The American, Heywood, could not tell. From his post with the Allied Nations Government, Heywood had managed to arrange things so that Martino’s laboratory was placed close to Azarin’s sector. But that was the best he had been able to do. He had known Martino, knew Martino was engaged in something important that required a room with a twenty-foot ceiling and eight hundred square feet of floor space, and was called Project K-Eighty-Eight.
Azarin scowled. It was all very well and good to have such faith in Martino’s importance, but what was K-Eighty-Eight? What good was an empty name? The American, Heywood, was very glib with his data, but the fact was that there was no data. The ANG internal security system was such that no one, even Heywood, could know much of what was going on. That in itself was quite normal — the Soviet system was the same. But the fact was that in the end it would not be some cloak-and-dagger secret agent, with his flabby white skin and his little cameras who would deliver the K-Eighty-Eight to them. It would be Azarin — simple Anastas Azarin, the peasant — who would pull this thing apart as a bear destroys a dead tree to find the honey.
Martino would have to be interrogated. There was no other method of doing it. But for all Novoya Moskva wasted its air on the telephone, there was no quick way of doing it. There was no getting people into Martino’s laboratory. He had to be waited for. Men had to be ready at all times, prepared to pluck him from some dark street on the day he wandered too close to the line, if that lucky accident ever did occur. Then — one, two, three, he would be here, he would be questioned, he would be released, all in a matter of a few days before the Allieds could do anything, and the Allieds would have lost the K-Eighty-Eight. And that devil, the American Rogers, no matter how clever he was, would have been taught at last that Anastas Azarin was a better man. But until that time, everyone — Azarin, Novoya Moskva — everyone — would have to wait. All in good time, if ever.
The telephone on his desk began to ring. Azarin swept up the receiver. “Polkovnik Azarin,” he growled.
“Tovarishch Polkovnik — ” It was one of his staff assistants. Azarin recognized the voice and fumbled for the name. He found it.
“Well, Yung?”
“There has been an explosion in the American scientist’s laboratory.”
“Get men in there. Get the American.”
“They are already on their way. What shall we do next?”
“Next? Bring him here. No — one moment. An explosion, you say? Take him to the military hospital.”
“Yes, sir. I very much hope he is alive, because this, of course, is the opportunity we have been waiting for.”
“Is it? Go give your orders.”
Azarin dropped the receiver on its cradle. This was bad. This was the worst possible thing. If Martino was dead, or so badly damaged as to be useless for weeks, Novoya Moskva would become intolerable.
2
As soon as his car had come to a stop in front of the hospital, Azarin jumped out and climbed quickly up the steps. He marched through the main doors and strode into the lobby, where a doctor was waiting for him.
“Colonel Azarin?” the wiry little doctor asked, bowing slightly from the waist. “I am Medical Doctor Kothu. You will forgive me — I do not speak your language fluently.”
“I do well enough in yours,” Azarin said pleasantly, anticipating the gratifying surprise on the little man’s face. When it came, it made him even more well disposed toward the doctor. “Now then — where is the man?”
“This way, please.” Kothu bowed again and led the way to the elevator. A brief smile touched Azarin’s face as he followed him. It always gave him pleasure when simple-looking Anastas Azarin proved to be as learned as anyone who had spent years in the universities. It was something to be proud of, too, that he had learned the language while burning leeches off his legs in a jungle swamp, instead of out of some professor’s book.
“How badly is the man injured?” he asked Kothu as they stepped out into another hall.
“Very badly. He was dead for a few moments.”
Azarin jerked his head toward the doctor.
Kothu nodded with a certain pride of his own. “He died in the ambulance. Fortunately, death is no longer permanent, under certain circumstances.” He led Azarin to a plate glass window set in the wall of a white-tiled room. Inside, still wearing the torn remnants of his clothes, incredibly bloodied, a man lay in the midst of a welter of apparatus.
“He is quite safe now,” Kothu explained. “You see the autojector there, pumping his blood, and the artificial kidney that purifies it. On this side are the artificial lungs.” The machines were bunched together haphazardly, where they had quickly been brought from their usual positions against the walls. Doctors and nurses were clustered around them, carefully supervising their workings, and other doctors were busy on the man himself, clamping torn blood vessels and applying compression to his armless left shoulder. As Azarin watched, orderlies began shifting the machines into systematic order. The emergency was over. Things were assuming a routine. A nurse glanced at her watch, looked over at a rack where a bottle was draining of whole blood, and substituted a fresh one.
Azarin scowled to hide his nervousness. He was having a certain amount of difficulty in keeping his glance on the monstrous scene. A man, after all, was made with his insides decently hidden under his skin. To look at a man, you did not see the slimy organs doing their revolting work of keeping him alive and real. To see a man like this, ripped open, with mysteriously knowledgeable, yes — frightening — men like this Kothu pushing and pulling at the moist things that stuffed the smooth and handsome skin…
Azarin risked a sidelong glance at the little brown doctor. Kothu could do these abominable things just as easily to him. Anastas Azarin could lie there like that, hideously exposed, with men like this Kothu desecrating him at his pleasure.
“That’s very good,” Azarin barked, “but he’s useless to me. Or can he speak?”
Kothu shook his head. “His head is crushed, and he has lost a number of sensory organs. But this is only emergency equipment, such as you will find in any accident ward. Inside of two months, he’ll be as good as new.”
“Two months?”
“Colonel Azarin, I ask you to look at what lies on that table and is barely a man.”
“Yes — yes, of course, I’m lucky to have him at all. He can’t be moved, I suppose? To the great hospital in Novoya Moskva, for example?”
“It would kill him.”
Azarin nodded. Well, with every bad, some good. There would be no question, now, of Martino being taken away from him. It would be Anastas Azarin who did it — Anastas Azarin who tore the honey from the tree.
“Very well — do your best. And quickly.”
“Of course, Colonel.”
“If there is anything you need, come to me. I will give it to you.”
“Yes, sir. Thank you.”
“There’s nothing to thank me for. I want this man. You will do your best work to see that I get him.”
“Yes, Colonel.” Medical Doctor Kothu bowed slightly from the waist. Azarin nodded and walked away, down the hall to the elevator, his booted feet thudding against the floor.
Downstairs, he found Yung just driving up with a squad of SIB soldiers. Azarin gave detailed instructions for a guard, and ordered the accident floor of the hospital sealed off. Already, he was busy thinking of ways this story might be spreading. The ambulance crew had to be kept quiet, the hospital personnel might talk, and even some of the patients here might have gathered an idea of what was going on. All these leaks had to be plugged. Azarin went back to his car, conscious of how complex his work was, how much ability a man needed to do it properly, and of how, inevitably, the American, Rogers, would sooner or later bring it all to nothing.