It was all too fast. He did as I told him to. I fingered his gun from the belt holster, then pushed him toward the door of the room opposite mine. The other one inside got the same stricken look too. Without being told he went palms out on the tabletop he was playing cards on and let me take his gun too and all he did was look up at his partner and whisper hoarsely, “How the hell did it happen?”
“He had a gun,” his partner told him.
“But… where?”
“Shut up,” I said.
I used their own handcuffs around the radiator to keep them in place, gagged them both, tied their feet down with sheets so they couldn’t bang around too much, then blew them a good-night kiss. They were two pretty sad-looking characters right then. Tomorrow they were going to be a lot sadder like a lot of others.
Just as long as one of them wasn’t me, that was all right.
The rest was easy.
The elevator operator took me downstairs to the basement, after I pocketed his gun, held still while I tied and gagged him with his own clothes; the guy on the back exit did the same; the one roaming the small courtyard almost threw up with disgust, but submitted to the same procedure; then I was on my own. I was carrying a damn arsenal by then I didn’t want or need, so I piled up the weaponry beside the last one, laid my wooden model on top for an object lesson and took off over the fence.
This time I let them sweat for a week. I let them get it all out of their systems, knowing damn well what was going on behind a lot of closed doors, and every time I thought about it I’d start to grin, then break out into a laugh, and more than once people thought I was a little nuts or else they would grin back figuring I was nursing a secret joke.
But the week was working for them too and I didn’t realize it. Life gets too grim without its little challenges and they had thrown a big one at me. I made them eat it, but the big one I hadn’t bought yet and the thought of it became more interesting every day.
After six days I had enough. On Saturday I went back to the Montebahn Hotel, asked the startled clerk for the same room I had occupied the week before, went up and turned on the TV, flopped on the bed and waited for the clerk to call the boys.
It was one hell of a boy, all right. They don’t hardly make ’em like that any more. This agent was one of the loveliest women I had ever seen and if they had wanted a deterrent to an escape in the first place they should have sent her along earlier. Her hair was long and dark, sun-streaked in spots and tumbled around her shoulders in a carefully casual manner that almost made you stop looking at the rest of her. Except that was impossible. She never would have modeled for the women’s fashion magazines because there was too lovely much of her, but from a man’s point of view she was geometrical perfection. Even though she was agency trained, she didn’t try to conceal the full rise of her breasts, or the sweep of waist to hips and the concave tautness of her belly. But for that matter, she couldn’t. Like I said, there was just too lovely much of her. Her face was large dark eyes with a near-Oriental cast and a full-lipped mouth that had a damp sparkle, curved in a small, wry smile that studied me for a moment before she sat down.
“Kimberly Stacy,” she said. “B-4 Intelligence, Section A. So you’re the monster.”
“Damn!” was all I could manage.
She smiled a little bigger this time. “You embarrassed a lot of my colleagues, Morgan.”
“That’s why they didn’t come themselves.”
“No… they simply thought it would be a little less conspicuous this way. Why did you do it?”
I squirmed up on the bed and stared at her. “Because I don’t like people trying outthink me. They needed a damn lesson…”
“No,” she interrupted, “I didn’t mean that. Why did you come back?”
My mouth twitched back into a grin. “Things were getting dull. I was having fun. I hated to see it stop.”
She nodded as if she understood completely. “And when they stop being fun?”
I shrugged. “Then I’ll do something else.”
“You have only two choices,” she reminded me.
“Do I?”
“It’s a stop-action order now. You’ll be killed if you try it again. The rest are waiting. Nobody’s taking any chances this time.”
“Why did they sweat me for a week, kid?”
“They were getting things organized. They didn’t want any attention brought to this matter.”
“Be candid, sugar,” I said. “They had things organized before that.”
Her mouth opened in a quiet laugh and I could see the even edges of her teeth. “I think they were testing you. They put you under maximum security and wanted to see what you’d do. Apparently they didn’t think it could be done. You’ve compounded their embarrassment by coming back. They won’t try that routine again.”
“So?”
“Now you’ll go with me. Quietly, no fuss, no bother and we’ll help you make that decision.”
“And if I don’t?”
Her eyes twinkled at me. “I’ll have to hold your hand,” she said.
I let the laugh rumble out of my chest. “Okay, baby, after a threat like that I’m totally demoralized. There’s only one thing.”
“What’s that?”
“Hold my hand. You’ll be safer that way too.”
“Don’t be so sure of yourself, Morgan,” she said. She meant it, too.
Something had changed in their faces. The aggressiveness was still there but a subtle respect had wiped out the antagonism. Only Jack Doherty remained untouched. The big cop still clamped a stub of a cigar in his teeth looking like he had eaten something sour, and eyed me impassively with no show of curiosity whatsoever.
Kimberly sat beside me and only then did I let go of her hand. We had left the others downstairs, the ones who had surrounded us on the street and squeezed into taxis fore and aft of our own. They had been a different bunch, their eyes frankly appraising me, hoping I would try something while their shift was on duty and looking disappointed when I didn’t.
Gavin Woolart took the seat at the head of the table and went through his paper-shuffling routine again. He’d have to break that habit or somebody would make something of it someday. Finally he said, “That was a very ingenious ruse you pulled, Mr. Morgan.”
I shrugged it off. “My pleasure. Maybe it’ll keep your boys on their toes the next time.”
“There won’t be a next time.”
“That’s what you said the last time.”
A flush of red crept into his face from his neckline. “There is one question… why you returned.”
I saw Kim’s head turn my way a fraction of a second and knew she was smiling. “I was bored,” I told him.
“No other reason?”
“What one could there be?”
“We were hoping it was more an act of patriotism.”
“Balls,” I said.
Somebody coughed. Carter, from the Treasury Department, said, “You are at your best when you’re bored, I assume?”
“I’ve never tried it any other way.”
“Then I hope we’re not making a mistake.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
For some reason they all turned and gave each other the briefest of glances. “We’ll get to that later,” he told me. “Now, Mr. Gavin…?”
Gavin Woolart nodded and cleared his throat. “Your return, I take it, means you’ll accept the terms of our… ah, proposal.”
“Sure,” I said.
“Then let us proceed directly to the heart of the matter. Time is an important element. We can’t afford to waste any of it. Every day, every hour impairs our national security that much more. We have a lot of briefing for you.”