Donald Hamilton: The Devastators

Under other circumstances, he would have sounded ridiculous: a peevish little boy complaining that life was unfair.

I said, "Forty-eight nosy-parkers is a lot of nosy-parkers. Are you sure Madame Ling didn't round you up a few strays on the side, people who weren't doing anything to harm you but just happened to be handy?"

He didn't say anything, but jabbed his needle into my right arm harder than seemed necessary. He knew damn well that all of his subjects hadn't been hostile agents, but he wasn't admitting it, even to himself.

His attitude gave me a hint of how to handle him, and I said, "Well, you might as well be getting used to it, I guess. After all, you're going to murder millions before you're through, aren't you?" His head came up angrily. I grinned, and went on smoothly, "Oh, hell, I'm not criticizing, man. I make my living at it myself. As a matter of fact, I came here to kill you."

I was glad I had waited until he'd got the hypo out of my arm, because he'd undoubtedly have broken it off, the way he jumped. His reaction told me I was on the right track: this wasn't a man to be tricky with, this was a man to lean on hard, just like Basil. Madame Ling and her Eastern cohorts, and the silent, dark-faced man were tough enough, but apparently they'd had to make do with some fairly mushy Western help.

McRow licked his lips. "But I… I thought you were an American agent!"

"So?"

"But surely… I mean, we don't employ assassins, do we?"

I laughed. "Look who's calling who names! And who's this 'we' you're talking about? Surely you don't still consider yourself an American citizen?" I grinned at him. "You, my friend, are a fool. What do you think is going to happen to you? Are you figuring on making a hundred million dollars with this lady's help, and restoring the old family plantation-well, castle-and settling down to be a wealthy Scottish laird in kilts and sporran?" His eyes wavered, and I knew I'd hit close. As Madame Ling had said, he had his fantasies. I said harshly, "Let me give you some advice, Doc, as one murderer to another. I see our taciturn friend has put the stuff he got from my pockets right there on the desk. There should be a nice little knife, about four inches in the blade. It's good and sharp. I don't see my gun anywhere, so why don't you just take that knife, Doc, and cut your throat, and save everybody a lot of trouble?"

He snapped: "Save you a lot of trouble, you mean!"

"Me," I said, "or the guys who'll come after me, if I fail. I figure there'll be about ten million of them."

"What do you mean?"

I said, "Well, I was just using your figures, Doc. You estimate your stuff will kill around ninety-five per cent, isn't that right? There are about two billion people in the world. After ninety-five per cent of them are dead, there'll still be around ten million left. And every damn one of them will be looking for Dr. Archibald McRow with a gun in his hand, or a knife, or a stone club, or nothing at all but the bare fingers and the homicidal impulse. You'll be the most unpopular man on this depopulated planet, amigo."

He laughed uneasily. "You're being ridiculous. Of course, unless we're forced to, we're not really going to-"

"You may not be," I said, "but she is."

I sensed, rather than saw, Madame Ling stir slightly. The nameless man at the door had also moved, as if to step forward and silence me, but she'd signaled him to lay off. She was watching McRow. He glanced at her, and looked back to me.

"You're crazy!" he cried. "Madame Ling is merely taking precautions against outside interference-"

"Sure," I said. "She's got this place rigged with more remote control gadgets than a space probe, to hear her tell it. She's going to be on the ship's radio thirty-six hours a day, after she leaves here, giving orders and ultimatums and pushing buttons like a church organist doing hot licks from Hayden. I never heard a grown woman talk so much science-fiction nonsense in my life." I glanced at Madame Ling. "Oh, don't get me wrong, Madame. I enjoyed every minute of the performance. It was real great."

She did not move. She'd thrown aside the mink coat, and she was wearing a figured silk tunic above the narrow pants. She was smiling faintly as if she found me amusing, too amusing to stop, at least not while I was doing good work for her. After all, she'd have to break the news to him pretty soon; and this way she could study his reactions while I did the talking for her.

McRow licked his lips again. "But… but I don't understand."

I said, "Hell, sonny, there's no remote-control stuff here. There's just that black lever on the wall, which she'll pull just before she goes out the door and down to the boat which will take her out to the much-advertised ship. Since she's so insistent it's a ship, it's probably a plane or submarine, probably the latter. They've got a few, I've heard, not the latest atomic jobs, but adequate.

Good enough to take her-under strict radio silence, of course-to the coast of Europe, where she'll land a load of your infected rats, and then across the Atlantic where she'll dump a big consignment on the North American continent, and maybe a small one in South America. And then home to the Orient, to manufacture serum like mad, and try to improve it with the help of one McRow, and inoculate as many of her people as possible-the politically sound people, of course; the others can go to hell- before your hopped-up Black Death works its murderous way around the world, leaving only one country in any kind of shape to take over…"

I was watching the woman's delicate, smiling face; and I saw that I was right on the beam. I saw her finger move. I didn't see the dark-faced man move-I wasn't looking that way-but I heard him. There was no point in dodging. Where could I go? I just hoped he was good at his work, and he was. The blow put me out instantly, with hardly any pain at all.

I woke up in a cage, like a rat. I mean, the mesh was bigger and the wire was stronger, but it was a cage just the same. I was lying on a kind of sagging chain-link shelf crimped into one side of it, about eighteen inches off the stone floor. There was no mattress, no blanket, and no other furniture except a unit of basic plumbing, quite primitive, in the back corner. The place stunk of insect spray and strong disinfectant, that was not, however, strong enough to cover up various other odors reminiscent of a public john. I seemed to be wearing a suit of crude white cotton pajamas and nothing else.

I managed to get this much information without using anything but my eyes and nose. I stirred cautiously, to give anybody hanging around plenty of warning that I intended to wake up. It seemed unlikely that surprise could gain me anything except a crack with a gun-butt, and the back of my neck was quite tender enough already.

I sat up unmolested, and found that I had the cage or cell to myself. There were others, however, down both sides of the long, narrow hail carved out of the rock. The next cage down the line on this side was empty. There was a woman, judging by the hair, asleep in the one beyond. The hair was gray and frizzy and unfamiliar. Elsewhere, a few faces were turned my way incuriously. I knew none of them.

I decided that I was in the observation ward, the door of which Madame Ling had pointed out to me, the one with the guard. It looked pretty much like the animal room she'd shown me, except that the cages were larger, the specimens wore a certain amount of rudimentary clothing, and there were no fancy gadgets for opening the doors.

"Feeling better, old chap?"

I looked around. In the next cage toward the door- the last one that way-stood Sir Leslie Alastair Crowe-Barham, watching me through the strong wire mesh. He was wearing pajamas, too, and a pair of cheap rubber thong sandals. Looking down, I found a similar pair under my cot. I put my feet into them and stood up; rubbing my aching neck. I felt pretty groggy-not surprising, considering that I'd been rendered unconscious in two different ways within the space of an hour or two.