Heller walked across the salon and picked up the instrument. "I didn't get a chance to phone, dear."
"When you didn't call to say you arrived, I got worried. How are my two warriors?"
"Well, one is now in the army and the other is lying here snoring off a pint of cream."
"How dreadful!"
"Oh, cream won't hurt him. It's pasteurized."
"I mean the army."
"They wouldn't take him. Criminal record. Illegal alien. They only like to send good fellows out to be shot."
"Jettero, be serious."
"It is serious, but I'm not going to discuss it past the ears of NSA. How's the sick man?"
"He just lies there. The doctor says he is better but he doesn't seem to know where he is and he doesn't speak. That's what I'm worried about. He may not recover. What's this about the army?"
"Don't worry about that. I have it under control. I may be busy for a couple days. Love you."
"You take care of yourself, Jettero. This planet isn't worth it."
"It's the only planet we've got at the moment. Take care of things, dear."
She told him that she loved him, in an anxious voice. His hint about the National Security Agency and the inference he was about to do something had her worried.
He hung up and went to his room and changed his clothes. He put on a black summer-weight suit, black engineer boots and black engineer gloves.
He packed a shoulder-strap bag with explosives and other items. He tied the collapsed spacetrooper sled to it.
He picked up the cat's satchel, checked its items and put the cat in it.
Balmor escorted him down to the car and handed him a leather lunch case overfull with sandwiches, hot coffee and milk. "An army crawls on its stomach, sir. I don't think you've eaten since you got off the plane."
"Thanks, Balmor. The fellow who said war is hell didn't have you for a butler."
He rolled downtown in the Rolls Royce, sharing sandwiches with the cat.
They stopped half a block from the Empire State Building. Heller thanked the chauffeur and told him to go home.
He shifted the two satchels to comfortable positions on his shoulders and strode along, carrying the lunch box.
He went in by another entrance than the one he had used last time. It also had police and they eyed him. He took an elevator to the floor above his own. He walked along until he was above the Maysabongo Legation. He looked around to make sure there were no night cleaners in sight.
Expertly he opened the lock of an office door, went in and closed it behind him. He crossed it and opened a window. He verified that he was right. He got out a spaceship safety line and hooked its quick release to a pipe. Heller looked far down at the distant street. Two cop cars were standing there. A swirl of mist went by bis window, such was the altitude of it. He looked up: the sky was pale black above.
He swung out and dropped down.
He came opposite the legation window. It was all dark inside.: He thumped on the glass quietly.
Suddenly there was Izzy's face!
Heller made a gesture of opening the window. Izzy came out of his shock. He fumblingly obeyed. Heller slid in. He gave the safety line a twitch and it fell into his hand. He closed the window.
A candle was being lit.
"Don't say, 'Jet, how did you get here?'" said Heller. "It will very shortly be dawn and we haven't got much time."
"Mr. Jet, how did you get here?" said Izzy, eyes round as saucers behind his horned-rimmed glasses.
In the candlelight, Bang-Bang was grinning ear to ear. Delbert John Rockecenter II was getting off a desk, popeyed.
"What's going on?" said Heller. "Did you execute the options or what?"
"Oh," said Izzy. "It is a dreadful thing. Miss Simmons has got all the refineries in the world shut down. Maysabongo exercised the options to buy all the oil reserves."
"Couldn't you pay for them?" said Heller.
"Oh, yes," said Izzy. "That was easy. We had the cash. Maysabongo controls every drop of crude oil in the tanks and on board ships. That's why they're going to declare war!"
"But didn't you make good the options to sell all the oil stock in the world? Didn't it go down?"
"Oh, it went down! It's worth almost nothing."
"Well, all right," said Heller. "You must have made billions!"
"I should say so," said Izzy. "That's another trouble. Tharti more cash than there is available and it will break the American banking system. They don't have 189 billion in their tills!"
"Well, didn't you exercise the options to buy in all the oil-company stock for a dollar?"
"Mr. Jet," said Izzy, "I got to tell you something. The options at the brokers will expire Monday noon. We can't get out of here. We can't phone. We can't send messengers. We're living on Maysabongo samples of coconut oil. We can't reach the brokers or the bank. We haven't exercised either the sell options or the buy options!"
"It's Rockecenter," said Bang-Bang. "He got Faustino to order the New York City Police to bottle up this place."
"He got the president of the United States to declare mobilization," said Izzy. "Sunday evening, the Swillerberger Conference of International Financiers is meeting in Philadelphia. They're ordering the president and Congress to declare war on Maysabongo Monday morning. They'll take back the oil as enemy property and we'll be out our money. They'll sell it back to Rockecenter for pennies and he'll make billions."
"But what if we owned all the shares?" said Heller.
"The money we make with the sell options will do us no good," said Izzy. "They'll keep the banking system intact by saying we're enemy-connected people and seizing all our funds. Even if we execute our buy options, all those shares will be seized and the oil companies will be sold to Rockecenter for nothing. He'll come out of this far more rich and powerful than he ever was before."
"And us guys," said Bang-Bang, "will wind up in the jailhouse as enemy agents."
"And," Izzy continued, "although I filed their 13D form with Securities and Exchange Commission, saying we were going to acquire more than 5 percent of a lot of oil companies, they claim they never saw the paper and we'll be facing Federal warrants. Oy, Mr. Jet, I have never seen such trouble!"
"Well, I can solve part of it," said Heller. "Have a sandwich and some hot coffee." And he hefted the lunch case onto a desk.
"Oy, Mr. Jet. I wish I had your nerve!" said Izzy. "My ulcers are killing me."
"What are you doing here?" said Heller to Delbert John Rockecenter II.
"I'm a conscientious defector," said Twoey. "Tuesday a bunch of men with guns shot the land yacht all to pieces. Me and the staff were down at the barns feeding pigs. They set fire to the barns, too, and shot a lot of helpless swine. We barely got away with our lives. I had just got here when they closed this place down. Let me tell you, Jerome, this being a Rockecenter son is dangerous. I think I better warn you: they don't even respect pigs! All I did was phone our father and ask him to do a commercial telling people not to eat ham...."
"You phoned him?" said Heller.
"Yeah, Miss Joy left the number in the land yacht. I talk good English now and everything. There wasn't any reason for him to blow up. Any self-respecting boar treats his kids better."
"Mr. Jet," said Izzy. "That's another thing. Bleedum, our attorney, was looking up the Rockecenter wills, and did you know that there's a ten-billion-dollar trust standing by if Rockecenter has a son? The boy would get it when he was eighteen and up to then Delbert Senior is the trustee. I don't think it's safe for either you or Twoey to be seen around. If you can get us out of here, I've got airline tickets for Brazil."