The Game of X: A Novel of Upmanship Espionage (16 page)

I had been waiting for that. I took the fire tongs, sprang to my feet like a spearman leaping from ambush, and hurled it at the picture window. It smashed through the center, and we felt the cold mountain wind at once. The fire also felt it; the carpet began to hiss and crackle, and the smouldering drapes were fanned into flame.

We kept on throwing branches and logs, and Karinovsky winged one guard and kept the others distracted. The heavily varnished furniture caught fire, and the flames started to get out of control. Forster’s men were caught in an impossible situation. You can’t put out a fire in the middle of a gun battle, nor can you keep up your end of a gun battle in the middle of a fire.

Two men broke for the door. Karinovsky winged the first and killed the second. That gave the last man time to dive through the window. Unfortunately for him, he didn’t dive high enough. He hung for a moment screaming, impaled on a row of glass daggers, with his hair beginning to burn. Karinovsky emptied the magazine into him.

It was time to get out; a little past time, as a matter of fact. Karinovsky was used up. He got halfway to the door before he collapsed. I tried to lift him, and I couldn’t. My left hand refused to take any weight. It was only then that I discovered that at some point in the fighting I had been shot cleanly through the wrist.

Guesci hoisted Karinovsky across his shoulders, and we started again for the door. The room was filled with smoke now, and we blundered into a wall. We felt our way along it, and I had the absurd certainty that we were going to stumble into a closet. I kept on telling Guesci to make sure he found the right door. We kept on walking, and it felt as if we circumnavigated that room three times.

Then my left leg buckled, and I fell down and knew I could never make it to my feet. Guesci stopped, and I shouted at him, “Keep on going!” But he wouldn’t go any farther; he was kneeling, laying Karinovsky on the floor beside me.

It was a damned cold fire. Also a wet one.

I thought about that for a while. Then I opened my eyes and looked around. I was lying on wet grass. The lodge, 50 feet behind me, was burning merrily. I wanted to ask Guesci how we had gotten out, and whether Karinovsky was still alive. But I didn’t have the strength.

A few seconds later, it seemed to me, we were surrounded by a crowd of villagers. There was a single, embarrassed-looking policeman, and several Americans. I recognized my old buddy, George. And my new buddy, Colonel Baker.

“Nye!” the colonel was saying. “Are you all right? We got here as fast as we could. At first, when we received Guesci’s message, we thought—”

I said, in a hard, clear voice, “Your thoughts do not concern me, Colonel. Only your actions, which I find deplorably inefficient.”

I was pleased to see Baker look abashed. I had several other choice things to say, but no opporunity to say them. Just about that time I passed out cold.

26

I recovered consciousness in a comfortable bed, in a room overlooking the Alps. But not the Dolomite Alps. A cheerful, middle-aged nurse told me that they were the Carnic Alps. I was in Austria, in the town of Kotschach. More of me seemed to be bandaged than not.

The nurse left, and Colonel Baker came in and brought me up to date.

During the confusion of the fire, Baker and his men had bundled the three of us into a car and driven us across the border with all deliberate speed. This was only expedient; the Italian authorities and press were starting to ask a lot of uncomfortable questions. They would get answers, too; not necessarily true ones, but certainly reasonable ones.

Karinovsky’s wounded shoulder had become infected during his strenuous activities. He would have to spend a week or so in a hospital, but would come out none the worse for wear.

Guesci was in a state of nervous collapse. It seemed to be nothing that a few weeks or months on the Riviera wouldn’t cure.

They had both given Baker a full account of their activities, as well as mine. Here the Colonel coughed and nervously cleared his throat.

“Frankly, if I did not have the evidence of two witnesses, I could scarcely believe in your exploits. I don’t mean to insult you, Nye, but it is
not
very credible. I mean to say—scuba, hydroplane, airplane, a duel with battleaxes—that is hardly the thing one expects of an agent.”

“Except,” I reminded him, “for a man like Agent X.”

“Yes. Very true.” The Colonel frowned, pursed his lips, rubbed his cheek with a forefinger, and said, “I want to talk to you about that. I mean, after all, Agent X
was
our invention. But it occurs to me now that I know very little about you. I don’t know what you were doing, for example, in the years between your graduation from college and your meeting with George in Paris.”

He looked at me hopefully. I smiled and said nothing.

“I don’t suppose you’d care to tell me about it?” he asked.

“I prefer not to discuss my past,” I said. “But I don’t like being referred to as your invention. I think of myself more as your discovery.”

“Yes, of course,” Baker said. “I thought you might say something like that.”

He drummed his fingers on the edge of my bed. I felt no pity for the man. For too long had this junior-grade Father of Lies sat in his web, spinning preposterous dreams for the entrapment of the unwary. Now the illusionist was caught in his own snare. The lie had come home to its master.

“What disturbs me,” the Colonel said, “is the possibility that you were never what you seemed to be; that you were, and are, a secret agent of considerable experience; and that you were introduced into the scheme by a different agency of the U.S. government.”

“Why would they do that?” I asked.

“In order to spy on us,” Baker said unhappily. “Certain agencies have never been willing to accept our autonomous status.”

“It sounds farfetched, sir,” I told him.

“It does,” Baker said. “But then, everything about this case is farfetched. Wouldn’t you help us clear up the situation?”

“I have nothing to hide,” I said. “And for that reason, I have nothing to say.”

“Well,” the Colonel said, “perhaps it can’t be helped. Uncertainty is our daily diet in the service. The operation has come to a most successful conclusion. You’ve performed brilliantly, Nye, and I congratulate you. My appreciation, of course, will take more—tangible—forms.”

“That’s very kind of you, sir.”

“Now,” Baker said, “I suppose might be a good time to discuss your future.”

“My future?”

“Of course. It is not my job to understand the tools at my disposal, only to use them as well as possible. I would like to continue using you, Nye. I would like to put you on full operational duty.”

I took my time before answering. I thought of Mavis, now waiting for me in Paris. I thought of the resumption of my life, such as it was. The adventure was over, whether Colonel Baker knew it or not; The Game of X had been played, and could not be played again. It was time for Agent X to exit gracefully, and for William P. Nye to come back to life.

And yet, this reasonable solution dissatisfied me. Like so many of my countrymen, I am shy, friendly, idealistic, and more than a little provincial. Above all, I share in our national preoccupation with exotic danger. Strange lands and mysterious women are never far from my thoughts. My manner is commonplace; but always, as I walk down the matter-of-fact streets of my city, I am listening to waves explode across a coral reef, or wandering through weed-strangled alleys in some lost jungle civilization.

We avoid our true motives, substituting for them a face-saving urgency. I had chosen Baker’s money; it had been my apology to the everyday world. By taking it, I could convince myself that I was doing an absurd thing for a practical reason. It was easier to live with than a childhood dream of a watery city.

But now the game was over. Reality, no matter how distasteful, is better than illusion. My curtain speech was brief. I said, “I am sorry, Colonel. It simply isn’t possible.”

“Think about it for a while,” the Colonel said. “Don’t come to a decision at once. You would have plenty of time for rest and recuperation. And the question of payment would be easily settled.”

I smiled sadly and shook my head.

“And,” Colonel Baker said, “we really need you.”

“That’s very kind of you,” I said. “But surely there are other agents?”

“None are suitable for this particular operation. You see, the Celebes have never really been within our operational area, though we once had a man stationed in the Lesser Sunda Islands.”

“Hmmm,” I said, frowning thoughtfully and trying to remember where the Lesser Sunda Islands were.

“But he’s dead,” Colonel Baker went on, “and our Sumatra operative disappeared last week in the town of Samarinda in eastern Borneo. He did manage to smuggle out a message with the captain of a Hong Kong junk, who brought it to our weather station in the Sulu Archipelago.”

“Yes, yes, I see,” I said, seeing nothing but feeling a vast temptation rise within me. I had never been to the Orient. My only experience with the mysterious East was some evenings spent in the tortuous streets of New York’s Chinatown. And, of course, I had seen many movies, and had read innumerable books. …

I pulled myself together with an effort. “You’re going a little too fast for me, sir,” I said to Colonel Baker. “I mean, why, specifically would you need me?”

“We have no other agent who speaks fluent Tagalog as well as Yunnanese,” the Colonel replied.

I stared at him. Who, I wondered, had been scribbling in my dossier? Where was my lie taking me? As a matter of fact—could I be sure that it
was
a lie? Might I not actually be Agent X, suffering from a minor lapse of memory? It seemed as reasonable as the farfetched notion that I was actually William Nye.

“It also helps,” the Colonel said, “that you are able to sail a
prau.
”

I nodded automatically. Then, with great firmness, I said, “No! I can’t do it and that’s final!”

“Think it over,” Colonel Baker said.

He left the room then, well content with the damage he had done. I leaned back in my bed and told myself to be sensible. But I could feel the spell of the East begging me to return to its shallow sunlit seas, its indolent cities, its villages, where a spiritual fatigue erupts periodically into unreasoning passion. And I smelled again the cloying spices, the sharp scent of kerosene and charcoal, and the decay that creeps out of the dim jungles and rots men and their ideas. …

Why, after all, did I have to live with reality? Wasn’t illusion a perfectly suitable condition?