Klauswitz shrugged as if he personally believed that Vickers had drunk enough but wasn't going to say so. Ilsa, who was standing watching the planes come and go, glanced at him with contempt.
"Soaking it up to the bitter end, Mort?"
"It stops me having to think."
"You're a loser, Mort."
Ilsa didn't exactly look like a winner herself right at that moment. She had started out bandbox fresh, going to extremes to keep her seams straight and each hair in place. Two days into the waiting, though, she had been hit by the general boredom and lowering of standards. She had taken to wearing her hair like she'd just gotten out of bed, walking around in a silk slip and chain smoking. When this had started, Vickers had wondered if she was going to go all the way and actually sleep with her target.
It didn't happen. The only outbreak of that kind of activity was when Ilsa and Malmud had ordered a mess of cream cakes and locked themselves into one of the bedrooms. The whole thing was done with such slickness it was plain to Vickers that this wasn't the first such interlude.
Ilsa managed to generate a level of tension that only evaporated when she took her turns to sleep. When Ilsa was away, the men let out a collective sigh and relaxed. They were developing the strained camaraderie of a condemned man and his jailers.
Ilsa turned in early on that third afternoon. She retired for a few hours of sack time just after sunset. The three men started a game of five card stud. About an hour into the game, the phone rang. Klauswitz picked it up.
"Yeah?" He looked a little surprised. "Are you sure about this?"
He held out the phone to Vickers. "It's for you."
Vickers was equally surprised.
"Who is this?"
"It's Victoria. Shut up and listen. It's time for you to get out of there. There's an Amjet leaving for Las Vegas in two hours. Be on it. A car and driver will be waiting outside the hotel in one hour. It's a beat-up Ford Fabian. It'll take you to the right terminal. Everything has been seen to. That's all. You can hang up now."
Vickers had a dozen questions but he couldn't voice them in front of Malmud and Klauswitz. He placed the phone carefully back in its cradle. Klauswitz looked at him curiously.
"What did Morgenstern want?"
"Basically she was telling me not to panic."
"She was probably talking about the TV statement."
"Probably."
The previous day, Contec had made its electronic confession. Anton Fellful himself had appeared on all the major channels expressing the regret of the corporation. It had been the first tangible sign that anything was happening on the outside.
The poker game was resumed. On paper, Klauswitz and Malmud owed Vickers some fourteen thousand dollars. There was much strained laughter about who would live to collect it. This game didn't, however, last for very long. It quickly started to deteriorate as Vickers appeared to grow drunker and drunker. Finally it broke up. Vickers went on drinking, Malmud stared at the TV and Klauswitz stripped down his Yasha and started to clean it.
At the peaks of his drunk act, Vickers would launch into long disjointed stories of his past exploits. The two Internals humored him by pretending interest. After all, how much longer did he have. One of his favorites was the tale of when he and Mad Jack Cardew were in Cameroon together. He reached the slurring climax of the story just as Klauswitz was reassembling his gun.
"By the time we reached Yaounde, the second biggest city, it was pretty damn clear that although we'd toppled the government, the bunch we'd put in their place was ten times worse. M'Tubo had given his troops their head, and let me tell you that their head went a long way beyond ordinary barbarism. They were going feral all over the town while M'Tubo himself was sitting in the town hall or whatever, blind drunk and yelling bloody murder at the head of some local biggie. He'd got it set up on a table. Did I tell you that the head had been cut off a few hours earlier? Anyway, Cardew, who's past caring by that point, was almost as roaring drunk as M'Tubo, walks in and starts calling M'Tubo sixteen kinds of asshole."
Klauswitz snapped the clip back into the reassembled Yasha. All the green LEDs were alight.
"M'Tubo didn't seem to mind too much and he tells Cardew to fuck himself an' points out that he was now so powerful that he could shit where he liked."
Klauswitz put down the Yasha on the coffee table on which they'd been playing poker. Vickers grinned briefly and went on.
"So Cardew starts laughing at him. M'Tubo's got this nickel-plated machine gun laying on the table beside the head. It went everywhere with him. He'd damn nearly started to think of it as his symbol of office. Cardew points at the machine gun and tells M'Tubo that he wouldn't be able to shit at all if he, Cardew, simply picked up the gun and blew him away. Cardew and M'Tubo both have a good laugh about this and then Cardew does exactly that. He picks up the machine gun and blows the bastard clean across the room."
As if by magic, the Yasha was in Vickers' hands. He was no longer drunk. Without a moment's hesitation, he shot Klauswitz in the head. The next instant he had it pointed at Malmud.
"If you don't want to end up like M'Tubo and your pal, you'd better not move a muscle, kidlet."
Malmud raised his hands. "I'm not arguing."
"Do you have a set of handcuffs?"
"Of course."
"Cuff your hands behind your back and get down on the floor."
The bedroom door opened. Ilsa was silhouetted against the light. She was naked. Her voice was sleepy.
"What the hell's going on out here?"
Vickers covered her with the Yasha.
"Put your hands on your head or I'll cut you in half."
"Fuck you, Vickers."
"Just put your hands on your head."
Mad as she might be, she knew enough to do only what she was told. As she raised her arms, he couldn't help noticing what nice breasts she had.
"I believe that I'm expected to kill you but, instead, I'm going to give you a break. If I was you, I'd take the matter up with your boss-or your girl friend-whichever way you think of her."
THREE
THE BEAT UP Ford was waiting as promised. The driver was a heavyset black man with a 'fro combed out past his shoulders. He was wearing anonymous mechanic's overalls.
"I want to go to the Amjet terminal."
"I know."
The driver pulled quickly away from the front of the Holiday Inn. Once they were on the airport connector road, he picked up a plastic folder from beside him on the front seat and tossed it back to Vickers.
"I was told to give you this."
Vickers broke the seal. The folder contained four thousand in cash and a one-way plane ticket to Las Vegas.
"Is this all? No ID? No credit cards?"
"Don't ask me. I'm just doing what I'm told. I did hear, though, that Vegas is one of the last places they really welcome old fashioned cash money."
Vickers grunted. He felt like he'd been screwed again. Without ID, he'd never get his gun onto the plane. He'd arrive in Las Vegas completely unarmed. He would have to dump Klauswitz's Yasha that was right then nestling under his coat. He was suddenly rather glad he'd let Ilsa live. It was never too soon to start deviating from the program. With any luck, Ilsa would go crazy and have a crack at Victoria.
The black man dropped him at Amjet departures and drove away. Vickers watched the Ford disappear down the ramp. He suddenly felt very alone. He fought down the feeling and headed for the check-in desk. With the formalities completed, there were still some forty-five minutes before the plane left. He needed something to do that would preferably keep him largely out of sight. On the next level up, there was a row of therapy booths. For a deposit of ten dollars, you could talk to a computer that was programmed in basic psychology. The booths in airports were mainly concerned with the fear of flying.