Donald Hamilton: The Shadowers

"Yes, sir," I said; then I frowned. "I thought you said these shadows were recently acquired."

"In Pensacola, yes."

"I see," I said slowly. "Then this local manifestation isn't the first and only-"

"By no means," Mac said. "It was merely selected by us as a suitable point for a counterattack. Do you think I would have been authorized to give you such orders if only one small group of scientists was in danger?"

"It's a big thing, then? Nationwide? Old Taussig is shooting everything in the musket including the ramrod?"

"It is big," Mac agreed. "It was first diagnosed at a base of the Strategic Air Command up north in… well, never mind where. SAC reported that key flight personnel were being watched by enemy agents whose job might be to keep them from reaching their planes under certain circumstances."

"You mean," I said, "if the big bell started ringing?"

"Yes. I regret to say that the report was not, at first, taken very seriously by other government departments. It sounded rather farfetched to anybody who had not heard of Taussig's Budapest venture; and those SAC people have a recognized persecution complex. They are not really happy unless they think somebody is trying to do them in, one way or another."

"Paranoia is the word, sir," I said helpfully.

"Thank you, Eric. Paranoia. Gradually it developed that even allowing for the paranoia of the Strategic Air Command, there was evidence to indicate that something very unpleasant was being planned on a very large scale. One cell was discovered in Washington, D.C. You can imagine the furor this caused, behind tight security, of course. Then Taussig himself was spotted in the country, and somebody did remember Budapest, and the pieces fell into place. Cells are now known or suspected as far apart as San Diego, California, and a certain little-known government activity in Maine. We do not know how many there are. We do not know who is scheduled to die and who is not. This creates a certain amount of panic among various important people who can bravely face the possibility of having millions of people killed by nuclear weapons."

I said, "I know. It's always a little different when it's a man with a gun or knife who's hunting just you."

"As a result," Mac said, "in certain quarters Emil Taussig is no longer looked upon as merely a small, white-haired, Jewish gentleman with an ingenious mind; he is regarded as the devil himself. It is our job to exorcise him. We do not know many of the details of his operation. We do not know if his effort is an independent one, or if there will be concurrent action from overseas to take advantage of the confusion he hopes to create. We do not know," Mac said, "and as far as you are concerned we do not care. Information is the business of other agencies. The only information in which you are interested is:

Where is Emil Taussig?"

"Yes, sir," I said.

"You will find him," Mac said, "using any means necessary. When you have found him, you will kill him. Any questions?"

"No, sir," I said. I mean, he'd made it pretty clear.

THE cocktail lounge of the Montclair Hotel featured a large circular bar built to resemble, vaguely, a circus carousel complete with canopy. For this reason, I guess, it was known as the Carnival Room. All visible seats under the canopy were occupied when I came in, which was fine. It made my choosing a table at the side of the room seem natural, whereas otherwise somebody might have wondered why a lone man would go off in a dark corner by himself instead of sitting at the bar. Somebody might even have wondered later, in the light of developments, if the guy hadn't been expecting company right along.

A waiter won my heart by unhesitatingly supplying a Martini complete with olive, instead of trying to sell me on the virtues of onions, lemon peels, and other garbage. Since the door and who came through it was supposed to hold no interest for me, I concentrated my attention on the assortment of posteriors lined up around the bar. With the evidence before me, I came to the conclusion that it takes a pretty good rump to appear well on a small stool. One female specimen in pink satin, young and unrestrained, was quite intriguing as behinds go, but the rest were no treat to the eye.

I took a drink to celebrate my return to civilian life. Getting off the ship had involved a ride in an old prop trainer that sounded like a bucket of bolts, from the cockpit of which the carrier's three-hundred-yard flight deck had suddenly looked very short. Catapults aren't used to get the propeller jobs airborne. They're supposed to be able to make it on their own, but there had been a moment or two, running out of deck with nothing but ocean left ahead, when I'd wondered if somebody hadn't miscalculated badly.

Braithwaite had lifted us off nicely, however, and set us down on a military field somewhere inland. There I'd inspected some interesting and moderately confidential facilities to make my officer act look good if anybody bothered to trace me this far. Then a car had run us into Pensacola where I changed back into slacks and sports coat, leaving my military identity in the empty apartment with my lieutenant commander's uniform. We'd come roaring back along the beaches in Braithwaite's low-slung Healey, reaching New Orleans a little after dusk.

It had been a complicated damn performance, worthy of the old OSS and similar glamorous organizations. If it had accomplished nothing else, I decided, it had made some service people feel they'd been in touch with great matters of international intrigue. Maybe that was the idea. I'd got out of the car a few blocks from the hotel.

"Just walk straight ahead, sir," Braithwaite said. "You'll see it on your left. You can't miss it."

"Sure," I said.

"I'm not supposed to ask questions, I know," he said. "But… Ah, hell. Good luck, sir." He held out his hand. It was the first sign of humanity that had peeked through the Naval Academy polish.

I shook his hand and looked down at him for a moment. The sports car in which he sat wasn't much more than knee high. I said, "If you're interested in more of the same, it can probably be arranged on a permanent basis. I'm just passing the word as it was given to me. Personally I'd stick to the Navy if I were you. But you're entitled to know somebody liked the way you handled this."

"Thank you, sir." It was hard to tell in the dark, but I thought his boyish face flushed a little with pleasure. "As for the offer..

"Don't kid yourself it's all a matter of fancy counter-signs and fast driving," I said. "And don't waste your answer on me. The recruiting office…" I told him the number in Washington to call, and gave him a kind of salute. "Happy landings, as we birdmen say."

Thinking of this now, I felt old and cynical. To cheer myself, I looked for the neat little fanny in pink, but it was gone. Presently I spotted the tight, shiny dress some twenty degrees farther along the curving bar than it had been. My first thought was that the kid had moved to another stool. Then I realized that the great circular contraption, occupying the whole center of the room, was actually rotating like a real merry-go-round, but much more slowly.

I'd been briefed on this earlier, of course, but it had slipped my memory for a moment. Being reminded of it, and seeing it in action, came as kind of a shock, particularly since it was something I wasn't supposed to forget. It was part of our plan. At the same time I became aware that a woman was being seated at the table to my left, only a few feet down the upholstered bench that ran along the wall.

"Waiter," I said, carefully ignoring her, "waiter, either I'm drunk on one Martini or that thing is moving."

There was a quick laugh from the. woman who'd just sat down. "It certainly is!" Olivia Mariassy said. "What a dreadful thing to put in a bar! I thought I was intoxicated, too, when I came in here this afternoon and saw it."