Дональд Уэстлейк - Forever and a Death

“I already did that, sir. When they went to dinner Friday, I made sure they’d stay put a while, and I went and searched, and I didn’t find a thing. Mr. Curtis, could I ask you a question?”

“Go ahead,” Curtis said.

“How many people named Mark work for you?”

“Probably a hundred,” Curtis told him. “I employ thousands, Colin, a first name isn’t enough to go on. Now, I’m leaving Singapore for a while on Wednesday. If we don’t have any progress on the Jerry Diedrich front by then, we’ll just drop it. Come into the office Wednesday afternoon, see Margaret, she’ll have some money for you.”

“Mr. Curtis, I’m doing—”

“You know what I want,” Curtis snapped. “I want to know who the spy is. I want to know why Diedrich singles me out for all this attention. Those are the two questions. It really shouldn’t be impossible to answer them, Colin, it really shouldn’t.”

Miserably, Bennett said, “No, sir, it shouldn’t.”

“Thank you for your efforts, Colin,” Curtis said, and hung up.

He was always there. They caught only occasional glimpses of him, but he was nevertheless there, all the time, lurking. And they pretended not to notice.

Jerry didn’t know what to think about it. The man always in their background, like something from a silent movie, a constant ominous presence, never getting any closer but also never going away. He hadn’t done anything other than follow them, but the threat he implied was serious, and the man he worked for was serious.

If only they could find out what was going on. Every day at six, except on the weekend, Jerry had phoned Mark’s friend, and spoken with Mark, and every day Mark had absolutely nothing new to tell. Their visits to the Planetwatch offices had yielded nothing either, partly because Jerry didn’t feel he could tell them the whole story, but mostly, he believed, because Curtis was just too skilled at covering his tracks. Whatever he was up to, he was keeping it to himself — or doing a damn good job of hiding it in plain sight. Either way, no one had managed to dig anything up.

Jerry longed to be back on Planetwatch III , doing work he understood and was good at. But Richard Curtis was planning something horrible, the man was evil and needed to be stopped, and who else was there to stop him?

Not that they were stopping him. They’d been in Singapore a week, and were no closer to figuring things out than they’d been on arrival.

And then, Monday, Mark had news. They’d stopped at an outdoor bar near a payphone. While Luther ordered beer for them all, Jerry went to make his call. “I still don’t know what’s going on,” Mark said, “but something is, for sure.”

“Why?” Jerry asked, feeling suddenly breathless. “What’s happened?”

“First thing this morning, a fax came in from that guy I told you about. Jackie Tian?”

“A fax? From Hong Kong?”

“I got a look at it,” Mark said, “and I wrote it down from memory, so I may have a word or two wrong, but I’ve certainly got the gist.”

“Tell.”

“It said, ‘Diver unavailable. Arrested for smuggling. No substitute.’ That’s all.”

“Diver,” Jerry echoed. “A scuba diver, you think?”

“That’s what I’m thinking. If it has something to do with the soliton.”

“In Hong Kong?” Jerry said. “Or off Hong Kong, I guess. Taiwan? That’s the nearest large island.”

“Then maybe that’s where Curtis is going,” Mark said. “That’s my other news. He’s leaving Wednesday. The story is he’s going to Manila first, and then on to other places where we have projects, as a kind of inspection tour, but I think that’s a fake. He isn’t setting it up like a normal business trip. Usually, they’d have me phone people he knows in the various locations, give out his itinerary. He isn’t doing that this time.”

“Then where is he going?”

“Maybe Taiwan,” Mark said. “I’ll try to find out. Wherever he’s going... it certainly seems he’s going there to do whatever he’s going to do.”

“Oh, god , Mark, and we still don’t know a thing!”

Mark said, “What if you went to the police?”

“And said what? In Singapore? Richard Curtis is one of their most respected businessmen. We don’t have any proof, we don’t even know what he plans to do.”

“I’ll see what I can find out tomorrow,” Mark said. “But it isn’t easy.”

“Oh, I know it isn’t, Mark, you’re being wonderful, you really are.”

“Not yet I’m not,” Mark said. “Let’s hope I can be.”

“I’ll call you tomorrow,” Jerry said, and went back to the others to tell them Mark’s news. “If Mark can find out where Curtis is really going,” he finished, “maybe we could get there first, head him off somehow.”

“If he can’t,” Luther said, “maybe we should just go to Hong Kong, try to find out more about this Tian person.”

Kim said, “Do you know anybody in Hong Kong?”

“No,” Jerry said. “But Kim, we do have to do something.” He gulped beer, felt it hit his nervous stomach. He gestured toward the restrooms. “I’ll be right back.”

He rose from the table and headed for the gents’, a small and rather smelly room at the rear of the building with (thank god) a window open onto a back alley. Not much air came in, and not much smell went out, but Jerry hoped not to be in here long.

He wasn’t. He finished in the stall and when he pushed open the stall door to step outside the follower was there, standing at the sink, Jerry was so startled he almost forgot to pretend he didn’t know who the man was. “Excuse me,” he murmured, and started around the man, who turned and swung the piece of iron pipe hard, smashing it into Jerry’s forehead.

“I don’t want any more beer,” Kim said.

Luther said, “When Jerry comes back, I’ll settle up and go to the hotel.”

“Where is Jerry?” Kim asked. “It’s been a while.”

Luther looked at his watch. “See if you can get our bill, I’ll collect Jerry.”

He went away, and Kim gestured to the waiter that they wanted the check. He nodded and went away inside and soon came out with a rectangular black plastic folder advertising American Express. Kim let it sit there.

But now, where was Luther? This was becoming a long time. Were they having some sort of talk in the men’s room? A fight, maybe? Or had they just left without her?

Twice the waiter passed, giving her a raised-eyebrow look, and twice she merely smiled blankly at him. She was about to dig out her own limited cash when Luther sat down, abruptly, across from her, as though he’d been dropped there. He had a very strange expression on his face, like someone who has heard an inexplicable but frightening noise. He said, “He isn’t there.”

This made no sense. Kim looked toward the restrooms. “What’s he doing?”

“He’s gone , Kim, he isn’t there.”

Kim looked more closely at Luther, saw the sudden anxiety there beneath the disbelief. Instinctively she reached out to put a hand on his forearm as she said, “Luther! He can’t be gone.”

“No one in the men’s room,” Luther said. “None of the staff remembers seeing him go in or come out.”

“But— He went in there, we saw him go in. And he didn’t come out, Luther, we’d have seen him.”

Luther abruptly stood, and stared hard at everything he could see up and down the street and around the tables. She thought he was looking for Jerry, but when he sat down again he said, “That man isn’t here. The one who’s been following us.”

“Luther... What do you think happened?”