For my parents
SOFT TARGETS
Copyright © 1979 by Dean Ing.
". . . I found fear a mean, overrated motive; no deterrent and, though a stimulant, a poisonous stimulant whose every injection served to consume more of the system ..."
—T. E. Lawrence, Seven Pillars of Wisdom
FRIDAY, 19 SEPTEMBER, 1980:
Still naked and sleep-fogged after his morning coffee, the wire-muscled little man retrieved his attaché case from his pillowslip and placed it with reverence on the apartment's sleazy table. He touched the case in a necessary spot, then traded regal glances with Elizabeth II of England, whose likeness faced him from predominantly brown engravings. As an eye-opener, he reflected, caffeine was no match for cash.
The twenty-five thousand was in hundreds, all Canadian money. There would be more soon, if his sources were sufficiently pleased with his Buffalo broadcast of the previous night. Next to the money was his Hewlett-Packard hand calculator; American, modified in France. His German passport, tucked into a flap, had been faked in Italy. The Spanish automatic with its armpit holster took up most of the remaining space; he had obtained the piece in Quebec while killing time—among other things. He flicked his great dark eyes to the note pad flanking his passport, deciphering his personal shorthand which was by Arabic out of Gregg. Altogether, he thought contentedly, a cosmopolitan survival kit.
He grasped the little HP calculator and queried it. 9:37 A FRI, the alphanumeric display read. He could easily have programmed it to add, 19 SEP 80 TORONTO; or perhaps 6 DAYS TO BORDER. Even among HP units, it was a very special gadget. He winked—a signal Americans usually misread as harmless duplicity—at the stacks of Elizabeths, closed the case, and stood. There would be time for calisthenics before making the buy.
He began with simple hand and foot exercises, progressed to ritual defensive maneuvers, then dervished through a repertoire of offensive moves, breathing easily in marvelous silence as he negotiated the furniture. No surplus flesh masked the tendons that slid just beneath the skin. The knee was solid again, so he covertly eyed the pencil mark he had made chin-high on the door moulding. He took one bare-footed step as if to flee but rebounded, the other leg sweeping up flexed, then extended in a vicious slanting blur.
The ball of the foot gently swept within centimeters of his target, then thrust away. He landed quietly and rolled, to freeze into a crouch, mouth open to quiet his breathing. His weaknesses in martial arts were philosophical ones. He knew few peers in the prime requisites for unarmed combat: speed, silence, ferocity.
Not once had he made enough noise to excite comment from the next apartment. He was pleased with himself but he was not smiling. In his apparatus of deceit, the smile was a favored tool. He essayed two more flying side kicks, testing his eyes, his precision, his right shin's peroneus longus muscle that really made the move so murderous, and stopped only because of a creaky board in the floor. Satisfied, he tapered off with mild arm and leg flexures before his shower. The cold water sent blades of pain twisting up his limbs. Now he smiled, and turned the water on full force.
His scrub disturbed the flexible cobbler's cement on his fingertips and he applied a fresh coating. When dry, its sheen was unseen as it filled the tiny whorls of flesh. Now his touch was anonymous, matching the prosthetic tip of his left small finger.
He dressed quickly, choosing the ice-blue silk dress shirt and the deeper blue conservative jacket above dove-gray trousers. He shrugged into the harness, placed his piece carefully in the holster against spring pressure, and decided he would have time to find chemicals at supply houses enroute to the big buy. He flipped through the thick yellow-page Toronto directory, made several notations, and checked the window telltales. Then, taking the attache case, he paused to emplace a telltale on the bottom door hinge before sliding out to the hall.
The garage attendant wheeled his rented Toyota to him, proof that no unfriendly hands had dallied under the car. Then he drove down Bathurst on his shopping foray. At the paint store, paying for the aluminum powder, he asked to use a telephone.
A young woman's voice tinned through the earpiece, "Salon du Nord," making it sound like a beauty parlor.
"Monsieur Pelletier, s'il vous plait," he replied. His accent gave away less in French than in English. There were advantages to operating in a bilingual country.
Pelletier was in, Pelletier was oozing charm. Pelletier had the stuff. "But of course," he said, "packaged as you requested, Mr. Trnka."
"Quality assurance tests?"
"Of course. I believe your appointment was this morning."
"Precisely," said the little man, pronouncing his favorite English word. Though fluent in English, he had chosen the name 'Trnka' because so few people could say whether his accent was truly Czech. Once he had preferred the Turkish 'Jemil,' but no longer. Turkish was too close. He reaffirmed the appointment and minutes later drove into an area of new light industry.
Salon du Nord occupied half of a two-story building. Its logo phrase, "Electronique—Recherche et Perfectionnement" had its English equivalent below: "Electronic R & D." He had dealt with the firm only through an intermediary, but Pelletier was known as a useful source.
He was immediately shown to Pelletier's office. Pelletier was short, scarcely taller than his visitor but heavier by a good twenty kilos, all smiles and reeking of bonhomie. 'Trnka' smiled, detesting him on sight. "I trust you're enjoying your stay in Toronto, Mr. Trnka," Pelletier began.
"Very much; but I am pressed for time," the little man replied, placing the attache case in his lap.
Pelletier sighed. "Of course." His soft hands reached into his desk, reappeared with a plastic belt. Aligned like cartridges along the belt were twenty black oblongs, somewhat more slender than dominoes. "Unusual packaging," Pelletier said, offering the belt. "But, ah, very practical." Again the smile like an oil slick, bright and wide. And thin.
The visitor nodded and detached one of the black oblongs. The tiny microprocessor boasted eighteen gold-plated prongs down its length on each side, giving it the look of a centipede by Mondrian. "Certified for all functions, you say," he prompted.
"Yes indeed. But there's an exceedingly smart little computer in each one, Mr. Trnka. We can't test every one for every function although I personally supervised random sampling of the entire lot."
"Random? You are telling me that most of the microprocessors are untested," the visitor replied softly.
"On such short notice, and for such a price . . ." Pelletier displayed his palms.
"Fortunately," said 'Trnka,' "I can test them myself." He took the HP unit from his case, withdrew a tiny circuit board with a flimsy cable and IC socket. Pelletier gaped in silence as the HP, the test circuit board, and the microprocessor were assembled. Lastly, `Trnka' energized the HP and fed it a slender tongue of ferrite tape. They watched the alphanumeric display flicker for perhaps twenty seconds.
Pelletier smiled engagingly. "Forgive my curiosity," he wheedled. "It occurred to me that your circuitry could have—unusual applications."
"Games," was the reply. "We hope to give the Atari people a rude shock."
"I see," said Pelletier, unconvinced. "Something like war games." He flinched at the responding glance. It softened in a flash, but for one harrowing instant Pelletier felt that he gazed into the eyes of a Comanche warrior.
At length the HP display stabilized on CONFORME. Silently, `Trnka' substituted another microprocessor. "Sixty-three seconds," he said to the restive Pelletier. "It would have taken you just twenty-one minutes to run exhaustive function checks on this group." He was not pleased.