"Who? Do I have to shake it out of you?"
He reached across the desk and caught the thin, dry throat between his fingers, forcing Gormalu back into the chair. Gormalu fought and tried to rise but Dalroi threw him back again savagely and increased the pressure. In a paroxysm of frenzy Gormalu threw up his hands. Dalroi released him as he felt the body slacken. A small object clattered on to the desk and Dalroi stooped to pick it up.
A small black knight.
"That was very foolish, Dalroi. There are some things it"s better not to know. You"re caught up in a tide of affairs more complex than you can imagine."
"I want answers, not double-talk. Was it the Black Knights who killed Dever?"
"I warn you," said Gormalu, "you"re treading on unholy ground."
"h.e.l.l, I was born on unholy ground! Now talk - for I"m quite prepared to kill you if you don"t."
"I don"t think you will," said Gormalu quietly.
Dalroi sensed the pay-off and dived for his gun. Not fast enough. A blow on the neck from behind dazed him momentarily, and before he could react his arms were pinioned and forced up behind his back until he knew the bones must break at any second.
Unashamedly he screamed and the hold relaxed very, very slightly. He knew Gormalu"s henchmen, Timoshu and Matshee, and he knew they would not hesitate to cripple him at the slightest provocation. A blind tide of anger rose within him and leaked impotently away with the realisation that he was completely powerless.
"Let me give you a little advice," Gormalu said, fingering his throat. "The Black Knights have something big lined up for you. Something big and brutal - something to do with Failway. Don"t try to fight it. Just accept whatever comes."
"One day," said Dalroi, "I shall probably kill you. Human failings, the l.u.s.t, the greed and the cowardice, I understand, but you are a scowling enigma. I don"t know what black principles motivate you, nor what ghastly solace your twisted longings crave. Knowing you is like the kiss of death!"
"You"re a man of many talents." Gormalu"s voice was a mere hiss between his teeth. "You"re a fool, a prophet and a poet all in the same breath. The only reason I don"t have you killed now is because somebody is waiting for the privilege who will make an immeasurably better job of it."
"I don"t suppose," said Dalroi, "you"ve ever seen a shaft of sunlight breaking through a winter"s sky?"
Gormalu nodded to his henchmen. "You know what to do."Dalroi tensed his muscles, waiting for his antagonists to move, ready to take advantage of any opportunity. He never stood a chance. He only dimly felt the deft blow as darkness flooded over him.
When he awoke it was only a tenuous return to consciousness. He was in a ditch, his face propped on one arm, clear of the filthy waters. He was soaked to the skin, and above him rain lashed from a pitiless, muddy sky. Survival demanded that he move, but only the force of survival had the power to override the pain that racked his body. Gormalu"s henchmen had done a thorough job.
Despite the numbing of the bitter cold, every movement produced a pain too cruel for fort.i.tude. In a state of near delirium he attacked the slimy bank not caring or knowing what it cost him in pain or energy, nor how many times he fainted before he made the crest. After a time his mind withdrew from the struggle and pure, blind instinct forced him on, then deserted, leaving him helpless and exhausted on a bank of yellow clay.
The next time he woke the sun was high and warm and his clothes were steaming as they dried on his body. Painfully he rolled over, drinking in the warmth hungrily, dimly recognising that his life might depend on it. An eternity seemed to pa.s.s while he lay thus, then, feeling stronger, he attempted to rise to his feet.
The pain flooded back, but he fought it grimly. His back was a thousand aching segments and each rib was a band of agony cramping his breathing. His limbs responded as though the joints had been carefully misplaced. He lay still for a moment longer summoning his will to overcome the thousand crashing signals from his splintered nerves. Then he stood up and walked, his body burning with fire and his mind as cold as ice.
As he walked something elemental stirred within him, something which transcended pain and the bitterness of his plight. It was hatred, sheer, unbounded, naked hate, coupled with an endless determination to survive. It was part of the raw energy of the universe, the terrible will which ordained creation, the naive spring of the life force common to all things animate. Yet it was more than this, for it channelled and charged through a mind of more than ordinary awareness and cunning; a mind shaped in the corrosive shadows of Failway, already bitter and familiar with the darker things which men do to each other. It was a shaft of black forked lightning which played terribly through a brain already inflamed with dreadful resolution, and it spat like an angry arc in the tense no-man"s-land between consciousness and the dark side of the mind.
FIVE.
The surge of blood was strong in his ears and a blinding headache lanced through his skull like the forced insertion of a blunt penknife. And something else ... a whisper, a ghost, a flash of memory or delusion ...
of a long corridor with doors of surgical whiteness; the macabre c.h.i.n.k of instruments on a tray out of sight; an oscilloscope trace like a green eye burning into eyes too hypnotised even to blink; the insane knowledge that one was undergoing something too terrible to be admitted to conscious recognition. And it was gone ...
He groped frantically through his mind, trying to recapture the fragments and to correlate them with experience. No success. Whatever nightmare he had recaptured had withdrawn again into the dark whirlpool of the forbidden. Even the headache trailed to a dull, nagging pulse.
He staggered at length into the bar of a fifth-cla.s.s motel. The bartender noted his appearance without undue alarm, poured unordered cognac into a tumbler and pushed it forward.
"Smashed my car," said Dalroi by way of explanation. "Been unconscious in a ditch. I need a washroom and a phone."The bartender nodded. The world was full of nuts and anyone who arrived under his own steam in as bad a state as Dalroi had a right to invent his own lies.
"You"ll find the bathroom through there."
Dalroi cleansed the blood from his face and arms and examined the bruises and abrasions. They were painful but not particularly dangerous. Gormalu"s thugs had exercised a morbidly scientific restraint in their brutality. He was still wondering what to do about his bloodstained shirt when the door opened behind him. The bartender put his head in.
"Looks as though you could do with a change of clothes?"
Dalroi nodded. "Got anything handy?"
"At a price."
"I"ll pay it. This stuff of mine needs burning."
The bartender shortly reappeared with a suit of cheap cloth and a woollen shirt. He looked quizzically at Dalroi"s battered face.
"Boy!" he said. "That car must have hated you."
Dalroi ignored him and made for the phone, obscuring the index as he dialled.
"Dalroi. Any news of Zdenka?"
"Not a hope," said Brian Regis. "The boys are fighting shy. Rumour has it that you killed Harry Dever."
"I didn"t," said Dalroi. "He was dead for hours before I got to him. Anyway, how does it happen that everybody"s suddenly developed consciences?"
"I know how you feel," said Regis. "You"re having a rough time. But you can"t blame the boys for keeping their noses clean while the Black Knights are poking around."
"The Black Knights don"t want me," said Dalroi. "I don"t fool with stuff on that level."
"No? Seen the television lately. There"s an appeal out for you and I don"t think it"s just to help the police with their enquiries. Sorry, Dalroi, but unless things cool off a bit you"re strictly on your own. It seems as though you"re a stranger in town."
"That was all I needed," said Dalroi bitterly. "G.o.d! If ever I catch up with the joker who set this up for me I"ll start with the catalogue of Offences Against the Person and work right through the whole b.l.o.o.d.y list!"
"Can you let me have a room for the night?"
The bartender nodded. "You in trouble? I know a good lawyer who ... "
"Do me a favour!" said Dalroi. "The way my luck runs I"d need a whole ruddy army."
"I only thought ... "
"Don"t," said Dalroi. "Thinking"s a thankless occupation. It"s bad for the brain and makes you a bad risk for life insurance.""I see your point, Mister. I"ve a room out at the back. It has a good view of the best ways to get out in emergencies."
"You"re a bright lad!" said Dalroi. "Anything else about it?"
"Only that you have to pay in advance."
On principle he objected to paying luxury hotel prices for a paintless, fly-spotted sweat-box, but the need for rest was imperative. There was the very possible risk that the bartender might turn him over to the police, but if he had the feel of the place correctly the bartender had every reason not to attract the police to the motel. The laughing couples who a.s.sembled in the evening had certainly not been man and wife, and the bitter smell of cepi narcotics lingered mustily in airless corners of the rooms. Even so, Dalroi was taking no chances.
He checked the lock and laid a twisted hairpin in the keyhole, a simple device to prevent the door being opened during the night. Then he cleaned and primed his gun, laid it within inches of his fingers, and settled down to sleep.
About dawn he was awakened by a sound he was half expecting. There was a slight scratch and rattle as somebody attempted to manipulate the lock. Gun in hand Dalroi stole to the door and gently pulled the hairpin from the keyhole. Moments later the door swung quietly open. Dalroi let the intruder enter, then struck once. A dull thud and the man slumped quietly into his arms. Dalroi dragged him to the bed and went expertly through his pockets.
Obviously a professional. Nothing in his pockets, no ident.i.ty - not even a weapon. The latter fact intrigued Dalroi. An armed a.s.sa.s.sin he was ready for, but an unarmed man was something of a novelty.
Despite an imperative instinct to get out fast Dalroi stayed, splashing water from a jug on the unconscious head until the man revived.
"Who the h.e.l.l are you?" he asked dangerously.
The dark eyes opened in momentary terror as they focused on the gun, then his face twisted in a wry grin. Fine white teeth gleamed against dark skin.
"I am called Malmud the Strangler. Lord! But they warned me!"
Dalroi nudged the gun into the side of his temple. "What are you doing here?"
"I came to kill you."
"How did you know I was here?"
"The Black Knights always know where you are. You"re something - special. They take good care of you."
"I hadn"t noticed," said Dalroi cynically. "Why should they want to kill me?"
"They don"t. They said you were indestructible. I thought I knew better."
Dalroi threw the gun on the bed. "Get up!"
The dark eyes regarded him curiously. "Why?"
"If you still fancy your luck, I"m giving you another chance. There"s something I need to know.""There"s nothing personal in this," said Malmud warily. "Murder is my profession. Your demise was of purely academic interest."
"Not to me," said Dalroi.
Malmud sprang like a beast of prey, his hands transformed into snapping jaws of steel seeking Dalroi"s neck. Dalroi stood stock-still until the last instant, then, with the closing of the stranglehold, he struck. It was a wild blow at an improbable angle, but as his arm moved something burst within his mind, a little gateway into h.e.l.l, blinding his eyes with radiance. Then it was gone. He didn"t need to look to know the damage he had done. Malmud was far across the room nursing his injured ribs and regarding his tormentor with more than ordinary fear.
"Would you like another demonstration?" asked Dalroi.
Painfully Malmud rose, backing warily against the wall.
Dalroi indicated the door. "Now get out! I don"t know what sort of b.l.o.o.d.y run-around you"re giving me, but if anyone thinks it"ll stop me having a crack at Failway then they"ll have to learn the hard way."
Malmud went, hugging his ribs and coughing spasmodically, leaving Dalroi staring at his own hands and trying to trace an image that lingered in his mind. For a moment he brought it into focus and the reaction made him sweat and tremble. Then he picked up his gun and went out into the early light.
His car was still in the woods where he had left it. Turning away from town, he headed for the open country. He needed time to think. There had been more violence and murder packed into the last few days than a man had a right to expect in a lifetime. The vicious circle of death and misfortune which had surrounded him was far too pat to be coincidence. Clearly his persecutors, whoever they might be, were keeping him on the run, allowing him no time even to breathe. The question was why - what was so special about Dalroi?
The strain was beginning to tell. He felt like a man trying to do a jigsaw puzzle on which his life depended and which was being broken up as fast as he fitted the pieces into place. Failway, Cronstadt, the police and the Black Knights were all mixed up in it somewhere. Idly we wondered if his mind was beginning to crack. Once, when he had woken in the ditch and again when he had struck at Malmud, unexpected and atrocious facets of his mind had opened up to reveal a hint of something so malicious and diabolical that his mind balked even at the memory.
He kept to the main highway at first, solely because speed permitted a separation of those cars which might be trailing him, from the rest of the traffic. A black Mercury stuck discreetly on his tail for fifty miles, to be replaced by a red Forrole which executed a neat changeover. The lack of finesse about this mode of surveillance was laughable. Dalroi hit the Salang Hairpin bends at closing to one hundred miles an hour with the sure knowledge that anybody who had not misspent precious juvenile years with a super-fast car on those very slopes would be unlikely to survive at only half the speed.
He was right. He swooped down the perilous cutting like a jet, knowing the precise angle for a skid-turn at speed. The Forrole tried to follow. Only the ma.s.sive granite blocks of the parapet saved the wreckage from a three-hundred-foot no-return trip. Thereafter Dalroi had the fall-away to himself.
At the bottom he took the river road which hugged the cliff walls out of sight from the roads above.
Scorching back over the dusty tracks he drew out on to the heath and stopped.
His car was black with a gloss which hinted of a recent spray. With the attack of his sharp knife the black layer stripped in a thin, continuous film which had only nominal adhesion to the base. In less than fiveminutes the car stood clad only in the bright blue of the enamel underneath. He kicked the black film into a pile and watched it burn with a brief burst of fire.
The white walls from the tyres followed swiftly. The number plates reversed and the b.u.mper overriders unclipped and were shot into the boot. A few more modifications and the car was not easily recognisable as the one which ten minutes before had driven on to the heath.
The suit and shirt he had obtained at the motel fitted his purpose well. He settled into the car and used the driving mirror to effect his disguise. Blond hair turned auburn and heavy grease slicked the untidy locks back against his skull. He found earrings such as the smart-set wore, and a gaudy tie which tied to the largest of all possible knots. His face tanned tomato-red as though from unwise exposure to the sun and he added freckles with a deft touch.
Now he was typical of a thousand such young men: the fading clique who gatecrashed teenage parties, those who refused to accept that adolescence was over and that the age of responsibility had begun. To complete the atmosphere he turned on the radio, seeking raw jazz to blast away at the empty silence.
Then he frowned, and the sweat on his brow nearly ruined the undry pigments. The harmonic ghost of a radio squealer insinuated itself into part of the broadcast band. So discreet was its placing that it would have pa.s.sed unnoticed had he not himself been a master of the technique. Somebody had set a radio-marker on his car, and even now detectors would be plotting his position on an auto-map.
Whoever was after him was sparing no expense.
The receiver was a powerful set, illegally modified to monitor the police and civil service transmissions as well as the normal broadcast bands. He started at one end of the tuning scales and worked right through systematically, tracing the harmonics back to the fundamental frequency. Soon he found it, the unmistakable self-resonance of a micro-wave capsule at close range.
It took him ten minutes to locate the transmitter. So cunningly was it contrived that without knowing of its existence he would not have known the mechanism for what it was. A small cylinder, no thicker than a pencil and not more than an inch in length, had been lodged in a cavity under the turbine feed-pump. He examined it curiously, damping the oscillations with a loop of wire. The pattern was new to him and he mentally saluted the unknown technicians for a fine technical achievement. Undoubtedly the transmissions had a range of several miles and the device had a useful life of perhaps a year. Magnetic clamps were provided to attach the tube quickly to a suitable metal surface.
Since the capsule signalled his immediate position it was imperative that he lose it fast. To have cracked open the tube would have betrayed its discovery; to have left it on the heath would have served no useful purpose.
He drove back to the highway, pulling up near the crossing where the great trucking routes joined the express road to the coast. A near collision resulted in the capsule being attached to the side of an express truck en route for distant places. He wondered idly just how long his persecutors would waste on that particular deception. For the first time in several days he began to chuckle. Somebody was going to pay heavily for putting him on the murder roundabout.
He spent the rest of the day piecing facts together in his mind, trying to trace the underlying pattern. The conclusions he reached were as chaotic as the chain of events on which they were based. Whichever way he a.n.a.lysed it the Black Knights had no place in the equation and there was more dirt attached to the Cronstadt committee than its tyrannical author would care to admit. In fact, the committee emerged as a decidedly suspect unit. This was a charge which only Cronstadt himself could answer fully.SIX
In the commercial quarter, on the edge of the old town, the streets were quiet and overshadowed with the tall, deserted offices. At the marble portals of the Cronstadt Steel Corporation, Dalroi hesitated for a few seconds, then tried the doors silently. One swung open with spring loaded reluctance. A night-guard making tea in an alcove beneath the stairs received no hint that Dalroi had pa.s.sed.
Rumour had it that Cronstadt never slept. Certainly Dalroi had never found an hour when the tyrannical man of steel was not in his office nursing some white fury at the stupidity of the world. Dalroi knocked quietly and pushed open the door. He entered to find a heavy Service radiation pistol centred on his chest.
"Who the devil are you?" asked Cronstadt from behind the pistol.
Dalroi moved further into the light. "Remember me?"
The baron studied the disguise for a long second. "Dalroi, yes, I didn"t recognise you." The pistol returned to the niche in the desk. "I was not expecting you just now."