Thin Air (35 page)

Jan breathed shakily beside him, clutching his shoulder. He drew her inside, slammed the door, and locked it. He paused, listening. Nothing. He switched on a light.

The door to his office was slightly ajar. He pushed it open slowly, peering into the darkness and listening before he turned on the light. There seemed to be no one inside, but there certainly had been. Books, papers, and bills were strewn all over the floor. In the center of his desk, held together with a strap, were his briefcase and all his files on Thin Air, ready to go like a stuffed picnic basket. Hammond managed a smile: McCarthy had failed to get away with them.

He heard Jan gasp behind him and turned. She was peering over his shoulder, wide-eyed at the mess.

"Why don't you go fix your face?" he said softly. "Your mascara's running." She was hesitant to go alone, so he led her to the bedroom, checking the bathroom for her.

He left her, went to the kitchen window, and looked down at his front yard. His mind raced until he began to see the pattern. A device, worn at the base of the neck or implanted there, allowed McCarthy to remove himself at will by dematerializing from anywhere he wished and rematerializing....

Where?

Instantaneous spatial transference. IST. Teleportation. They had stumbled on it in the Philadelphia experiment of 1953.
Stumbled on it.
Two years later, Project Thin Air had been shut down and the principals involved had moved into private industry. And more than twenty years later, those principals were murdering people to keep their secret....

They had failed with invisibility, so they had turned instead to teleportation.
      

It was far more useful and apparently less dangerous. McCarthy didn't seem to suffer from chronic aftereffects. And he used the process regularly. He was able to beam himself in and out of the cities where he conducted his "treatment" of the surviving project participants. Very commendable: they were willing to keep these men alive and under control as long as they didn't get nosy, like Fletcher, or start to talk, like Rinehart.

Or investigate, like Hammond.

Now it all hung together, he realized, but still it was nothing more than a defensive operation. It had to cover something bigger.
What?

He returned to the living room and inspected the front door, trying to determine how McCarthy got into the apartment. Was he able to teleport himself
into
a place as well as out of it? Hammond felt around the lock and found scratches left by a burglar's pick, or what he took to be a burglar's pick. McCarthy had entered by conventional means. Hammond wasn't sure if he should feel relieved.
 

He brought brandy into the bedroom for Jan. He heard the water in the sink go off, then the bathroom door opened, and then he saw her drying her face. She glanced at him across the room.

But he wasn't watching her. He was staring at his bathroom and the open door of his shower stall. If McCarthy could make himself vanish from one place, he had to reappear at another. Somewhere there was a receiving station, a pre-set instrument that acted like a homing beacon to bring him to a safe location. The landing place was probably a small, enclosed room...like a vault.

Hammond put down the brandy, whirled, and charged into his office. He grabbed the phone and froze. Bloch's number. He didn't have Bloch's unlisted number. And then he remembered: Smitty would have it.

After ten rings, he got Smitty's butler, who was sleepy and very slow. The wait was interminable, but finally Hammond had Francis P. Bloch's home number.

The call was answered by one of the servants. Hammond could hear the party still going on in the background. He breathed easier and asked to speak with Admiral Gault. The servant left the phone for what must have been only a minute. To Hammond it was forever.

He glanced at his desk clock and calculated that McCarthy had vanished less than ten minutes ago. Bloch's home wasn't too far away. If McCarthy had walked it, he could be there in twenty minutes.

But he hadn't walked.

"Hullo?"

It was Gault, a little sloshed.

"It's Hammond, sir."

"You left too soon, Nick. They just broke out the twelve-year-old Scotch."
      

"Admiral, I want you to look around. Tell me if you see a man with red hair, a tall Irishman with a drinker's nose."

Gault hesitated. "Christ, Hammond, if this is a joke—"

"No joke. It's important. Where are you?"

"In the goddamned foyer. What am I supposed to do? Search the house?"

"No, sir. Wait a minute. Has anybody come through the front door in the last ten minutes?"

"No."

"How long have you been there?"

"Hammond, what is—?"

He broke off. Hammond listened.

"Just a second," Gault said, his gaze distracted by something he saw on the second-floor landing. Two figures were descending from the third floor. He recognized the big fellow named Coogan; he was talking to another man in a plain blue suit, carrying a black trenchcoat over his arm. He had a bloated face and red hair....

"I think I've found the nose you want," Hammond heard him say.

"Where?" Hammond said anxiously.

"Upstairs with your friend Coogan—"

"Upstairs?"
      

"That's what I said. Who is he?"

"McCarthy."

Hammond heard him suck in his breath then swear out loud. "Shit," he said, "want me to nab him?"

"No, sir—please! And don't say anything to him."

"Then what the hell do you want me to do?"

"Sir, he tried to kill me about fifteen minutes ago."

Gault fell silent again, then his voice dropped two octaves. "Where are you?"

"My apartment."

"How did he get back here so fast?"

Hammond started to explain, but Gault interrupted him. There was silence and he felt his heart begin to thump.

"He's coming downstairs," Gault whispered. He gazed furtively upstairs at the two men who had finally parted. Coogan remained on the landing while the red-headed man clumped downstairs, keeping his eyes locked straight ahead so he wouldn't attract attention.

McCarthy stepped off the stairs, and his crepe-soled shoes squished across the marble as he headed for the front door.

"He's leaving!" hissed Gault. "Hammond, I can't let him go—"

"You've got to!" Hammond shouted back.
      

It was too late anyway. McCarthy passed Gault without even seeing him. He was out the door and gone.

The admiral made a move to follow and stopped. He stood poised to leave the party with the host's telephone as a souvenir. He made a foul face, then brought the receiver up. His gaze automatically swept up with it and he found himself locking eyes with Joe Coogan, standing stiffly on the landing overhead.

"Uh-oh," Hammond heard him say. "Coogan caught me looking. Hammond, I don't know where your doctor friend is going, but I suggest you avoid another house call."

"On my way."

"Where?"

"MAGIC."

Hammond threw on plain clothes and a jacket, wondering whether he finally had some concrete evidence against these characters. Jan was a witness: McCarthy had tried to kill them.
I
have the gun
, he remembered, and ran to the living room to get it. He stuffed it into his briefcase along with all his papers on Thin Air. Gault could vouch for the fact that McCarthy got back to Bloch's house in better than Olympic time. And that device on Bloch's third floor, that was his Grand Central Station. Hammond smiled neatly—they would never be able to get rid of it fast enough. Tomorrow he could go in there with a Federal search warrant and an army of FBI agents, drag the CNO along by the scruff of his neck, and—

"Shit!" he yelled, and punched the wall. It wasn't enough. It might be enough to start an investigation, but if there was a secret project somewhere that these people were trying to protect, Intelligence could never move fast enough to keep them from hiding it.

He had to catch them red-handed, actually standing there up to their hips in misappropriated funds—

"Nicky?"

Jan stood in his office doorway in his jeans and sweater, staring quizzically at him. She looked tired.

"I'm sorry, honey," he said. "We'll go now."

He grabbed the case and turned out the lights, then guided her to the door. She stopped as he opened it, too frightened to go out.

"It's okay, Jan." She wouldn't move. He had to pull the gun out of his briefcase and start down the stairs. She came out on the landing, frowning at him.

"What good is that against an invisible man?" she demanded.

"He's not invisible," said Hammond. "He's just great on fast getaways."

He took another two steps and looked back.

"How do you know?" she said.

He felt a shiver of discomfort and looked out into the night. He swore under his breath. How
did
he know?

The drive back to Virginia was long and dark. It was sixteen miles north on the Dulles Access Highway to Herndon. Jan sat curled up at Hammond's side, staring uneasily at the road ahead. It started to rain. Thunder and a few forks of lightning. Her eyes grew heavy with exhaustion and, against her will, she went to sleep.

Hammond watched the wipers slap back and forth and thought of that night on the back road in Taos. He began watching the cross streets and checking his rear-view mirror, anxiously gripping the wheel every time a speedster zoomed up behind and passed him.

He looked at Jan. Was she strong enough to take all this? Could he keep her protected? For how long? And when it was over, would it be over for them, too? They'd had one night together, an emotional collision, but it didn't mean their relationship had resurfaced. Hammond was too confused and nervous to know what he felt. He didn't want Jan to get hurt, not physically or emotionally. But did he want to get involved again?

He pulled up to the house on Merlin Street just after two a.m. A security man stepped out of the bushes while Hammond was gently waking Jan and helping her out of the car. The security guard flashed a light on them and Hammond barked the password. They were covered all the way up to the door. Before Hammond could knock, it opened and Ike Menninger smiled sleepily at them. He was in pajamas and robe.
 

Jan was asleep again. Menninger helped Hammond carry her upstairs. They put her on the bed and drew a quilt over her, then slipped out of the room and closed the door.

Yablonski was in the hallway waiting for them. "How'd it go?" he said, tying his bathrobe.

"Downstairs," whispered Hammond.

Menninger stood guard on the landing while Hammond and Cas went down to the den. Cas was anxious to hear all about the party, so Hammond recounted the evening in detail. When he finished describing McCarthy's attack, Yablonski was wearing a dark scowl and clutching the arm of his chair so hard his knuckles were white.

"I wish you'd let me go," he said. "I could have stopped that sonofabitch from following you."

"He didn't follow us. He was there waiting. Spent the whole evening ransacking my office. Besides, how can you stop a man who can teleport himself out of your hands?"

"How did he know you'd come back to the apartment?"

"I don't think they know about the safe house. Oh, they might guess, but they don't know where it is. I'm sort of glad we did go back: now at least we know their trump card. But I still haven't figured a way to arrest anybody."

"And hang onto them," Yablonski added.

"That's not what I mean. Grounds. Except for McCarthy, I haven't got grounds."

Yablonski got up and motioned Hammond to follow. They went to the kitchen and he offered Hammond a piece of the pie his wife had baked. They ate in silence, Yablonski busy thinking.

"I see Menninger's put on some pounds," said Hammond.

"Like a bird. Eats twice his own weight in a day." Yablonski smiled, then grew serious. "You need hard evidence against these people, right?"

"Lost without it."

"What about the equipment that was aboard the
Sturman?
The ship may have been scrapped, but I guarantee you they wouldn't have junked all that stuff. Too much of it and very expensive. There must be records of where it went, who got it, and when. And if it ended up in the hands of your buddies at Micro-Tech, then I'd say you've got them by the balls. You could probably bring in a whole Congressional investigation. Am I right?"

Hammond stared at him. "Want to come with me tomorrow?"

Yablonski concealed his excitement. "Where?"

"Operational Archives."

Yablonski smiled.

At 0900, while Jan was still asleep, Hammond phoned Ensign Just-Ducky at the Pentagon and asked her to arrange a meeting that afternoon with somebody in Naval Archives. She called back twenty minutes later and informed him that a Lieutenant Gordon McWilliams would meet him at the Historical Display Center in the Washington Navy Yard at 1330.