The Living Death (12 page)

She listened intently, and we descended the ladder together, Emilie's screams had halted for a moment. They were questioning her again. I couldn't ignore the searing pain of my leg but hate made me disregard it. While Gerda raced out of the barn back to the house, I clambered aboard the tractor attached to the four-disc farrow plow. The Russian with the belt had his arm upraised to start beating Emilie again when the child raced onto the scene.

"Stop it," she screamed. "I'll tell you where he is. He ran down into that ravine over there. He's hiding down there in it."

Vanuskin's smile was triumphant. He started for the ravine at once, gun in hand. The rest of his crew followed at his heels. I waited while they clambered down the steep sides. I wanted to give them time to get deeper into the ravine. Then I put the tractor into gear and roared out of the barn. It jounced down the steep sides into the ravine, nearly toppling over on me. I turned the disc plows on high speed and their whirring, whirling motion set up a hum. Running the plow down the steep sides of the ravine didn't do it much good, I knew, but it was either a bent plow or a broken body. I figured Emilie would prefer the former. The Russians were racing through the ravine, spread out in a horizontal line, when the crash of the tractor coming into the ravine made them whirl as one. I set the tractor on high, lifted the whirling blades about a foot and a half from the ground, and locked them in place. I lay flat on the seat of the tractor, letting my legs hang down over the back of the seat. Reaching up with one hand, I steered the tractor more by instinct than sight. I heard the shower of bullets ping into the metal of the plow and the tractor, richocheting off the frame of the plow. Too late, Vanuskin and the others saw what was happening. They tried scrambling up the steep sides only to fall back again. The plow was on them now, the whirling steel disc blades humming with their circular motion. I felt the blades as they struck human flesh and bone, heard the cutting, crunching, grinding sound and listened to the terrible screams of men being cut into pieces. It was sickening and my hand was tempted to pull back the lever stopping the whirring blades, but I thought of a woman who died because she cared about the world, of a wonderful old man crawling across the floor, of eight brilliant minds reduced to idiocy.

I lay flat and let the tractor go forward, pushing the whirling, circular blades before it. When there was silence, when the last of the broken screams had ended, I put the tractor into reverse and backed down the ravine. The blades had done their work. The scene ahead of me was not for the sensitive. I backed to the end of the ravine and climbed out.

When I reached the house, Gerda had already untied her mother, thrown a robe over her and helped her into bed. Emilie's body was still quivering, still shaking, and her sobs filled the room as I entered. She looked up at me and fright was still fresh in her eyes.

"It's over," I said. "They won t be back." I didn't need to say more. I sent Gerda to tend to the cows with orders to stay away from the ravine. Pulling the covers back from her, I let my eyes rove across Emilie's soft, full body, reddened with raised welts and ugly marks. She had her eyes closed but she reached out a hand and clasped my arm, I got towels, hot water, and bathed her tenderly with hot compresses. I kept her in bed and when Gerda returned later, I fixed dinner for us.

"My time to play nurse," I said. I asked if there was a lake nearby other than the one I'd hit when I leaped out of the train. She said there was a river to the north, about ten miles, that ran swiftly through the mountains. After midnight, I took the Volkswagen panel truck and drove to the ravine. Using a shovel and a blanket, I loaded up the remains of the NKVD group, drove them to the river and dumped them in. It was a grisly business.

I wanted a drink when I returned, just to let the fire burn away the taste in my mouth. I was surprised to find Emilie awake and sitting up in bed, waiting for me. At my question, she gestured to a cupboard where I found a bottle of kümmel. I poured two glasses and the strong flavor of the caraway seed was a welcome taste. I sat on the bed beside Emilie and, though she wore her nightgown, I could see that the redness and raised areas had subsided substantially. We finished our kummel and I felt her hand against my chest. Her face turned to me and she raised her lips. I kissed her, tenderly, gently. There was a quality about this woman that evoked tenderness.

"Stay with me tonight, Nick," she whispered. "Just let me feel your body against mine. Please." I stroked her cheek and lifted the nightgown from her. I stripped and lay down beside her, tie softness of her skin a warm and pleasant sensation. She turned to me, one full, heavy breast falling upon my chest.

"It has been long, so long, since I have lain with a man," Emilie said quietly. "I don't want you to make love to me. That would only open up passions and feelings I have long put aside. You will leave in a day or so. I know this. The hunger you would release would be too much for me to bear."

I held her close and she moved her legs against mine. I could have made love to her. She was certainly lovely enough in her own girl-woman way and her body had its own fleshy sensuousness. But I only held her close.

"Can you understand what I am saying, Nick?" she asked. "A man like you who can't afford to get involved with anyone."

"You'd be surprised what I can understand if I try a little," I said softly, cradling her head in my arms. I held her quietly and she fell asleep in my arms, a wonderfully sweet woman waiting for the happiness she deserved, waiting for someone to bring it to her. I wasn't the one. She was so right about that. I could only bring her a moment, a moment that could hurt more than help over the long pull.

When dawn came and the sun awoke us, she clung to me for a long moment and then quickly rose, grateful tenderness in her eyes.

I left that night. She drove me to a nearby town where I caught a milk train that eventually would end up in Zurich. I had a lot of dirtiness ahead yet, a lot of answers to ferret out. All the real questions were still unanswered. How? Why? When?

A man named Karl Krisst still lived untouched. We had a reckoning still due, though by now I imagined he was feeling secure again. Good. I liked that.

My first move in Zurich was to contact the AXE front there for financial arrangements for Middle Europe. I got enough money for new clothes and shoes. The dip in the lake had just about ruined every bit of paper currency I'd had on me. After making do with some ready-to-wear stuff, I debated whether to drop in on Karl-boy for a friendly visit. It could serve a purpose. It would reveal how surprised he was to see me, for one thing, and he might pull a boner or two. But then, I had an advantage now, why fritter it away? He had sicked his Russian friends on me and had heard nothing since. He'd figure they did their job. I decided to wait for dark and pay him a nocturnal visit.

As darkness fell, I took a taxi out to the address I'd gotten and had the cab stop a block away. Krisst lived in a modest private house, and I was glad I'd taken the precaution of approaching on foot. I almost ran into him as he was leaving, just managing to duck behind a tree, feeling somewhat like a character out of an animated cartoon. I watched his roly-poly figure go down the street and once again noted, as he passed a few other people, that his roundness was deceptive. He was close to six feet. He appeared dressed for at least a dinner out, perhaps a night on the town. I gave his house a careful once-over, circling it on all four sides. The lights were out. He was, I was glad to see, a bachelor. The windows were low and provided the most inviting method of entrance. I tried the ones at the rear first, out of sight of strollers passing by. Surprisingly, they were unlocked, and in fifteen seconds I was inside the house. I closed the window after me. He had also thoughtfully equipped each room of the house with softly glowing night lights. Not very much illumination but enough for a cursory examination. The living room, bedroom and kitchen revealed nothing out of the ordinary. I found what appeared to be a small study leading from the living room, closed the door and switched on a lamp. It revealed nothing out of the usual, either. ISS correspondence and financial reports made up most of the papers on the desk. I flicked off the lamp and went out into the hallway where I saw a door and a flight of steps leading to the basement. At the bottom of the stairs I found a light switch.

The light bathed a large, rectangular room paneled with soundproof wallboard. In the center of the room stood a laboratory table with a series of corked test tubes and neatly arranged vials. But it was the device lying on the table, partially disassembled, which caught my eye. A blueprint lay alongside it, and I felt my pulse quicken. I'd only seen two or three of them before, but I recognized it at once as a high-power compressed-air gun. It was one of the latest models, and suddenly tie lights were going on in my head. Compressed-air guns were the newest device for giving injections, eliminating the actual physical and the psychological pain of the hypodermic needle. The gun was pressed against the patient's skin and under extreme pressure, the injection itself, the very fluid, was shot directly through the skin into the veins. Under the extreme compression, the fluid itself became a jet-stream, a needle of fluid that penetrated painlessly and instantly. Except for one important fact, I was looking at the device that could shoot a poison or a virus or an electrical current into a man he wouldn't know it The one important fact was that the compressed-air injection guns I'd ever seen were like this one — big, heavy, unwieldly. The injection itself might be painless but you'd sure as hell notice someone using one of these things.

I was studying the blueprint of the gun and wondering about a number of small figures that had obviously been noted in pencil on the diagram. I was concentrating on the blueprint, but nonetheless I suddenly noticed the hair on the back of my hand standing up. My never-fail, built-in alarm system told me I wasn't alone. I turned slowly, to see Krisst standing at the foot of the stairs, gun in hand. The round face was unsmiling and the little eyes were darting pinpoints of bright anger. I saw that he was in his stockinged feet which explained his silent approach. It was only a partial explanation, I found out.

"I am surprised, I must admit," Karl Krisst said. "I am disappointed, too, in my Soviet friends. I thought they had done their job."

"Don't be too hard on them," I answered. "They tried. I'm hard to get rid of, like a bad penny, you know."

"You have also underestimated me," Krisst said, moving down to the floor, keeping the gun trained steadily on my belly. "You are no different than the rest of them in that respect. I have always been underestimated. I knew someone had entered my house the minute you went through the window. I have every window and door protected by an electric eye that sets off a small alarm, a buzzer, in a receiving unit I always carry with me. Of course, I didn't know it was you, Carter."

"I was right then," I said. "You are the one behind it all. You use a compressed-air injection gun."

Krisst smiled his usual unctuous smile. I was still unable to understand how he did it, though. There was no possible way he could have made use of such a big, clumsy device on Professor Caldone without my seeing it. I got my answer as he went on.

"Of course, I don't use anything as large as that. You were studying my calculations on the blueprint as I came upon you. They are reductions. I've had the entire principle reduced to the size of a book of matches or a small cigarette lighter." He held up his hand and I saw the small, square object cupped in his palm. It made a tidy — and hideous — destruction machine.

"You got him during the session at the beach," I said, realization suddenly flooding over me. The compressed-air injection gun had to be pressed directly against the persons skin. All that backslapping hid his special purpose.

"Correct," he admitted. Reducing the unwieldly compressed-air injection gun was a piece of applied science that somehow didn't fit Krisst. I couldn't see him having that land of skill or knowledge.

"Where'd you have the gun reduced in size?" I shot out.

"An old friend right here in Switzerland," he said, his smile suddenly an evil, gloating thing. "He was a leading craftsman for the watch industry. You forget, miniaturization has been a part of our precision watchmaking for generations."

"Your old friend, where is he now?" I asked, having a nasty idea what the answer would be. I was right again. The round bastard smiled that unctuous smile.

"He had a sudden mental collapse one day," he chuckled. "A real tragedy."

"Why?" I asked directly. "Why all this?"

"Why?" he repeated, his little eyes growing still smaller. "Because they needed to be taught a lesson. Yes, a lesson in humility. It was quite a good number of years ago that I applied to the International Science Scholars for membership. They turned me down. I wasn't good enough. I hadn't the credentials to belong to their elite little group. I was only a self-taught physics teacher at a private school. They looked down on me. Later, when I conceived my plan, I applied for my present position with them. They were glad to have me for that, their paid lackey, a glorified servant."

Krisst was a fifteen-carat, first-grade psychopath. It was plain to see he'd been harboring his monumental grudge all these years.

"Why only those men working with the Western powers?" I probed further. That one still eluded me.

"Those who rejected me were all men belonging to the Western powers or working with them," he answered with some heat. "The Russian and Chinese scientists did not join the ISS until some years later, under the International Science Agreement. I am about ready now to go to the Soviets and reveal myself. The world will see how eagerly they will accept me into the Soviet Academy of Sciences. They will recognize me for the genius that I am."