Джон Болл - The First Team

This wasn’t child’s play and he knew he had to face up to that fact.

“Target.”

The word came from the man with the rifle who was also looking through a telescopic finder. Hewlitt looked and saw the figure coming into his field of view: first his feet, then his trouser legs, his torso, and finally the face of Captain Philip Scott. He looked very carefully for three additional seconds, but there was no mistake; he was wearing the same clothes he had had on in the bar. “It’s Scott,” he said, just loudly enough to be heard.

“You are certain?” This from Percival.

“Certain.”

He did not want to look, but he could not escape from the eyepiece. He saw Phil Scott walk the few remaining paces to the front of the building, watched as he turned, and followed him as he started to mount the steps. Then he heard an angry, muffled spit bite the air in the room.

He saw Phil Scott appear to hesitate, raise his arm as though to shield his eyes from the absent sun, and then falter. He slumped downward, tumbling backward from where he had stood, until his body lay sprawled flat where he had paused moments before.

“Let’s go,” Percival said.

Shaken, Hewlitt went out the door, hurried along the corridor, and ran down the steps. The others were directly behind him. Once he was outside in the air his mood abruptly changed, he was the hunted one now and his mind was totally set on escape. When he reached the backyard of the opposite house he heard the single word, “Wait.”

Although his mind urged him to flee, he did as he was told. Others came behind him, carrying things he could not see even though his night vision was now effective. Then he made out the outlines of a car that was parked there; he noticed that when the doors were opened no lights went on automatically. “In the front,” he was directed.

He was barely seated when the vehicle started. It moved down the narrow space between two adjacent houses and entered the all but deserted street. No other traffic was visible for some distance either way. Hewlitt found that he was wedged between the driver and Percival.

They were off the streets again within five minutes; the driver turned into a dark, unguarded parking garage which was normally used only during the daylight hours and the very early evening. Behind the first spiral ramp other vehicles were waiting, including the cab that Hewlitt had ridden in earlier.

The three other men, all of them carrying equipment, left the car without a wasted motion and moments later were on their way separately, driving out by different exits. Percival lingered for just a moment to speak to Hewlitt. “Are you all right?” he asked.

“Yes, I’ll make out all right. My first experience, of course.”

“I know — and it isn’t easy. But he was guilty.”

Hewlitt nodded. “I know that. In the bar tonight, he made a bad slip.”

“Tell me.”

They were already alone except for the waiting driver who was not close enough to hear. Percival was obviously anxious to go, but he wanted the question answered first.

“He told me how Bob Landers was discovered. He said that he was accidentally photographed leaving a note in a drop. True or false, he couldn’t possibly know that, unless…”

“Of course not. Good work. Go home.”

“Yes, sir.”

He went quickly to the waiting cab and was relieved when he felt the vehicle moving under him. Twenty minutes later he let himself in his back door, undressed, and prepared for bed. But he had no thought of sleep; the image of what he had seen, the silent unreality of it all, keep repeating itself, over and over, in his mind. He could not banish it or forget that he had given the signal that had destroyed a man’s life.

It was hell, because he had been an intelligent man, a capable one, with fifty more years of life ahead of him.

He turned the lights as low as he could, then mixed himself a stiff drink. He sat down on the edge of his bed, glass in hand, and waited for the alcohol to release the bonds that were tied so tightly around his brain.

Colonel Gregor Rostovitch was in a sustained rage that not even the passage of the long hours of the night had been able to mitigate. His frustration was rekindled every time that he allowed himself to think once more of the setback that had been thrust upon him, and the added fact that he had an enemy who had not yet been totally liquidated.

Ever since his late teens he had been accustomed to giving the orders and having them obeyed. Blinding ambition had been the beacon of his life — that and his intense hatred of the Jews. He was a man of violence; both his hands were heavily scarred from having been smashed into men’s faces and his body bore the marks of two unsuccessful attempts at assassination. By the time he had reached the rank of colonel in his nation’s army he had a reputation so fearsome that he had chosen to remain known by that title.

When he had been appointed head of the secret police he had made results his one objective; the methods of obtaining them were evaluated by him from a practical standpoint and no other. Scott, the American, had been a good case in point. He had first appeared in a certain vital location in Europe at a time when the plans for the overthrow of the United States were well advanced. Not even the premier knew as much about them as did Colonel Rostovitch, who was himself their principal author. There were certain things, the colonel had decided, that the premier would be better off not knowing. The premier had continued with his playacting while the colonel had done the hard core work. One minor piece of information which he desired and did not have was known to Lieutenant Scott; he therefore set out to get it.

Scott had been probed to find out where his weakness lay. It lay in immaturity and the earnest desire to love someone and to be loved in return. That called for a woman of singular talents, of which the colonel had a number available. He made a shrewd choice and then waited for the inevitable results; every man had his price, despite the fact that he might not know it himself.

Scott had been completely determined to be loyal to his country and to his military obligations, but he had been broken down with ruthless efficiency. Misleading information had been fed to him and then what had appeared to be supporting evidence. Convinced that his superiors had already openly discussed certain information which had been entrusted to them, and by then almost blindly in love with the highly skilled and extraordinarily lovely young woman who had been assigned to the job, he had unknowingly yielded to the expert questioning which had been concealed in her apparently idle, devoted conversation.

Just before the matter was to have been concluded, the lieutenant had been promoted and assigned to an even more sensitive area. The colonel had changed the instructions immediately and ordered him kept on the string. During the next few months he had been so carefully manipulated that he had gradually become truly convinced that the best hope for humanity, including that segment of it in his own country, lay in overcoming the aggressive lust and ruthless demand for profits that motivated the capitalistic system. His reward for this eventual conversion had been a physical and emotional ecstasy beyond anything he had conceived of as possible.

When it had been at its apex it had been snatched from him by the inhuman action of a high military superior, or so he had been made to believe. Rage had destroyed his reason and he had crossed over the line. He had been kept there by a firm promise — that the girl around whom the earth and all of the other planets now revolved would in one way or another be found and restored to him.