Or perhaps Gurd and Skriva had been nabbed while tramping heavy-footed all over a roof and waving cables across a street. He could readily imagine them fixing a mock telephone tap with a thumping noisiness fit to arouse the street. On a rooftop, blinded by easy money, they were liable to make themselves as conspicuous as a pair of drunken elephants.
If they had been caught they’d talk, tough as they were. The Kaitempi would make them talk. When fingernails are peeled off one by one with a pair of pliers, or when intermittent voltage from a battery is applied to the corners of the eyeballs, the most granite-hard character becomes positively garrulous.
Yes, they’d talk all right but they couldn’t say much. Only a weird tale about a crackpot with a Mashambi accent and an inexhaustible supply of guilders. Not a word about Dirac Angestun Gesept. Not a syllable about Terran intervention on Jaimec.
But there were others who could talk and to better effect.
“You see anyone leave this booth just now?”
“Yar. A fat yokel. Seemed in a hurry”
“Where’d he go?”
“Down the road. Got an a 42 bus.”
“What did he look like? Describe him as accurately as you can. Come on, be quick about it!”
“Medium height, middle-aged, round-faced, got a bad complexion. Quite a belly on him, too. Had a red falkin alongside his nose. Wearing a fur jacket, brown cord pants, heavy brown boots. Looked the farmer type if you get what I mean.”
That’s enough for us. Jalek, let’s get after that bus. Where’s the mike—I’d better broadcast this description. We’ll nail him if we move fast”
“He’s a cunning one. Didn’t take him long to smell a trap when Lathin answered his call. He blew a dirty noise and ran. Bet you the bus-jump is a blind-he’s got a car parked someplace.”
“Save your breath and catch up with that bus. Two callers have escaped us already. We’ll have a lot of explaining to do if we lose a third.”
“Yar, I know.”
Mowry got off the bus before anyone had time to overtake it. He caught another one running on a transverse route. But he did not play tag all over the city as he had done in the past. Right now things were a lot livelier, the pursuers almost certainly had a description. of him and it looked like he’d got most of Jaimec on the hop.
His third change put him on an express bus heading out of town. It dropped him a mile beyond the bridge where he had hidden fifty thousand guilders for the benefit of those who, for all he knew, might not have another fifty hours to live. Once again he was heading back to the forest and the cave.
To retrace his steps to the bridge and try unearth the money would be stupid and dangerous. Police cars would be heading this way before long. The hunt for a pot-bellied farmer would not be confined to Pertane. Anytime now they’d start probing the rural areas immediately outside the city limits. So long as daylight remained the best thing for him to do was to get out of sight and stay out until such time as he could assume yet another new guise.
Moving fast he reached the edge of the forest without being stopped and questioned. For a short time he continued to use the road, seeking shelter among the trees whenever a car approached. But traffic increased and vehicles appeared with such frequency that eventually he gave up hope of further progress before dark. He was pretty tired too, his eyelids were heavy, his feet had taken a beating.
Penetrating farther into the woods he found a comfortable, well-concealed spot, lay on a thick bed of moss and let go a sigh of satisfaction. For a while he reposed in thoughtful silence while his eyes idly surveyed small patches of sky visible through leafy gaps.
Wolf had asserted that one man could pin down an army. He wondered how large a number he’d fastened and what real good it had done, if any. The most frustrating thing about this solitary wasp-life was that he had no way of obtaining a glimpse behind the scenes, of looking into the enemy’s head-quarters and measuring his multiple reactions, of seeing for oneself how widespread and crippled they became.
How many precious man-hours had his presence cost the foe? Thousands, tens of thousands, millions? To what forms of war service would those man-hours have been devoted if he had not compelled the enemy to waste them in other directions? Ah, in the answer to that hypothetical question lay the true measure of a wasp’s efficiency.
Gradually he gave up these unprofitable musings and drifted into sleep. Night was upon him when he awoke refreshed and energetic. He was also less soured with events. Things could have been worse, lots worse. For example, he could have gone straight to the Cafe Susun and walked into the arms of the trappers like a prize chump. The Kaitempi wouldn’t know what they had grabbed but they’d hold him on general principles and in their own effective way they’d squeeze him of every item of information he possessed. Thinking it over, he doubted his ability to hold out once they really got to work on him. About the only captives from whom the Kaitempi had extracted nothing were those who had managed to commit suicide before questioning.
As he trudged steadily through the dark toward the cave he blessed his luck, wisdom or intuition in making a phone call. Then his thoughts became occupied with Gurd and Skriva. H they had been caught, as seemed likely, it meant he’d been deprived of valuable allies and once again was strictly on his own. He’d have to find some way of replacing them and that wouldn’t be easy.
But if, like himself, they had escaped the trap, how was he going to find them? The crummy cafe had been their only recognised point of contact. He didn’t know where they lived and it would be foolhardy to go around asking. They didn’t know his address, either. They’d want to meet him fully as much as he wanted to meet them. Both sides could waste weeks or months fumbling at random for each other in a city as big as Pertane. Somehow the problem had to be solved.
Arriving at the cave as dawn was breaking, he took off his shoes, sat on the pebble beach and soaked his aching feet in the stream. Still his mind chewed unceasingly at the question of how to find Gurd and Skriva, if they were still free. Eventually the Kaitempi would remove the stakeout from the Cafe Susun either because they were satisfied that they had exploited it to the limit, or because their patience had run out, or because of pressure of other business. It would then be possible to visit the place and find someone able to give all the information he needed. But heaven alone knew when that would be; perhaps as far off as a year next Christmas.
In new and radically changed disguise he could mooch around the neighbourhood of the cafe until he found one of its regular customers and used him as a lead to Gurd and Skriva. It would be a risky’ tactic, a highly dangerous one. Chances were high that, for the time being, the Cafe Susun was the focal point of Kaitempi activity over the entire district with plainclothesmen keeping watch for suspicious looking characters lounging around anywhere within a mile of the place.
After an hour’s meditation he decided that there was one possibility of regaining contact with the brothers. It depended not only on them being on the loose but also having their fair share of brains and imagination. It might work. They were crude and ruthless but not stupid and a steady flow of guilders must have greatly stimulated their natural cunning.
He could leave them a message where he’d left one before, hoping they’d have the sense to think of the same thing them-selves and go take a look. On the Radine road under Marker 33 den: If they had successfully completed their last job they had fifty thousand guilders owing to them. That should be more than enough to sharpen their wits.