Warren Murphy: Balance of Power

The boy looked at him with his sad, dark eyes. "Denise Saravena was my friend," he said. "After my mother died, Denise brought us food until I was old enough to join the army."

"Who is Denise?" Barney asked.

After a moment, the boy said, "Let us wash your wounds and drink at the waterfall. Then we must go. I know a small mountain village north of Puerta del Rey where we will be welcome."

They drank at the foot of the waterfall. Barney let the cold water run over his bare feet and stomach, washing away the putrefaction that had begun to develop in the burns.

It felt good. Barney's head began to clear. He tore his shirt to make a bandage for his hand so that he could hold the knife better. He tore off strips of cloth to cover his feet. As he was splashing water over his head and neck, the boy whirled around, his knife poised for throwing.

Out of the forest ambled a chimpanzee, chattering and running in a zigzag. The boy sighed.

"You know what you're doing with that knife," Barney said, relieved.

The boy lay on his stomach to drink. "No man knows more than the jungle," he said. He waded into the water to wash. Then the shot came and sent the boy sprawling into the mud at the other side of the stream, a hole the size of a grapefruit in his back, his thin legs twitching for a moment before he lay still.

Barney saw the soldier before he had a chance to turn around, so by the time he turned, his knife was already spinning in the air and came to rest with a thwack in the soldier's chest. The chimpanzee at the other end of the stream screamed and scurried noisily into the jungle as Barney scrambled back into the cave. Moments later, when the other soldiers appeared, they followed the noise of the chimpanzee. And Barney was safe to look on the lifeless form of his friend, a boy young enough to have been his son.

He waited an hour, staring all the while at the dead boy who had saved his life. None of it made any sense to him any more. Strangers come and then they go, and some of them hurt you along the way and some help you. And some even die for you. But why, God, why him? Why not me? I don't remember half my life, and this boy didn't even get to live it. Why didn't you take me instead? he said to himself, as he dug a shallow grave for the boy with a rock beside the stream.

Then, without thinking, without caring, he wandered aimlessly into Puerta del Rey the next morning, stopping to spend a day and a night in a sleazy cafe that served him three bottles of tequila in exchange for his brass belt buckle.

And after the three bottles were empty, Barney felt good for the first time in all the life he could remember. He felt so good that he called a press conference in the middle of town to say that the CIA was bad. The CIA was in Hispania. The chief of police, somebody named Estomago, looked surprised to see him, although Barney didn't know the man from Adam. He didn't want to know anybody. The CIA was here. The CIA was bad. And who the hell cared?

Smith placed two pieces of paper side by side. One was the front page of the New York Daily News. The headline read:

NATIONWIDE MARCH ON WASHINGTON

Millions of Blacks Protest Murder of Civil Rights Leader Colder Raisin

The other paper was an enlargement of a microfiche from the Women's Correctional Institution in Abbey's Way, Indiana:

Mr. George Barra, Warden Women's Correctional Institution

Dear Mr. Barra:

This is to inform you that your inmate #76146, Pamela Andrews (armed robbery, 25-life), continues to serve out her sentence satisfactorily under Hispania's voluntary work program.

May I extend my congratulations to you for your participation in this program. By permitting your prisoner to serve her term by performing much needed work in our country, you not only save your taxpayers many dollars in prisoner upkeep, but take a great leap forward in progressive penal reform as well.

I shall continue to inform you about the well-being of your inmate who has been transferred to our program, and offer you my best wishes.

General Robar Estomago Chief, National Security Patrol Republic of Hispania

A stack of similar letters, all dated two years earlier, were piled on the side of Smith's desk. He looked down at the notes he had made while reading.

—All the prisoners sent to Hispania on Estomago's voluntary work program were women.

—All were orphans.

—All the letters to the prisons had been signed by Estomago.

—All the prisoners were serving maximum sentences.

—All were doing well, according to the letters. No deaths, not even accidental.

—But not one of the CIA agents stationed in Hispania with Barney Daniels had recalled seeing any white women working on the island.

He looked again at the newspaper.

Calder Raisin, an ineffective leader in life, was a martyr in death. Blacks everywhere were rallying. Riots in Washington were feared.

The autopsy report on Raisin showed that he died from multiple contusions of the head caused by a variety of weapons. Daniels had been sent out to kill Raisin, yet Raisin had been killed by more than one man.

Gloria Sweeney had been in Hispania with Barney. Gloria Sweeney was now in New York, and probably tied up with Estomago.

A bomb in an envelope manufactured in Hispania had been placed to kill Barney Daniels.

And the blacks were marching.

The CURE director wheeled in his chair and looked out through his windows of one-way glass at Long Island Sound. The pieces of the puzzle were coming together and the picture that was forming was chilling.

First, there had been the appointment by Hispania's President De Culo of the American-hating Estomago as his U.N. ambassador.

And then, there were growing signs of Hispania drawing closer and closer to the Soviet Union.

Then, there was the ship. A Russian military ship, carrying what might have been nuclear equipment, had simply vanished on its way to Cuba. One day, it had been sixty miles from Cuba's shore. The next day, high altitude spy flights and spies inside Castro's empire couldn't find the ship. It had never arrived.

The report had arrived on Smith's desk and at first, he was willing to think it accident at sea. The ship had sunk. But as the days had gone on and the Russians had not announced the accidental loss of the ship, he had begun to wonder. And then, three weeks later, agents in Europe reported that the ship was returning through the Baltic sea.

So, where had it been?

Was it possible that the ship had swerved from its expected course at the last minute and arrived in Hispania to unload a shipful of nuclear weapons supplies?

Smith drummed a pencil against the back of his left hand. Ordinarily, he would had have discounted such a scare prospect as nuclear arms in Hispania. But there were other things that made it difficult to discount.

In European capitals, agents were picking up tips and rumors-rumors about a strike against the United States now being possible.

Was it possible? Could Russia be planning a strike against the United States? A missile strike launched from Hispania?

Gloria Sweeney and Estomago had been behind the killing of Raisin. Therefore they were responsible for the hundreds of thousands of blacks marching on Washington, D.C., right now. Was that part of some plan, to try to create such chaos and confusion in Washington that the nation's defenses might somehow be slackened? And what was the map that Barney Daniels had been talking about?

The CURE director sighed. So many questions; so few answers.

He would just have to wait for Remo to come back with some answers.

It did not occur to Smith to worry that while he was waiting, plans might be moving along to blow up a piece of the United States. Waiting was the correct thing to do. Therefore he would wait. And he would tell no one because the burden of responsibility was his and no one else's. So he put the problem out of his mind, turned back to his desk, and began to look through the month's vouchers for Folcroft Sanitarium.