"We haven't talked about how I'm to be paid off," I suggested. I knew he would expect it, and be ready for it.
Nor was I mistaken. "When you leave the Alhambra, you will be taken to Grand Central Station by a man who in your presence will deposit forty thousand dollars in U.S. currency in a locker," Bayak said smoothly. "At the hijack location, when you are committed, you will be given the only key, and upon the completion of the job you will return and recover the money."
Beautiful.
Except that I knew it was this fat slug's intention that I never return from the hijack. One of the hijack crew would have orders to finish me off with a bullet in the back of the head. I'd gone this far thinking I had only to learn the location and let Erikson know and have his people take over. Now I was being firmly locked into the operation with no possibility of finding out the essential factor: where the hijack was to take place.
It was in a thoughtful mood that I left the penthouse apartment.
I had to get to a phone and call Erikson at the Queens number he'd given me.
10
It took me ten minutes to lose the tail who picked me up on the street in front of Bayak's apartment building.
I led him to a busy intersection where I hailed a cab in a bumper-to-bumper and curb-to-curb mass of cars. I watched while the tail scrambled frantically for another cab, and the instant he opened the door, I leaned forward and dropped a bill on the front seat of my cab. "Changed my mind," I told the cabbie as I went out the opposite door I'd entered. I inched my way through jammed cars to the sidewalk.
When the light changed, the traffic surged forward. I watched the cab with the tail in it follow the cab I'd been in across the intersection, and I wondered how long it would be before the tail realized he'd been had.
I found a street pay phone and called Erikson at the Queens phone number. "You mean you still don't know where the hijack is going to take place?" he demanded after I brought him up to date.
"That's right. The Turk is too cute to tip his hand even five minutes in advance of the action."
"And we have five and a half hours?"
"Less thirty minutes," I said after checking my watch. "How did you make out with Talia?"
"She's four doors down the hall. Doc Walsh thinks she was waiting to load up again just before she boarded the plane, so she was on a down cycle when we brought her out here. He says she's in the first stages of actual withdrawal, but he won't guess how soon she'll be willing to talk."
And if she didn't talk-or didn't know anything useful when she did talk-I was right up to the gate of the Turk's project with no way out.
Unless I pulled out.
Erikson must have read my mind. "Take a cab up here and we'll talk this over," he said. "There's got to be some way we can set this thing up so we can give you an umbrella." The phone clicked in my ear.
I went over it all again during the long cab ride, and I could find no better answers than I had in Bayak's apartment. The Turk had covered himself well at every turn. A man had to be crazy to go into a midnight-black cave without a flashlight, and I was going to tell Erikson so.
The cab pulled up at the emergency entrance of a small clinic, the main building of which was hidden from the road behind stone walls and high hedges. Erikson came down a white-walled corridor to rescue me from the questions of the nurse at the admissions desk. "She's cracking up," he said quietly after drawing me to one side. "Doc thinks she might spit it out anytime. Brace yourself. It isn't pretty."
I followed him down the hall. We went into an antiseptic-looking room with a hospital bed and a single chair. I heard the click of a solid lock as Erikson closed the door. A gray-haired, white-coated man with a stethoscope stood beside the bed which had high metal bars raised on either side of it.
Erikson's warning still hadn't prepared me for my first glimpse of Talia. She was a twitching mass of flesh in a short hospital gown, restrained in the bed by leather straps across chest and ankles. Ravaging lines around eyes and mouth made her look ten years older. Her features glistened damply, and wet blotches on the hospital gown indicated profuse body perspiration.
"Can she talk?" Erikson asked.
The doctor shrugged. "If she will."
"See if she knows you," Erikson asked me.
I moved in beside the barrier of the raised metal bars.
Talia's glossy black hair streamed soddenly over the pillow. Her constantly tossing head gave her eyes little opportunity to focus, but I leaned down until I thought she could see my face. She knew someone was there, all right, but I couldn't tell if she knew it was me. She muttered something in a foreign tongue, then repeated it with great urgency. "F-fix!" she whispered hoarsely. "Need-f-fix!"
I leaned still closer. Her constant struggle against the restraints was causing her body to give off an almost animal heat. "Where is Bayak's truck hijack going to take place, Talia?" I said slowly and distinctly.
"Don't-know," she got out breathlessly. Saliva flew at each consonant. More spittle formed at the corners of her mouth and ran down onto her chin. "Can't-tell you. Never told me-anything."
Erikson leaned down over the side of the bed. "Bayak smuggles dope?" he asked, spacing each word.
"Yessssss." It came out as one long hissing sibilant. "In diplo-" Talia swallowed hard and began over again. "In diplomatic pou-ches." Her throat worked convulsively. "Gets-from Arabs to-finance commando-activities." Her knees jerked wildly and her hands clenched and unclenched.
"And Bayak takes a cut?"
"Yessssss."
"What about the truck hijack?"
"Not-heroin. Way he acts-more valuable."
"What were you supposed to do in Damascus?"
"Tell Shariyk-missing element-be in hands-twenty-four hours."
Erikson's eyes met mine across the bed. "The lost-strayed-or-stolen atomic scientist," he said. He returned his attention to Talia. "Where will the truck hijack take place?"
Her black hair whipped from side to side as she shook her head in a violent negative movement. "Don't- know!" It was almost a scream. "Only place possibly- find out-his safe!"
Erikson straightened up. "I've got to make a phone call," he said curtly, and strode to the door.
I tried a few more questions, but with less and less response. In all honesty it didn't make sense that the cautious Bayak would have confided details of his plan to Talia. I stared down at the writhing girl on the bed. "Give her a shot, Doc," I said.
"She's going to have to go through this sooner or later, you know," he objected.
"Later, then."
"I've no authority-"
"Don't give me a hard time, Doc. Give her a shot."
He opened a little black bag at the foot of the bed and removed a hypodermic syringe. "These types usually aren't salvageable, anyway," he said while he wound a rubber cord under Talia's upper arm and searched with his fingertips for unpitted flesh. "Mainlining it into the vein doesn't make for a long life, but it's the only thing that can reach her now." Dextrously he plunged the needle into the black-and-blue arm.
Talia's shivering and shaking died away. Her knees went slack as I watched the familiar hard shine take over her dark eyes. "Bet-ter," she whispered. "Stomach- hurts. H-hurts."
Erikson thrust his head into the room. "Come on," he said to me.
I went down the hallway with him to a small conference room. In front of a picture window overlooking the clinic parking lot was a library table with a telephone and a scattering of medical journals. "You've got to call Bayak and explain your disappearance," Erikson said. "And try again to get him to tell you where the hijack location is."
"I've got a good out on the disappearance," I said. I looked up Bayak's number in the directory and dialed. Abdel's heavy voice answered the very first ring. Bayak came on the line immediately. "Where are you?" the fat Turk demanded angrily.