He paid his miserly landlord two months rent in advance without creating more than joyful surprise. Then he checked his false identity papers. Hurriedly he packed his bag with guilders, a fresh supply of stickers, a couple of small packages and got out.
No sudden traps opened out between there and the city centre; even if they ran around like mad the police could not be everywhere at once. On the east-west road he carried his bag unnoticed, being of less significance than a grain of sand amid the great mob of spectators that had assembled. By the same token progress was difficult and slow. The route was crowded almost to the walls. Time and again he had to shove his way past the backs of an audience which had its full attention on the road.
Many of the shops he passed had boarded-up windows as evidence that they had been favoured by his propaganda. Others displayed new glass and on twenty-seven of these he slapped more stickers while a horde of potential witnesses stood on tiptoe, stared over their fellows at the military procession. One sticker he plastered on a policeman’s back, the broad, inviting stretch of black cloth proving irresistible. The cop gaped forward along with the crowd, ignored pressure behind him and got decorated from shoulder to shoulder.
Who will pay for this war?
Those who started it will pay.
With their money and their lives.
After three hours of edging, pushing and some surreptitious sticker-planting he arrived at the city’s outskirts. Here the tail-end of the parade was still trundling noisily along. Standing spectators had thinned out but a straggling group of goon-fanciers were walking in pace with the troops.
Around stood houses of a suburb too snooty to deserve the attentions of the police and Kaitempi. Ahead stretched the open country and the road to Radine. He carried straight on, following the rearmost troops until the procession turned leftward and headed for the great military stronghold of Khamasta. Here the accompanying civilians halted and watched them go before mooching back to Pertane. Bag in hand, Mowry continued along the Radine road.
Moodiness afflicted him as he walked. He became obsessed with the notion that he had been chased out of the city even if only temporarily and he didn’t like it. Every step he took seemed like another triumph for the foe, another defeat for himself. Given the free choice he’d have stayed put, accepting increasing risks as they came, glorying in meeting and beating them. He didn’t have a free choice, not really.
At the training college they had lectured him again and again to the same effect. “Maybe you like having a mulish character. Well, in some circumstances it’s called courage, in others it’s downright stupidity. You’ve got to resist the temptation to indulge unprofitable heroics. Never abandon caution merely because you think it looks like cowardice. It requires guts to sacrifice one’s ego for the sake of the job. Those are the sort of guts we want and must have. A dead hero is of no earthly use to us.”
Humph! easy for them to talk, hard for those who have to listen and obey. He was still aggrieved when he reached a permasteel plaque standing by the roadside. It said: Radine—33 den. He looked in both directions, found nobody in sight. Opening his bag he took out a package and buried it at the base of the plaque.
That evening he checked in at Radine’s best and most expensive hotel. If the Jaimecan authorities succeeded in following his tortuous trail around Pertane they’d notice his penchant for hiding out in overcrowded, slummy areas and tend to seek him in the planet’s rat-holes. With luck a high-priced hotel would be the last place in which they’d look for him if the search spread wider afield. All the same he’d have to be wary of the routine check of hotel registers which the Kaitempi made every now and again regardless.
Dumping his bag he left the room at once. Time was pressing. He hurried along the road, unworried about snap-searches which for unknown reasons were confined to the capital, and had not yet been applied to other cities. Reaching a bank of public phone booths a mile from the hotel, he made a call to Pertane. A sour voice answered while the booth’s tiny screen remained blank.
“Cafe Susun.”
“Skriva there?”
“Who wants him?”
“Me.”
“That tells me a lot. Why’ve you got that scanner switched off?”
“Listen who’s talking,” growled Mowry, eyeing his faceless screen. “You fetch Skriva and let him cope with his own troubles. You aren’t his paid secretary, are you?”
There came a loud snort, a long silence, then Skriva’s voice sounded. “Who’s this?”
“Give me your pic and I’ll give you mine.”
“I know who it is-I recognise the tones” said Skriva. He switched his scanner, his unpleasing features gradually bloomed into the screen. Mowry switched likewise. Skriva frowned at him with dark suspicion. “Thought you were going to meet us here. Why are you phoning?”
“I’ve been called out of town and can’t get back for a piece.”
“Is thar so?”
“Yar, that is so!” snapped Mowry. “And don’t get hard with me because I won’t stand for it, see?” He paused to let it sink in, went on, “You got a dyno?”
“Maybe,” said Skriva, evasively.
“Can you leave right away?”
“Maybe.”
“If you want the goods you can cut out the maybes and move fast.” Mowry held his phone before the scanner, tapped it suggestively, pointed to his ears to indicate that one never knew who was listening-in these days and might perhaps have to be beaten to it. “Get onto the Radine road and look under marker 33-den. Don’t take Arhava with you.”
“Hey, when will you—”
He slammed down the phone, cutting off the other’s irate query. Next he sought the local Kaitempi H.Q. the address of which had been revealed in Pigface’s secret correspondence. In short time he passed the buildings, keeping as far from it as possible on the other side of the street. He did not give close attention to the building itself, his gaze being concentrated above it. For the next hour he wandered around Radine with seeming aimlessness, still studying the areas above the rooftops.
Eventually satisfied he looked for the city hall, found it, repeated the process. More erratic mooching from street to street while apparently admiring the stars. Finally He returned to the hotel.
Next morning he took a small package from his bag, pocketed it, made straight for a large business block noted the previous evening. With a convincing air of self-assurance he entered the building, took the automatic elevator to the top floor. Here he found a dusty, seldom-used passage with a drop-ladder at one end.
There was nobody around. Even if somebody had come along they might not have been unduly curious. Anyway, he had all his answers ready. Pulling down the ladder he climbed it swiftly, got through the trap-door at top and onto the roof. From his package he took a tiny inductance-coil fitted with clips and attached to a long, hair-thin cable with plug-in terminals at its other end.
Climbing a short trellis mast, he counted the wires on the telephone junction at its top, checked the direction in which the seventh one ran. To this he carefully fastened the coil. Then he descended, led the cable to the roof’s edge, gently paid it out until it was.dangling full length into the road below. Its plug-in terminals were now swinging in the air at a point about four feet above the pavement.
Even as he looked down from the roof half a dozen pedestrians passed the hanging cable and showed no interest in it. A couple of them glanced idly upward, saw somebody above and wandered onward without remark. Nobody questions the activities of a man who clambers over roofs or disappears down grids in the street providing he does it openly and with quiet confidence.