The Vulcan Disaster

“My father... look at him. He died during the night. When he died, the power that I have effectively wielded ever since his stroke two months ago fell legally into my hands. Look at him. He has been helpless, senile, unable to speak or communicate; meanwhile, our organization has...”

Organization? Was this Alexandra Komarova speaking? Could it be the same woman — the way she was when she wasn’t bombing herself out on drugs every night of her life? I leaned heavily on a panel, holding my aching side...

...And felt the panel give. And heard the voices grow louder.

“Alexandra, you can’t mean this. We had a signed contract. We...”

“Shimon, don’t be a fool. Put that thing down and leave the ship this moment. I give you my word that if you leave right now I will forget this incident, and...”

I pushed the panel open, slowly. It was almost as big as I was; I slipped through silently, gun at the ready, watching the two of them through the curtains that surrounded the old man’s bed. I’d come out inside the curtained canopy, and I was gambling on their being unable to see me. There was a strange smell in the air; I bent over the old man’s face and sniffed. The same burnt-almonds smell; she hadn’t taken any chances on the old man getting better or, worse, recovering.

“No,” Shimon was saying. “No, you are not going to get away with this. Perhaps I... perhaps our movement is doomed. Perhaps not I have two days to move them out of the area, covertly or otherwise. At any rate, you yourself are unlikely to see any of it. You will not survive the night.” His voice was tight, controlled. I could see the grim determination on his face as he spoke, the businesslike attitude of the .357 Webley he held in his trembling hand.

“No, Shimon, don’t...” Too late, she saw how serious he was. She shrank back against a tall bureau, one hand held up in a puny gesture of self-defense. “Please, I...”

There was a roar of gunfire: loud, deafeningly loud.

Shimon’s body twitched twice in a grotesque dance as the two heavy 9mm parabellum slugs hit him amidships, from the side opposite me. His body rammed into the heavy posts of Komaroff’s bed and slipped to the floor; miraculously, the curtain held.

The man with the black eyepatch and the missing arm stood in the open doorway, holding the big PI5 pistol at the same oblique angle across his body, his body tall and erect and military-looking. He hadn’t changed a bit since Saigon. “Alexandra,” he said, “you are losing your effectiveness. How could you let a man like this get the upper hand with you this way?” His voice was deep and harsh, and still had that touch of strange accent. Well, all the places he’d been in the last thirty years, he’d be sure to have a funny accent by now. A bit of this, a bit of that. Particularly if his English had been picked up on the run — in places like Switzerland, Bogota, Buenos Aires, Syria, Lebanon, from people who spoke English with an accent themselves.

“No,” he said again, looking at her with distaste, “you have grown unreliable. Poisoning the old man... did you think there would be no inquiry? You are in Greek waters. Even if you buy off the local magistrate, can you buy off the press? Those damnable drugs you take, they have weakened your mind.” He made no move to step into the room, standing there in the doorway in that odd military stance, his face dark with anger.

“But Kurt... darling... we have won. We have...”

“Two corrections, my dear. One, we have not won. I have won. You no longer figure in the picture. Two...”

“Kurt, no. No, please...”

“Two...” he said. A strange half-smile flitted across his face. “But no, I suppose the second item does not matter now.”

And he pulled the trigger, once, twice. The first bullet blew her brains all over the curtain; the second one was just tossed in there for meanness. It threw her heavily against the bed-curtain and this time the canopy gave.

I gave him one quick glimpse of me standing there in the wet suit, and then I shot the gun out of his hand. The 9mm slug socked the big pistol right at the front sight; a poor enough shot, all in all, but it jarred his hand enough to make him drop it. He thought of bending over — just once. I fired off another round at the gun on the floor and knocked it out of his reach. He straightened back up again.

“Ah, yes,” he said. “It would be... I suppose it would be Mr. Carter, wouldn’t it? I might not have known if it hadn’t been for the meeting in Saigon. Finding you both there — and in close association with Corbin, too — and here too... no, that would be too much of a coincidence, wouldn’t it? Carter it is.”

“Yes,” I said. “Just don’t move a muscle. Keep talking and don’t move a muscle.”

“All right.” There was a thin smile there. He was flexing his one hand; I’d jarred him pretty badly, and it must have hurt. “I... you owe me a life, you know. I saved yours in Saigon. I wonder if I should have done so, now. Perhaps I should have shot both you and Corbin. Perhaps...”