I wanted a drink when I returned, just to let the fire burn away the taste in my mouth. I was surprised to find Emilie awake and sitting up in bed, waiting for me. At my question, she gestured to a cupboard where I found a bottle of kümmel. I poured two glasses and the strong flavor of the caraway seed was a welcome taste. I sat on the bed beside Emilie and, though she wore her nightgown, I could see that the redness and raised areas had subsided substantially. We finished our kummel and I felt her hand against my chest. Her face turned to me and she raised her lips. I kissed her, tenderly, gently. There was a quality about this woman that evoked tenderness.
"Stay with me tonight, Nick," she whispered. "Just let me feel your body against mine. Please." I stroked her cheek and lifted the nightgown from her. I stripped and lay down beside her, tie softness of her skin a warm and pleasant sensation. She turned to me, one full, heavy breast falling upon my chest.
"It has been long, so long, since I have lain with a man," Emilie said quietly. "I don't want you to make love to me. That would only open up passions and feelings I have long put aside. You will leave in a day or so. I know this. The hunger you would release would be too much for me to bear."
I held her close and she moved her legs against mine. I could have made love to her. She was certainly lovely enough in her own girl-woman way and her body had its own fleshy sensuousness. But I only held her close.
"Can you understand what I am saying, Nick?" she asked. "A man like you who can't afford to get involved with anyone."
"You'd be surprised what I can understand if I try a little," I said softly, cradling her head in my arms. I held her quietly and she fell asleep in my arms, a wonderfully sweet woman waiting for the happiness she deserved, waiting for someone to bring it to her. I wasn't the one. She was so right about that. I could only bring her a moment, a moment that could hurt more than help over the long pull.
When dawn came and the sun awoke us, she clung to me for a long moment and then quickly rose, grateful tenderness in her eyes.
I left that night. She drove me to a nearby town where I caught a milk train that eventually would end up in Zurich. I had a lot of dirtiness ahead yet, a lot of answers to ferret out. All the real questions were still unanswered. How? Why? When?
A man named Karl Krisst still lived untouched. We had a reckoning still due, though by now I imagined he was feeling secure again. Good. I liked that.
VIII
My first move in Zurich was to contact the AXE front there for financial arrangements for Middle Europe. I got enough money for new clothes and shoes. The dip in the lake had just about ruined every bit of paper currency I'd had on me. After making do with some ready-to-wear stuff, I debated whether to drop in on Karl-boy for a friendly visit. It could serve a purpose. It would reveal how surprised he was to see me, for one thing, and he might pull a boner or two. But then, I had an advantage now, why fritter it away? He had sicked his Russian friends on me and had heard nothing since. He'd figure they did their job. I decided to wait for dark and pay him a nocturnal visit.
As darkness fell, I took a taxi out to the address I'd gotten and had the cab stop a block away. Krisst lived in a modest private house, and I was glad I'd taken the precaution of approaching on foot. I almost ran into him as he was leaving, just managing to duck behind a tree, feeling somewhat like a character out of an animated cartoon. I watched his roly-poly figure go down the street and once again noted, as he passed a few other people, that his roundness was deceptive. He was close to six feet. He appeared dressed for at least a dinner out, perhaps a night on the town. I gave his house a careful once-over, circling it on all four sides. The lights were out. He was, I was glad to see, a bachelor. The windows were low and provided the most inviting method of entrance. I tried the ones at the rear first, out of sight of strollers passing by. Surprisingly, they were unlocked, and in fifteen seconds I was inside the house. I closed the window after me. He had also thoughtfully equipped each room of the house with softly glowing night lights. Not very much illumination but enough for a cursory examination. The living room, bedroom and kitchen revealed nothing out of the ordinary. I found what appeared to be a small study leading from the living room, closed the door and switched on a lamp. It revealed nothing out of the usual, either. ISS correspondence and financial reports made up most of the papers on the desk. I flicked off the lamp and went out into the hallway where I saw a door and a flight of steps leading to the basement. At the bottom of the stairs I found a light switch.
The light bathed a large, rectangular room paneled with soundproof wallboard. In the center of the room stood a laboratory table with a series of corked test tubes and neatly arranged vials. But it was the device lying on the table, partially disassembled, which caught my eye. A blueprint lay alongside it, and I felt my pulse quicken. I'd only seen two or three of them before, but I recognized it at once as a high-power compressed-air gun. It was one of the latest models, and suddenly tie lights were going on in my head. Compressed-air guns were the newest device for giving injections, eliminating the actual physical and the psychological pain of the hypodermic needle. The gun was pressed against the patient's skin and under extreme pressure, the injection itself, the very fluid, was shot directly through the skin into the veins. Under the extreme compression, the fluid itself became a jet-stream, a needle of fluid that penetrated painlessly and instantly. Except for one important fact, I was looking at the device that could shoot a poison or a virus or an electrical current into a man he wouldn't know it The one important fact was that the compressed-air injection guns I'd ever seen were like this one — big, heavy, unwieldly. The injection itself might be painless but you'd sure as hell notice someone using one of these things.
I was studying the blueprint of the gun and wondering about a number of small figures that had obviously been noted in pencil on the diagram. I was concentrating on the blueprint, but nonetheless I suddenly noticed the hair on the back of my hand standing up. My never-fail, built-in alarm system told me I wasn't alone. I turned slowly, to see Krisst standing at the foot of the stairs, gun in hand. The round face was unsmiling and the little eyes were darting pinpoints of bright anger. I saw that he was in his stockinged feet which explained his silent approach. It was only a partial explanation, I found out.
"I am surprised, I must admit," Karl Krisst said. "I am disappointed, too, in my Soviet friends. I thought they had done their job."
"Don't be too hard on them," I answered. "They tried. I'm hard to get rid of, like a bad penny, you know."
"You have also underestimated me," Krisst said, moving down to the floor, keeping the gun trained steadily on my belly. "You are no different than the rest of them in that respect. I have always been underestimated. I knew someone had entered my house the minute you went through the window. I have every window and door protected by an electric eye that sets off a small alarm, a buzzer, in a receiving unit I always carry with me. Of course, I didn't know it was you, Carter."
"I was right then," I said. "You are the one behind it all. You use a compressed-air injection gun."
Krisst smiled his usual unctuous smile. I was still unable to understand how he did it, though. There was no possible way he could have made use of such a big, clumsy device on Professor Caldone without my seeing it. I got my answer as he went on.
"Of course, I don't use anything as large as that. You were studying my calculations on the blueprint as I came upon you. They are reductions. I've had the entire principle reduced to the size of a book of matches or a small cigarette lighter." He held up his hand and I saw the small, square object cupped in his palm. It made a tidy — and hideous — destruction machine.