Shadow of the Condor (19 page)

"I suppose I must make my decision now."

"Oh, no, no. Take some time. We have half an hour to kill before it is necessary for us to cross the line to
Montana
so you can make your checkin call."

Malcolm smiled while his mind raced. He tried without success to find holes in Chou's story. The Chinese might well be a complete liar. Without a doubt he was lying part of the time. But one thing Malcolm knew for sure: Chou told the truth about killing him. Malcolm saw no other option himself. If he died, any hope that the old man might learn the truth was tenuous, a thought which, added to Malcolm's strong desire to live, made a convincing .argument to accept Chou's arrangement, at least for the time being. There was always the chance that things would change so Malcolm might be in a more favorable position.

Besides, thought Malcolm, the arrangement made sense as far as the mission was concerned. Chou and the girl Sheila could be of great assistance: They were pros who had worked against the Russians before and who knew at, least something of Krumin. Really, thought Malcolm, I have no choice.

"Agreed," he said. "I suppose you knew I would accept."

"Not really," replied Chou. "I wasn't sure how stubborn and 'idealistically patriotic' you were. I'm glad you're a realist. For one thing, it will help you understand what we will do next."

Malcolm raised his eyebrows to ask the question.

"While a certain amount of trust is necessary," Chou said almost apologetically, "it is always nicer if one has guarantees. We are going to use the drugs again to see if you told us the truth about accepting the arrangement."

"What about me? Do I get any guarantees?"

"I'm afraid not," Chou apologized softly. "You will just have to trust us."

"I was afraid of that."

Chou nodded slightly to the girl. She quickly stood and left the kitchen for the upstairs bedroom. Chou also stood and motioned for Malcolm to follow her. "Shall we go to the bedroom? It is so much more comfortable in there."

Malcolm sighed, put down his cup and followed his host's suggestion.

….

Kevin called the old man from
Chicago
that night. Kevin was tired, very tired. It had been a long, hard day.

"Our Rose left the truck on the South Side, took the elevated train to a transient hotel on the North Side, had a bite to eat at a deli, then went to his room. He's been there ever since. As far as we can tell, he's made no contacts.

"The truck belongs to Fritz Pulaski. He's a small, independent trucker who runs a five rig operation out of
Cicero
. No record on him anywhere, but we found a possible tie-in. In 1958 Fritz was stationed in
Germany
in the Army. He met and married a young Hungarian refugee and brought her back to this country. She got her citizenship papers in sixty-six. Immigration dug out her files. She lists some relatives in the old country. We figure the Russians are using pressure on her to get to Fritz. They've probably had them locked in for some time, maybe paying them a little too, so now they can't really come to us without having to explain their own profiting. The same old system everybody uses. We've got the Pulaskis covered in case Rose goes to them again, but I'm pretty sure they just used the trucker for that one-shot maneuver."

"About that," asked the old man, "does our boy know we're on to him?"

"I don't think so," replied Kevin, "for two reasons. One, that's the kind of operation it would take too long to set up for him to use if he just found out he's blown. Two, we're been too careful. All this dodging he's doing is probably just routine. Admittedly, it's good routine and perhaps a bit extravagant, but we're probably playing a big game. Parkins must have stumbled onto something. Rose just isn't acting like he's playing that big a game and has been blown. He's too natural. I don't smell that he feels something is wrong."

"I thought so," murmured the old man, "I thought so. He's getting closer, Kevin. Don't lose him now. As close as he is, if he shook us, he might be able to do his mission before we could find him again. That makes me very nervous."

"Me too. But we always have Condor and the teams in
Montana
. How is our Malcolm doing?"

"Oh, as well as can be expected. He's turned up nothing tangible. He checked in tonight with a fairly good idea.

He's going to poke around
Canada
, quietly, using the pretext of a few days off. He said the county extension agent who is the only local he's been close enough to think anything like that might be fishy-showed no surprise when Malcolm called and told him he had some time off coming. if and when Rose gets close, we will pull our Condor near enough to the net so that he won't get hurt or in the way. I can't envision using him as a fallback-on this operation: Rose is proving far too good for Condor to handle. Is there anything else?"

"No," replied Kevin, "that about does it. All in all, I'd say we're pretty much on top of things."

"I think so, my boy," said the old man, "I think so."

More than a thousand miles away, sitting in the Canadian farmhouse, Chou felt the same about his position as Kevin and the old man felt about theirs, only with a little more reason for confidence.

The girl called Sheila wasn't so sure. They had crossed the border at Coutts, a small port of entry just north of
Shelby
, Malcolm's base. There had been no trouble, for they walked from the Canadian side in the town of
Coutts
across an ignored street that straddles the border separating
Coutts
,
Alberta
,
Canada
, from
Sweetgrass
,
Montana
,
U.S.
Malcolm called the county extension agent, his motel and his checkin number from a pay phone outside a dingy bar. Then the three of them walked back across the border, drove to the farm and ate a leisurely dinner. Malcolm was now locked in the windowless upstairs bedroom. The door was reinforced with metal, modified by Chou for just such a contingency.

The Chinese girl had been very silent all evening long, virtually ignoring the almost ceaseless flow of chatter from Chou and the few comments Malcolm made in response. Now she sat in the living room, watching Chou lovingly oil his pistol. She watched Chou caress the shining black metal with the soft pile cloth. The cleaning and oiling were a nightly ritual relished by Chou. It disgusted the girl with its passion directed toward something cold, inanimate and superhumanly efficient. She watched, waiting to speak until after he put the cleaning kit away and, with a last long lingering look, returned the gun to the specially designed shoulder holster. Finally she said, "Suppose he guesses the truth?"

Chou looked at her with mild surprise and slight amusement. "What truth? And how much of it could he guess? And what if he does?"

"Your real mission with Krumin, for one thing. For another, you neglected to mention our control gave only tentative approval to your plan. What if the plan is turned down?"

"In that case," Chou replied tartly, "the control would prove very foolish. All your strange ideologies aside, and don't look at me like that, my dear. I care not if you report me to the political officer. He knows me and knows how absurd I regard your little political charades. He also knows how valuable I am to his, needs. Please don't bother to drearily point out that the situation might change. I am sure you realize I am not stupid. I intend to be well ahead of any changes. The political officer knows this. The little man tries so hard to project my value, to guess exactly when I will become, in his terms, 'counterproductive.' It really is quite a challenge to keep him on his toes. Not an impossible challenge, but an interesting one.

"At any rate, if he or the area director overrules my

control, well, then matters are out of my hands. I made an honest attempt at keeping things moving. I would, of course, follow any official, definitive order."

Sheila nodded her head toward the ceiling. "And what about him?"

Chou deliberately took a long time to answer, although he really didn't need the time to consider his reply. He let a broad grin slowly grow on his face, then said, "My dear he can die tomorrow as easily as he can die today."

"And what does it live on?"

"Weak tea with cream in it."

A new difficulty came into
Alice
's head. "Supposing it couldn't find any?" she suggested.

"Then it would die, of course."

"But that must happen very often,"
Alice
remarked thoughtfully.

"It always happens," said the Gnat.

Malcolm found his door unlocked when he woke the next morning. He stood at the top of the stairs, dressed in only his shorts, frowning while he listened to the movements in the house's lower floors. Go with it, he finally thought, because even if you had a chance of breaking out (which you don't, he told himself), they might prove helpful. At least I have found something, he thought. He sighed, then went to the bathroom to bathe, shave, put in his contacts and in general prepare to meet the day.

The girl, Sheila, didn't turn around when Malcolm came into the kitchen, deliberately, he thought. Either she's trying to show she trusts me or she doesn’t care to register my existence. Malcolm stood awkwardly in the doorway, staring at her back while she fussed with a frying pan on the stove. She wore her shoulder-length black hair in a tight bun. Her yellow faded sweat shirt hung loosely from her shoulders. Malcolm noted her solid build: not overly muscular, but firm, rounded shoulders and a smooth back tapering slightly, then expanding to ample hips held tightly by the blue jeans. Her legs were too muscular to be called slim. She wore white tennis shoes. Malcolm coughed softly, trying to make it a natural sound rather than an announcement.

"I'll be with you in a minute," she said, her voice not overly friendly but not coldly officious either. "I'm scrambling your eggs. There's orange juice poured for you on the table."

"Thank you." Malcolm sat at the table. He drank the orange juice slowly, using the tangy liquid as an excuse for silence. The girl gave him his eggs and toast. They exchanged awkward smiles. She sat across from him, drinking her coffee almost as nervously as he ate his breakfast.

"Well, what a charming scene. How nice to see you two are getting along!" Chou strode into the room. He looked slightly ridiculous in his denim pants, shirt and jacket, thought Malcolm, almost like an Oriental tourist duded up for the West. Only Chou's work boots and the clothes" griminess spoiled that image.

"Did you sleep well?" Chou stared out the kitchen window as he spoke. He didn’t look at the couple seated at the table.

"Fine," replied Malcolm. "With the locked door I felt very secure from monsters and things that go bump in the night."

Chou laughed. "Indeed. An elementary precaution, my friend. Just to be on the safe side. From now on, whenever you sleep here, the door will be unlocked."

"Whenever I sleep here?"

Chou smiled before he answered Malcolm's indirect question. "Yes, whenever. You may be going back to
Montana
soon. But we'll know more on that later, probably by mid-afternoon."

"What happens then?" asked Malcolm.

Again Chou smiled. "Then you will know what happens then. Why worry now? Sheila, I'm going out. Why don't you show Malcolm around after you clean up here? Bring him by the grove first."

Neither Malcolm nor the girl said a great deal as they cleaned up the breakfast mess. They exchanged meaningless statements about dishes, the weather, household chores. Once again it crossed Malcolm's mind that Sheila was as nervous as he, but he couldn't understand why.

The Japanese immigrants' farm was actually little more than ten acres -in size. Sheila* told him how over the years the old couple had been forced to sell more and more of their land in order to live. The only crops now grown on the remaining land were vegetables Sheila raised and sold to restaurants in
Lethbridge
, the major
Alberta
city to the north. A neighboring farmer paid a minimal fee for the privilege of grazing a few cattle, but the "farm" was basically a monetary disaster.

"What keeps it going? I mean, how do you keep your cover? The neighbors must know how bad off the place is."

Sheila shrugged. "I give the impression that when the old people got me, they also got a small inheritance and I'm trying to bring the farm back. Nobody bothers me much about those details or anything else, for that matter. I'm still an immigrant."

Memorize the layout, thought Malcolm as he and the girl left the house. They walked past the garage, away from the dirt road. Slightly rolling fields stretched out in every direction looking much like 4he Montana farms to the south, but there seemed to be a qualitative difference that Malcolm felt but couldn't label. The crisp air carried the same damp, healthy earth smell, the green young plants growing from the brown soil seemed to hold the" same texture and the massive blue sky seemed just as awesome as it did across the border. Yet, with all the similarity, things seemed slightly, intrinsically different. Malcolm wondered if they would seem that way had he not known this was
Canada
.

Almost a hundred yards separated the last of the farm buildings from the grove of trees. The girl motioned for Malcolm to be silent as they approached the trees.

At first Malcolm didn't see Chou, which puzzled him, for the Chinese's basically blue clothing should have stood out against the trees, the earth and even the horizon. Malcolm was startled when he discerned the shape which was the man standing at the edge of the grove. He blends in, thought Malcolm, somehow he has a protective camouflaging which allows him to blend into his surroundings like a chameleon waiting for the fly to buzz close: obvious, yet invisible. Chou let them approach within fifteen feet before he raised his right palm out from his side in an obvious command to halt. Chou's same arm slowly swung away from them, pointing to their right, the direction Chou faced. Moving just as slowly and silently, though he didn't know why, Malcolm faced the direction Chou pointed.

Forty yards from where Chou stood Malcolm saw a small mound of recently turned earth. At that distance he could barely discern differences between the mound and the surrounding dirt. He-stared at the mound because he saw nothing else in the indicated direction which could be the object of Chou's interest. Sheila stood slightly behind Malcolm. He couldn't see her, but he felt her presence, heard her breathing grow deeper, smelled the slight tanginess of her sweat.

"There!" said Chou suddenly, pointing once again to the mound. "Did you see him?1"

Malcolm shook his head slowly. All he saw was the dirt.

Chou's impatience came through his whispered exhortations. "Concentrate! Look at the mound, feel it with your eyes, touch it with your sight!"

Malcolm stared at the mound. Nothing, he thought, a pile of dirt, some pebbles, a little tuft of broken grass off to the left, the hole, and ... Malcolm blinked to clear his contacts and stared harder. Was that a twitch? A small movement? Then the gopher stood up in his hole, his head and neck just barely over the mound of dirt, and Malcolm was sure. "I see him," he whispered back, only to watch the gopher duck into his hole as he spoke.

"Good," Chou said slowly. He lowered his right arm to his side. "Now watch. the next time. Watch his bead."

Suddenly Malcolm knew what they waited for. He had occasionally hunted gophers during his adolescent summer visits to his aunt's ranch. He knew Chou planned to shoot the gopher, to kill him, and Malcolm also knew that was ridiculous. Chou carried no rifle. Malcolm was not an expert hunter, but his youthful experiences combined with his training from McGiffert told him that for a man to hit such a small, moving, almost indistinguishable target with a handgun at forty yards was absurd. Out of the comer of his eye Malcolm noted that Chou's hands hung empty and relaxed at his sides. For a man to draw a handgun, aim, fire and hit such a target was beyond absurd.

It came too quickly for Malcolm to distinguish separate events. He saw the slight motion as the gopher raised his head. To his left Chou's form blurred and a crack sliced the morning air. Malcolm blinked. What looked like a new, light tan dirt lump lay just behind the gopher hole. Chou stood to his left, right arm gracefully extended in the target shooter's stance. His hand held a blue-barreled automatic. Malcolm heard the girl behind him sigh deeply as if some pain or exertion had finally passed. Somewhere in the fields a meadowlark whistled.

Chou lowered his gun slowly, satisfied. He didn't turn to face Malcolm, but with a, smile on his face he said, "Go look. To be absolutely sure-although I know I really don't have to-hedge such things-I took a body shot instead of just the head. I mainly didn't want him to slide back down the hole, so I had to hit him squarely enough to knock him clear. That's why the chest shot. Go look."

Postmortem reflexes still twitched the small animal's hind feet when Malcolm arrived at the gopher's hole. The furry corpse lay on its back. Although healthily plump, it was a small animal, possibly frorn that winter's litter. The white incisor teeth shone clean, unmarred by extensive grubbing. The two tiny forepaws curled in, pointing down toward the animal's belly like a fat banker's hands draped over his Christmas-dinner-stuffed stomach. If a hole of corresponding size to the red-tinged gap in the gopher's chest would have appeared in a banker's chest, it would have been slightly larger than a softball. Judging by the blood freely flowing from under the animal, Malcolm guessed a corresponding exit on a man would have been larger than a basketball. Malcolm raised his eyes to look back to Chou.

"Leave him for the birds," yelled his host. "They need food to attract them back. Perhaps you're interested in my, gun," Chou commented as Malcolm rejoined the two Chinese. "It's rather light for our type of work, but that makes things so much more interesting and challenging. One can say many things about your country," Chou continued [Lecturing, not speaking, thought Malcolm], "most of them bad. But when it comes to making a wide variety of firearms, you are unexcelled. Amid the proliferation of handguns, only a few stand out as really excellent implements. Mine, for instance."

Chou's hand moved under his jacket and returned cradling a gun almost before Malcolm knew what Chou was doing. Malcolm had the distinct impression Chou deliberately moved slowly enough so that Malcolm would gain at least an impression of speed.

"The gun I use," Chou continued, "is a Browning .22 Challenger automatic with the four-and-one-half-inch barrel. That makes it almost ten inches long. Any longer and the difficulty I have in carrying it concealed would become an impossibility. I realize your weapon training is very limited, but I'm sure you will appreciate my selection.

"The .22 Challenger is, of course, basically a target weapon. Indeed I'm sure the good Browning people would be appalled if they knew I used it as a combat weapon. Apart from its being bad for their corporate image, they would probably think me a fool for not choosing something with a heavier caliber and a more concealable construction. Your .38, for example. Yes, we know all about it, even to its location in your motel room. Those drugs are a marvel.

"A .22 caliber has very little intrinsic stopping power. A man hit anywhere by a .45 or .44 magnum might as well be hit by a truck: A wound from such a heavy caliber guarantees he is out of commission. But a .22? 1 can hear your McGiffert clucking his tongue now. There are very few places you can hit a man with that low a caliber so that he is neutralized enough to ensure your safety. To employ a weapon of such a low caliber successfully is a fascinating challenge. When using such a bulky gun, drawing it from under a jacket, even with a special holster such as I have, your speed is cut down considerably. A man would have to be a fool to rely on such a weapon."

Malcolm smiled though he found nothing funny. He recognized his cue and he knew his lines. On with the show, he thought as he said, "Or very good."

Chou smiled. "Or very, very, good. With speed as well as accuracy. As you can see from my little practice session demonstration, I have both. Some men are born with a natural talent for dancing, writing or song. I was born with a natural genius for the pistol. It was my very good fortune to be in a social-political situation where my talent was discovered and cultivated instead of being wasted like your Beethovens rotting in
Harlem
. Through years of practice and possession of excellent equipment such as-Browning artisans provide, well, you have seen the result."

"Yes," replied Malcolm while Chou caught the breath be had lost in his excitement. Malcolm wanted to cut Chou down somehow, to spoil the moment for him, perhaps make Chou less confident and more anxious to prove himself to Malcolm. He said, "You're very good at killing gophers, placing your shots in a harmless, unarmed animal's chest. What about people?'

As soon as Malcolm said those words, Chou began to smile. Malcolm realized his ploy had failed.

"For people," Chou replied paternally, "I use a somewhat different system. Consider that a bullet shot directly to a man's skull might not kill him: It might miss the brain or bounce off the skull. A .22 bullet to the heart might not stop a man from squeezing off a dying shot. A round to the stomach will probably double up an adversary, but he might recover in time to fire. What if your opponent wears body armor? Limb shots with a low caliber may be ineffectual. Do you see the challenge? It isn't there if your opponent isn't facing you. Any dolt, any moronic Oswald with a high-powered rifle can gun down an unsuspecting victim. What do you do, then, when you are armed like me and face a formidable opponent? Remember, in our business any opponent, until he is neutralized, is formidable."

Chou moved quite close to Malcolm, so close Malcolm could smell Chou's breakfast breath. "You do what I do," Chou said softly, "you shoot through the eye. The results are instantaneous and emphatic. Your opponent loses all contact with the outside world it microsecond before the soft lead bullet expands, rupturing his lower brainpan and killing him. The beauty of it, from an esthetic point of view, is that your opponent brings it unto himself, for he must look at you, he must present his eye as your target before you do him any harm. The irony of it is that in order to protect himself, your opponent must expose himself, for how can he harm you or defend himself if he cannot see you? If he does not look at you? If his eye does not swing around to meet the bullet? A marvelous, fascinating situation, don't you agree? Don't you see what I mean?"