Keith Laumer - Assignment in Nowhere

It was one of those tranquil summer evenings when the sunset colors seemed to linger on in the sky even longer than June in Stockholm could explain. I stood by the French windows, looking out at pale rose and tawny gold and electric blue, feeling a sensation near the back of the neck that always before had meant trouble, big trouble, coming my way.

The phone jangled harshly through the room. I beat the track record getting to it, grabbed the old-fashioned Imperium-style, brass-mounted instrument off the hall table, and waited a moment to be sure my voice wouldn’t squeak before I said hello.

“Colonel Bayard?” said the voice at the other end. “The Freiherr von Richthofen calling; one moment, please…”

Through the open archway to the dining room I could see the dark gleam of Barbro’s red hair as she nodded at the bottle of wine Luc was showing her. Candlelight from the elaborate chandelier over her head cast a soft light on snowy linen, gleaming crystal, rare old porcelain, glittering silver. With Luc as our household major domo, every meal was an occasion, but my appetite had vanished. I didn’t know why, Richthofen was an old and valued friend, as well as the head of Imperial Intelligence…

“Brion?” Richthofen’s faintly accented voice came from the bell-shaped earpiece of the telephone. “I am glad to have found you at home.”

“What’s up, Manfred?”

“Ah…” he sounded mildly embarrassed. “You have been at home all evening?”

“We got in about an hour ago. Have you been trying to reach me?”

“Oh, no. But a small matter has arisen…” There was a pause. “I wonder, Brion, if you could find the time to drop down to Imperial Intelligence Headquarters?”

“Certainly. When?”

“Now. Tonight…?” the pause again. Something was bothering him—a strange occurrence in itself. “I’m sorry to disturb you at home, Brion, but—”

“I’ll be there in half an hour,” I said. “Luc will be unhappy, but I guess he’ll survive. Can you tell me what it’s about?”

“I think not, Brion; the wires may not be secure. Please make my apologies to Barbro—and to Luc too.”

Barbro had risen and come around the table. “Brion—what was the call—” She saw my face. “Is there trouble?”

“Don’t know. I’ll be back as soon as I can. It must be important or Manfred wouldn’t have called.”

I went along the hall to my bedroom, changed into street clothes, took a trench coat and hat—the nights were cool in Stockholm—and went out into the front hall. Luc was there, holding a small apparatus of spring wire and leather.

“I won’t be needing that, Luc,” I said. “Just a routine trip down to HQ.”

“Better take it, sir.” Luc’s sour face was holding its usual expression of grim disapproval—an expression I had learned masked an intense loyalty. I grinned at him, took the slug gun and its special quick-draw holster, pulled back my right sleeve and clipped it in place, checked the “action. With a flick of the wrist, the tiny slug gun—the shape and color of a flattened, water-eroded stone—slapped into my palm. I tucked it back in place.

“Just to please you, Luc. I’ll be back in an hour. Maybe less.”

I stepped out into the gleam of the big, square, thick-lensed carriage lights that shed a nostalgic yellow glow over the granite balustrade, went down the wide steps to the waiting car, and slid in behind the thick oak-rimmed wheel. The engine was already idling. I pulled along the gravelled drive, out past the poplars by the open iron gate, into the cobbled city street. Ahead, a car parked at the curb with headlights burning pulled out, took up a position in front of me. In the rearview mirror I saw a second car ease around the corner, fall in behind me. Jeweled highlights glinted from the elaborate star-burst badge of the Imperial Intelligence bolted to the massive grill. It seemed Manfred had sent along an escort to be sure I made it to headquarters.

It was a ten-minute drive through the wide, softly lit streets of the old capital, superficially like the Stockholm of my native continuum. But here in the Zero-zero world of the Imperium, the center of the vast Net of alternate worlds opened up by the M-C drive, the colors were somehow a little brighter, the evening breeze a little softer, the magic of living a little closer.

Following my escort, I crossed the Norrbro Bridge, made a hard right between red granite pillars into a short drive, swung through a set of massive wrought-iron gates with a wave to the cherry-tunicked sentry as he presented arms. I pulled up before the broad doors of polished ironbound oak and the brass plate that said KUNGLIGA SVENSKA SPIONAGE, and the car behind me braked with a squeal and doors slammed open. By the time I had slid from behind the wheel, the four men from the two cars had formed a casual half-circle around me. I recognized one of them—a Net operative who had chauffeured me into a place called Blight-Insular Two, a few years back. He returned my nod with a carefully impersonal look.

“They’re waiting for you in General Baron von Richthofen’s suite, Colonel,” he said. I grunted and went up the steps, with the curious feeling that my escort was behaving more like a squad of plainclothesmen making a dangerous pinch, than an honor guard.

Manfred got to his feet when I came into the office. The look he gave me was an odd one—as though he weren’t quite sure just how to put whatever it was he was about to say.

“Brion, I must ask for your indulgence,” he said. “Please take a chair. Something of a… a troublesome nature has arisen.” He looked at me with a worried expression. This wasn’t the suave, perfectly poised von Richthofer I was used to seeing daily in the course of my duties as a colonel of the Imperial Intelligence. I sat, noticing the careful placement of the four armed agents in the room, and the foursome who had walked me to the office, standing silently by.

“Go ahead, sir,” I said, getting formal just to keep in the spirit of the thing. “I understand this is business. I assume you’ll tell me what it’s all about, in time.”

“I must ask you a number of questions, Brion,” Richthofen said unhappily. He sat down, the lines in his face suddenly showing his nearly eighty years, ran a lean hand over smooth iron grey hair, then straightened himself abruptly, leaned back in the chair with the decisive air of a man who has decided something has to be done and it may as well be gotten over with.

“What was your wife’s maiden name?” he rapped out.

“Ludane,” I answered levelly. Whatever the game was, I’d play along. Manfred had known Barbro longer than I had. Her father had served with Richthofen as an Imperial agent for thirty years.

“When did you meet her?”

“About five years ago—at the Royal Midsummer Ball, the night I arrived here.”

“Who else was present that night?”

“You, Hermann Goering, Chief Captain Winter…” I named a dozen of the guests at the gay affair that had ended so tragically with an attack by raiders from the nightmare world known as B-I Two. “Winter was killed,” I added, “by a hand grenade that was meant for me.”

“What was your work—originally?”

“I was a diplomat—a United States diplomat—until your lads kidnapped me and brought me here.” The last was just a subtle reminder that whatever it was that required that my oldest friend in this other Stockholm question me as though I were a stranger, my presence here in the world of the Imperium had been all his idea in the first place. He noted the dig a moment before going on to the next question.