Джон Болл - The First Team

Fortunately not handicapped by any feelings of sensitivity or requirements of conscience, Archie decided very promptly that the men who had come to his city from abroad would be just as anxious for his help as any of his other clients, and they should not be adverse to making the necessary payments. The way to obtaining their trade was simple: find out something that they would like to know and then open negotiations. It might even be necessary to give one or two tidbits away, but that investment could be recovered later by adding a suitable surcharge on to some more important item.

One of Archie’s outstanding talents was an almost unerring ability to evaluate properly the worth of his stock in trade; he seldom made a mistake. But the invaders from overseas represented something new entirely and he had had no experience with similar customers to draw on. It was therefore all but impossible for him to appraise the amount of interest that would be aroused by the simple and not very spectacular fact that out at the university a small group of students was meeting secretly and probing for possible ways of frustrating the occupying forces.

Students were not very important. And Archie’s common sense told him that their efforts, after all of the mighty military forces had been rendered impotent, were meaningless. More important and significant sabotage efforts, which were quite likely to come later when the general citizenry finally woke up to what they were up against, might well bring in some good fees. He decided, therefore, that in this instance it would be politic to give away a free sample. For this he resorted to his old ally, the telephone.

He had read the paper and knew whom to ask for. When he had the man himself on the line he indicated that he had some “valuable information” and used a well-tested formula to introduce his method of operation. He was very coldly received until he stated what it was that he had to tell. The reaction to that was positive, so much so that any idea of giving it away swiftly left Archie’s mind. He arranged terms for a modest amount, which was his come-on technique that had worked out so well in the past, and then at once delivered his merchandise. He hung up the phone with a welcome sense of well-being; he had already made the transition to the new management and he was probably the first businessman in the city to do so.

Most ordinary citizens were totally unaware of the long-range listening devices which were capable of picking up a conversation held in normal tones in the middle of a deserted football field. Highly directional microphones, sound mirrors, and similar equipment, some of it artfully miniaturized, had been developed through two or three generations of design without ever receiving very much publicity. The eight undergraduate students at the university, who were meeting under the leadership of Miss Sally Bloom, might have known that such things existed, but they had never expected to encounter any of them. They were, therefore, totally unprepared when a force of eleven very tough, uniformed men broke in on them. Under the direction of one other foreigner, this one in civilian clothes, they were literally yanked out of their meeting room and hurried outside behind the building.

There was a brief, very rough, interrogation. “Who is the leader here?” the civilian demanded in guttural, heavily accented English.

Sally bravely raised her hand. “I am,” she answered. “Why does it concern you?”

The man in charge did not bother to answer her question. “You are plotting against us,” he declared instead. “You will tell me at once who directs you — everything. Otherwise…” He stopped to let his words be understood.

“We are a college drama group,” Sally said, looking her accuser in the eye. “We have been working on the outlines of a new play. One that will be about what has been happening to the country.”

The civilian took two steps forward and smashed his open hand across her face.^As a brief spurt of blood appeared at the corner of her mouth he drew his arm across his body until his hand was behind his ear, then he whipped it out and hit her again, backhand. For just a moment he kept his attention on her; he did not see the look of desperate determination on the face of the slightly built young man who was at her right. He almost missed the young man’s lunge toward him; he was too late to block effectively the untrained fist that was aimed at his jaw. As the student tried to bring his left into his middle, he raised his knee; with his two hands he rammed the youth’s face hard against the solid bone of the kneecap and then, as he fell, kicked him viciously in the groin.

He seized the Bloom girl by the arm and expertly twisted it up sharply behind her back. As he did, the men under his command formed a quick cordon around the six other students, who still did not quite realize what was going on. “Who directs you? Talk!” the leader said, and then sharply increased the pressure on the thin arm he had trapped.

Sally Bloom could not help a tight, short scream of pain, but she said nothing. For three full minutes, the longest and most fearful of her life, she endured the questions, the blows on her body, the exqusite agony in the socket of her arm. Slowly the young man who had tried to help her got back onto his feet, still doubled over with the intense agony in his groin, a fearful burning that he did not think that he would be able to endure for another hundred seconds.

Unexpectedly the leader unlocked Sally’s twisted arm and with it threw her to the ground. “You!” he said, pointing to one of the six who remained. “Come here.”

Thrust forward by one of the uniformed men, the student complied. The man in charge wasted no time in subtleties; he ripped the young man’s shirt open, took out a cigarette lighter, and directed how his victim was to be held. Locked on each side by a toughened man far stronger then himself, the youth was helpless. The man before him lit the cigarette lighter and then held it close under the student’s armpit.

Pain was immediate and overwhelming. In a few seconds he could smell the odor of his own burning flesh and he wanted desperately to vomit.

“Tell me,” the inquisitor demanded, “who directs you?”

The blinding pain took total possession of the student, his muscles turned to jelly and his whole body became a caldron of consuming fire. His mind lost all will except to stop the terrible agony; it had no strength for anything else. “I don’t know,” he screamed. “Only she knows.” He could endure no more; the sudden shock, the things he had witnessed, his own brief but unendurable ordeal conquered him; and he went limp.

At a distance, terrified students and a few older adults were beginning to gather, but no one dared to venture closer than several hundred feet from the scene of the sudden, unexpected inquisition.

“Stand them up!” the leader directed in his own language. His command was quickly obeyed; the little group of students was lined up in a row, except for the Bloom girl, who lay where she had been thrown. The young man who had tried to attack the leader stood where he was shoved, still bent over, his hands unabashedly holding on to his cruelly injured groin through his clothing.

The man in the plain, ill-fitting business suit pulled the girl to her feet. “Tell me,” he demanded. “Tell me and save their lives!”

“I don’t know,” she sobbed. “I don’t know. He calls me by telephone.…” She was incapable of more.

The man who held her marched her forward two paces and flung her with the others. Then he barked a command in his own language.

There was a thick, ugly sound as eleven holsters were opened and the guns they contained were drawn. The only other female student in the little group began to scream; the soldier who had hold of her slapped her hard into silence. For a moment she was still, then, her eyes wild, she let out another terrified burst of sound.