Assassins Have Starry Eyes

Donald Hamilton

Assassins Have Starry Eyes

ONE

I GOT UP at five forty-five, started the stove, and went down to the creek for water. I had to crack ice to get it. The kids in the camp above me already had a big fire going. I envied them; a gasoline stove is convenient, but it doesn’t keep your fingers warm while you’re cooking breakfast. Of course, there was no law against my building a fire too. The bacon was hard as plywood, and the eggs were frozen in their shells and fell into the pan like blobs of jello. A middle-aged man from the small trailer parked below me came by on his way back from the john and shivered in an exaggerated way as he passed, grinned, and paused to speak.

“If the Army had ordered us here we’d be griping our heads off. Ain’t it hell what people will do for fun and venison? All by yourself? Come on down, the wife’s making breakfast.”

I said, “Thanks, but I’ve already got this started.”

“Well, good luck.”

“The same to you,” I said, sitting down on a log to eat out of the frying pan. I don’t know why it is a man camping alone will always cut all the corners he can. Last year, 1954, I recalled, we had Jack Bates’s big wall tent and Larry DeVry’s folding table and chairs; and even on opening day breakfast had come up with fruit juice, hot rolls, and all the trimmings. Well, this morning Jack and Larry were luxuriating down in the Mogollon country somewhere, with a couple of other guys from the Project, and I was sleeping on the ground up here and eating off my lap.

They would be on their second cup of coffee by now, I reflected, and they would be talking the usual mixture of guns and game, sex, physics, politics and security, with maybe a few fishing reminiscences thrown in despite the season. There would undoubtedly be some sympathetic reference to poor Greg who was taking it pretty hard, and a moment of respectful silence for another man’s marital difficulties… I grimaced, rose, dumped some water into the skillet and left it to soak, and went over to roll up my sleeping bag and throw the ground-cloth over it in case it should rain—not likely at this time of year.

The two kids from above came by in their beat-up jeep, and waved as they went past. “Good luck, Mac,” the nearest one shouted.

“Leave a big one for me,” I called back.

Off in the distance somebody fired a gun. I glanced at my watch and made it illegal. Official daylight wasn’t for twenty minutes yet. I had another cup of coffee. The deer could wait. I had no intention of entering the timber, even in the car, until it was light enough for people to see what they were shooting at. You get some wild men in the woods at this time of year.

I watched the sky get pale over the ridge beyond the creek. The mountain pines made a saw-toothed black silhouette, quite detailless as yet. Los Alamos would be over that way, I reflected. Nowadays you couldn’t take two steps across New Mexico without falling over an atomic genius. Well, I was hardly in a position to complain about that, and the work had to be done somewhere—although since the accident to those Jap fishermen off Bikini and the publicity given last year’s tests out in Nevada by the fallout-conscious press, our profession probably didn’t seem quite as glamorous and romantic to the local populace as it had when nobody quite knew what the hell we were doing.

But anyway the sky was clear and it was going to be a fine day. There are a great many criticisms that can be made about this part of the United States, and I had heard most of them in the three years I had been married; but except for a little dust now and then nobody can find much fault with the climate.

I got into the car at last, drove out of the camp ground, turned right, headed up the gravel road for a mile, and turned right again up an old logging road I had spotted the afternoon before. It was rough going and didn’t do the Pontiac a bit of good, but I had never liked that blue-and-cream creation, anyway. Like all the new cars, it looked like something to be kept under glass in a lady’s bedroom, and since when am I too helpless to shift my own gears?

A mile and three-tenths from the gravel—I always log the distance when heading into unknown territory, in case I might have to walk out—there was a wooden bridge that looked doubtful, and nothing to be gained by taking a chance on it. I backed the convertible into the bushes and swung it around; if I was going to get stuck doing it, it might as well be now while I was fresh and had food in me. But I got around all right, although why they build cars twenty feet long will always be a mystery to me. There was pale daylight all through the woods now and sunlight on top of the mountains but not down where I was. I peeled off my sweater, exchanged my wool helmet for a red cap, and got the gun out of its case.

There’s always something special, like a ritual, about loading a gun for the first time of the season—not that I hadn’t fired a couple of boxes of shells through it during the past couple of weeks to zero it in and get the feel of it back. But this was for keeps, and I cleaned off the scope lenses, pulled the bolt and sighted through the bore to make sure it was clear, replaced the bolt, pressed five shells into the magazine, fed one into the chamber, and set the safety.

“Okay, deer,” I said. “Here I come, ready or not.”

With two apples, one Hershey bar, and half a dozen extra shells in my pocket, and the gun in my hand, I crossed the half-rotten bridge and started up the logging road at an easy pace. There’s a theory to the effect that a man walking naturally won’t scare game half as much as one sneaking along trying to make like Hiawatha; the deer figure the first guy is going on about his business, while the second is obviously up to no good. However that may be, there were too many dry leaves around for me to move quietly; so I just walked, keeping my eyes open for a suitable place to sit. In my experience, you’ll see twice as many deer sitting still as you will loping across country, particularly when the woods are already full of fiddlefooted hunters who can be counted on to keep the game moving.

After a mile or so I found a nice stand. There was a long open expanse of slope to watch, as well as several hundred yards of the road winding on down the side of the ridge over which I had just come; and, very important, there was a dry stump to sit on. Nothing dissipates the joy of hunting as quickly as a wet tail. I climbed up there, looked the situation over, ate an apple, and just sat. The view, as always in that country, was terrific. I could look over the tops of the nearer trees and see the canyon open up to the west, finally merging with the desert country out there, just touched by the sun. The horizon was at least twenty miles away in that direction, probably nearer forty; and once past the main highway you could walk all day and find no sign of civilization except maybe a uranium prospector’s jeep-track.

I can never comprehend how anyone can look at a view like that and not like it; but I have good reason to know that it depresses some people to encounter a lot of land on which nothing much grows. I saw this country first on a business visit to Alamos during the war; and I told myself at the time I was coming back. Now that I’ve lived out here for a while, it makes me nervous to go east and see green stuff sprouting all over the landscape. I have come to like a country that gives elbow-room to everybody and everything, even a blade of grass.

I tossed my apple core away, checked the gun, and sat some more. The wind, what there was of it, was in the right direction—toward me—but nothing seemed to be moving in the neighborhood except a couple of mountain jays. Once I raised the gun very slowly and used the four-power scope to examine a dead limb that might have been an antler but wasn’t; then I put the weapon back on my knees. There was plenty of time. I was in no hurry. If I got my deer today, I’d have to head right back to Albuquerque to get it to the freezer plant before it spoiled. I’d just as soon take a few days. I expected to get one—I had filled my license every season so far—but I didn’t want it to come too easy. There was nothing to go home for anyway.

It’s very difficult to explain to a non-hunter why a normal and presumably sane man will drive a hundred and fifty miles over bad roads, sleep on the ground with the weather below freezing, beat up his car and strain his lungs at eight thousand feet above sea level, just so he can sit on a stump waiting to shoot an animal that never did him any harm. It certainly isn’t the meat alone, although I’ll eat venison in preference to beef any day in the week. And it isn’t entirely the fact that I’ve been hunting since I was big enough to carry a gun and see no reason to stop now, although that’s part of it, too.

I guess it’s largely a matter of proving to yourself that you can do it. We’ve got so far from fundamentals these days—driving down concrete super-highways in our blue-and-cream convertibles with hydramatic drive—that every now and then we’ve got to get out and prove to ourselves that we’ve still got feet and hands and eyes; and brains good for something besides turning out fancy equations for the electronic computers. We can, by God, climb a mountain and outwit a mule deer once a year…

The bullet hit me in the back, to the left of the spine. Everything was very clear and lucid and I knew that I had been shot even before I heard the report behind me. Then I was on the ground on top of my rifle. I was in no particular pain, although I did seem to be a little behind in my breathing. I was mad and scared—very scared—and I yelled something, God only knows what. Something hit the stump on which I had been sitting a solid blow. People don’t realize the power of modern firearms; this bullet went clear through the eighteen-inch stump, ripping out a fistful of rotten wood on the exit side.

“For Christ’s sake, you crazy damn fool!” I shouted as loudly as I could manage; and I pulled off my red cap and, lying there, waved it as high as I could reach. A line of fire seemed to run across my arm. I snatched it back and looked at the torn sleeve and the blood beginning to ooze from the shallow burn. Another bullet smashed through the bushes beside me, hit the hillside, and went screaming off into space.

I tried to move—cautiously, because I expected it to hurt. There was no pain, but the wires were down. I had no control over my legs at all. I wondered if I were dying, and, more scared than ever, got my elbows under me and managed to wriggle off the gun, swing it around, and shove it out ahead of me, parting the thin oak brush into which I had fallen.

I can’t recall making the decision. It kind of made itself, helped along by a faceful of dirt thrown up by the next bullet. Then I had him in the scope. He was standing in the thick bushes at the edge of the woods; all I could see was his head—with one of those luminous red hunting caps on it—and the carbine with which he was blazing away just as fast as he could pump the lever. The undergrowth made it difficult to see much of his body. As I say, I don’t remember taking much time over the decision. I shot for the head. The recoil of the .270, which had never bothered me before, seemed to tear me apart inside, and I passed out.

TWO

I AWOKE TO full consciousness at last in a Santa Fe hospital, hooked up to what seemed like enough laboratory equipment to give Frankenstein’s monster a good start in life. They had fitted me with exterior plumbing to use while my own system was undergoing repairs. I had a beard and a fancy assortment of tormented memories; and an uneasy feeling that people were going to want to talk to me, now that I could talk back. I was right about that.

The first one in was a stocky, dark, western character in a blue uniform. Despite the uniform, the badge and gun, you would never for a moment have mistaken him for a Chicago or New York cop. The nurse who ushered him in told me that this was Sergeant Ramon Sagrado of the state police, who had stopped by to see how I was getting along. Having encountered the state police in their official capacity once before on a matter of speeding—I wasn’t driving the car at the time—I happened to know that on the New Mexico force, sergeant ranks just below captain and above two different grades of patrolman.

Sergeant Sagrado asked a few innocuous questions, the nurse called time on him, and he departed, having let slip no more information than that I had killed a man—something of which I was already aware. I’m not quite the world’s best marksman, but at seventy yards, with a scope, from the prone position, it’s hard to miss; and I had used my .270 often enough on game to have a fairly good, if unpleasant, idea of what it would do to a man’s head. I had not yet decided how I was going to feel about it, however, and did not do so now. It was easier just to go back to sleep.

The following afternoon, Van Horn dropped in to see me. “Well, Dr. Gregory,” he said, “you
will
go hunting, no matter what anybody tells you.”

“Yep,” I whispered.

“Now, if you’d hurt yourself in an automobile accident or ruptured your appendix,” he said, pulling up a chair, “I’d be full of sympathy and concern. But any man who’s fool enough to go out into a forest full of other men with guns—particularly a man in your position—deserves anything he gets. Not to mention the fact that I fail to see what pleasure anybody can find in using a high-powered rifle to annihilate an inoffensive deer.”

“It’s a mystery,” I agreed in my weak whisper, “like why anybody would put twenty pounds of old iron on a little wheeled cart and drag it three or four miles through a cow pasture under the hot sun just to beat at a harmless little white ball—”

“Well, at least I never wound up in the hospital from it,” he said, taking out his pipe and scratching the bowl with a small-bladed penknife.

He was just an average-looking guy, not short not tall, not fat not thin, about forty or a little over, in a brownish suit, a light topcoat, and a light Stetson with a medium wide brim that he had bought after coming out here and referred to as his disguise—apparently his previous work with the F.B.I. had not often sent him west of the Mississippi. Nobody quite knew whether he was still with the Bureau and just out on loan, so to speak; or whether he had actually quit to take the job with the Project. He had the title of Chief of Security. Rumor said that while with the F.B.I., he had killed four men in the line of duty. He didn’t look it. Well, I had killed one and I hoped I didn’t look it either.

“Well,” he said in a resigned voice, “tell me what happened.”

“The guy shot me,” I whispered. “He kept on shooting. It seemed likely that if he worked at it long enough he would hit me again, so I shot back.”

“Uh-huh,” he said, stuffing tobacco into his pipe. “Hit him in the left eye and cracked his skull like a ripe melon. Not bad for an amateur.”

“I’m so glad you approve,” I whispered. “And I do thank you for the graphic description.”

He said calmly, “If you were going to be sensitive about it, the time to start was before you pulled the trigger. As a matter of fact, you have reason to congratulate yourself on your marksmanship. Since the other fellow obviously did no shooting after he was hit, there’s no doubt in anyone’s mind that he must have fired his five shots at you before you shot back, which, taken with your wound, makes a clear case of justifiable homicide. Normally there’s a public hearing in any case involving homicide, justifiable or otherwise, but under the circumstances, after some discussion with Washington, the local authorities have agreed to drop the matter. So you can quit holding your breath now.”

I whispered, “I don’t like that. It smells like a cover-up. If there’s supposed to be a hearing, I want a hearing.”

He grinned. “What you want, Dr. Gregory,” he said gently, “is one of the lesser problems confronting the administration in Washington. They, for obvious reasons, want no unnecessary publicity. The case is therefore closed. Now tell me: was he shooting at a deer or a man?”

I glanced at him. He was lighting the pipe now. “I assumed a deer,” I said.

“Why?”

“No reason to think otherwise.”

“None except the striking coincidence of a key research man getting shot shortly after completing his report on the initial phase of a very hush program from which great things are expected.”

I said, “If I’d been shot before completing the report, it would have been even more striking.”

“You were wearing a red cap and a red plaid shirt, and sitting on a stump in the middle of an open clearing. How in God’s name could anybody have mistaken you for a deer? Enough to fire five shots at you?”

I said, “It may sound screwy, but it happens every year. It was the morning of the first day of the season. The guy was keyed up; he snapped a shot at something he just saw out of the corner of his eye. The target flopped and started crashing around in the brush. As far as he was concerned, the biggest damn buck in the world was down over there, and was he going to let it get away? Not on your life.”

He said, “If you’re so sure of that, why did you shoot to kill?”

“What do you mean?”

“If you’d shot for the body, he might have stood a chance.”

I whispered, “He was standing in brush up to his neck. A .270 won’t shoot through brush, not with the 130-grain load I was using. The bullet’s too light, traveling too fast. Any little twig will deflect it or even make it fly apart. I should tell you about bullets? I shot at the only target I stood a reasonable chance of hitting, Van. Don’t build any fancy theories on that. At the time, I never thought that it was anything but a trigger-happy hunter.”

“And now?”

“I still think so. If somebody wanted me dead, they’d have sent a better shot. Or a guy who could at least keep his head when he missed the first one. There I was, anchored to the spot, yelling at him to stop shooting, obviously suspecting not a thing. All he had to do, if murder was his business, was to come running up with an expression of shock and concern on his face, ask me how badly I was hurt, fuss around trying to make me comfortable, set my gun out of reach—and slit my throat from ear to ear. Instead of which he stood blazing away, just hoping if he fired enough shots in my general direction one would connect. Is that the behavior of a steel-nerved professional killer, or of an excited deer hunter?”

Van Horn grinned. “You make it sound very plausible. I can see you’ve given it some thought, which is kind of significant in itself. Well, we’re checking. I might add that we’re getting not a damn thing. So far. But there’s the interesting coincidence of the young fellow and his hunting companion picking the same camp ground you had chosen; and I don’t like coincidences—”

“Wait a minute!” I whispered. “Two kids in a jeep… One of those?”

“Didn’t you know? His name was Hagen, Paul Hagen. His partner’s name was Antonio Rasmussen—there’s a nice New Mexico combination of names for you. We’re checking on him too. They were both students at the University, which may or may not mean something.” He glanced at his watch. “Well, I’d better get out before the nurse kicks me out. I’ve stuck a couple of men next door, just in case somebody might try again. Three rings on the buzzer will get them. Take it easy.”

I watched him leave. The door closed. I relaxed and closed my eyes, suddenly very tired. Into my mind, unbidden, came a picture of the two youngsters riding by in their battered jeep. One of them had wished me luck and both had waved, I remembered. There are probably few hunters who, watching the odd specimens who head into the woods with guns each fall, haven’t said to themselves:
If some trigger-happy moron opens up on me, he’d better not miss, because I won’t. But having the thought is a little different from acting on it…

When I opened my eyes again, she was standing there, holding the door open to show that she was prepared to leave if she was not welcome. She was wearing the mink coat she had had when we were married and the small hat she had bought on her last trip back east.

“Hi, Princess,” I whispered. “How was Reno?”