Checkpoint Charlie (17 page)

He was the hunter. It put the burden on him. Realizing that, I knew my best chance was to stop.

The boulder had been too huge to shift so they had curled the trench around it, undercutting its belly. I wouldn't find better cover. I crouched under the overhanging rock and took out the survival carbine, cocked it and waited.

*   *   *

I
THOUGHT
of trying the radio again but that was no good. They couldn't help me in the fog — and he might hear my voice.

I heard the suck of bog around his boots.

He was up high on the mountainside somewhere above the trench. The rock above my head prevented me from seeing him — and prevented him from seeing me as well: maybe I had a chance.

He was still searching for me and that meant it was more than mere curiosity. He knew I had the code box; otherwise he'd have been satisfied to run me off the search area. Possibly he'd found the abandoned metal-detector and drawn his conclusions from that; or maybe he'd seen my tracks at the foot of the cliff where I'd recovered the CCT. A man adept at reading tracks could have —

Tracks. The realization grenaded into me. I'd left huge tracks in the muddy trench. Not being an outdoorsman I hadn't even thought of it before.

My tracks led to this spot. They didn't lead away from it.

Too late now to think about sweeping mud over them. All I could do was pray he didn't see my spoor.

But he found it.

*   *   *

T
HE TRENCH WALLS
were nine or ten feet high. If the Japanese had used ladders they had long since rotted away. The only way to get down was to jump; the only alternative was to travel along the trench to a distant point where the walls were lower.

I listened to him come. He was near the boulder, just above me. He went back and forth a couple of times. I could see what he saw: tracks on one side, no tracks on the other.

I heard the harsh metal clack when he worked the mechanism of the machine pistol.

Then unaccountably his boots moved away.

It took me a moment to understand. Then I realized. The trench was too wide for him to leap across it. And he couldn't jump down in plain view of me. He was heading along the trench to jump into it beyond the bend and come at me carefully on a level.

While I listened to his footsteps recede I knew I couldn't stay here. Some primitive impulse drove me out of my shelter — back the way I'd come, sliding my feet into the tracks I'd already made.

I approached the bend and stopped, my back to the wall, searching the rim above me. Then I heard him again — he was past the bend; something clanked.

I slid along the wall, coating the parka with muck. I was in time to see him jump right down into my view.

*   *   *

T
HE MUCK
betrayed him. His feet slid out from under him and he sprawled. The machine pistol slid out of his hand into the mud, jamming itself muzzle-first with the handle protruding at an angle.

I took a pace toward him and spoke in Russian: “Be still.”

He froze. His face came around — a big flat Mongol face, the face of a Siberian Tatar Cossack.

I trained the carbine on him. “Take it easy, Tovarich.” But my heart pounded. His face was preternatural, terrifying. His dark eyes burned at me. Then they flicked toward the machine pistol just beyond the reach of his long powerful arms.

Sure, I thought. They'd picked a Mongol for the job because they wanted someone expendable and someone expert at outdoor maneuver — a man who could read the earth like an Apache and find an object that American eyes had missed. An animalistic soldier who could move across an enemy island without being trapped by the enemy.

In short he was formidable. Primitve but clever; simple but expert — a fighter, a survivor, a killer.

All this I understood with one look at him. And something else:

He wasn't programmed to surrender.

*   *   *

H
E CAME
to his feet with slow menacing care. He kept looking from me to the machine pistol and back. Judging his chances. His eyes lingered a moment on my survival carbine. It was a high-velocity .22, very small and light. He was thinking he could absorb one or two of those and still live to kill me.

He wasn't a technological sophisticate. There was something I knew that he didn't know. I had an edge that had nothing to do with the gun in my hands. But just the same I faced a terrible dilemma.

I said in English, “I won't kill you in cold blood. It's not my style.”

I could see by the slight squint of his eyes that he didn't understand my English. I went on, talking in a calm voice as you might talk to a skittish animal to calm it. “I can't just walk away. You'd come after me. I can't tie you up — if I get that close to you, you'll find some way to get the better of me. I can try to take you down to the beach at gunpoint but that doesn't have much appeal either. In this fog? You'd have too many chances to escape or jump me. Look, I want to get out of this alive.”

He only stood there, facing me, adamant.

I said in Russian, “Don't try to reach the gun.”

He made no reply but from the flash of his eyes I knew he'd understood that. Stubborn, willful, he watched me with singleminded intensity.

I said reasonable, “You might kill me and get the box. But you can't get off the island. We've driven your submarine away. You're stranded here. Your only choice is to go back with me. I won't hurt you if you don't force it.”

With one hand I held the gun on him; with the other I wormed the radio out of its bag. I spoke into the mouthpiece in English:

“Shemya, this is Charlie Dark. I doubt you can hear me. But if you can, send a squad over here to help me out. I've got my hands full with a Mongolian Tatar who wants my guts for lunch.” I waited for a reply, got none, switched it off and fumbled to put it away.

He was motionless; his very stillness was menacing. His quick determined mind was racing visibly and I knew I'd never get him to the beach.

I spoke to him in English. “It's splitting hairs and I'm going to hate myself for a hypocrite but I don't see any other way to do this. You're too healthy for me to contend with.”

He didn't even blink.

I switched to Russian, defrauding him: “We're going to walk down to the valley to the beach. You first.”

Then I turned my head as if to locate something in my pack.

It was the break he'd waited for. He pounced on the machine pistol, willing to take his chances, figuring he could survive my first shot or two, figuring my reaction time would be slow — an old fat soft American.

The weapon rode up in his grasp and in that broken instant of time I wondered if I'd guessed wrong. But it didn't matter now. I didn't bother to try to lift my carbine; it would have been a useless gesture. I saw the grim stubborn satisfaction in his eyes; a trace of puzzlement flicked across him but he was already committed: he pulled the trigger.

*   *   *

T
HE EXPLOSION
rang in my ears. Pieces of heavy steel whacked into the walls of the trench. The Mongol wheeled back with a wail, blood streaming from his right hand in a gout. He sank to his knees and folded himself protectively over the shattered hand, grunting his agony.

I found the first-aid kit in my pack and tossed it to him. “Here. Bind it. We've got a long hike ahead of us.”

And hike we did. He was docile enough now; the injury had blown the fight out of him.

The chopper collected us at noon on Massacre Beach.

*   *   *

T
HE BASE COMMANDER
drove me to the plane. When I got out of the car we shook hands. He said, “Thanks for bringing him in alive. We'll milk him for every drop. But I still don't understand how you brought it off.”

“I guess I didn't play fair with him. I could have told him not to try to shoot that machine pistol. You can't fire a weapon that's got mud jammed up its muzzle. It won't shoot — it'll only explode.”

*   *   *

Charlie's
Dodge

S
TREAKS OF FALLING GREY RAIN
slanted across the silhouette of Sydney Harbor Bridge and when the taxi decanted me under the shelter of the porte-cochere canopy my poplin suit was still steamy from the dash at the airport. I carried my traveling bag inside the high-rise, found my way to the lifts and rode it up to the ninth floor.

The door had frosted glass and a legend:
Australamerica Travel & Shipping Agency Ltd.—New York, Los Angeles, Sydney
.

The girl at the reception desk sent me down a sterile hall. I could hear typewriters and Telexes in the warren of partitioned cubicles.

The conference room had wraparound plate glass; it was a corner suite. The view of the stormy city was striking.

Two men awaited me. The ash tray was a litter of butts and the styrofoam coffee cups had nothing left in them but smeared brown stains. Young Leonard Ross hurried like an officious bellboy to relieve me of the B-4 bag. “I hope you've got a spare suit in here. You're drenched. How was the flight? Bill, I guess you know Charlie Dark?”

“Only by reputation.” The tall man came sinuously to shake my hand. “Good to meet you, Charlie. I'm Bill Jaeger, chief-of-station down here.”

When the amenities were out of the way and we'd sent out for sandwiches I settled my amplitude into a wooden armchair at the table. It was a bit of a squeeze. “Now what's the flap?”

Ross said, “Didn't Myerson brief you?”

“No.”

“That figures,” Jaeger said. “I may be stepping out of line but it baffles me how Myerson keeps his job.”

I let it lie. It wouldn't have been useful to explain to Jaeger that Myerson keeps his job only because of me. Either Jaeger would refuse to believe it or he'd resent my conceit.

“The flap,” Ross said, “goes by the names of Myra Hilley and Iwan Stenback. They purport to be journalists.”

Jaeger made a face. “Underground press. They're tearing our station to pieces.”

“Systematically,” Ross said. “Causing a great deal of embarrassment for both the Australians and us.” Then a wan smile: “You and I were sent in to get rid of them for Bill. Actually that's not quite accurate. You were sent to get rid of them. I was sent to hold your coat.” With his collegiate good looks Ross was the picture of earnest innocence but I'd known him a while — sometimes he was astonishingly naïve but he was brighter than he seemed: a quick study. One day he'd be in charge of a department.

A girl brought us a tray of sandwiches and rattled something at Jaeger in 'Stryne — I didn't get but one word in four; the accent was more impenetrable than Cockney. Jaeger said, “I'll have to call them back later.” The girl smiled, nodded, departed, legs swishing; Ross's eyes followed her until she was gone.

Jaeger was one of those lanky Gary Cooperish people who seem to have flexible bones rather than joints. I knew him as he knew me: by reputation. Easygoing but efficient — a good station chief, reliable, but not the sort you'd want running a vital station in a danger zone. He was a good diplomat and knew how to avoid ruffling feathers; he was the kind of executive you assigned to a friendly country rather than a potential enemy.

He said, “Iwan Stenback publishes a weekly rag called
Sydney Exposed
. Part soft-core porn, part yellow gossip and cheap scandal, part health food recipes and diagrams for Yoga positions, part radical-left editorializing. Until recently it didn't have much of a circulation — mostly just freaks. Very youth-oriented. Always just skirting the libel and obscenity laws. Then a couple of months ago Stenback hired a hot new reporter by the name of Myra Hilley. Since then the circulation's shot up like a Titan missile because the rag announced in a page-one box under Hilley's by-line that they were going to start naming and identifying American CIA spies who were working undercover in Australia.”

Ross said, “It's happened before, of course. In Greece that time, and —”

I cut him off. “Have they made good on the threat?”

Jaeger said in his dry way, “So far they've named seven of our people.”

“Accurately?”

“Yes.”

I decided I liked him. He didn't make apologies; he didn't waffle. He looked like a cowboy and talked with a prairie twang but I suspected there was nothing wrong with his brain.

I said, “Where's they get the names?”

“We think one or two of our people may have been indiscreet. They aren't all paragons, the people we buy information from. And in a country like this they're not scared into secrecy — they don't need to worry about jackboots in the hall at midnight, do they. In some ways it's harder to run a secure intelligence network in a free country that it is in a dictatorship.”

“You've made efforts to plug the leaks?”

“Yes, sure. I think I know how it may have happened. I'm told Myra Hilley's attractive — seductive as hell.”

“You've never seen her?”

“No. Not many people have, evidently. I'm sure she goes under a variety of cover identities. After all, if her face were known people wouldn't talk to her.”

“Is ‘Myra Hilley' a pen name?”

“No.” Jaeger deferred to Ross.

“Born in Australia but schooled in England and Switzerland .” Ross was reading from his notebook. “Myra Elizabeth Hilley's her real name. She's twenty-seven. The Berne file suggests she may have had contact with members of the Baader-Meinhof gang. In any case she returned to Australia a year ago with a head full of radical revolutionary anti-capitalist theory.”

Jaeger said, “Typical immature anti-establishment anti-American notions. Australia already has a socialist government but that doesn't seem to satisfy these idiots. They want blood. Preferably blue. It doesn't seem to penetrate their thick heads that this capitalist free enterprise system they hate so much has graduated more people out of poverty than any other system in history.”