Aaron Elkins - Fellowship Of Fear

"It’s impossible to tell. Monkes’s diary does not include the encounter, of course. But we think that is what happened. And so the book is closed."

They had reached the shopping center. Even at nine-thirty there was a cheerful, gratifying bustle. The hot-dog stand was already open, and Gideon found the aroma irresistible. He wasn’t sure if he was still hungry because of missing dinner last night or if he simply needed to bite into a chunk of down-home America. Delvaux merely shuddered when Gideon asked him if he would like a hot dog, so Gideon bought one for himself and painted it with a heavy coat of mustard. They found a nearby bench and sat down. Gideon bit in, savoring the American mustard’s clean tang.

Bright blue patches were appearing in the clouds after all, and the sounds and movement in the shopping center were wonderfully humdrum. He began to understand the virtues of military bases that looked like pieces of Oklahoma, no matter in what exotic locale they sat.

"Do you know," said Delvaux brightly, "that smells very nice. I believe I will have one."

He marched off to the stand on his stumpy legs, like a soldier going off to battle, and returned with a hot dog gingerly daubed with mustard.

"My fairs’ ‘uht dohg," he proclaimed in his most atrocious accent. Then he laughed, and Gideon laughed too.

After a few quiet minutes of congenial munching, Delvaux spoke again.

"Ah! I nearly forgot! Do you recognize this?" He placed a battered black umbrella on his lap.

Gideon had vaguely noticed him carrying it on their walk.

"No, should I?"

Monsieur Delvaux popped the last fragment of hot dog into his mouth. "Look here," he said, pointing to one of several dents in the umbrella. "You are an anthropologist. Would you not say that this indentation matches the cranial conformation of Monsieur Lau?"

"This is Sholokov’s umbrella?" Gideon said.

Delvaux energetically licked some crumbs from his fingertips, then rubbed his hands together. They made a dry, rustling sound. He unscrewed the metal ferrule at the end of the umbrella, slipped off the black fabric with its underlying struts, and set them aside on the bench. What was left was a conventional handle of artificial bamboo attached to a very unconventional length of aluminum pipe a little over a foot long and an inch in diameter. Two inches down from the handle, something that looked very much like a trigger protruded from the pipe.

"Pull it," said Delvaux.

Gideon did; there was a click and a powerful concussion inside the pipe. Delvaux took the instrument back from him.

"To pull the trigger releases a spring inside," he said. "The spring drives a piston hammer-you know what a piston hammer is?"

"Sort of," Gideon said.

"…drives a piston hammer two inches forward. Inside the tube is, or was, a small cylinder of gas that is attached to a hollow needle. Do you follow me so far?"

"More or less. Go ahead."

"The piston drives the needle two millimeters into the victim’s skin-your skin, let us say-at the same instant as the gas impels a miniscule pellet, less than a millimeter in diameter, into the tiny skin puncture. The needle retracts at once, leaving you with nothing more than a passing pinprick sensation…and an invisible poison pellet lodged under your skin. Ingenious, no?"

Amid the shopping center sounds of normal living, Gideon found it hard to give credence to the device, in fact to the whole conversation. Nearby an eight-year-old and his mother were talking at the mustard dispenser.

"Mom, could Jesus Christ beat up King Kong?"

"Yes," the mother said, not listening.

"If King Kong was after me, I would punch him in the stomach with a karate chop."

"That’s right, hon," the mother said.

Gideon picked up the weapon and looked at it. The soldered joints were surprisingly sloppy. "You know, it’s hard for me to believe this sort of thing really exists."

Delvaux smiled. "It was used quite successfully in Munich in 1963, in Vienna a few years after that…and who knows how many more times? The poison is unknown and nearly undetectable."

"Why didn’t he use it this time?"

"I think we can assume he was working his way up to a ‘casual’ brush against you when-so he thought-you spotted him."

"But why didn’t he use it then instead of hitting John over the head with it?"

"The poison is slow-acting. In four hours the victim notices some difficulty in breathing. In twenty-four hours, by which time he has forgotten all about the brief, stinging sensation of the day before, he is dead. Excellent for leisurely assassinations, but not much use for quick getaways, you see."

"I killed him, didn’t I?" said Gideon quietly. "In the scuffle. I heard the click."

"It’s hard to say," said Delvaux. "He was stabbed several times in the fight with Monkes. But yes, he also had a pellet in his foot. The autopsy has not yet been performed. Probably the pellet would have killed him soon enough."

Delvaux looked into Gideon’s face, his eyes suddenly concerned. "My dear friend, you cannot allow yourself to suffer for this. It was not your fault. He was an assassin, a professional killer. It was his own weapon, meant for you. He brought it upon himself."

Gideon wondered what Delvaux was seeing in his face. What he was feeling, if anything, was a detached, mild interest; it was difficult to convince himself that any of it was real, let alone that it involved him. "You’ve explained why Monkes was after me," he said slowly, "but why Sholokov? Why would the KGB want to kill me?"

"We believe that also is because of a misunderstanding-"

"I’m certainly happy to hear that."

Delvaux smiled, not without friendliness. "Let me go back a little. As you know, we have been aware for some time that a member of your university has been supplying extraordinarily crucial information to the Russians in connection with a mysterious undertaking we know only as Operation Philidor. Our hope in assigning you to Sigonella and Torrejon, the two remaining bases, was to draw this person out. We hoped that he, or perhaps she, feeling hounded and personally endangered, might turn to you, a naive, ignorant newcomer-you understand the sense in which I speak-for help in getting the needed information. We did not think he-or she-would ask you outright, of course, but we thought he might try to use you in some way. And so we sent you to Sigonella, and we watched you very carefully-"

"Yes, I understand all that. But why would they want to kill me? If he thought I was being used to trap him, all he had to do was ignore me-"

"Correct, and that is apparently what he did. But we-" here he paused to give his grandest Gallic shrug-"we, in our brilliance, not only fooled completely our own Mr. Monkes, but also the entire, mighty KGB. They have been under the impression that Dr. Gideon Oliver is in reality one of NSD’s most formidable and dangerous agents of counterespionage." He began to reassemble the umbrella.

"By association, you mean? They found out that I had been in contact with you?"

"That’s the idea, yes. They made, it would seem, the same mistake that Mr. Monkes did. They discovered that you were assigned to go to Sigonella and Torrejon, and that you had already been at Rhein-Main-all at the critical times. They assumed-correctly, in the latter two cases- that these assignments were no mere coincidences. Their deduction?… That you must be an NSD agent sent to these bases in an effort to thwart them. I think we may also surmise that they found out you had been to our headquarters in Heidelberg-the building is watched, of course- and so such a conclusion on their part was really quite reasonable."

After a moment Gideon said, "Monsieur Delvaux, does this sort of thing happen every day in your field? Or am I simply fortunate in having been involved in an extraordinarily… interesting adventure?"