Brian Garfield - Kolchak's gold

“Go to hell, Evan.”

“I guess I’m on my way. For what I’m going to have to do to you.”

“I suppose you’ll start by holding my hands out on the floor and stepping on my fingers.”

He didn’t reply. He swiveled his chair until his back was to me. Smoke drifted around his head. He tipped back, the red neck creasing white. “It’s a dicey business, Harry. Individuals don’t matter at this level.”

“I know. I’m expendable.”

“So am I. If I don’t get what they want from you, my ass is grass.”

“I’m sorry.”

“The hell you are.” He still had his back to me. “But I am. The damnable thing is, to an outsider like you I look like a pretty big guy. I mean I’ve got a big job. They pay me a lot of money and I’ve got a rank that’s just about equivalent to lieutenant general. I whistle and twenty thousand people jump through hoops. People hold doors for me.”

Now he swiveled to face me. He laid both arms out along the desk top. “But there are people in Washington-I’m not even big enough to see over their desks. You understand who I’m talking about?”

“Yes.”

“They know about you, Harry. They know about your train of gold. And they also know that you and I are friends.”

“Used to be friends.”

“Yeah.” He dragged his hands back off the desk and unscrewed the cigarette from his mouth. “They expected I might go soft on you. Because we used to be friends. So they didn’t have any choice. We’re gladiators, you and me. They threw me into the arena with you and they locked the gate behind me. I’ve got no exits, Harry. The only way I can go back is with your scalp. Otherwise I might just as well join the Watergate crowd or bury myself right here in that faggot’s backyard.”

“I’m sorry. I can’t help you.”

“Bastard.” Then he reached inside his coat and withdrew a revolver. Its orifice swung toward me. “You still think I’m kidding, or bluffing.”

“I know you are. That’s a stupid mistake. Don’t point that thing at me when you’re not ready to kill me with it. Kill me and you’d never have a chance of finding what you’re looking for.”

Now he grinned. “Actually I wasn’t thinking of using it on you. ”

“What do you want me to do? Talk you out of suicide?”

“Why don’t you try. Start by telling me where the gold is. Just think, Harry, you’ve got a chance to save an old friend’s life.”

“Actually I’d rather you shot me with it.”

“Shoot you? As you pointed out, Harry, who would that profit?”

“Everyone but you,” I said. “Now who’s playing games? You thought the gun might scare me. It didn’t. Why don’t you put the damn thing away before it goes off.”

He slid it back under his coat. Not sheepish: brash. He said, “Up till now I never realized what a tough hundred-proof son of a bitch you really are. You’d make one hell of an agent. Brains and guts. What’ll you take, Harry-Ritter’s job? My job? I’m due for the chop anyway.”

“Do you mind if I go?”

“In a minute. We’re waiting for someone.”

“Is that all we’ve been doing? Stalling for time?”

“It’s a way to pass the time. But don’t think I wasn’t telling the truth. They’ve got my ass in a crack, old buddy. You’re the only one who can get it out. You’re forcing me to make it hard, but hard or easy I’m going to make you do it.”

“Who are we waiting for, Evan?”

It was as if he hadn’t heard the question. He went on:

“You could still do it easy. Think about whether you’d rather have it in the Kremlin or the White House. Think about democracy-corny as that may sound. The innate good judgment of the American man in the street.”

“That good trustworthy American Christianity. It wasn’t the man in the street who ordered the bombing of Nagasaki.”

“You really don’t believe in it, do you.”

“The apple pie way of life? Sure I do.”

“Democracy.”

“I don’t believe power can be trusted. I don’t trust Brezhnev and I don’t trust Mao and I don’t trust Nixon.”

“Right now this minute, Harry, you’ve got more power than most people in this world.”

“No. You only think I have. I’ve got no gold mine in the sky. I’m sorry you convinced them I did. It’s backfired on you, but there isn’t a thing I can do about that.”

“You make me sick. Aren’t you tired of this yet?”

“Tired to death of it.”

“Then quit it, Harry. Tell me when the auction was supposed to start.”

Of course that was it. They had sat around a great long table at the CIA Director’s conference one morning and they had come up with the auction because it smelled right: it fitted their conspiratorial way of thinking, it was exactly what each one of them would like to do if he had the chance. They were people so corrupted by their own cynicism they couldn’t credit anyone else with a morality any higher than their own. Somebody had said, Sure, that’s exactly the way Bristow will do it , and they’d all nodded in agreement because it was just plausible enough and it sounded dirty enough to appeal to them.

It was a mark of my own naivete that I hadn’t thought of it myself. I wouldn’t have done it-I wasn’t gaited that way, wealth wasn’t my goad-but if my mind had been working more clearly I’d have known that was how they were thinking and I’d have known why all of them were taking me so seriously: they didn’t want me to get loose where I could force an auction. I hadn’t anticipated it at all, so I was just as shortsighted as they were.

I said, “No. No auction, Evan. Think about it and you’ll see why it couldn’t be done.”

MacIver cleared his throat. He sat there with his hands intertwined across his incipient paunch. “God damn it.”

“You’re all clowns,” I said. “You’ve done it again, Evan. The CIA working in mysterious ways its blunders to perform. You see how funny it is?”

“Do I look amused?”

“I wish you had the grace to. You used to have a pretty good sense of humor.”

“I never laugh when there’s a gun jammed up my ass.”

“You put it there yourself.”

“Please don’t tell me it’s poetic justice, Harry.” He spat something out; I saw that he had bitten his cigarette cleanly in two.

He said, “You win that round on points, Harry, but I still have to win the fight. Now either you throw the fight or I knock you out. Your choice. And I still don’t think you want-”

An obsequious knock at the door cut him off. Pinar opened the door.

“Here?” MacIver asked.

Pinar nodded. “Upstairs, as you wished.”

MacIver nodded. “About time. Harry, go up to your room. I’ll see you again later. But one thing first. This building is surrounded by our people. If you try to leave and they haven’t had a signal from me, they’ll turn you back. As painfully as you make necessary.”

“That could be a bluff.”

“Try it and see. You’re welcome to.”

“You’ve laid on an expensive production here.”

“It’ll be cheap at the price,” he drawled. “Go on upstairs like a good boy.”

He’d regained his self-confidence. It was more than I could say for myself. I went along the hall with Pinar; he left me at the foot of the stairs.

When I put my foot on the step a new realization grenaded into my mind: I knew what I would find in my room. It had to be; it was the only way MacIver could have known I was in this town. I went upstairs with slow uncertainty and hesitated outside my door with my hand on the knob.

I opened it and stepped inside and suddenly I was face to face with Nikki.

“Hello, Harry.”