Carlson’s face grew troubled. “Aren’t we going to get along? I was hoping everything would be friendly.”
“I bet you were.” Grofield opened the suitcase and started dressing. “Excuse me while I put on my radio,” he said.
“I beg your pardon?”
“Never mind. Was this just a social call or did you have a motive?”
“Miss Kamdela,” Carlson said.
Grofield stopped with one pant leg on. “Say again?”
“Miss Vivian Kamdela,” Carlson said.
Grofield put his other foot in the other pant leg and pulled his trousers up. “I bet,” he said, “that’s the black lady who was in here this morning.”
“Well, of course. You seemed to be on very good terms with her.” Carlson was being prim again.
“Sure,” Grofield said. “We skipped over the part where you exchange names, that’s all.”
“What did she want?”
“To know who sent me and why. And if she hung around to watch you come in here, she probably no longer has to ask.” Grofield carried his tie into the bathroom and put it on in front of the mirror.
Carlson called from the other room, “No one saw me come in, I guarantee it. Why did she want to know about you?”
“She didn’t say.” The tie came the right length on the first try, a rare occurrence. A straw in the wind, or a sign that his luck was changing? He patted the tie against his shirt front and walked back out to the other room. “Shall we have breakfast together or are we making believe we have security to maintain?”
“It is hardly make-believe,” Carlson said stiffly. “A great deal of care has been put into this operation, to be absolutely certain no one knows of our connection with you.”
“Then how come Miss Whatsername... ”
“Vivian Kamdela.”
“Right. How come she showed up to ask questions?”
“That’s what I’m here to find out.”
“You’re zigging when you should be zagging. Go ask Miss Vivian Whosis.”
“Kamdela.”
“All right, Kamdela.” Struck by a sudden thought, Grofield said, “Is she African?”
“Of course.”
“Not from Undurwa, by any chance?”
“Are you merely pretending ignorance, Mr. Grofield?”
“No more than you are, Mr. Carlson. A fellow named Onum Marba is one of my two acquaintances at this meeting I’m supposed to crash. He comes from Undurwa. If he saw me this morning when I checked in, it might have made him curious to know if it was just coincidence. He has a very dry sense of humor, Marba has, it would be his kind of thing to send a girl around to ask the questions.”
“I see,” Carlson said thoughtfully. “That does make sense.”
“You noticed.”
“It was all I wanted to know, really. Why Miss Kamdela was here.” He closed his book and got to his feet. It was The Espionage Establishment, by David Wise and Thomas B. Ross.
Grofield gestured at the book. “They give you a mention?”
“Happily, no.”
“Better luck next time. You want to join me for breakfast?”
“At this hour?”
“I’ll call what I eat breakfast, you call yours whatever you want. You coming?”
“No, Mr. Grofield. There really is security to maintain, you know, it isn’t all a joke. If your cover is blown, you realize, you won’t be any further use to us at all. I don’t know exactly what my superiors would want to do about you in such a case.”
“Back into the frying pan, eh?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Go ahead,” Grofield said. “All right, how do you want to work this?”
“You go on out,” Carlson told him, “and I’ll leave a few minutes after you.”
“Why don’t we do it the other way around? You first.”
“If the representative from Undurwa is keeping you under observation, this room will now be watched. If you go out first, the watcher will leave with you, and I will be able to leave unobserved.”
“Okay, that makes sense. But be sure the door is locked when you go out.”
“Certainly.”
“Not that it does any good,” Grofield grumbled, and went away to find breakfast.
Eight
It is impossible to get breakfast at four o’clock in the afternoon. In fact, it’s impossible to get any meal at all, it being too late for lunch and too early for dinner. Grofield finally settled for an overdone hamburger, oily french fries and a wilted salad, washed down with plenty of coffee, and afterward was sorry he’d broken his fast at all.
The next half hour he spent at Holt Renfrew, a department store near the hotel, where he spent most of his government-issue hundred dollars fitting himself out with a complete set of non-broadcasting apparel. He considered leaving the store in new clothing, leaving all of the old stuff behind and walking quietly away, but he doubted it could be done right now. If some of Carlson’s friends weren’t watching him, surely some of Marba’s friends were. The thing to do was wait at the hotel until tonight, slip out under cover of darkness. So he left the store wearing the same clothes he’d worn in.
Going out the narrow door, carrying his package, he was bumped into by a man hurrying in, and there was a sudden sting on his left arm where he was bumped against. Maybe the man’s cuff link had sharp edges. Grofield looked after him in irritation, then went on out to the sidewalk and fell on his face.
He didn’t lose consciousness, that was the worst part of it, he just had no strength any more, no connection to any part of his body. His eyes had closed reflexively when he’d fallen, and were still closed, but he could hear the voices all around him and he could feel the new pains in his knees and left shoulder and nose, where he’d hit the concrete.
The voices around him were being startled, and then concerned. Hands touched him, people foolishly asked him questions such as “Are you all right?” He thought, If I were all right, I wouldn’t be lying here in the middle of the sidewalk, but it was impossible to say it. Impossible to say or do anything.
“I’m a doctor,” said a new voice, with a French accent, or more probably a French-Canadian accent. Hands, firm but gentle, rolled him over onto his back. A thumb lifted his eyelid and he found himself looking up at vague shapes. He couldn’t focus, he couldn’t get any of the shapes to come in clearly.
The doctor was touching him, checking his pulse, patting his chest, feeling his forehead, and finally he said, “This man has had an epileptic fit.”
Grofield wanted to frown. An epileptic fit? He didn’t have epilepsy, this doctor was a buffoon. But there was no way to tell him so.
The doctor was saying, “We must get him to a hospital at once. Does anyone have an auto handy?”
“I do, Doctor, right over here.”
“Good. If some of you would help lift him... ”
Grofield was lifted and borne away. Inside, his mind was still churning around, trying to figure things out. He hadn’t had an epileptic fit, this doctor had made a maybe understandable but definitely wrong diagnosis. Could his breakfast have had this severe an effect on him? Impossible.
The man who’d bumped into him. The sting on the arm. He’d been poisoned!
Good God! How much time did he have? Somebody would have to make the right diagnosis fast, if he was to be given the antidote. If there was an antidote.
There was a great deal of difficulty getting him into the car. They kept bumping parts of him against metal, shouting advice into each other’s ear, tugging him back out and starting all over again. Somebody even said, “Do you think we should wait for an ambulance?”