The Proteus Operation Page 14

  "Shh!" The nearest of the hooded figures cut her off with a curt warning gesture. The other stood listening for a few seconds by the door, then nodded.

  They ushered her out and over to a bathroom across the landing. One of them took the key from the lock as he pushed her not too roughly but firmly inside. "Stay in here," he murmured. "We'll be back." The door closed, and she heard the key turn. Then there was silence.

  Fritsch shook his head and looked dazed. "I don't know. . . . Maybe. But leave her out of ziss business."

  Bruno looked at him contemptuously. "You don't seem to have gotten it into your head yet that you ain't in no position to give me terms," he said. "You owe money, and the debt's overdue."

  "Ze money I can raise," Fritsch protested. "Luck has not been good zese months. . . . But I vill need a little time."

  "You don't have any time, and I need that ship. I'll be the one who says when." Bruno broke off and looked around the room, suddenly puzzled. "What the hell's happened to One-Round? I thought I told him to bring the dame here."

  Numbers shrugged. "Probably he stopped off at the bathroom."

  "What for—to decorate it? Go find him, willya, Toes. Get them here."

  Fairytoes nodded and started to leave, but as he reached the door, one of the hoods from the poolroom opened it from the other side. Toes shouldered his way past him and disappeared. Bruno looked irritated. "What now, Arch?" he asked the newcomer.

  Arch gestured vaguely in the direction he had come from. "The phones are out, Boss. I figured y'oughta know."

  Bruno scowled first at Numbers, then at Charlie. "They can't be—I just talked to Pete on the phone. I need to call him back, too. Check it out, willya?

  Arch shrugged. "I already did. They're out.

  "What about the private line in the den?" Bruno asked.

  "Ain't sure." Arch stuck his head back out the door and called up the stairway, "Hey, Mack, is the private line in the den out, too?" There was no reply. He tried again, louder. "Mack, wassamadda widdya? Ya gone deaf up there or sump'n?" Arch frowned. "Are you there, Toes?" he shouted. Nothing. He looked back inside the room. "I don't get it. Toes walked up there just a second ago."

  Bruno and Numbers looked at each other. Bruno got up uncertainly from the chair, his face suddenly suspicious. "Something funny's going on," he muttered. He elbowed his way past Arch and stood looking along the passage and up the stairs outside. A foreboding silence greeted him from the rest of the house. "Arch, Numbers . . ." He inclined his head at each in turn. "We'll take a look. Charlie, you stay here with Wally. I wouldn't want him to get ideas about taking any walks."

  They went upstairs in the direction that Fairytoes had taken. Jackets were hanging on the wall in the poolroom, a couple of half-finished drinks were standing on the edge of the pool table, and a cigarette was still burning in an ashtray. Nobody was in sight, and nobody answered when Bruno called.

  "You got a rod?" Bruno asked Numbers in a low voice.

  Numbers felt below his arm. "I left it hanging on the chair in the den," he said. Arch produced his own gun and peered warily back out into the corridor. It was empty.

  "Let's get up there. We need to collect more equipment," Bruno told the other two. "Something spooky's going on around here." He motioned for Arch to go first and positioned himself close behind, allowing Numbers to bring up the rear. Nothing stirred as they made their way cautiously back to the hall and up the carpeted stairway to the floor above.

  Arch went through the door into the den. He was already flat on his face and out cold when Bruno entered just a few paces behind. Facing him over Arch's prostrate form was a tall, menacing figure dressed in a black, hooded, tight-fitting tunic, and over it a belt and harness holding gun, knife, coiled line, and assorted tools and pouches. Bruno yelped with fear and ran back out onto the landing. Numbers had disappeared, and a second hooded figure was turning back from the banisters as the crash of something limp and heavy splintering a piece of furniture came from below. They grabbed Bruno by his shirt, bundled him back into the den, and slammed him down into the large chair at the desk. One of them jerked his head back by the hair and knocked it alternately left and right with a rapid series of open-hand slaps, then, delivered a straight-fingered jab to the V below his rib cage, knocking all the wind out of him and paralyzing his breathing.

  Bruno recovered painfully, gasping and heaving for breath. He focused his eyes to find one of the intruders lounging in the armchair by the bar, drinking beer from a bottle and eating caviar off the end of a wicked-looking, double-edged dagger. He had thrown back his hood to reveal a lean, lazy-eyed face with shaggy yellow hair and a droopy mustache, and was leering at Bruno with evident enjoyment. The other, who was standing between the desk and where Arch was lying unconscious, had also uncovered his head; he had alert, narrow eyes and high cheeks, and he looked mean.

  "And then there was one." Cassidy said. He scooped some more caviar out of the can resting on the edge of the desk and smacked his lips approvingly. "You know, you really shouldn't go getting yourself mixed up in things you're not big enough to handle, Pop."

  Bruno's jaw shook for a few seconds, but no sound came out. His face was pale, and beads of perspiration were appearing on his forehead. "Who are you? What's this all about?" he managed finally. He gulped, licked his lips, and shifted his eyes' fearfully from one to another. "Look, if I did something that crossed somebody big in town or anything, it wasn't intentional, know what I mean? We can straighten things out. There's no need for misunderstandings."

  Cassidy grimaced distastefully. He threw the empty bottle into the wastebasket and took his .45 from his belt, squinting along the barrel as he leveled it at Bruno's head. Bruno whimpered incoherently with terror. Cassidy turned the gun away and nonchalantly shot the face out of a photograph hanging on the opposite wall. "We can split the action," Bruno offered when the glass had stopped flying. "Fifty-fifty . . . Whatever . . . Anything's negotiable. I'm a reasonable man." Cassidy shot the inkwells off the desk in front of him. Evidently Bruno had said the wrong thing again. Bruno swallowed hard and looked at Cassidy strangely all of a sudden. "I know you from someplace. . . ."

  "We're from the Federal Department of Insurance Company Licensing," Cassidy told him. "Especially fire insurance. We've been getting complaints from your customers." He fired once into the bottles behind the bar, once at the mirror above, and a third time through the clock by the window while Bruno flinched at the reports and the crash of more shattering glass. "That's official notice that your license has been revoked. Uncle Sam's got a reputation to think about, and you haven't been doing a good job to help him keep it clean. Get the message-Pop?"

  Then Bruno remembered. "Those new guys by the water down in Brooklyn . . . the ones who moved into Maloney's old warehouse—you were with them!"

  "Now you're getting the message," Cassidy said.

  Headlamps from a car turning into the driveway outside lit up the window for a few seconds, which meant that Ryan had opened the gates. Then a frightened squeal sounded from just outside the door, and Ferracini came in behind Fritsch and the woman who had been locked in the bathroom. Two other girls were with them—a bubble-headed blonde clad in a negligee, and a heavily made-up redhead in a bathrobe. The blonde's eyes were bulging with fright; she looked like the one who had been doing the squealing.

  "Trust Harry to find em," Cassidy murmured.

  Bruno's eyes widened further when he saw Ferracini. "He was there, too! Look, whatever it was we walked into down there, we'll stay out of from now on, honest. I didn't—"

  "Looks like we messed up somebody's plans for a romantic evening," Ferracini said, nodding to indicate the blonde and the redhead. "I guess these come with the decor."

  "Who are the other two?" Cassidy asked. The woman was still distraught at the man's bruises.

  "Reluctant guests," Ferracini said. "We just got here before it was her turn. You don't change your style, do you, Bruno? Maybe it's time someone taught y
ou a lesson about politeness to ladies."

  Cassidy's eyes hardened. "Bruno's starting to get wrinkles around the face," he commented. "We could smooth some of them out for him. There should be a laundry room with an iron in it around here somewhere." He emitted a laugh of gloating anticipation, unfolded from the chair, and stood up. Lamson began moving forward menacingly. The blonde screamed.

  "No!" Bruno shrieked. He fell out of the chair and onto his knees, clasping his hands imploringly. "I'll back off . . . anything you say, okay? I won't be any more trouble. Just name what you want . . . anything."

  "I never thought I'd see the day," a new voice said. "Don't bother to get up, Bruno—it suits you." Johnny Six Jays came into the room, accompanied by two of his pals. Paddy Ryan was behind them. Johnny looked around and whistled. "Boy, these guys don't fool around! They've taken out your whole army, Bruno. You'd better be in a listening mood because we've got a lot of talking to do."

  "Who are these guys?" Bruno asked in a bewildered voice. "How are they mixed up with you?"

  "You're not asking the questions," Johnny reminded him. "Let's just say for now that you moved in on an operation down in Brooklyn that's a lot bigger than you'll ever understand. The people who are running it aren't pleased, okay?" That was all he'd been told; it was enough. More headlights came from the driveway. Johnny turned to Ferracini. "That'll be the rest of the boys arriving. I guess we can handle things now. If you guys wanna get along, that's okay. It'll be mainly family business from here on, anyhow."

  "Probably best," Ferracini said.

  Johnny ran an eye over the people who had arrived with Ferracini. "I know these two tramps," he said, inclining his head toward the girls. "Any idea who the other two are?"

  "They're okay—just two people that Bruno's been pushing around. Want us to take them, too?"

  "Sure, why not? . . . And thanks again."

  "Any time—our pleasure," Ferracini said. He looked at the man and the woman with him. "Do you need a ride?"

  "Yes—ve ver brought here," the man told him.

  "Come on," Ferracini said. "We'll take you home."

  CHAPTER 13

  THE REARMOST PART OF the Gatehouse building consisted of several levels of partitioned areas that the team had adapted for living quarters, recreation, and additional work space. In the room that she used as a reference library and office, Anna Kharkiovitch sat at a large wooden table covered with neatly arranged and labeled piles of newspapers, magazines, and files, conducting her ritualized daily search of the news for discrepancies from the events recorded in her own future. By her chair stood a steel cart with a bank of microfilm file drawers below and a viewer on top.

  Her face was somber as she worked. Clearly, the past they were in differed subtly from the past that had been recorded in the future they were from. It was true, as Mortimer Greene had pointed out, that the whole purpose of the mission was to alter that future, and that goal could hardly be accomplished without changing the events that had led up to it; but she was finding changes in events which could not, by any stretch of the imagination, be causally connected to anything the team had done. Surely that didn't make sense. How could anything be affected by their mere presence? Greene had been trying to appear unperturbed, but Anna interpreted this as a brave public face to avoid demoralizing the team. She had confided her misgivings to Gordon Selby, and he, too, had admitted to being far from happy about the situation.

  The papers from a few days previously carried stories of the official visit by King George VI of England and Queen Elizabeth to Canada, where they had met the five-year-old Dionne Quintuplets. Now preparations were being made for the impending arrival of the royal couple in the U.S. as guests of President Roosevelt. As had been recorded in the Proteus world, the same Choctaw-Chickasaw princess had been engaged to tell Indian tales at the planned hot-dog party at Hyde Park, and Kate Smith and Alan Lomax would be singing to entertain after the state dinner.

  Anna wondered if the visit was meant as a demonstration of Anglo-American solidarity to make Hitler think twice. If so, then whoever had dreamed up the idea still didn't understand Hitler. Even the majority of Germans still didn't understand Hitler. She had talked to Kurt Scholder since his arrival in the U.S. with Winslade, and he had admitted the failure to bring about any real changes in Britain's defense preparations so far. "It's like the Little Pigs—they're building a straw house to keep out the wolf over there," Scholder had said to her. It would have been hilarious if it weren't so frightening.

  Winston Churchill, a firm monarchist who had stood staunchly by the King's brother, Edward, in the abdication crisis of 1936, had wanted to tell the King about the existence of the Proteus mission, and to use the opportunity of the royal visit for the British sovereign personally to bring President Roosevelt into the secret. Winslade, however, had vetoed the proposal. His orders, he had claimed, were expressly to leave matters of Anglo-American relations to be handled by the appropriate people after the link to 1975 was established.

  But in reality Winslade was concerned about security, Scholder had told Anna. Although interviews in Canada in the early seventies with the King's daughters, Elizabeth and Margaret, had failed to reveal any reason for doubting the King, Winslade had remained reluctant to involve any members of European aristocracy or royalty. The network of family trees and social connections was simply too uncertain to be trusted; but he hadn't wanted to risk offending Churchill by saying so.

  It was all such a complicated business. Anna sighed and turned her attention back to the paper that she was studying. A dispute between union leader John L. Lewis and Madam Labor Secretary Frances Perkins over a new contract was reported just as had been recorded in the Proteus world; Clark Gable and Carole Lombard had announced their surprise wedding in Arizona, just as recorded; and Franco's victory parade in Madrid was reported just as recorded. But then Anna found another item that was different: In her records, General Malin Craig, the Chief of Staff of the U.S. Army, had completed his tour in August, after forty-one years of service; now, however, he had retired early, in May, and been replaced by somebody called George C. Marshall. Anna shook her head hopelessly. Proteus couldn't be responsible for something like that. There was no rhyme or reason to any of it, no pattern that she could discern. She entered the details and references into her notes and turned to another page.

  Immediately, an item in the "Crime section caught her eye under the headline TOO HOT FOR ICEMAN. The article hadn't even existed in the same newspaper from the 1939 that Anna had known. She spread the page out and read:

  The New York Police Commissioner told reporters yesterday that gangland feuding may have rid the city of one of its noted undesirables, Bruno "Iceman Verucin, long suspected of major involvement in gambling frauds and protection racketeering. According to underworld informants, Verucin has been run out of town by rivals, and his entire operation reduced to a shambles.

  The news came after an amazing assault in true-to-form "Batman" style on Verucin's heavily guarded Pelham mansion by mysterious intruders in black, who defied supposedly impenetrable defenses, walked up walls, and stormed the premises to take Verucin captive and hospitalize four of his gun-toting henchmen.

  Fifty-two-vear-old Verucin, notorious for his alleged part in . . .

  The report went on to give details of Verucin's previous criminal career and suspected recent dealings before returning to the happenings at Pelham.

  Something about the accompanying photograph drew Anna's eye back again. The face seemed vaguely familiar, but she couldn't place it. She shook her head and continued reading.

  Miss Sally Jackson, another of the guests present at the time of the incident, described them as "terrifying, like out of a comic book—you know, the guys who are always decked out in masks and capes and that kind of stuff. They were all big—seven feet, at least—and dressed in black with all kinds of things hanging everywhere like airplane pilots in movies. I guess they must have had goggles and helmets. . . . Yes, t
hat's right—they definitely had goggles and helmets. They must have parachuted onto the roof."

  It brought to mind some of the training films that Anna had seen of the Army Special Operations units. She sat back in the chair; her eyes narrowed thoughtfully all of a sudden, and she looked at the photograph again. Then she set the paper down, got up, and left the office.

  Downstairs, at the large table in the middle of the partitioned space that served as the mess area and off-duty recreation room, Cassidy picked up the cards that Ferracini had dealt and fanned them. "The trouble with Germans, Harry, is that they're all robots," he said as he inspected his hand. "They're only happy when they've got someone to tell em what to do. Otherwise they don't, know their asses from holes in the ground and they start worrying, know what I mean?"

  "I still say it's more an abdication of responsibility," Ferracini said. "Let the leader make the decisions. And if it all screws up, well, you're just the same as everyone else, so it's not your fault."

  Cassidy frowned at the cards he was holding. "Say, what is this, Harry—you been taking lessons somewhere? . . . Anyhow, they'd have been a lot better off if they'd shot the whole bunch of leaders as soon as they started getting outta line. That's what the Russians did with theirs. It wasn't their fault if the bunch they ended up with turned out to be worse than the bunch they got rid of. At least they tried to do something. You know, Harry, I kinda like Russians."

  Captain Edward Payne, the mission's doctor, industrial chemist, and officer in charge of Gatehouse security, was sitting in an easy chair in one corner. Propped on his knee was a catalogue of the New York Worlds Fair, which had opened a month previously at Flushing, on the north shore of Long Island, in celebration of the 150th anniversary of George Washington's inauguration. He and Gordon Selby planned to go to see it when they could find time.