He smiled and started to say something, but suddenly he felt a series of tiny pricks in his arm. He whirled around, surprised, and saw two other men, both huge and muscular, grinning at him. One had a needle-gun in his hand.
He started to say something, started to protest, panic rising within him, but, the whole world was suddenly spinning and he blacked out.
TEN
“You look beat,” Jake Edelman said sympathetically.
Sandra O’Connell smiled appreciatively. “I am a little tired. I’ve been going over that stuff for days now—and nothing. There’s just nothing there!”
Jake Edelman lit a cigar, inhaled, and blew out a stream of blue-gray smoke so dense it almost choked her. He looked thoughtful.
“I really wish you wouldn’t do that,” she protested.
He shrugged. “Sorry about that. My office, my social conventions. No place left to enjoy things any more. No this, no that, everything’s banned. The whole damned world is bad for you and mad at you at one and the same time.” He reached over to the window, flipped a control, and a fan started dragging the smoke behind him. “Better?” he asked.
She nodded. “Thanks. But I’ve come to report bad news. There simply is nothing in Mark’s last work to show that he stumbled onto anything odd or unusual. It’s just good science, so good that I’ve had to consult with a few dozen other people just to follow it. The man was a genius. Not just in his field. In any branch of medical lab work.” Her expression grew sad. “What a terrible loss it was.”
Edelman nodded sympathetically. “I know. I broke it to his wife and kids. Toughest damned thing I ever did. Back with the Navy I once lost two young boys in a carrier accident and had to do the same thing, but this was worse. Murdered in the most secure place I know of outside of Fort Knox, in a particularly nasty way, by person or persons yet unknown.”
She looked at him, trying to figure him out. “You saw Sarah? Why? Surely there were dozens—”
He cut her off, holding up a large, vein-etched hand and reaching over for some pictures. He handed them to her.
A pleasant-looking if fat little woman. Other pictures—one a small boy on a horse, another a little girl playing with a dog. In back of them were adult pictures.
“They got their mother’s nose, thank the good Lord,” he said, and took the pictures back and replaced them in their proper position on the desk. “The boy’s now a man—a dentist in Cleveland, three kids of his own. The girl’s a pretty damned good lawyer, just got married herself to a rabbi in Philadelphia.” He paused for a moment. “I been in law enforcement since the Navy. Most of it’s boring stuff, routine work, but there’s always that chance. More with me. I live with it fine—hardly ever think about it. But I think about them all the time—they all had to live with that fear all their lives. Nadine—that’s my wife—got ulcers while I was working the New York labor front. Every day she never knew when she kissed me good-bye if somebody’d drive up that afternoon and say that somebody got me. Not much chance, but it was always there.” He looked back at her, straight into her eyes. “That answer your question?”
She smiled and nodded.
“So what’s a pretty doctor girl like you doing in a place like this?” he continued, shifting subjects. “Unmarried, too. Not even living with anybody. That’s not natural.”
It seemed like an accusation. “I just never had the time,” she said. “Long ago I had to make a choice, and up until a few days ago I was convinced I’d made the right one. But it wouldn’t be fair to drag anybody else into a life like mine.”
He shrugged. “Then you should make time. It isn’t too late. You know what one of your co-workers said about you?” He shifted some papers, brought up a typed form. “He said you were trying hard to prove something you proved ten years ago. I wonder what he meant by that?” The tone was such that it left no doubt he had no questions at all as to its meaning.
The question disturbed her, as well as giving her a chance to change subjects. “That form—you’ve been interviewing people about me?”
He grinned sheepishly. “Sure. You and everybody else down there before the body was found. Woman, I know more about all you people than you know yourselves!”
“And you still don’t know who killed Mark,” she said in a flat tone of voice.
He softened. “No, I don’t. Well, I have some ideas, but I don’t want to air them yet. This is going to be one hell of a hot potato. One of the worst in history. I have to be absolutely certain.”
She was interested. “What have you found out? What is all this about?” she pressed.
He chuckled and held up both hands as if to fend her off.
“Take it easy!” he protested. “I said nothing certain yet.” His tone grew more serious. “But when the time comes, you’ll know, I promise you.”
That didn’t satisfy her, but she had the feeling it was all she was going to get.
“You look as tired as I do,” she said.
He nodded. “I worry a lot. My ulcers have ulcers. I worry about how a bunch of overage radicals suddenly get ahold of an engineering marvel and decide to try it on small towns. I worry about how so many strangers can lug big blue cannisters through small towns without being noticed. What can their cover be? Exterminators?” He paused a moment, then continued. “I worry about lots of good men, women, and children getting crippled for life. I worry about how a damned fine scientist can get murdered under the best security we can muster.” Again he paused, then said, much more softly, “I worry about my country going quickly from a free one to a military dictatorship—so very quickly! I wonder how it’ll get out from under.”
She looked at him curiously. “That’s an odd remark. You know why it’s happening. It’s only a temporary thing. Nobody can hold this country under control forever. Such things can’t happen here.”
He smiled humorlessly. “Such faith! Well, God Bless America, it can happen here and it is happening here. Just look out that window and see it happen.”
She involuntarily glanced over at the large window to the left and behind his desk.
Pennsylvania Avenue looked almost deserted; there was a soldier on practically every street corner, and one or two were talking to civilians. An Army truck was going up the street, except for some busses the only vehicle there.
“But—” she started, but couldn’t think of any-thing to say.
Jake Edelman nodded grimly. “So you put the Army, all the troops, reservists, guardsmen, all of ’em, everyplace. Federalize all the cops, make ’em a zillion times more powerful and important. Clamp down censorship on radio, TV, everything. Slap taps randomly on everybody’s phones, but cut off long distance service. Ban the sale of gas and oil. Nobody moves except to work and back on makeshift bus routes.” Again the characteristic pause. “We’re arresting tens of thousands of people. Anybody who ever said a kind word about anything the government don’t like. They’re already building big camps for ’em out west.”
Her jaw dropped. “I didn’t—”
“And you wouldn’t,” he cut her off. “When they control the news nobody knows what’s going on.”
“I’d think this would make your job and life a lot easier,” she pointed out. “After all, isn’t crime ’way down?”
He nodded. “Oh, yeah. It’s practically nil, until the Army boys invent a new one. Safe to walk the streets of Washington at midnight—who’da ever thought that was possible? Unless an overeager soldier just shoots you for violating curfew,” he added. “Look, when I joined this Bureau it was in the middle of a big scandal. The FBI was violating everybody’s rights. Nasty old FBI. But they were wrong.”