Single Combat (30 page)

"Haven't the foggiest." Staring out the window at the growing port city, Quantrill mused, "I'm tempted to believe in fate, Brubaker. I mean, that huge boar is something I know about first-hand. I tracked him once after he snuffed a little kid I knew—but I never located him.

"And I met Simpson once. And
now
I find that Chabrier was a friend of hers, God help him! It's almost as if there really were only a few hundred people in the world…"

Old Brubaker stood beside him, chuckling, fondling his one-a-day cigar. "In a way it's true, Ted.

When you're as old as I am, you'll realize how few people there are who do pivotal things; people full of ideas and vitality, gamblers for the most part; stepping on people's toes as they pass, shaking the rest of us in our little ruts and striking sparks from each other. Not exactly a prescription for a quote, nice guy, unquote. My only surprise is that some of you live so long. Oh, you're obviously one of the breed," he said, showing patently false teeth, laughing at Quantrill's quizzical look. "So is Governor Street; so are those quintessential assholes, Young and Mills. I'm not saying
all
you hyperactive wowsers are good for us; only that you're all agents of change, one way or another. And I wouldn't trade places with you. I like to play chess, read a Michener epic I've read twice before, watch a long sunset; things I couldn't cram into a short life."

"And you expect to outlive me; is that it?"

Pause to light the stogie. A long pleasured puff. Gently, then: "Yes, I do. I got a look at the Canadian file on you, Ted. You've lived several lives' worth of risks and you're barely old enough to vote. If you keep living on the cutting edge—hell,
as
a cutting edge—you'll run out of reflexes or luck one day. Soon, maybe. Or later, maybe."

"It's been years since I had a chance to bullshit with someone like this," Quantrill sighed. "I'd like to try a slower pace, myself. I intend to, when all this is over."

"It'll
never
be over! There'll always be a gamble somewhere with your name on it, Ted."

"You don't think I could change?"

"Not sure you ought to. Remember, I sit in on the game too, now and then—with you, for instance. One day it could get me snuffed. But I've found a slot, call it a rut if you like, that isn't too hectic for a family man like me. If you weren't in such an all-fired hurry I'd invite you for a home-cooked meal. You're one guest my grandkids couldn't terrorize," he laughed.

"You keep sliding away from giving advice," Quantrill observed, studying the play of fine wrinkles that fanned from old Brubaker's eyes.

"Don't know you well enough. I just know that whenever you've been run through a meat-grinder, it's the machine that got busted." Now he was laughing again as he watched cigar smoke swirl in the afternoon light. "That's no small talent, Ted."

Quantrill, wistfully: "There must be another slot for me beyond that. Any ideas?"

Old Brubaker rocked on his heels, nodding, taking his sweet time. "Foreign correspondent," he finally murmured, "if you can face a holo camera."

"Scares me shitless."

"Security staff? God knows your training has taught you most of the angles."

"Possible," Quantrill hedged. "My trouble is that whether I worked for government or some corporation, they're always screwing somebody and I'd be likely to change sides."

"True," said Brubaker. "Then you'd just have to decide where your ethics pointed you. I can't tell you what your ethic is; I can only tell you that everybody has one, however twisted it might be. You're a long way ahead if you know what's likely to keep you awake nights. And," he said with a wink, "I've wasted ten minutes playing guru on the mountaintop to a man who knows what he wants."

"Do I?"

"Sure: temporary work with Midas Imports, and papers to get you to Corpus Christi. That little container seems to be burning a hole in your pocket. I don't want to know what it is, but I imagine Governor Street will. Am I right?"

Quantrill thought again of the critic, and of Sanger, and felt his scalp tighten. However much he might long for the satisfactions of a Brubaker, he yearned more for redress. One day he might luxuriate in unhurried disputes of ethics. But for now, his was still an ethic of destruction.

Sandy's journal, 23 Sep.'

Hands so raw can hardly hold pen but canning done! Preserves & veggies, gleaming ranks of riches to spend this winter. With 2 more paying guests could buy choice items in Rocksprings. Note from Lufo; his friend Quantrel expected from Mexico. Wonder if brute distant kin to Ted Quantrill? Not common name & variations frequent. Ironic that hardened killer should remind me of gentle, generous Ted, object of first girlish crush. Doubtless long dead in some pointless Asian battle. Cannot even recall face after 6 yrs. Is forgetting a natural therapy?

He has returned with, of all things, garish pendant draped over one tusk! Lost or discarded by some tourist with taste for cheap flash, I suppose. Childe insisted hers, & why not? Truly it does charm the eye; poor so long I tend to make poverty a virtue. N.B.: caution Childe against showing it off; why tempt strangers who might think it valuable?

Anything small enough to fit on a railroad flatcar is small enough to disappear when routed through Mexico. That is why Midas Imports always shipped a security kiosk on the same flatcar. Quantrill found those quarters cramped, but the kiosk was insulated and the toughest part of the job was staying awake during the hours he spent in switching yards.

His first transit delay left him in on a siding in downtown Tucson for hours. He could see that the Mexican government did not splurge on civic upkeep; street traffic detoured around potholes in the middle of the city, and the streets were littered with trash. Well, perhaps Mexico did not really expect to keep these yanqui territories very long. His temptation to stroll into the city faded quickly, and Quantrill spent Wednesday reading in his kiosk.

Wednesday was also the day when old Brubaker said a little too much on an unscrambled videophone. By then, Boren Mills had persuaded President Young that S & R needed help. The NSA people didn't like it, but they did it; a listening NSA spook fingered the Midas Imports man to S & R. A few hours later, kidnapped in his own Chevy by the nearest rover, old Brubaker suspected that he might not get much older.

Old Brubaker was right. Questioned under torture, he cried as anyone would. Graeme Duff of S & R sensed that his captive might be crying too much and revealing
too
little so, cursing the time it always took, the rover brought drugs into play. While going under, old Brubaker had time for regrets, chiefly focused on his family. He also regretted that he knew how to contact the Canadians, and that the young escapee had important information for the Indys in Corpus Christi. Brubaker thought it was a memory cube.

Before long, Duff would know whatever old Brubaker thought.

Bull-necked and bull-headed, the rover Duff might have botched the interrogation but for his two-way connection with Control. His critic cautioned him against mentioning names or events until they had been voiced by the victim.

Fifteen minutes after old Brubaker started to babble, Duff asked for Seth Howell online and in another five minutes, got him. "You'll want to wring this one out yourself," said Duff, neither happy nor unhappy. "He's tied up with Canuck spooks, and the last man he fed to the rebels was Ted Quantrill."

His critic fed him Howell's triumphant, "Goddamn! I'll be in Eureka in two hours. Keep the informant comfy 'til I get there and meanwhile, find a snuff-box for him. You'll need it when I'm done."

Duff coded out, grumbling inside. He could always count on Howell giving him the shit-jobs.

On Friday afternoon, Quantrill dozed through the arid stretches of Coahuila while the NSA untangled coded manifests enough to place his flat-car somewhere between El Paso and Matamoros. It would have been possible for S & R to spend a day setting up an airtight trap, monitoring every breath Quantrill took until they nailed him. Except for one thing—actually a bundle of several small things.

First, NSA deputy assistant directors do not appreciate being suddenly subordinated to agencies such as S & R. Next, a position high in spookery does not always eliminate one's political biases. Both the NSA and CIA employed a few patriots who chafed against their orders. Also, the NSA's charter is information-gathering, and some of its team leaders shared the rumor that a certain S & R rover had somehow managed to become a high-pressure leak in an uncontrolled part of the system. Some of these leaders viewed that rumor with what might best be termed guarded optimism.

Finally, it was late on a Friday, and S & R had neglected to formally request prioritizing codes to ensure that information on Quantrill would be run through NSA's crypto office with flags flying. The deputy assistant director spied, among seven other completed routine tasks, the timetables for a flat-car in Alta Mexico. He could pursue this particular item Friday after hours—or he could hurry to his condo and dress for a function he had been told to attend, an open-air reception certain to feature illegal booze, fancy dress, and pliant women. Known in the crypto trade as tux and fux.

The deputy assistant director was not long plagued by indecision. "Catch you Monday, Quantrill," he murmured, and headed for his long weekend. Sometimes, he reflected, doing one's part means doing nothing.

On Saturday, Quantrill's flatcar skirted under Wild Country and was bunted onto a barge at Port Isabel. The flatcar was still unpillaged, but still at the mercy of Mexican shippers. Quantrill's security job would terminate when the dredge equipment reached Corpus Christi Bay but, to judge by the slow passage of the barge up the intracoastal waterway, that equipment might become obsolete during the trip. Tow cables parted; sand bars materialized where none were expected. By late Monday morning Quantrill was almost ready to leap overboard near one of the many islets adjoining the sandy coastline, but now at least the barge was proceeding faster than he could swim.

And the team of Howell, Cross, and Ethridge was proceeding at mach two from Ogden direct to Corpus Christi Naval Air Station. Their vehicle was an Air Force jet under Executive Verbal Order, It made a straight-in approach as if low on fuel, and a fast Navy chopper waited for them near the end of the runway. Before the USAF jet was in chocks, the trio of rovers was en route to the docks in the Navy chopper.

S & R cosmetologists had done their best on short notice. Seth Howell was bald as an egg, fat-cheeked, padded to pudginess beneath his longshoreman's outfit. Cross was blond, dapper in his business suit, and remembered to limp as he leaned on a cane that would fire shotgun cartridges. Ethridge wore the gray hair, wrinkles, and dress whites of an aging naval officer, his gymnast's body carried with military correctness. They exited from the chopper at a dead run with five minutes to spare as Quantrill's barge was warped slowly to its pier.

In S & R training, paranoia was a matter of policy. Quantrill did not see the helicopter drop behind the warehouses because he was too intent on the uniformed customs officials who strolled to their posts, each with a sidearm and shoulder-slung video terminal. Quantrill had the unsettling notion that they did not walk like customs men.

Corpus Christi was a port of entry into Streamlined America and here he might be retina- and thumb-printed on the spot regardless of the papers he carried. It was high noon under a cloudless sky with no hope whatever that he might step ashore without a confrontation, and a small patrol launch idled slowly past the barge on the bay side. Quantrill wrenched his heavy shoes off and, with a flash of foresight, placed them with his wallet and sidearm in a polymer garbage bag, trapping a considerable volume of air in the bag as he clamped it shut. The only other garbage bag was full. He emptied it onto the floor of the kiosk, thrust the partly inflated shoe bag inside it, opened the window on the bay side, dropped his bag onto the bed of the flatcar.

Through the dockside window he saw a tall portly workman in earnest conversation with a customs man. Something in the way the workman's hands moved set a small alarm chittering in Quantrill's head. He felt a shudder as the barge nudged its pier and knew that the great flat craft would grind and groan as it sought perfect alignment with track adaptors. He flowed over the windowsill on the bay side, snatched the drab garbage sack; squatted perfectly still as he squinted in hard sunlight at the patrol boat. It was starting its turn for a return pass.

Another massive shudder, then a series of metal-to-metal screeches. Quantrill made two squatting leaps, flatcar to barge and barge to salt water. He had no way of knowing whether his splash was lost in the clatter of moorage.

Gripping the neck of the bag, he did not plunge far under the surface; if anything, he had trapped too much air inside. He kept the bag between himself and the patrol craft; felt a feeble current bumping him against the flank of the barge. He opened the bag, reached inside, then saw that his head and shoulders would fit inside the filthy thing. He eased into it, tugging the neck of the bag; realized he could not haul it down farther without tearing an air hole.

Above the slap of wavelets against the barge hull he could hear the burbling approach of the patrol boat. Too late to hyperventilate now. He scissored with his legs, feeling the barge hull at his heels; let the current abrade him against it. The surface current tended to move the bag faster than his submerged body, and he treaded water to keep himself vertical. His flotation bag might pass unnoticed among other floating junk in the bay.

The silt stirred by the barge was Quantrill's ally, darkening the water to gray-green opacity. He heard the patrol craft pass fifty meters away, held his breath, felt the current quickening as he was dragged faster along the hull. The thrumm of the barge's starboard engine grew until he could feel it through his ribcage and Quantrill realized he was being drawn toward the whirling propeller. He slid the bag aside to risk a glance and saw that he was barely fifteen meters from the aft curve of the hull. The barge was twenty meters wide but ranks of steel-sheathed pilings stood, a welcoming forest, supporting the pier. He had time for four hard breaths before pushing away, abandoning his flotation, feeling the swirl of current. An instant later, a meter beneath the surface, he felt himself flung aft of the barge. He let the current take him where it would.