They weren’t ever out of money. They had it by the bucket load!
I only knew three things for sure. One: Bury was going to have Heller killed, whatever else Bury was up to. Two: Soltan Gris was going to be executed if Heller was. Three: Earth population was going to be slaughtered if they interrupted Heller’s communication line and I, right now, was part of that population!
I started to ask Faht if there was a good mortuary in Afyon. At least I could have a decent funeral. But I didn’t even dare say that.
I slogged through the long, long tunnel to my room. My future looked even darker than the tunnel, and no room at the end of it — just a tomb, even an “unknown grave.”
Chapter 6
Without hope, I watched my viewscreen as Heller entered the Silver Spring, Maryland, Howard Johnson Motel. I should have been relieved, for it meant that, with luck, I myself could end, for a few hours, the marathon of sleepless vigil he had been putting me through.
He wasn’t looking behind him as he should have. He didn’t scan the desk or waiting area for suspicious figures. He was taking no precautions any normal agent would take.
He simply clickety-clacked up to the desk, told them he wanted a room for the night, laid down thirty bucks and wrote his new car license number, plain as day, on the registration form — he didn’t falsify it or even make it illegible. And then he spurred me into near fury.
With a flourish, he signed the register, “JOHN DILLINGER!” He even put the exclamation point on it! A fat lot he’d learned at FBI headquarters: John Dillinger was one of the most famous gangsters of the 1930s. Pure sacrilege!
He threw his bags carelessly in his room as though he hadn’t a care in the world. He washed up and soon clickety-clacked outside — not even looking into the many shadows — walked around the building and came into their restaurant.
Heller sat down. An elderly waitress promptly came over and told him he was in the wrong seat. She made him move to another booth in the corner with a flat white wall behind him. She fiddled with the lights until he was totally illuminated. And he didn’t even register that she was putting the finger on him! He just busily puzzled away at the menu. And a Howard Johnson menu has nothing on it to puzzle about: they’re all the same, numbers and pictures, from coast to coast!
The elderly waitress had gone off but now she returned. She took his baseball cap off his head and put it in the seat beside him, saying, “Young gentlemen don’t eat with their hats on.”
“I’ll have a chocolate sundae,” said Heller.
She stood there and she said, “You will have a Number 3. That’s green salad, fried chicken, sweet potatoes and biscuits. And if you eat all that, then we will talk about a chocolate sundae.” She imagined Heller was going to protest. She said, “I have boys of my own and you are all alike. You don’t realize you have to eat good food to grow!”
She didn’t fool me. She had for sure put the finger on Heller for someone. Helplessly I wondered if it would be a bullet or knife or arsenic in the chicken. Maybe, I thought, with a faint stir of hope, it was just a finger to identify. But she had certainly done a workmanlike job and a beautiful cover-up. One comes to learn the hallmarks of a real agent.
The food came. Heller peered about at other plates to see what others were eating. Then he seemed reconciled and fell to, even doing a creditable job of handling his utensils. He even picked the pieces of chicken up and ate them with his fingers, a thing he would never have dreamed of doing on Voltar! But although he was absorbing culture, he was also making mistakes. I realized that in D.C.; and here, he was talking in an Ivy League accent. He thought, apparently, that he was out of the South and this wasn’t so. Maryland is as south as the fried chicken he was eating. He wouldn’t be in New England unless he went just north of New York City. He was too crude and rough in his nonexistent command of tradecraft.
He had finished his meal, wiped the grease off his mouth and fingers when his attention was attracted by a movement on the other side of the room. It was hard to see as the lights were so strong in his eyes. Just a shadowy figure.
Then I froze. The figure had something held before its face. Was it a gun?
There was a bright blue flash! It was extremely brief.
My viewscreen went white with overload!
Then there were black spots dancing on it and I could not see even what Heller saw, if he saw anything.
The scene cleared. The black spots faded. And Heller was just sitting there, looking into the room. There was no figure there now.
The waitress came to him. “My, my. You ate it all. You have been a good boy, so you can order your chocolate sundae.”
“What was the flash?” said Heller.
“Oh, the cashier’s desk lamp just blew out. Did it hurt your eyes?” And with motherly concern she rearranged the lights near him so they would not shine in his face. Sure enough, the cashier was fiddling with her desk lamp.
Heller got and finished his sundae, paid his check with a generous tip and went clickety-clacking off around the building to his room, once more not even looking in the shadows. I was dealing with an idiot!
In his room, which he had entered without a fast door-swing-back and sudden spring, he did not check his baggage to see if it had been tampered with. He simply adjusted the air conditioning — no inspection for a gas capsule — and sat down in an easy chair and read the drug book again.
He did something then which put me into an idea conflict. On the one hand, he must NOT be killed until I had the platen. On the other hand, he would HAVE to be killed if he really penetrated what our Apparatus Earth base was all about.
Heller got up and found two ashtrays. He turned out the right-hand pocket of his jacket into the first and the left-hand pocket into the second. He was carrying DRUGS!
I couldn’t understand it. Then I realized he simply had taken a small handful out of each of two jars at the FBI drug lab!
He opened up his suitcase and took out a little vial. It only had a tiny amount in it, a few specks of powder. Then he took out another vial and it, too, had a tiny amount in it.
There actually had been drugs in his suitcases when the DC. policeman searched them! Microscopic amounts but drugs all the same! Where had they come from?
He inspected the vials. Then he put the contents of vial one into the ashtray over at the edge. He put the contents of vial two into the second ashtray over at the edge.
He went over to the light and held ashtray one to his eye.
The granules were suddenly HUGE!
It was Turkish opium!
He did the same with ashtray two.
It was Turkish heroin!
Then he went over to the long French doors to a porch which served as the motel room window and with a bit of fiddling got them open.
He took a book of matches and lighted one. He dropped it in the ashtray. And, of course, the opium began to burn and smoke like mad.
He coughed and put a plastic table mat over it.
He lit the heroin the same way.
He coughed some more and put a mat over the ashtray to put it out.
The room went sort of wobbly for a moment on my screen. Naturally. He had had a whiff of opium smoke followed with a whiff of heroin smoke.
Heller went outside on the balcony and took a lot of rapid breaths of fresh air. Then he ran in place a bit, breathing noisily. Of course, the wobble in the view cleared up.
He went back and dumped both ashtrays in the toilet,
washed them, washed out the vials, thoroughly dusted out his coat pockets and put everything away.