough to stretch all the way, from Palermo. It gives you some idea of his methods.”

  Ronny was flabbergasted.

  Metaxa wrapped it up. “Your job is the only angle we’ve come up with, so far. It’s to track down and either, preferably, capture or if necessary liquidate the professional killer who did the job.”

  “He escaped?”

  Metaxa said grimly. “Thus far. I’m rushed now, Ronny. Sid Jakes will give you more details, physical description and so forth.” His face went hard. “But I’ll finish up with this: Giorgio Schiavoni’s death will be atoned for. He threw himself on the mercy of United Planets, in a patriot’s cause, and his protection was left in the hands of this department. There hasn’t been a political assassination on Earth in the memory of anyone living and we allowed ourselves to be careless. Very well, but Schiavoni will be vindicated, that I promise.”

  Ronny came to his feet. “I’ll see Jakes,” he said simply.

  The office door of Ross Metaxa’s right hand man was, as always, slightly ajar.

  When Ronny knocked, Sid’s voice yelled out happily, “Come on in! It’s always open!”

  Ronny braced himself and entered. He was still not quite used to the Sid Jakes personality.

  The supervisor was as informal in appearance as his boss, if not more so. Ronny sometimes wondered how either of them ever got past the Octagon guards when coming to work in the morning. Jakes invariably looked more like a man in his oldest sports clothes taking off on a weekend fishing, rather than a high ranking official in the staid Octagon.

  “Ronny!” he exclaimed, bouncing up from his chair and speeding around the corner of his desk. “Thought you were in the hospital!”

  He wrapped his arms around the other and chortled happily. “I told you, when you’re dodging bullets, you ought to zig instead of zagging.”

  Ronny had to laugh at him. “And vice versa?” he said.

  “As the occasion calls. Sit down, sit down. I read the reports on your assignment on Goshen. Pulled off a neat trick there.”

  “Yeah,” Ronny grunted. “And wound up with a hole in my side.”

  Sid Jakes zipped around to the other side of his desk again and into his chair. “And got a three month vacation,” he pointed out. “You field men get all the breaks.”

  “Yeah,” Ronny said.

  Sid Jakes turned serious for a brief moment, the longest known period for him. He said, “I see you’re on this Billy Antrim job.”

  “Billy Antrim?”

  “This assassin from Palermo.”

  Ronny said, “The Old Man didn’t give me his name. You were to fill in the details.”

  The Section G supervisor popped his feet up onto the desk. “Okay. Here they come. The lad you’re chasing is named Billy Antrim. Not William, Billy. Our dossier on him isn’t complete as yet. And maybe it’ll never be completed, if you’re able to pull off your assignment quickly.”

  Ronny said, “I don’t see how he could have remained uncaught even this long.”

  “Because he’s a cunning snake,” Sid told him, grinning as though that made the whole thing happier. “He’s a lad who’s never done anything in his adult life except use a gun. If you can call him an adult.”

  Ronny looked at him quizzically.

  Sid Jakes took up a report from a desk almost as littered as that of Ross Metaxa. He puckered his lips. “He’s not twenty yet, according to this. At any rate, here’s the rundown. Our Billy wasn’t born on Palermo; he came there as a child with his mother. She was evidently some sort of entertainer, probably on a rather low level. To cut things short, one of Luigi Agrigento’s bully boys evidently gave her a hard time one night. Cuffed her around a bit, for playing too hard to get. And our Billy, who was eleven or twelve at the time, knifed the man to death.” Sid chortled. “Mind you, this chap was one of Luigi’s bodyguards. And a twelve-year-old finished him off. Neat trick, eh?”

  “Very neat,” Ronny said dryly.

  Sid Jakes chuckled. “Now you’d think that would get friend Luigi all riled up, but not at all. He evidently thought it was the funniest thing that had happened since his grandmother fell down the well. He had Ruth Antrim, the mother, kicked off the planet—for her own protection, since they’ve got vendetta traditions on Palermo that evidently apply even to women—but took over the care of the boy himself.”

  “I can see what’s coming,” Ronny said.

  “Right. The boy was a crack shot before he was fifteen. Which was just as well, since he killed his second man at that age
. Some relative of his first victim who evidently decided vengeance was in order even though Billy was under Agrigento’s protection. He had evidently also learned to throw a knife and…”

  “Throw a knife?” Ronny said blankly.

  “That’s right. Evidently they’ve got some skills preserved on Palermo that have died off elsewhere,” Sid said happily. “But you might remember that knife routine. And Billy’s not on the large side, even smaller than you, but evidently he can use his knife doing close-in work too.” Sid Jakes grinned. “You beginning to love him more and more?”

  “More and more,” Ronny said.

  “It seems that Luigi was pleased as Punch with his protégé and began to use him as a professional pistolero. Government on Palermo, it appears, doesn’t call for courts of law, judges, juries, jails and that sort of jetsam.” Sid beamed. “Not at all. The Maffeo takes care of all those little things. At any rate, our charming Billy became quite adept at his trade. A real pro. So much so that when Luigi got in a tizzy about Giorgio Schiavoni escaping from Palermo, and above all sounding off to the Commissariat of Interplanetary Affairs, he sent Billy Antrim to set things right.”

  Ronny said, “How did he ever expect Antrim to make his getaway?”

  Sid Jakes took his heels from the desk and leaned forward, beaming. He pointed a finger at Ronny. “Now that’s the real beauty of the thing. Our Luigi knew damn well that young Billy wouldn’t ever succeed in making a getaway and hence made no effort to provide one.”

  Ronny frowned. “You mean Antrim knew he’d get caught, but pulled the job anyway?”

  Sid shook his head. “Not if our dope is correct. Luigi Agrigento figured on throwing Billy to the wolves. He let the boy believe there was a getaway all arranged. But there simply wasn’t.”

  The field man didn’t get it. “But I thought Antrim was his favorite protégé. He wouldn’t…”

  Sid Jakes chuckled. “I keep telling you about these Maffeo lads. They’re very uncouth, as the term goes. Luigi isn’t the type to let friendship, or affection, interfere with business and there was one advantage in sending Billy to do the job. Billy isn’t a citizen of Palermo, having been born on Delos. When blame is being scattered around, Agrigento will have some claim to innocence.”

  Ronny whistled softly. “Well, what happened here on Earth?”

  “It was done very professionally indeed. A classical assassination of the very old school, such as you see in the historical Tri-D shows. Giorgio Schiavoni, was located, set up, and fingered. And Billy shot him very neatly indeed, like the old pro he is—at the age of nineteen.

  “But it was then that the wheels began to come off for Billy Antrim. The getaway floater evidently simply wasn’t there. Neither were any of his supposed colleagues. He was left stranded with the local sheriff’s men coming in fast.”

  “Sheriff?”

  “It’s an old police term, going back to antiquity. They still use it in some areas. The head of the local commissariat of police. At any rate, Billy shot it out with them, killing one man and sending two to the medicos. He stole a floater and took off, apparently without plan.”

  “And he’s remained at large all this time, on Earth?” Ronny said unbelievingly.

  Sid Jakes held up a hand, grinning. “Wait. You haven’t heard it all. The alarm went out, of course, and he was cornered again not three hours later.” Jakes snorted. “This time he killed two men and wounded two bystanders, both women. Then he stole one of the police floaters and was off again. He ditched it later and at gun point forced three people out of a private floater and took off in it. But there was a pattern by now. They could see he was heading for Greater Washington, and set up road blocks.”

  By this time, Ronny was staring. The story was incredible.

  “They flushed him twice more,” Jakes said. “The last time, just last night. I don’t think even the Old Man knows about this. I haven’t taken it in to him yet. Two of the local floater patrol caught him in their bips and started in pursuit. Mind you, this was a standard police floater, with all equipment. Evidently Billy realized he couldn’t outrun them and lifted his vehicle to about a ten foot level and took out over the fields, with them after him. But it wasn’t Billy’s style to wait until they caught up and finished him off. No sir. He zipped around a corner, got out of his floater and waited. You can imagine their surprise when they came tearing around that corner and there was young Billy, waiting. By the way, he carries a gun that is at least as powerful as one of our Model H’s. When we found the two patrolmen they were like tomato paste.”

  Ronny wound it up for the other. “So he made it to Greater Washington, and whatever his destination was.”

  Sid Jakes shook his head, as though pleased with the whole affair. “He has no destination. He’s probably just trying to disappear into the city. Billy is basically a city boy, and it’s the best place on Earth for him to hide. Don’t think he’ll head for the Palermo Embassy. He knows better. Billy Antrim hasn’t survived this long by being stupid. He knew. He knew the moment that getaway floater didn’t materialize that he’d been betrayed.”

  Sid Jakes leaned back in his chair, beaming at his subordinate. “So that’s your phase of the job. Get Billy Antrim. I don’t need to tell you what his continued freedom means to the department. If political assassinations can be successfully pulled off right here on Earth, heads are going to roll in Section G, starting with Ross Metaxa himself.”

  Ronny came thoughtfully to his feet. “How come we’re not putting more men on it?”

  Sid grinned at him. “Our prestige is low enough as is. If we assigned a dozen men to capture this callow boy, how would it look? Nope. There’s only one of him, so there’ll be only one Section G agent sent to get him. You’ll have, of course, the support of all the police apparatus you’ll need. Just call. But there’ll be only one Section G agent.”

  He stood too and stuck out a hand for a shake. “It’ll be a neat trick, if you pull it off, Ronny. And Ross’ll have your scalp if you don’t.”

  Ronny said acidly, “From what you say about this Billy Antrim, Ross’ll never have a chance at my scalp if I foul up. Billy’ll already have it.”

  XVI

  Billy Antrim was on the run under one of the most difficult situations conceivable.

  He had no credit card acceptable on Earth.

  Looking back at it now, he could see that Big Luigi had deliberately arranged that. The obvious thing would have been to have equipped Billy Antrim with several valid credit cards, just in case. Without one he could breathe and he could get water to drink, but practically all else was closed to him.

  This was his first visit to Earth and his first contact with this type of exchange, but animal instinct told him that the simple stealing of a credit card wasn’t the answer. At least, not a permanent answer. In an economy using this exchange medium, somewhere along the line would be ultra-efficient computors, checking and double-checking each transaction no matter how small. A stolen credit card might be used once or twice, but then whatever police powers were available to the accounting computors would be after the thief.

  He slept the first night, his stomach empty, standing in the nearest equivalent he could find in the city of Greater Washington to a darkened alley. It was darkened through his own efforts, and he didn’t like that bit of it, either. He had no way of knowing how soon the light failure would be taken care of by the city maintenance department. He slept standing, to the extent he slept at all, his hand never further than inches from the weapon in his belt, the gun which he knew how to use so well.

  A maintenance squad floater came through at dawn and Billy, catlike, awoke fully from his drowze. He shrugged his shoulders in the nearest thing he had time for in way of stretching cramped muscles, gave his clothes a rapid brush, stuck his hands in his pockets and stepped out briskly, whistling a currently popular Palermo dance tune.

  The two men of the squad looked at him blankly.

  Billy grinned his toothy grin and
said, “Sure is pretty this time of morning, ay? I just can’t help comin’ out and walkin’ around.”

  One of the two men looked up at the lightening sky, his face still empty. Color was there. New color in the gray-black of night. He had seen dawn many thousands of times. Perhaps the first thousand had even awakened some feeling in him. Now, he wished he was in bed. The other one didn’t bother to look up. He grunted sarcasm.

  Billy, his hands still in his pockets, turned and went on his way, still whistling.

  The first of the two looked after him for a moment. “Crazy young jerk,” he muttered. “Doesn’t know when he’s well off. He’ll freeze his bottom off in this weather with no more but that jacket on.”

  The other growled, “What the devil was he doing in this alley with the light off and all?”

  The other grunted contempt of the question. “What d’ya think he was doing?”

  Billy Antrim was going to have to eat. Already his head felt somewhat light as a result of having not eaten for… how long? There’d been two oranges and half a box of cookies in that floater he’d gloamed from those three scared-to-death yokes a couple of days ago. He sneered amusement. They’d thought he was on some juvenile romp and tried to give him their watches and jewelry. He needed three more watches like he needed a knife in the kidney.

  But he had to have food.

  The gods to whom Billy Antrim prayed when in his personal fox holes came through. The streets were still largely deserted, but immediately ahead of him a citizen lurched from a doorway and started up the avenue.

  Billy’s eyes darted around him. The streets were otherwise clear.

  He called out, “Ay! Mac! you dropped somethun!”

  The other swayed to a halt, reversed his engines and looked back at the hail. It could only have been for him. His lids were half lowered over cloudy eyes.