Flashpoint (20 page)

    "Don't-know," she got out breathlessly. Saliva flew at each consonant. More spittle formed at the corners of her mouth and ran down onto her chin. "Can't-tell you. Never told me-anything."

    Erikson leaned down over the side of the bed. "Bayak smuggles dope?" he asked, spacing each word.

    "Yessssss." It came out as one long hissing sibilant. "In diplo-" Talia swallowed hard and began over again. "In diplomatic pou-ches." Her throat worked convulsively. "Gets-from Arabs to-finance commando-activities." Her knees jerked wildly and her hands clenched and unclenched.

    "And Bayak takes a cut?"

    "Yessssss."

    "What about the truck hijack?"

    "Not-heroin. Way he acts-more valuable."

    "What were you supposed to do in Damascus?"

    "Tell Shariyk-missing element-be in hands-twenty-four hours."

    Erikson's eyes met mine across the bed. "The lost-strayed-or-stolen atomic scientist," he said. He returned his attention to Talia. "Where will the truck hijack take place?"

    Her black hair whipped from side to side as she shook her head in a violent negative movement. "Don't- know!" It was almost a scream. "Only place possibly- find out-his safe!"

    Erikson straightened up. "I've got to make a phone call," he said curtly, and strode to the door.

    I tried a few more questions, but with less and less response. In all honesty it didn't make sense that the cautious Bayak would have confided details of his plan to Talia. I stared down at the writhing girl on the bed. "Give her a shot, Doc," I said.

    "She's going to have to go through this sooner or later, you know," he objected.

    "Later, then."

    "I've no authority-"

    "Don't give me a hard time, Doc. Give her a shot."

    He opened a little black bag at the foot of the bed and removed a hypodermic syringe. "These types usually aren't salvageable, anyway," he said while he wound a rubber cord under Talia's upper arm and searched with his fingertips for unpitted flesh. "Mainlining it into the vein doesn't make for a long life, but it's the only thing that can reach her now." Dextrously he plunged the needle into the black-and-blue arm.

    Talia's shivering and shaking died away. Her knees went slack as I watched the familiar hard shine take over her dark eyes. "Bet-ter," she whispered. "Stomach- hurts. H-hurts."

    Erikson thrust his head into the room. "Come on," he said to me.

    I went down the hallway with him to a small conference room. In front of a picture window overlooking the clinic parking lot was a library table with a telephone and a scattering of medical journals. "You've got to call Bayak and explain your disappearance," Erikson said. "And try again to get him to tell you where the hijack location is."

    "I've got a good out on the disappearance," I said. I looked up Bayak's number in the directory and dialed. Abdel's heavy voice answered the very first ring. Bayak came on the line immediately. "Where are you?" the fat Turk demanded angrily.

    "I'm doing a little shopping, remember?" There was a note pad beside the phone. I scribbled the words "handheld acetylene torch" and "plastic explosive" on it and shoved the pad toward Erikson. He nodded.

    "It's almost time for you to be at the Alhambra!"

    Bayak sounded more nearly out of control than I had ever heard him.

    "I had to break loose from a tail after I left your place. It could've been the precinct detectives keeping tab on me, like they said they would when Talia sprung me, or maybe the fuzz is getting close to your operation. In which case you'd better get yourself another boy."

    "It was my man, not the police!" Bayak exploded. "Naturally I had to make sure you weren't being followed!"

    Naturally you're a pluperfect liar, I thought. You intended having me followed for your own good reason. "If you weren't so damned secretive about these things, we wouldn't be wasting so much time," I complained. "Now cut out the foolishness. Where's the hijack location?"

    Immediately he was in control again. "You don't need to know that yet." I tried to say something, but he kept right on talking. "Listen closely, now. Forget the Alhambra. There isn't time. Instead, go to the waterfront in Bayonne, New Jersey and station yourself at the northeast corner of the abandoned gate-house leading to Pier Twenty-six. You will be contacted-" There was a pause as if he was consulting his watch "-in two hours and thirty-four minutes. Do you understand?"

    "Hold it while I write that down," I said. I covered the mouthpiece while I wrote it on the pad and showed it to Erikson.

    "I know the area," he whispered, frowning. "It's open and exposed. There's no way we can give you back-up cover there. But we'll work out something." He nodded at the phone. "Don't keep him waiting."

    I was staring out the conference-room picture window at the parking lot. Two guards were shooing off-duty nurses and white-jacketed orderlies from the center of the area. All heads were turned upwards. A gray-painted helicopter wearing bands of iridescent yellow paint around its thin boom settled slowly in the middle of the area. Its rotating blades whirled with decreasing speed, then came to a stop. The plexiglass door, which formed one side of the passenger bubble, opened and a uniformed man climbed out.

    Erikson nudged me, and I uncovered the mouthpiece. "I've got that down," I said. "Will you be there?"

    "I've already said that we will have no further contact," Bayak said sharply.

    "I don't like working in the dark," I sought to prolong the conversation while I tried to think of another angle to bring pressure to bear on Bayak. "We should really have a dry run or two on the hijack to iron out any possible problem."

    "There will be no problem unless you become one," Bayak replied. His tone was pregnant with warning. "The timetable provides sufficient latitude for you to conduct what you Americans call a 'skull session' with the men who will assist you. They know their jobs."

    "But how will I know now that my money is in the Grand Central locker like you promised?"

    "It's entirely your fault that you weren't in a position to verify it for yourself," the Turk said coldly. "Once the business is finished, you will be given the locker key and dropped off at a convenient point."

    Dropped off at convenient point from a convenient bridge into a convenient river. "It's too complicated," I said.

    Bayak's voice rose again. "It's hardly necessary to practice something that must be done perfectly the first time. Like a parachute jump, for instance. Are you going ahead with the plan?"

    "Sure I'm going ahead with it," I said. "But I've got to know-"

    "I must leave now," Bayak said. He hung up on me.

    "I ought to cut out of this damned business right now," I told Erikson while I replaced the phone receiver. "You can't cover me, and if this hijack comes off, you'll arrive on the scene in time to deliver flowers."

    "I can't order you to do it," Erikson said. "But I laid on the helicopter to save time in case you decided to follow through."

    I thought again of the way Chryssie had died, and the care the Turk had shown in protecting his own gross obesity. "I'd love to put a spoke in that bastard Bayak's wheel for sure," I admitted. "You figure the hijack is going to take place right there on the Bayonne docks?"

    "That would be too simple, the way the rest of the operation is shaping up. You'll probably be meeting a contact man who'll take you to the hijack spot."

    "These guys have got to slip somewhere," I argued to myself. "And when they do-" I didn't finish it, but I had Iskir Bayak's left ventricle lined up in a mental gunsight. "Let's try for another first down. I'll let you know about the touchdown later."

    Erikson led the way outside to the helicopter. The pilot looked like a kid. Erikson brushed aside the boy's snappy salute. "Next stop Bayonne?" I said as we settled down inside the bubble.

    "Downtown New York," Erikson replied. "The girl convinced me that our only chance to nail down the hijack location is to get into Bayak's safe."

    "And how do you think you're going to do that?" I asked as the engine of the helicopter caught hold and the drooping blades began windmilling again.

    "You're going to do it," Erikson informed me, raising his voice against the engine noise. "Or have I been misjudging you all the time I've known you?"

    I didn't say anything. "Where to, sir?" the helicopter pilot inquired as we rose from the ground.

    "The heliport on top of the Pan American Building!"

    Erikson shouted.

    The pilot jerked his head around. "I can't do it, sir. It's off limits. The FAA closed it down."

    "Just follow orders, Ensign. I'll clean up the paperwork later."

    "There goes my Navy career," the boy muttered in an aside. "Boy, my tail will really be in the grease."

    Erikson handed me a microphone after speaking into it briefly. "This is a 'ham' phone patch linking radio transmission to ground telephone lines. McLaren's on there. Tell him what you need in the way of a torch and plastic explosives. Have him bring them to the Turk's with two cars and four agents."

    I transmitted the information as the 'copter's wide-ranging arc in the sky disclosed the blue waters of Long Island Sound in the distance. "And McLaren?"

    "Yes?"

    "I'll need a detailed map of the area around Pier Twenty-six in Bayonne, New Jersey. Plus the tool kit."

    "Check. Sounds as though business is picking up."

    I handed the microphone back to Erikson.

    We approached Manhattan's tall buildings, heading into a lowering sun which turned the haze over the city into an orange mist. We crossed the East River paralleling the Queensborough Bridge. To our left, the rays of the setting sun reflected from the glass windows of the UN Secretariat Building, making its western side look like a sheet of flame.

    We weren't more than a couple of hundred feet above the tallest buildings, and air turbulence made the helicopter bounce and rock. "You can see now why the heliport's closed, sir," the pilot shouted, fighting the controls. "But there it is."

    "It" was the flat top of the Pan Am building a few blocks away. From where we were yo-yoing in the air, the landing area looked like a postage stamp. And when the pilot plunked us down with a shuddering thud within the yellow landing circle, it still didn't look a hell of a lot larger.

    Erikson nudged me toward the closed heliport terminal. He snapped off a remark when he found the door locked,, looked at me with his hand shaped into the form of a pistol, then backed behind me. I drew my.38. The bullet ricocheted off into space with a diminishing whine, but it had done the job on the lock.

    In less than two minutes we had plummeted to the ground floor in the high-speed elevator. Out on the street, Erikson's commanding presence obtained us a cab. Two dark sedans were parked against the yellow-lined curb in front of Bayak's apartment building. McLaren stepped from the first car when he saw us get out of the cab.

    "Don't let anyone get past us here, Jock," Erikson ordered. "Let's go, Earl."

    "The tool kit," I reminded Erikson.

    He looked at McLaren, who went back to the car and brought it to me. "Good luck," he said.

    Erikson and I crossed the sidewalk. "Let's take the doorman up to the penthouse with us, since he doesn't know you," I suggested as we entered the lobby. "Otherwise he might call ahead and alert a welcoming committee."

    "Good thinking," Erikson agreed.

    The uniformed doorman was standing just inside the heavy revolving door. He nodded to me, but his gaze lingered on Karl. I stepped in close to him while shoving a hand into a jacket pocket. "No noise," I warned, nodding toward the penthouse elevator. "Get moving."

    He stumbled a step backward, his eyes on my hand submerged in the pocket, then turned meekly and preceded us. I punched the single button when the bronze doors closed behind us. Nobody said anything. I could hear the doorman breathing.

    The elevator doors opened, and I enjoyed the usually imperturbable Erikson's first goggle-eyed look at the sumptuous apartment. "Stay the hell out of the way now," I said to the doorman who looked as if he were trying to decide to have a fit or a chill. I opened the elevator fuse box and removed the fuse, anchoring the cab until we were ready to use it again.

    I led the way across the highly polished black-and-white squares of the foyer to the steps leading down to the sunken living room. I could see that we were none too soon. The Moorish swords and armor were gone from the walls, and the antique vases had disappeared from the end tables. Someone was packing the Turk's belongings for a final departure.

    The arrival of the elevator must have triggered a signal somewhere in the apartment, because Abdel appeared in the farther bedroom doorway with a puzzled look on his flat features. He had a pile of folded clothing over one arm. The giant did a double take at the sight of me, dropping the clothing. He moved toward us swiftly, his slippered feet making no sound in the deep-pile carpeting.

    "Don't shoot," Erikson said to me as I reached across my chest. He moved in between Abdel and me. "Get started on the safe."

    I drew the.38 anyway. I'd seen Erikson in action before, but I'd also seen Abdel. Felt him, rather. The two men collided in the center of the room like two bull moose. Abdel's arms enveloped Erikson in a bear hug as the giant tried to wrestle the smaller man off his feet. Erikson's shoulders bunched and writhed, and Abdel staggered backward with an incredulous look on his dark face, his hold broken.

    I set down the tool case in order to be ready to use the.38 immediately, if necessary. Erikson pursued Abdel closely, though, and his right arm moved sideways and slightly upward in an arc like a man hurling a discus. The bladed edge of Erikson's palm thudded mightily into Abdel at the joining of neck and shoulder. I saw the whites as the giant's eyes rolled upward. He tottered, remained upright for an instant, then plunged forward on his face. The windows rattled when he landed.