Дональд Уэстлейк - The Spy in the Ointment

Did he even know who Angela was? There was a chance he didn’t, so I said, “Do you recognize the girl?”

It broke into his thoughts. He said, irritably, “What?” Then glanced at her and away again. “No.”

“Look again,” I said. “You saw her with me once before.”

“I did?” This time he looked more closely, and I saw it hit him. “The meeting!”

“She’s Angela Ten Eyck.”

He stared at both of us. “You killed her,” he said.

“Ask her,” I said. “Ask her who Leon Eyck is.”

Angela volunteered without being asked. “He’s my brother,” she said. “My brother Tyrone.”

Sun started to shake his head, like a man bedeviled by a million little flies.

I said, “He identified her at the meeting.”

“He had seen her before,” Sun said, obviously repeating what Ten Eyck had told him, “knew she was a CIA agent.”

“Are you kidding? She’s Marcellus Ten Eyck’s daughter!”

“That only makes it worse,” he said, but without complete conviction.

“Why did he want Marcellus Ten Eyck doped before he went in,” I asked, and answered my own question: “Because the old man would have taken one look at him and shouted Tyrone!”

“He’s my brother,” said Angela.

“With me dead,” I said, “and with Armstrong and Labotski already set to kill themselves, you’re the last one alive from that meeting. You and your boys are the only ones who’ve seen Leon Eyck’s face. So he’s got two reasons to kill you. To protect himself, and to set up the frame on—”

“That’s enough of that!”

“I just—”

“Shut up!”

Sun looked around, like a man with too many decisions to make all at once. And then I got it.

Every time I tried to talk about Red China he shut me up, but anything else I wanted to talk about he was willing to hear. But the head of the Eurasian Relief Corps ought to be interested most of all in an accusation about somebody trying to frame Red China.

As though we didn’t have confusion enough, Sun was a double agent!

He had to be, it was the only way that made sense. The ransom story might keep the rank and file satisfied, but Sun knew too much about the financing and timing of everything else. He had to know why we were here, or at least that particular reason.

To check out my theory I said, quietly, “How many ways do you cut, Sun,”

“What was that?”

“I won’t spoil the pitch,” I said. “Just remember, Tyrone Ten Eyck thought his sister was dead. All he has to do is frame you for killing the old man, and Tyrone inherits free and clear. But only if there’s nobody around to prove he’s been in the States the last few days.”

He said, “I must talk to him about this.” Then he frowned at me and said, “I’m not sure I understood you before.”

“You understood me,” I said. “And I understand you.” He smiled thinly, saying, “I wonder if you do.” To his troops he said, “We’ll put these two somewhere safe, then we’ll go talk to Mister... Eyck.”

“All together,” I suggested.

“All together,” he agreed.

They locked us in a small, barren, windowless room on the second floor, and went away to discuss the situation with Tyrone Ten Eyck.

This was some room. Two fluorescent light fixtures set into the ceiling gave even soft light, which illuminated practically nothing. The walls were covered in a smooth expensive fabric of dark opulent green, the ceiling was a muted cream color, and the floor was a high-gloss dark parquet. But there was no furniture, no closet, no window, no apparent reason for the room to exist at all.

Therefore, I asked Angela about it. I said, “What is this place?”

“Daddy used to have a stamp collection,” she said. “Very valuable stamp collection. He kept it in display cases in here.”

“Then he gave it up?”

“No. One time when Tyrone was little, he took all the stamps and stamp books and burned them up in one of the fireplaces.”

“That’s my Tyrone,” I said. “What happened to the display cases?”

“They’re downstairs,” she said. “He keeps his peace awards in there now.”

“Oh.” (Due to some natural irony implicit in our world, munitions manufacturers seem to receive more peace awards than practically anybody except professional boxers. But maybe I’m just bitter because pacifists never get them at all.)

Angela said, “What are we going to do now, Gene?”

“I don’t know,” I admitted. “No matter which side wins out there, we’re still in trouble. Sun can’t let us leave here alive any more than your brother can.”

“Won’t Sun win?” she asked. “He’s got so many men with him.”

“About a dozen. And on the other side it’s just Tyrone and Lobo.” I shrugged and said, “Sounds like even money to me.”

She said, “What were you and Sun talking about there, about cutting and pitching and all?”

“He’s a double agent,” I said. I explained to her what had made me think so, and added, “He and Tyrone must have set up the frame together, except Sun thought he’d be a survivor.”

“Well, who’s he really working for?”

“I don’t know. Himself, I suppose. It’s tough to think of Chiang Kai-shek having followers, but maybe Sun’s hipped on Nationalist China. Whether he’s doing it on his own or for somebody else, the point is he’s made the Eurasian Relief Corps operate in a way to make Red China look even worse than she does here anyway. That’s why Red China disavowed them, I suppose.”

Somewhere along the line she must have stopped listening to me, because as soon as I finished talking she said, “Gene, what’s going to happen to Daddy? And Murray?”

“The same as what’s going to happen to us.”

“I mean now . What’s happening to them now .”

“Nothing. Everybody’ll be too busy to worry about sleepers.”

I went over and tried the door, and discovered that Marcellus Ten Eyck had paid top dollar when this room was built. The door was solid oak. The lock was a Yale, impossible for me either to pick or get at. Since the door opened outward, I couldn’t get at the hinges either. I rattled the knob, the way you do when you’re stuck for something sensible to do, and Sun’s boys had gone and locked it. The cheats.

If only we could get through that door, it seemed to me we’d have a pretty good chance. There was no guard outside here, because Sun was bringing all his forces with him when he braced Tyrone Ten Eyck.

A bracing that apparently had just come to order, for I heard very faintly the sound of gunfire from elsewhere in the house.

In a way, Angela and I at the moment were in very nearly the safest place there was. (Unlike her father and Murray, who were lying unconscious and exposed in the middle of the equivalent of no man’s land, a fact I had thought it best to keep from Angela.) We were locked away, but outside this door there was a battleground. On one side, Sun and his dozen sunlets. On the other side, Tyrone Ten Eyck and Lobo. Skirmishing, attacking, retreating. Sun using the advantage of greater numbers, Tyrone Ten Eyck using the advantage of a natural cunning vicious enough to make a fox blanch. The middle of that brushfire war was no place for a pair of dewy young pacifists.

Still, to wait here was to wait, merely, for our turn to be bloodied.

Behind me, Angela said, “Gene?”

I turned away from the door. “What?”

“I’m sorry about the watch,” she said.

“Let’s not talk about it,” I said.

“I thought it was fixed all right,” she said.

“I really don’t want to talk about it,” I said.