The By-Pass Control Page 12

  “Just the same,” Virgil said, “Grady wants you covered.”

  “So let him come then. Anything new on Niger Hoppes from London?”

  “A curious bit of ID material, not that it will do much good. Johnson has been picking up bits and pieces about the guy and the latest is that he’s a sniffer.”

  “A what?”

  “Those nose inhalers to clear up the sinuses. Benzedrine compounds. Excitement clogs him up so he sniffs the stuff.”

  “Great, old buddy. So what do I do—check every drugstore and supermarket in the States to see who buys them? You know how many they sell every day?”

  “I already checked,” he laughed back. “About fifty thousand.”

  “Thanks,” I said sarcastically.

  “No trouble,” he told me and hung up.

  When I stepped outside I lit a cigarette, deliberately making a target of myself, but ready to move if anything showed. Aside from a few cars heading in either direction and two couples going by hand-in-hand the area was empty. The shift workers from Cape Kennedy had already made their swing and it wasn’t the season for the biannual north-south flow of traffic. I took my time about getting in the car, then started up, cut out into the street and found an open diner where I grabbed a coffee while watching the windows, and when I was certain nobody was tailing me, I paid the bill and angled back to the motel.

  I parked in front of the office, went in and hit the bell on the desk. The same man who had rented me my room said, “Yes, sir, what can I do for you?”

  “I’d like a room, please.”

  “But ...”

  “No, I’ll keep the other one.... I want a different one.”

  “Oh, I see ... you’re expecting company?”

  “Not exactly. I may want to use it for a conference room later and I don’t want one all cluttered up with my personal gear.”

  “Yes, yes, of course,” he agreed quickly. “We don’t usually get the salesmen trade here and I almost forgot their habits.” He swung the card holder around to me. “Mind signing?”

  I registered in the way I did before and paid for a day in advance. When I stuck the pen back I said, “Put any calls through to my own room, but if anybody asks where I’m staying, give them this number. I’ll leave my car parked outside it, okay?”

  “Certainly, sir. Glad to be of service.”

  “Fine. Good night.”

  “Good night, sir.”

  I put the car in the driveway beside the room, went in, kept the lights on about five minutes, cut them off, then eased back into the night and followed the shadows down to my original room, went in and undressed in the dark and lay back on the bed with the .45 beside my hand.

  The shooters were everywhere and it was no coincidence. I went over every detail of leaving New York and convinced myself there had been no leak in security. No one but our own group had known of my leaving and no one but me knew where I was staying. Ergo ... whoever shot into the door at Claude Boster’s shop was hoping to get him. But why? What did he know? Or what did they think he knew? Could it have been a warning? I took a drag on the butt, then snubbed it out in the tray on the nightstand beside the bed.

  In this case you had to go on suppositions. Louis Agrounsky’s whereabouts weren’t known to the Soviets ... yet. They were processing it from all angles too. His incredible defection from principles had started right here and they, like us, were working it from both ends.

  My eyes started to close and I was staring blankly at the darkened wall across the room through narrow slits. Then suddenly my eyes were wide open again and I said “Damn!” softly and shook my head at my own stupidity.

  How would anyone know of Agrounsky’s by-pass control?

  Either he told them or they worked on it with him. Or ... they could have suspected what he was up to and investigated his research enough to justify their suspicions. It was no secret that all our top priority projects were saturated with enemy agents skilled in the art of putting money to work. We used the device all the time ourselves. You could always find a price for almost anything. There was a probability that Boster or Vincent Small could unknowingly have leaked a little information on Agrounsky’s activities to someone concerned who smelled the possibility and passed it on. Damn again!

  I went to sleep trying to sort the mess out in my mind, but it was still a mess when I awoke at seven, showered, dressed and went back outside to check my other room.

  Nothing had been touched. The strand of fine wire I had left in the door was still in position. I shrugged, figuring I went to a lot of trouble for nothing, then unlocked the car and got in.

  It’s all so automatic. You handle the everyday things until they become commonplace and you never give them a thought. You pick up a knife or fork with an unconscious gesture, flush a toilet without thinking beforehand ... and those are the things they kill you with.

  As I went to put the key in the ignition I remembered Caswell getting his in Trenton for not checking, and feeling a little foolish, got out and lifted the hood on the car. And I was lucky. I had gotten sloppy in my habits, but luck was there for one of the few times, nudging me with its tiny golden fingers, and made me look.

  The package was a small one, but big enough to disintegrate the car and its occupants into a fine spray of metal and flesh the second the key was turned on, a taped grouping of six inch dynamite sticks artfully hidden under the transmission housing where a cursory inspection would miss them. But I saw the lead wires, followed them and cut the charge loose.

  Cute, you bastards, you did a neat job. But why? Somebody was a lot more clever than I thought. Nobody tailed me so there had to be only one other way and it didn’t take me longer than five minutes to find it. The tiny oscillator that could transmit a homing signal was fastened under the gas tank and whoever wanted me could take his time until I was where I was at, feeling perfectly safe, then move in and booby trap my car.

  Now the next question. Was it a double precaution? If they wanted to knock off Boster they had to take a chance on a miss. But anyone interested in Boster, they’d be interested in too, and no matter who he was, they’d want him out of the way. So ... who was the primary target?

  I grinned a little, knowing that someplace an ear was glued to a receiver listening to the hum the oscillator was giving off, realizing that the second it stopped it meant the dynamite charge had done its work. I dropped the gimmick on the ground where it stayed activated, sending out its signal, and backed the car out of the drive, then turned and headed toward Dr. George Carlson’s clinic a mile away.

  The building was a one story affair, sprawled out like a T, of white brick with a red ceramic tile roof. The receptionist at the desk was a young girl with a tired smile who was just finishing stamping a pile of papers when I walked in.

  “Yes?”

  “Dr. Carlson, please.”

  “Are you a patient?”

  “No, this is personal business. I’m not a salesman either.”

  “May I have your name?”

  “Mann. I’m from New York. Am I interrupting anything?”

  “No, I’m sure the doctor can see you.” She smiled, dialed the phone and made a call that came over an intercom system from the closed doors behind her. There was a moment’s conversation before she put the phone back and said, “Dr. Carlson will be right here.”

  “Thanks.”

  Dr. George Carlson was a tall, slim man in his early thirties, dressed in typical hospital garb, his eyes reflecting the things all doctors have seen and hope to achieve. He came through the doors, nodded to me and pointed to a door on my left marked Private.

  Inside, he sat behind his desk and wiped his face with his hands in a tired gesture and said, “Long night. Two emergencies. Damn speeders.” He looked up at me and leaned forward on his elbows, hands clasped together. “Now ...”

  “Doctor,” I said, “I’m going to omit details unless you want them just to save time. I’m looking for Louis Agrounsky, who was former
ly employed at the space project....”

  “I know him,” he interrupted.

  “He’s disappeared. It’s imperative that he be found.”

  Carlson made a wry face. “He was a patient of mine. That’s all I can offer.”

  “Then let’s put it this way. You can forget the doctor-patient relationship.”

  “No I can’t, Mr. Mann.”

  “Then check on me.” I gave him the same details I did Claude Boster and waited while he did the same thing and watched him while he hung up and nodded slowly.

  “All right,” he told me. “Shoot.”

  “First ... his accident.”

  “Nothing serious ... for most people, that is. The normal recovery period would have been much shorter, but with Agrounsky it was different.”

  “How?”

  “Know what a pain level is?”

  “Too well,” I said.

  “He was very low. This man could take any type of mental pressure ... up to a point like any of us, but his physical pain tolerance was lower than most.”

  “Was he hurt?”

  “Not too badly. You or I could have taken it and been ambulatory in a matter of days, but his acceptance of pain wasn’t like ours.”

  “That’s why he stayed here so long?”

  “It wasn’t the curing. It was the un-curing. His physical condition was fine, but in treating him we used morphine to ease the pain he undoubtedly felt and he turned out to be one of those rare specimens who become addicted almost immediately. Most of his stay here was devoted to taking him off the narcotic addiction.”

  I had it then. It was starting to fall into place.

  “Did he ever talk to you?”

  “Never about his work, if that’s what you mean. He wouldn’t speak about the space project at all.”

  “I didn’t mean that.”

  Carlson waved his hands absently. “Oh, occasionally he’d go off into some vague ramblings. It wasn’t the first I had heard. Look at how many scientists engaged in the original Manhattan Project suddenly became total humanitarians after they saw the damage inflicted at Nagasaki and Hiroshima. You can’t engage in destructive enterprises without developing a guilt complex somewhere along the line.”

  “And what was his?”

  “Worry about the world. He was afraid it would destroy itself and he was the one who gave it the means. Baloney. I tried to talk him out of it and I think I succeeded.”

  “You didn’t,” I told him.

  His lips turned into a tight, thin line.

  “Agrounsky’s ready to do the job himself,” I said.

  For ten seconds he looked at me, then muttered, “Son of a bitch!”

  “He was capable of it, you know.”

  Carlson nodded again. “Yes, I know. He was one of the great ones. What happened?”

  “I don’t know, but you might have a plausible lead. This addiction of his ... how serious was it?”

  “We caught it in time. It was all controlled and his treatment was the usual one prescribed in such cases.”

  “And when he left here ... was he cured?”

  Carlson licked his lips, chose his words and said, “I was sure of it.”

  “No recurrence?”

  “There’s always that possibility. It’s like having an alcoholic teetotaler taste whiskey without realizing he’s an incipient alcoholic. There’s always that taste to remember. I never thought ...”

  “It isn’t your fault.”

  “It is. I should have insisted on further checks.”

  “Look ... you’re a doctor ... you know things and hear things. What’s the situation on narcotic sales in this area?”

  “Oh, hell, you have that disease in every damn city in the world.”

  “I’m talking about here.”

  “I’ve treated several,” he said.

  “Children ... teen-agers?”

  “No. Always adults. They came through the police courts.”

  “What’s the source?”

  Carlson made a negative gesture with his head.

  “Guess.”

  “Imported,” he said. “No reported incidents of break-ins that I know of. I’ve asked around several times and I’ve never heard of any. Listen ... you get where money is big and you find vice. ...”

  “I know all that.”

  “And do you know that for some reason professional people seem attracted to addiction? They take a jolt now and then to keep going, to make up for the lack of sleep, the missed meals, the mental distress they undergo. Do you know... ?”

  I said, “I know all that too.” Then added, “You aren’t one, are you?”

  “No, I’m not.”

  “And what do you think Agrounsky’s chances of remaining an addict are?”

  “Too big,” he told me. “If he stays away from the stuff he’ll be all right, but if he found a taste for it he will wind up total. I gave him credit for having more sense than that.”

  “It’s a disease, Doctor,” I said sympathetically. “They haven’t found a cure for the common cold yet, so don’t blame yourself. It wasn’t something you did. He had it in him all the time without knowing it.”

  “Nuts.”

  “I can give you some big names who are hooked right now if you’d like to hear them. It would surprise you.”

  “Don’t bother.”

  “Thanks for the information,” I said.

  He didn’t answer me.

  The police had a report on the .38 used last night. Ballistics had come up negative and nothing useful had been found in the grounds outside the shop. It was supposed the gun had been a revolver since no ejected shells had been located, and it made a front page story for the local paper with the intimation that it was another robbery attempt, interrupted this time, by Boster and a friend appearing in the doorway and startling the heister. There were squibs in the Miami sheets and a brief recap on the TV news broadcast, but that was as far as it went.

  I drove back to the motel and parked the car in its original slot, right over the oscillator, put the gimmick back in its place under the gas tank, hooked the charge up under the hood and went into the office.

  The manager gave me a big smile, waiting.

  “Any calls?”

  “None, sir.”

  “Anyone looking for me?”

  “No, sir, not a soul. Have a good day?”

  “Profitable,” I said.

  “Care to keep the other room for tonight too?”

  I threw a bill down on the counter top. “Yeah, I might as well.”

  He took the bill, stored it away and handed me my change and a receipt. “Just call me if you want anything.”

  “I’ll do that.”

  I went back outside and stood in the fading light and looked over at the car. They’d have to start wondering sometime, I thought. The bastards! I grinned to myself, thinking through their minds. That oscillator had been put in place with masking tape and it could have fallen off. There was always the chance that a wired charge wasn’t hooked up correctly too. I eased the oscillator down and let it lay in the sandy loam under the car, then rewired the charge myself from a different viewpoint. Up front, a convertible drove in with a young couple in the front and Just Married slogans chalked on the sides of their car. I checked the room on the other side of the car, went back to the office and registered that one in under my name too and paid for it. I was getting to be the best customer the guy had. The newlyweds took a room at the far end, giggling all the way, and the manager gave me a knowing wink and a laugh as I went out.

  Maybe they’d have a night to remember, I thought. At least nobody could be in the area where they could get hurt. Only the world was reserved for destruction.

  The phone was ringing when I got in my room. I recognized the voice but went through the coded check anyway and Dave Elroy gave me the right answers. “Got in an hour ago, Tiger. I’m at the Sea Cliff in room ten. Anything for me to do?”

  “Yeah, probe this town
and see if you can find any source of narcotics. Look for H primarily and try to find out if Agrounsky was a user.”

  “Any indications?”

  “All of them,” I told him. “Got hooked in a hospital, thought cured, but was under a severe mental strain and might have reverted. He took off periodically and it might have been to see his supplier. All I want to do is be sure. And see if he made any big buys.”

  “Before he left?”

  “Right. Try to date it.”

  “Okay, will do.”

  “You have an informant in this area?” I asked him.

  “Not yet, but I know who can give me a lead. Tiger ...”

  “What?”

  “Things are getting touchy. Hal Randolph is raising hell in New York. They want you on the scene up there.”

  “Screw them.”

  “They have technicians breaking down all the circuitry of the control system and they haven’t come up with anything yet. Some of the wheels are insisting that it couldn’t have been done and are yammering to call off the search.”

  “The idiots.”

  “They won’t do it, though,” he said. “They can’t take the chance.”

  “How about Niger Hoppes?”

  “Not a thing. Grady has called in everybody and is pulling all the plugs. He’s an unknown face. Johnson called from London again with another bit.... There’s a possibility that he might have a slight limp now, but it wasn’t confirmed. It could have been faked to throw off anybody looking for him in the future. You got the angle about him being a sniffer, didn’t you?”

  “Check.”

  “Then you got the latest. Johnson said he used the Bolatrine variety but that isn’t sold in the U.S. at all. There are derivatives almost the same, so it wouldn’t make any difference at all. I checked with Ernie Bentley and he told me all the inhalers conformed to the Pure Food and Drug Act ... no bennies sold over the counters ... but the only similarity was the containers. One firm makes them all in different shapes and sizes.”

  “Good enough. Call me back if you dig up anything.”

  “Roger. Off now. Behave.”

  I put the phone back and snapped on the television. I lay on the bed in the dark and watched the last segment of a western before the news came on, caught the news broadcast that mentioned that the sniper outside Claude Boster’s shop hadn’t been apprehended yet, then closed my eyes for a little while waiting for time to pass. Nobody was going to come near me until the night had quieted into that death-like quality that comes after a small town goes to sleep and the traffic has diminished to an occasional truck going up the highway.