Assassins Have Starry Eyes (17 page)

The man behind me said, “All right. Out.”

I got out. We walked over to the plane, which seemed to be making enough noise to be heard downwind clear to the Mississippi a thousand miles east. The pilot was on the ground.

He shouted over the racket: “A jeep’s tracking you about two miles back. There’s been an AEC plane running a survey over Monk’s Canyon all day. What do you think they expect to find in those limestone strata?”

My escort said, “Can you lose them if they pick us up?”

The pilot laughed. “Those government boys wet their pants if they have to fly under a hundred feet. And at night, yet? Don’t give it a thought.”

The jeep was already driving away. We got in. The plane started to move. You could feel when it was airborne; I waited for the pilot to pull up for altitude, but he just kept boring straight up the canyon with the rock walls closing in from both sides. We weren’t twenty feet off the ground. I thought the right wing-tip would touch when we banked for the first turn. Then the shadowed wall alternated with the moonlit one as we twisted and dodged up the narrowing gorge; a cliff loomed dead ahead and the pilot laughed and lifted us over it with, it seemed, only inches to spare, and dived for another canyon that opened up in front of us. This kind of horseplay went on for much longer than I care to remember. I don’t even like rollercoasters, and they run on rails. It must have been a couple of hours. At last we hopped over a kind of a rim into pitch blackness beyond; suddenly two lights appeared ahead and below us. The plane changed course slightly to line them up and we dropped in to them. I saw the ground only an instant before the wheels touched. Then I was standing on the ground alone, happy to be there, and the plane was swinging around, taxiing, and taking off again.

“Better check to see if he’s got a gun,” somebody said behind me, and hands patted the conventional places for the second time that evening. The plane was a dim blot against the sky; the sound of it was almost gone. I didn’t think I was going to miss it. I was standing in the middle of a kind of sagebrush flat in the floor of another canyon, the walls of which rose several hundred feet all around. Near by some people seemed to be sweeping the ground with brooms. It seemed like a silly occupation until I realized they were brushing out the tire marks of the plane. Another voice, a girl’s voice, said, “Search him again, stupid. I know he’s got a gun. I gave it to him.” I turned slowly around to face Nina Rasmussen.

TWENTY-TWO

SHE WAS HOLDING a kerosene lantern, so I could see her clearly. She was dressed as I had last seen her in the hospital at Espanola, in jeans and the big checked Mackinaw jacket. Her head was bare. The short, blonde hair, brushed back from her face, gave her a clipped and boyish look.

“Hi, Spanish,” I said.

She held out her left hand. “Where’s the gun, Jim?”

I studied her for a moment longer. Coming here, I had made allowances for several eventualities, in a theoretical sort of way; but that did not mean that I was fully prepared for this one.

“Excuse me while I turn my back,” I said.

“Be careful, Jim,” she said. “Even if you should manage to make a break, we’d catch you before you found a trail out of this valley. And even if you should find your way out and get away from us, you’d die of thirst out there before you reached a house or road.”

I said, “Be your age, Spanish. I didn’t come here to play hide and seek. I came to find my wife.”

I turned away from her, unbuckled my belt, and reached inside my clothes for the cord that, tied to a light belt next to the skin, held the .22 pistol suspended down my leg. I had read that one in a book somewhere. The fellow who wrote the book probably never lived with the trick for any length of time; it had been damned uncomfortable. Even though it hadn’t worked, they should give me credit for a good try. I fished the weapon out, untied it, and held it up and back of me. It was taken away. I disposed of the harness and dressed myself again. When I turned around, she had the gun tucked inside her own belt.

“Well,” I said, “it shows you’re never quite as smart as you think you are. I figured a bunch of amateurs might let that one slip by them.”

Nina smiled. “Maybe that’s why I gave you the gun. So we’d know what to look for when you got here.”

I said, “Don’t rub it in. Where do we go now?”

She looked around, and spoke sharply to the others: “Come on, let’s get it cleaned up before a plane wanders over and sees the lights. Pull that dummy brush back on the landing strip. Hurry it up now!” She jerked her head at me. “This way.”

Walking along beside her, I said: “You sound like a top sergeant.”

“They need one,” she said grimly. “Or a slave driver with a whip. They seem to think you can run an organization like this on nothing but fine ideals.”

“Which brings up the point,” I said. “An organization like what?”

“Haven’t you guessed?”

I shook my head. “A fellow I know named Van Horn would like to blame it all on the communists, but I’m not so sure. I’ll bet you’re saving the world from something, but I haven’t determined just what.”

She laughed. “Well, you’ll find out in the morning.”

“What happens in the morning?”

“They hold a meeting and decide what to do with you. There’s been some disagreement about policy lately, and you’re to be the test case.” She glanced at me. “Why don’t you think we’re communists, Jim? It seems like a logical explanation. You can blame anything on the communists these days, can’t you?”

I said, “Personally, I give the Reds credit for a little more efficiency than this outfit’s displayed so far. They’re professionals; and this is an amateur production, judged by the sloppy way it operates. Professionals don’t get so jumpy at the smell of blood. I’ve said that from the very beginning. This looks and acts like a collection of brilliant minds and weak stomachs; a lot of fancy ideas and no guts, Spanish.”

She laughed again. “I think you’re calling us names because I fooled you, Jim.”

“You certainly did,” I said bitterly. “I thought I was reasonably safe in trusting you. Not merely because you kissed me and gave me a gun to protect myself, but because I couldn’t see you working with the gang that tried to kill your own brother. Maybe I should take back that remark about weak stomachs. Yours seems to be strong enough.”

She hesitated. We were moving toward the canyon wall—the north wall, I decided, after a quick glance at the stars. I had lost my bearings completely in the air; I was not even sure we were still in the state of Utah.

“You have no right to say that,” Nina said. “I went with you to save Tony’s life, didn’t I?”

“I wasn’t accusing you of sending him to his death or even of knowing he was to be killed,” I said. “Certainly when I pointed out the possibility, you were eager enough to go; and I’ll admit you worked hard over him after we found him. But you know as well as I do who was responsible, and here you are associating with the very people who tried to murder him—in their usual fancy and gutless way. Van Horn and the authorities seem to think Jack Bates’s death is tied in with the rest of this, but I don’t believe it. The person who killed Jack had the nerve to stand in front of him with a gun and make sure of the job; and he didn’t bother to dress up his work with a lot of clever trappings of accident or suicide.”

She said, “You sound as if you judge a man’s character by how well he commits murder!”

I said, “After all this elaborate pussyfooting around, a good, honest, straightforward murder is like a breath of fresh air. I can understand a person who hates somebody and grabs a gun and blows his head off. I can’t understand this clever stuff. It’s beyond me.”

“Well, that’s one way of looking at it. As for Tony—” She hesitated. “As for Tony, he died yesterday afternoon, Jim.”

We walked a couple of steps in silence. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t know.”

“They thought for a while they were going to save him. I think they told you so over the phone that morning. But he was just too weak, after the carbon monoxide. His heart couldn’t quite make it, I guess.” I did not say anything. She went on quietly, “Nevertheless, I’m here. Some things are bigger than mere personal relationships, Jim.”

“Sure,” I said. “Sure, Spanish.”

“Just because… just because some fool got panicky for fear my brother was going to talk and sent somebody to kill him, does that mean I have to renounce everything I believe in? Besides—”

“Besides what?”

“Besides, I could be looking for the man who gave the order.”

The swinging lantern in her hand cast the shifting, twisted shadows of the sagebrush out around us in every direction. Then we were climbing the talus slope at the foot of the cliff. We passed a building that seemed to be an old mine shack. Some fifty yards above it, we reached the shaft opening. The wooden shed protecting the mouth against slides from above looked battered and weatherbeaten, but it did not yet have the silvery patina of age that you find on some of the really ancient deserted structures scattered around that country. Inside, the tunnel was just high enough for me to walk erect. There was debris on the floor that had fallen from the roof. I don’t like caves or tunnels or holes in the ground of any description.

“There is actually no mine called Ararat Three,” Nina said behind me. “That happens to be our name for this place, and you weren’t supposed to broadcast it.”

“Why did you tell me then?” I asked.

“Because we wanted you to come looking for it. I was supposed to give you enough clues to start you in this direction; after all, it’s the region people think of when somebody mentions uranium, isn’t it? We were going to feed you more hints as you went along, until we had you out in the open where it was safe to move in and pick you up.” She laughed. “You have quite a reputation as a dangerous man, Jim. Nobody was willing to tackle you alone. And then you messed up the plan by taking all kinds of people into your confidence. I don’t quite understand that. I thought we could count on your working quietly by yourself; after all, your wife’s still suspected of murder, isn’t she?” I did not speak, and she went on, “Anyway, we had to take you out of circulation in a hurry, and the kidnap note seemed like the best bet although I admit it was a fairly corny idea.”

“Well, it worked,” I said. “I’m here.”

“With a hide-out gun in your pants leg! Jim, I’m afraid you’re kind of corny yourself. What were you planning to do, rescue your wife and fight your way clear with a smoking pistol?”

“Something like that,” I said. “It would have worked, too, except for you.”

She glanced at me, started to speak, and changed her mind. We were getting pretty far underground; I didn’t like it at all. Nina spoke at last: “Actually, this place is known as the Big Judith Mine, but the local people call it Fleming’s Folly. It seems that a rich easterner named Fleming was taken in by a very fancy salting operation, although the geologist told him you don’t find uranium in this type of strata. Of course, Fleming knew better than to pay attention to them; if Steen and Pick had listened to the geologists, they wouldn’t be riding around in Cadillacs now. So he bought this claim out in the middle of nowhere, and built miles and miles of road and put in heaven only knows how much expensive equipment—and of course all he ever got out of it was the truckload or so of high-grade ore that the swindlers had hauled in on muleback and planted artistically around for him to find. Anyway, that’s the story that got around. When Fleming finally woke up to what had happened, they say he was so mad he just drove off and left all his equipment in here to rust. His road washed out the following spring, and a couple of slides helped to block it completely. Nowadays you can’t even get a jeep in here, and not many people try. After all, it’s been pretty well proved there’s nothing here worth the trouble.” She laughed. “Of course, Fleming was one of us, and his equipment was put to good use after he took his dramatic farewell of the place.”

I said, “Pretty neat.”

Nina said, “We have another entrance now, but you’d never find it without knowing where to look. We only use this one to meet the plane, since it can’t land on the other side. It’s about eight miles around to Number Two entrance by trail, and quite a climb, both up and down. It’s only half a mile or so straight through.”

I said, “Just between the two of us, I’d rather go around.”

She laughed. “Does it give you the creeps? It did me, too, at first. It won’t be so bad once we get below. Naturally we try to leave this part looking completely unused and deserted. There’s always some optimist willing to go to a lot of trouble to poke around an old mine, even one that’s supposed to be a dud.”

A few rods farther on, the tunnel ended. Here a transverse passage explored the interior of the earth to right and left. We took the right-hand branch, moving only a dozen steps or so before the lantern light showed a mass of splintered timbers and fallen rock ahead. Before we reached this, Nina stopped and touched a switch or button of some kind, concealed in the right-hand wall. She waved me back a little. Part of the tunnel floor in front of us began to move, settling down and swinging aside heavily in the manner of a safe door or the breechblock of a naval gun. It left a round hole about three feet in diameter. Light streamed up through the hole and illuminated the roof of the passage. Nina raised the glass of her lantern and blew out the flame.

“Be careful going down,” she said. “The ladder’s kind of slippery.”

I knelt and felt for the ladder with my foot, found it, and climbed down into a lighted chamber that disappointed me slightly. In the movies it would have had shiny plastic walls, tile floors, and indirect lighting. The people would have been wearing skintight leotards and little capes like Superman. I don’t know why the costume of the future always has to look like a romantic variation on my winter underwear. But this was just another hole in the ground, a little more spacious than the passage I had just left, and much more heavily reinforced by timbering. The illumination was electric, to be sure; it consisted of an ordinary light bulb of about sixty watts in a dime-store porcelain pull-chain socket screwed to one of the timber uprights that lined the walls. Two insulated wires supplied it with current. I could have made a neater installation myself. Amateur handymen always mess up the heads of screws; while long experience with guns has made me finicky about using the right size screwdriver for a job. The place did have heat and ventilation; there was a definite movement of warm fresh air up through the open trapdoor.