Robert Adams - The Clan of the Cats

“Take it easy, Van, just take it easy,” said Bedford soothingly. “Think harder, my friend. Had I had designs to set you up, as you say, I’d never have come here today and told you all that I have. Think, Van, would I?”

“Well … well, maybe not,” Van Natta agreed, albeit grudgingly. Then why did you do it, any of it?”

“Before I tell you that,” answered Bedford. “I have to know if you will agree to take on Harel, take him into your group, take him to your island facility. And also agree to deny him any use of a v-phone, radio or regular phone for any calls not thoroughly monitored by a Russian-speaker … one that he knows is monitoring his calls.”

“Why?” Van Natta asked in a tightly controlled voice.

Bedford shook his head. “Sorry, Van, no answers from me until I get the answers I want from you. That’s the way the stick floats, buddy.”

Van Natta changed his tack. “Just how much does John III know about all this? You did meet with him, I happen to know, before you came to my office today.”

Bedford grinning teasingly, maliciously, and said, “One hell of a lot more than you ever will, my sharp-eared friend, until … unless … ? Aw, c’mon, Van, give me the agreements I want, huh? You’re plainly drooling to know what my scheme is, and besides. Harel does have definite assets for your project, you know that.”

Van Natta shook his head stubbornly, his face mirroring his heritage—that of less than two hundred ill-armed men who, from the dubious advantage of a crumbling abode-walled mission, had laced a disciplined army of six thousand and had killed or wounded at least a quarter of them before being overcome. “From all you’ve said about him, Jim, the man could be really dangerous if thwarted, and I cannot expose my people to that. And that’s not to mention the possibilities of him deciding to try his stinking blackmail gimmick on my project, too. You know, I’ve got some key people who were born overseas and/or have relatives in foreign countries, also.”

Bedford frowned. “Van, the man is only dangerous to those he can scare with his size and his bluster, his tantrums. I know that for fact, believe me.”

But Van Natta still looked dubious and started to shake his head, so Bedford blurted, “You know he has three broken bones in his right hand, broken metacarpals?”

Van Natta nodded slowly. “Yes, he told the people in my Sacramento office that a piece of heavy equipment misfunctioned in his lab and broke them; that’s why his résumé was dictated to a voicewriter there.”

A smile flitted across Bedford’s face. “Well, he lied, Van. The piece of equipment that broke those bones and damaged his right wrist, and split both his ears, as well as bruising him up quite a bit in other places, was none other than an antique rattan walking stick that was once the property of my great-grandfather.

“Harel had made to attack me with his cane once before, and when once I had the goods on his real background and knew I could put him on the run, I brought my cane to a meeting with him and the rest of the core group, then deliberately angered him to a sufficiently high pitch that he again attacked me with his blackthorn stick.”

Van Natta winced. “Jim, Jim, men has been killed with canes, you know. Why did you take such a chance?”

Bedford chuckled. “I was never in any real danger, Van, not from Harel. He handles his stick as if he were a troglodyte with a club.”

Van Natta allowed himself a brief smile. “And you handled yours like a sword, probably, like the Olympic-class fencer you were not too many years ago.”

“Speaking of which, Van,” asked Bedford almost casually, “do you still hold those black belts?”

“Why, of course,” responded the blond scientist. “Why?”

“Then,” said Bedford, “Harel poses no danger to you so long as you make certain he has no access to firearms and doesn’t sneak up behind you. Sandy O’Malley will be in your group, too, won’t she? Van, can you imagine what she would leave of that tub of lard if he tried to get rough with her?”

At this, Van Natta was moved to real, honest laughter. “And she looks so tiny, so helpless, so fragile, too. Remember when those punks tried to force her into an old car in the south parking lot that time, Jim?”

Grinning at the memory. Bedford replied, “And she rammed the head of the biggest one through a closed window? Yes, I remember it well. It could’ve gotten sticky, too, if John II hadn’t said his few words on it—a few words was all the old man ever needed to say to clear up almost anything short of a full-fledged shooting war. The cops just could not bring themselves to believe that little Sandy had committed all the carnage they found on the scene.

“So. with two like you and Sandy around, I just can’t see an unarmed Harel being any danger to you, out on your island, Van. So say you’ll take him on and handle him in the way I’ll outline and I’ll tell you all I told John III. Okay?”

In Kyoto, Dr. Hara was really enthusiastic about the new project, especially so when he told her of his accidental buying of the two Panthera spelaeus replications. But, far more important to him and to the Project feethami , she agreed to present his request for funding to the board of the investors she advised on replication matters and seemed most confident of a sizable amount of forthcoming monies.

He boarded his plane for Washington, D.C., in much better spirits than when last he had left Japan. Despite the favorable reception and heartening words of the Japanese scientist, there was still the possibility that the investors would entertain reservations about investing any meaningful amounts in a project that was just now barely off the ground, a project that had been a failure in Canada and had been once delayed by his own group. Therefore, he felt it wise to shake every money tree within his reach.

When his Uncle Taylor saw the three-dimensional prints of the two spotted lions, the snow leopards and the white jaguar, he smiled broadly enough to reveal almost every tooth and nodded his head with its thick mane of snowy hair—both teeth and hair looking even whiter in contrast to his tanned face.

“Dammit, Jim, that’s where you should’ve been headed all along, you know. I have high regard for our fine Israeli allies, always have, and my voting record bears me out, too; I’m certain that in a number of ways this Israeli scientist is a very smart, a brilliant man, but his act of steering all of you off on that damned bison business was stupid … but I suppose even the best of us make mistakes, it’s part of being human.”

James Bedford laughed. “I doubt you’ll lose any Jewish-bloc votes over criticizing him, Uncle Taylor. He’s an Israeli only because he was sent there, planted there deliberately by the Russians, you know. His real name is Dr. Vladimir Markov, he took his doctorate in Russia, only studied in Israel until he had managed to get himself invited to join the dwarf fauna project and then left that one suddenly and for no reason that any of them can understand to emigrate here and bull his way onto the Stekowski group’s board.”

“James,” said the senator quietly, “I sincerely hope that you have access to substantial documented or documentable proof of these terrible slanders of this man, this immigrant scientist from one of our most faithful and loyal allied nations. Even here, within my private office, we are certainly being overheard by someone … likely, by a number of someones; privacy no longer exists here, not for anyone.”

Nodding, James Bedford took from his case a metal cylinder, set it before his uncle and scribbled rapidly on a scrap of the senator’s heavy, embossed notepaper. “ Full files here. Reports from U.S. & foreign sources, agencies, mine too. Harel/Markov no longer connected with my group; report anything to any you feel should know. I’ll know where to find him if & when .”