Top Gun (25 page)

(Two)

Turner Layten remained on the carpet in his office. His back was against the wall and his knees were drawn up to his chest.
He was breathing deeply, waiting for the pain in his belly to subside as he listened to Steven Gold’s footsteps receding down
the hallway.

Then, suddenly, Steve Gold was back in the office standing over Layten.

Gold began, “I came back to make sure you understand my position—”

Layten didn’t wait for Gold to finish. He moved fast, pushing off from the wall and barreling into Gold’s knees, sweeping
Gold’s legs out from under him to topple him. Gold cried out shrilly as he sprawled belly-down on the carpet. Layten rose
up on his knees and clipped Gold on the jaw, just to quiet him down a bit. As Gold rose groggily to his hands and knees, trying
to shake off Layten’s powerful punch. Lay-ten got to his feet and sauntered over to his desk, where he kept his backup gun,
a .32-caliber Walther PPK.

Layten always kept a round chambered in the Walther, so after taking the gun from his top desk drawer he had only to thumb
the safety, revealing the red dot on the side of the sleek, black pistol that meant the weapon was “hot” and ready to fire.

“Don’t shoot me. Turner!” Gold pleaded, staring at the Walther held casually in Layten’s hand. “I beg you, don’t do it!”

Gold frantically crawled to the office’s far corner, upending the potted palm in order to retrieve the .38 Smith & Wesson.
Layten watched as Gold then scrabbled across the carpet, fingers clawing around the bases of the packing cases in order to
gather up a couple of the spilt .38-caliber rounds. He began clumsily jamming them into the revolver’s cylinder.

“Take your time, Steven,” Layten said coolly as Gold managed to load the Smith. “I want to give you the fairest possible chance
against me. You’re going to need it….”

Gold, his face twisted into a hideous grimace of fear, rose up to his knees, grasping the revolver with trembling hands as
he brought it to bear on Layten.

“Go ahead,” Layten told him while still holding his Walther at his side. “Shoot, if you’ve got the balls.”

Gold, bellowing in fear, started to press the Smith’s trigger. Layten smoothly extended his right hand holding the Walther.
Gold fired the Smith. Layten squeezed off his own shot….

Gold’s round went wild, plowing an ugly furrow in Lay-ten’s desktop. Meanwhile, the Walther had bucked in Layten’s hand, ejecting
a brass shell casing that chimed musically as it bounced off the desk and then landed on the carpet. The guns’ twin sharp
reports had sounded very loud within the confines of the office, but not as loud as Gold’s despairing howl as the crimson
flower of death blossomed on his shirt-front.

Gold’s revolver drooped. His eyes glassed over. “Help me,” Gold begged piteously, his earlier arrogant tone now reduced to
a hoarse whisper. “Call an ambulance…. Please!… Help me, Turner….”

But it was too late.

“It’s too late,” Layten said, not unkindly, for he could afford pity for a vanquished foe. “1 aimed for your heart, and I
never miss.” Layten shook his head. “Steven. Steven, Steven… You should have listened when I told you that someday I’d even
the score between us.”

“Should… have…” Gold nodded, pausing to cough bright scarlet bubbles of blood. “Should have listened—”

Layten watched Gold pitch forward to settle into the oblivion of death. Then Layten heard footsteps clattering down the corridor.

“Mr. Layten!”

Layten looked up to see Clarice, his sultry redhead receptionist, standing in the doorway. Clarice pressed the back of her
hand to her mouth as she stared with horrified, widened eyes at Gold’s corpse lying curled on the carpet.

“M-Mr. Layten— Turner!” she amended shyly. “W-What happened?”

“It was self-defense, Clarice.” Layten calmly gestured with his Walther to the smoking revolver still lying curled in Gold’s
fingers. “As you can plainly see, I had no choice.…”

“Yes, sir!” Clarice seemed to be calming. “But Turner, are you all right?”

Layten, studying her, saw the smoldering passion in her blue eyes. It was a look he’d been aware of for months but had chosen
to ignore.

But no longer, he thought, feeling his own passion flaming his loins.
Clarice. I will make you mine, for to the victor belongs the spoils.

“I’m fine, baby…,” Layten murmured, beckoning her. “At least, there’s nothing wrong with me you can’t kiss and make better.”

“Oh, yes, Turner.” Clarice sighed happily. She hurried across the room—stepping nimbly over Gold’s corpse—to fold herself
within Layten’s strong embrace….

The telephone on Layten’s desk rang, startling him out of his fantasy.

“Yeah, it could have happened like that,” Layten told his empty office and the ringing telephone. “
if
Gold had come back, and
if
had a backup gun…”

Layten guessed that by now Gold was in an elevator and on his way down to the lobby. Layten was still on the floor, where
Gold had left him. He was still leaning against the wall, hugging his knees and breathing deeply, focused on his throbbing
gut, waiting for the radiating circles of pain and the waves of nausea to subside. He wanted to answer the shrilly insistent
telephone, but he didn’t think he was ready to get up yet.

“Got to get into shape,” Layten muttered. “Ridiculous for one punch to have wiped me out like this…”

Then again, it wasn’t as if he were used to physical violence. The CIA didn’t train you in firearms or unarmed combat unless
you were designated likely material for certain kinds of field assignments, and from the beginning of his Agency career it
had been clear that Layten’s future lay in administration.

Really ought to answer that telephone,
Layten thought. Then, mercifully, the damned thing stopped ringing.

Haven’t been struck since I was a youngster,
Layten remembered. That last time had been in prep school, during some altercation over a close call in a game of lacrosse.
Ironically, back then as now, Layten had been punched in the stomach, and back then as now, he’d found the experience to be
excruciatingly painful, humiliating…

Enraging.

Layten had been unable to exact his revenge upon that schoolyard bully, but
this
time things would turn out differently, because this time he had far more offensive options at his disposal.

He was feeling better and got up slowly, groaning. He felt like he had a white-hot coal smoldering in his gut. He managed
to hobble over to his desk and collapse in his chair.

The telephone again began to ring. Layten wearily picked it up. “Yes?”

“Mr. Layten?”

“Yes, Clarice—I mean, Miss O’Brien,” Layten hastily corrected himself.
Clarice, Clarice, Clarice.
He’d had a crush on the redheaded receptionist for months, but had been unable to bring himself to do anything about it.
It was too late now, he supposed with some relief. In a couple more days these offices would be closed, and he would never
see her again. Just as well. He wasn’t good with women. Never had been…

“Mr. Campbell has been trying to reach you,” the receptionist said.

“Oh, did he just call?”

“Yes, sir. Mr. Campbell said your phone rang and rang, and then he called me.”

“Ah, well, I was… indisposed,” Layten said. “Did he leave a number?”

“Mr. Campbell said you could reach him on his private line in New York.”

“Thank you,” Layten said, and broke the connection. He then dialed Campbell direct, punching in the long-distance number from
memory. He was very good with numbers.

Campbell picked up on the fifth ring. “Yes?”

“It’s me,” Layten said. “You wanted to speak to me, sir?”

“Yeah, I did, Turner. I have some further ideas on the Amalgamated-Landis expansion we discussed—”

“Excuse me, Tim, but before we get into that, I think I should tell you that Steven Gold was just here to see me.”

“Hah! I told you so. Turner!” Campbell said, sounding pleased.

“Actually, sir, he came to see
you,”
Turner amended respectfully.

“Obviously, Turner,” Campbell said impatiently. “Well, what did Steve want? What did he say? Tell me everything!”

Layten told him, leaving out the part about the gun. Layten was ashamed of how he’d fubbed that, and anyway, Campbell would
never have approved if he knew Layten carried one.

“He actually struck you. Turner?” Campbell asked when Layten had finished his account of what took place. “You’re not exaggerating,
now?” he cautioned. “Steven actually hauled off and punched you in the stomach?”

“Yes, Tim.” Layten was feeling a bit affronted at the way Campbell was sounding so amused about the incident.

“Well, you did call his father a despicable name,” Campbell scolded mildly.

“With all due respect, Tim, I called Herman Gold exactly what he was.”

Campbell chuckled. “In any event, you got off lucky with just a sore belly. Turner, boy. Many, many years ago I witnessed
Herman Gold
kill
a man who called him a kike.”

“Killed… ?” Layten echoed feebly, shuddering as he remembered how easily Steve Gold had taken control of the revolver. Layten
often had fantasies in which he violently triumphed over his enemies, but the notion that he himself might be seriously hurt
scared the daylights out of him.

“Anyway,” Campbell said. “Let’s look on the bright side of this here juicy li’l contretempts between you and Steven.”

“I didn’t think there was a bright side,” Layten said sourly.

“There’s always a bright side,” Campbell lectured. “What separates the men from the boys in our line of work is the ability
to discover it and use it to one’s advantage.”

“Yes, sir,” Layten said happily. He loved it when Campbell got off on the Machiavellian thing.

Campbell said: “Now, what we can infer from Steven’s belligerence today is that he’s been riled by his clash with us, or rather
to the lengths to which he had to go to counter our threat.” He cackled. “In a word, son, poor ole Steven’s
remorseful.”

He didn’t seem very remorseful to me,” Layten muttered, rubbing his aching belly.

“That’s ‘cause you don’t know ’em like I do, son,” Campbell assured.

I don’t?
Layten thought glumly.
I’ve only spent the last ten years of my life obsessed with getting even with the man.

“Oh, sure, Turner. You
think
about Steven a lot,” Campbell said, as if he’d read Layten’s mind or something. Campbell did it a lot, and it never failed
to spook Layten.

“You think about Steve and have studied up on “im,” Campbell was continuing. “But you don’t know him personally, the way I
do, son. I watched Steven grow up, and I can tell you that he’s just like his father. Like Herman, Steven has a conscience.
In other words, like his father, Steven has the brains to figure out what needs to be done in a specific situation, and the
ability to do it, but he hasn’t got the willpower to put out of his mind the less savory aspects of what he’s done.” Campbell
paused, sighing. “It was Herman’s inability to take pleasure in his ruthlessness that kept him from true greatness.”

Layten smiled, forgetting his physical discomfort at Steven Gold’s hands in the rush he felt at chatting so intimately with
Tim Campbell. “But ruthlessness like so many of the finer things in life is an acquired taste, isn’t that so, sir?”

“Indeed it is. Turner, old boy.” Campbell chuckled. “Indeed it is. You know what they said about the gunfighters of the Old
West? That the best of ’em didn’t think twice about killing an adversary. They just drew and shot: That was what made ’em
the fastest. Flying way up high in the sky in his fighter planes, Steven Gold had always considered himself above the fray,
but we made ’im get down and dirty this time. Turner.”

“But, Tim…” Layten paused, afraid to say it. “Sir… GAT
won.
They cost you a lot of money.”

“Steve knows money don’t mean shit to me anymore,” Campbell said. “I got so much money I could catch me a dose a dysentery,
wipe my ass with thousand-dollar bills, and never feel the pinch. As far as I’m concerned, money is just a raw material, like
clay to a sculptor. Money’s just the medium in which I work my art.”

“Just the same, sir,” Layten said. “They did win?”

“Yeah, sure, GAT won,” Campbell muttered. “Steve Gold and Don Harrison did what they had to do, but like I said, I know those
hombres. I’ll betcha anything they didn’t
like
doing it.”

“They were reluctant gunfighters,” Layten murmured, shivering with pleasure as he began to understand.

“Now
you’re with the program, son,” Campbell laughed. “Reluctant gunfighters
was just
what they were. Next time we go toe-to-toe with GAT, Steven Gold and Don Harrison just might flinch before they make their
move.”

“But we never flinch,” Layten boasted.

“And that’s the advantage we’ll use to finish ’em,” Campbell concluded.

It was all so obvious
, Layten thought. “Thank you, Tim.”

“My pleasure, son,” Campbell said. “You’re a fast learner. Now, then, getting back to the Amalgamated-Landis expansion. I’ve
decided to move you over to our El Segundo facility. Your title at A-L will be executive director of marketing and sales,
reporting directly to me. Your cover will be that you’re at A-L to monitor the industry competition in the marketplace, but
the only company I want you to keep your eye on is GAT. I want you to continue to devote yourself to information gathering
on our friends in Burbank, is that clear?”

“Yes, sir.”

“All right, then,” Campbell said. “I’ll be back in L.A. next week. For now, is there anything else?”

Layten briefly considered asking if he could bring along the redheaded receptionist to be his secretary. That would give Layten
more time to get to know her. Perhaps he and Clarice could have lunch together—maybe even dinner—to discuss the job?

“Turner?” Campbell spoke up impatiently. “You still there?”

“Yes, sir,” Layten said. “No, Tim, there’s nothing I need.” He paused. “Except for Steve Gold’s head, mounted above my mantel.”