An assistant librarian, gathering up some books, said, "You look kind of lost. Can I help you?"
Heller said, "No. I don't think anybody can. Somewhere I went wrong. And for the life of me, I can't spot where."
"Just go see the student psychiatrist," said the assistant librarian cheerfully.
"Just because I'm lost is no reason to make two mistakes," said Heller and went back to studying Hakluyt.
But oh, was I cheerful. My life felt like a song.
Bless Bury. Bless Madison. Heller was stopped cold!
According to psychologists a manic state seldom lasts very long. And so it was with mine.
Not two minutes after I left the viewer, there was a knock on the door. Thinking it was a bellhop with some deliveries for Utanc, I unsuspectingly opened it.
Raht and Terb!
I hastily swept them into the living room, looked up and down the hall, reentered and locked it behind me.
Raht's mustache was growing back—they must have shaved it to repair his fractured jaws. He had some facial scars from the wires. He was very hollow-eyed.
Terb had lost most of his fat and, apparently, the use of a couple of fingers.
"It's about time!" I thundered at them. "Lollygagging about on company time! You ought to be ashamed of yourselves. I've a good notion to dock your whole year's pay!" That's the way you have to handle such riffraff.
I sat down and poured myself a cup of coffee from the silver pot and looked at them contemptuously through its steam. They were standing in the middle of the room, their thin clothes shabby, shivering from the outside cold, kind of blue. Apparently they had lost their overcoats.
"The New York office is open and running," said Raht. "They got all the criminals scheduled for their identity changes as you requested."
"That's no reason for you to come around and bother me," I said.
"Oh, we wouldn't have," said Terb. "But Faht Bey said on the wire that it was pretty urgent so we had to come."
I sighed the sigh of the harassed executive. "And what," I said, "is urgent enough to disturb the vital work I'm doing? Without any help from menials, I might add."
Raht said, "Apparently, he wouldn't wait."
"And whom is he?" I said, correcting his grammar. You have to keep such riffraff on their toes.
"Gunsalmo Silva," said Terb.
I felt my hair lift. I had told Silva to go kill the Director of the CIA. Silva shouldn't be alive. He should be safely dead while executing an execution that couldn't possibly be executed!
"Evidently," said Raht, "he arrived several days ago in Afyon. Faht Bey tried to find out what he wanted and get it handled but Silva said his business was with you and a couple days ago he simply left. The airline booking he made was for New York!"
Well, New York is a big town. Silva couldn't possibly, Gods forbid, know my address. One mustn't appear nervous before underlings. "So what else is new?" I said.
Terb promptly handed me a stack of orders to stamp!
Wearily, I got out my identoplate and stamped away. But, for once, I was alert. There were two orders there: one for their hospital expenses and another which called for overcoats and new clothes. I tossed them aside. Then, on second thought, to make a better impression, I recovered them and tore them in small pieces.
"You be on call," I said as I swept them into the hall. "No more of this loafing!"
I slammed the door on them.
For some time I sort of paced around the bedroom and sitting room. Then I decided to go for a walk. I got my warmest clothes and, all wrapped up, I went to the hall door and opened it.
GUNSALMO SILVA!
In moments of intense shock, the thing uppermost in one's mind tends to surface.
"How did you find me?" I gasped.
He pushed on by. He removed a camel's-hair overcoat from his squat and muscular frame and threw it on the sofa. He put his hat, a Russian astrakhan, on the coat. He sat down, found the coffee was still warm in its thermos pot and poured himself a cup.
"Come in and close the door," he said. "It's drafty."
I did. I went in the bedroom and took off my own coat. I checked to make sure I had my Colt Bulldog but, actually, I don't think I could have drawn it, because my hand was shaking.
I reentered the living room and sat down to hide what my knees were doing.
"The answer to your first God (bleeped) question," he said, "is easy. I seem to have these miraculous powers. That Utanc is sending avalanches of postcards to her two little servant kids back in Afyon and they're showing them to half of Turkey." He pulled one out. It was pretty dogeared. It was of the Bentley Bucks Deluxe Arms with an X on the penthouse and said "X marks my room." And also "Confidential."
"I had to twist the little (bleepard's) arm a bit, but there it is. Now as to your next question," he said, overlooking the fact I hadn't asked it, "where's my hunnert big ones?"
I found my wits. "How do I know you did the job?" I said. "After all, the rub-out of the Director of the CIA would make big news."
"Jesus H. Christ," he said, "don't you ever read the papers?" He looked around. A stack of them for the last two weeks stood in a corner: my Heller file that I hadn't clipped yet. He went to them. Sure enough, there was the story:
CIA DIRECTOR
REPLACEMENT
HITS SNAG IN SENATE
He fished around in the stack some more. "And how about this?" He jammed it under my nose.
CIA DIRECTOR
SUCCUMBS TO OPERATION
"They can't come right out and say he was hit," said Silva. "It would set the God (bleeped) Russians a bad example. But how about this?"
He threw the whole wallet and identity cards of the Director of the CIA on the sofa. It was bloodstained!
"Incredible!" I said, stalling for time.
"Yeah, I thought so myself. You see, I sort of got these incredible powers. I don't know where the hell they come from."
I knew. Taken to Voltar, he had been hypnotrained by the Apparatus! I had a killer-killer in front of me, very deadly indeed!
I fought to think of more stalls. "It's hard to realize you could waste a man as guarded as that," I said.
"Yeah, it took time. First, I had to get them to hire me as a hit man. They knew my score—'Holy Joe' and all—so they took me on. And I had to waste two Russians for them and then a dictator in Central America. That's what slowed me down."
He poured himself another cup of coffee. "Still, it wasn't too slow. You see, these ideas on how to do things just pop up and away I go. Mysterious. Like angel voices. Really beautiful."
Silva added two lumps of sugar to his coffee. "But wasting the CIA Director was easy. Hardly took any angel voices at all. After the three hits they trusted me so much I was even riding in his car. I learnt his habits, so to speak. So I disguised myself as his wife and shot him in a Georgetown brothel. They're looking for her now. Good, clean job so they won't find her. I sold her body to the God (bleeped) university hospital. It was a bit more money, too. And speaking of money, where's my hunnert big ones?"
I choked. "Listen," I managed, "lira won't do you any good in the U.S. I'll phone and find out what the exchange is and pay you in dollars."
"Lira!" he snarled. "What the hell would I do with ten million lira! It's a hunnert thousand U.S. greenback bucks, buster. So cough up."
"That's what I was saying," I said hastily. "I'll make a call and get it sent over right away."