"Remember, I should have somebody with me. I may take a little longer coming back."
"Just don't make any extended stopovers. The first shift comes in at 5:30 and I'd hate to have to explain to Ward Baldwin why I was sitting in his basement with my finger on his camera cable."
"I'd better get started. We've talked up my forty-second margin." Don't be long."
Illya sat with his left side against the wall and his head half inside the relay box. His right elbow rested on his knee and his wristwatch, moved for the occasion to his unaccustomed wrist, was visible with scarcely a shift of his eyes from the little box he held ready to be pressed against the fat grey video cable. He relaxed slightly and began to watch the minutes marching past.
Napoleon kept a measured stride to the end of the corridor and around the corner, down that hall beyond the range of the ultrasonic field to another door and into a stairwell. The door closed behind him as he stripped off the heavy belt and coiled it around the staff, then set the improvised caduceus in the corner behind the door. He wouldn't need it until he came back this way.
He was at the proper corner with twenty seconds to spare, and his eye tracked the second hand across the last thin lines to the minute. Then with the faith of long friendship he moved as if the corridor would be safe two seconds after the mark. Counting in his head, he sprinted lightly to the eighth door on the right and punched 6-1-9 on the lock. It opened at once into a darkened cubicle. The blue-white swath of light fell across a bunk against the far wall. Sprawled across it, shirt and shoes off and sound asleep, was Harry.
"I'm afraid you'll have to leave your toothbrush," Napoleon murmured under his breath as he continued his mental count. 21 – 22 – 23 – 24…
He hoisted Harry, still unconscious, more or less to his feet and braced him against the wall. 30 – 31 – 32 – whoops! – 34… Napoleon turned around and let Harry sag forward over his back, arms over his shoulders, Harry was breathing deeply and evenly. Poor mutt, Napoleon thought irrelevantly. This is probably the best sleep he's had in a while. That cost him count – he glimpsed his watch while he crossed Harry's wrists in front of him and shifted the weight onto his back. 48 – 49 – 50… Better get moving.
His burden balanced like a side of beef, he staggered into the corridor again, hooking the door to with his toe and nearly losing his balance in the process. 64 – 65 – 66… He made the end of the corridor and cleared the corner with about five seconds to spare, secure in the knowledge that Illya would be likely to give him a few seconds margin.
Once he was out of camera range he could slow down. The stairs were going to be a problem – "HEY, FELLA! WHAT ARE YOU DOING? Hold it right there!!"
Napoleon started to turn, drawing his gun with his free hand, and felt something slam into his back like a sledgehammer as the SPLAT of a silenced Thrush rifle followed the sudden voice behind him. His own automatic coughed fatally once and silence rose from the carpet as the walls absorbed the echoes. The Thrush guard kicked a few seconds and was still.
Harry felt strangely limper than he had a minute before – Napoleon ducked and lifted the linked arms to check his passenger. He didn't look…
It suddenly became apparent to Napoleon that Harry's troubles were, ultimately, finished.
So was their carefully prepared plan. Harry could no logger be induced to tell anyone anything, and there was an inconveniently dead Thrush unexpectedly involved as well. The situation called for some brilliant improvisation. He wished Illya were there.
Two deaths do not cancel each other, he said to himself, but two bodies may be easier to explain than one if we use them to explain each other. A pair of double doors opened off the corridor into a large dark office, and a quick search found and lit a desk lamp.
Now – how do we do it? Harry was shot while, escaping, obviously. And he killed the guard before he died. Uh-huh – with what? Well, he grabbed the guards pistol? You're kidding. Got a better idea? He shook his head and started plotting the set-up.
Put the guard over by the door, maybe even with his body slumped against it; Harry about three feet away, the guard's automatic in his hand.
Say Harry had been hiding in here and the guard heard him, or -
There was a footstep outside and Napoleon's hand darted to the lamp switch plunging the room into darkness just as the latch clicked and the door opened.
Light spilled in from the corridor, silhouetting a figure with a gun in her hand pointing steadily at him. He froze, squinting against the bright fluorescents. There almost seemed to be something familiar about the way she stood… Slowly she lowered the gun. "Napoleon?" said a soft, slightly hesitant voice. Something impossible started to stir in his memory as she spoke; on sudden impulse he snapped the desk lamp back on. She came a step towards him, tentatively.
"Have I changed so much?" she asked,. "After eighteen years – don't you recognize me?"
It was Joan.
His wife.
SECTION III. "Cry 'Havoc!', And Let Slip The Dogs Of War."
CHAPTER NINE
"Where Have You Been All My Life?"
The room spun about Napoleon, and a wave of dizziness blurred his vision for a moment. He leaned on the desk and tried to think. The question of a hoax never entered his mind.
Joan.
The only photograph he had of her was a yellowed snapshot in the bottom of a box somewhere – he hadn't seen it in years. But her image was still clear in that part of his mind where he lived alone; cool, intelligent eyes with a directness of gaze which had annoyed some of his classmates but had drawn him magnetically; a certain indefinable grace of posture and movement which even now identified her more surely to him even than her soft and husky voice.
He stared at her, unable to voice the questions bursting unformed within him. She looked down at the floor. "Good," she said. "I thought you'd think of that." She knelt smoothly to inspect Harry's body, then rose again as effortlessly as a dancer. "Would you have noticed the guard's pistol hasn't been fired? Baldwin would." Napoleon became aware that his mouth was open, and closed it. Then he realized he'd been asked a question, and opened it again to answer. But he couldn't think of anything to say. "Joan?" he finally said tentatively.
"I thought you might be a little surprised," she said. "I'll explain it all to you, but not right now. You want to get out of here, don't you?"
"Uh – yes… Oh! The Luger!" He stood up and studied the scene again. And Harry. And Joan, who had been killed in a horrible accident back home while he was carrying an M-l through enemy snow with death crouched behind every hill. He'd hardly known her, his bride of a year, with whom he'd lived less than a month – and nearly twenty years later, half his lifetime removed, he scarcely thought about her except as a private dream that had no relation to the real world…
While that part of his mind reeled in gibbering confusion, his trained intelligence took on the problem at hand. He worked the toggle and ejected one cartridge from the guard's Luger; Joan caught it and dropped it into her pocket. Then he fired one muffled round into the guard's body, directing the slug parallel to the angle of the first and fatal wound. This done, he fitted the Luger back into Harry's limp and cooling hand.
He straightened from his task, and Joan handed him the gleaming coppery cartridge. "At least it's the right caliber," she pointed out.
Napoleon scowled "But it's a wadcutter," he pointed out. "Mine are full-jacketed hollowpoints. Tough. We can't do an autopsy to find the other slug and replace it without more trouble than we can spare at the moment. We have a chance it won't be found, at least for a couple of days, and it may be bashed up beyond ballistic reconstruction. Or they may not care to work on it. It looks like an open and shut case from here."