“You have your orders.” The Director hung up.
Brook returned his phone to its cradle grudgingly. He felt disoriented. General Levashev’s frail body was stretched out on the couch in absolute helplessness. The old man’s eyes were shut and there was a look of weary peace on his face.
Just a peace-wanting old man.
You didn’t walk up to a dozing, peace-wanting old man and put a bullet through him. Who didn’t? People didn’t. Ordinary people. The people who spent their lives looking for peace — peace across frontiers, peace in their streets, peace from their wives, peace from their bosses, peace from the banks and the bill-senders, peace from their internal struggles... above all, that peace, the kind all the others added up to: peace of mind. It was for such people, the argument ran, that all this deceit, this plotting and counterplotting, this torture, this murder took place. It was in their interests that the skillful robots of FACE and the CIA and M.I.6 and the KGB and the rest had been created. Or so the big brains said. It was for them that the Peter Brooks of the world sold themselves to the intelligence establishment. It was for them that you crossed over and gave up your membership in the human race.
That’s what they told you. That’s what you came to believe. It might even be so. There was nothing else a Peter Brook could tell himself. It was the only justification in town. But always there was that little nag of doubt.
You were luckiest if you grew calluses through the daily exercises in indecency. The closer to the robot, the easier it became. If you achieved the ideal state you needed no justification. The act was its own excuse.
Kill Levashev.
Tug-of-war. To do it was a hard thing, because he was still in some vital part of him a man. Not to do it was an even harder thing, because unquestioning obedience was the hallmark of FACE and its brother organizations; a bit of man he might still be, but the robot part was in the ascendancy.
All this time Brook was crossing the room. General Levashev’s hands were folded laxly on his chest; he looked as if he were already lying in a coffin. Brook paused, took out his handkerchief, and picked up Krylov’s pistol and his own; his own he returned to its shoulder holster, Krylov’s he gripped through the handkerchief. The weapon he now held was Levashev’s, but he thought of it as Krylov’s.
He went up to the dozing old man and stopped at the precise distance which had separated Krylov from Levashev when Krylov had got off his shot.
He raised the pistol.
Levashev opened his eyes.
“You know,” the old man said. “You have known all along.”
Brook was startled. “What?” he said.
“I see,” the old man said. “I see you do not.” He was looking not at the muzzle but at Brook’s face. “You have just been ordered to kill me, Mr. Brook?”
Brook said, “Yes.”
“I think—” Levashev raised his head slightly “—I think you do not wish to. Yes. It is in your face, Mr. Brook. Krylov had no hesitation. But you are disturbed. Why, Mr. Brook? Is it because I am an old man?”
“There’s nothing to talk about,” Brook said roughly.
“But there is. It was your superior on the telephone who gave you the order, yes?” Struggling, General Levashev swung his feet to the floor. Brook stepped back to adjust the distance. “This leads me to believe that he has just discovered why I am here. At first glance it would seem to be that. But one learns to look beyond the obvious.”
“Sorry, General. No more time.” His finger contracted.
“Wait! Do not begrudge me a few moments. It is my final opportunity to analyze an event for what lies behind it. Do not deny me this.”
“Sorry.” But Brook did not pull the trigger.
The old eyes went to the weapon. “My pistol, not yours,” he said thoughtfully. “Why? Why indeed. Follow the logic of this, please. Krylov used my pistol to wound me. Therefore you have been ordered to finish me off with the same weapon. It falls into place. From the beginning your Director knew that Krylov was not a genuine defector, that he was being sent here to assassinate me. It follows, then, that your Director knew even more. From the beginning he knew why I had defected.”
“I don’t know,” Brook said. “I don’t care.”
“Ah, Mr. Brook, that is not so. You care very much.” And there was the old man incredibly propelling himself from the couch and plunging toward Brook, hands extended like claws. Brook stepped back and squeezed off three shots: one, two, three, the first in the head, the second in the chest, the third in the abdomen. The old man jerked with each impact. The top of his head came off in a bloody bean curd, roses bloomed rapidly on his chest and abdomen. Then he fell on his face.
The old man’s right leg twitched twice like a lizard’s on a dissecting table. It stopped.
Brook stooped to feel the neck.
Then he went to the telephone and dialed the gatehouse.
“Yes,” the Director said, looking at Brook, “I believe I will.”
Brook had asked out of politeness; everybody knew that Holloway didn’t drink. Maybe he was a secret lush. You would almost have to be in his job. Correction: I would have to be in his job. “With or without, sir?”
“On the rocks.”
Brooks poured and delivered the drink to the lemon-yellow plastic easychair and Holloway. The Director took it and held it. So he had said yes out of politeness. That was even more startling than the secret-lush theory.
“Thank you,” Holloway said. Mirabile dictu. It had been big, all right.
Gone — or concealed — was the coiled spring. Holloway sat back in the easychair with every evidence of relaxation. His icefloe eyes even held a certain... not warmth, but a lesser chill.
“Have a good air trip?” Brook asked. They were in the same motel Brook had used on his first trip to Albuquerque to talk to Levashev.
Holloway looked puzzled. “They’re all the same,” he said. He glanced down at the glass in his hand and leaned over to set it on the night table. Brook sat down on the edge of the bed and tasted his drink. “I suppose you’re wondering, Mr. Brook.”
“Frankly, yes, sir. You don’t usually visit the scene.”
“This was of unusual importance. I had to be sure you set it up this morning convincingly. So far everybody appears convinced Krylov did it.”
“No problem. The locals, the guards in the gatehouse, swallowed my story in one gulp.”
“So it seems. But before you dislocate your arm patting yourself on the back, Mr. Brook, I point out that Krylov got away from you.”
“From everybody, sir,” Brook said, piqued. “I didn’t set up the security on that rancho. Krylov is one of the best.”
“We’ve got to put the arm on him before he gets out of the country.”
Brook put his glass on the floor with a bang. “If you don’t mind, Mr. Holloway, I’d like to be let in on exactly why it will be better. What in hell’s been going on?”
The Director actually smiled. “Are you slowing down, Mr. Brook? Think now. Why did I order you to go ahead with Krylov when you reported from Toko that your cover was blown?”
“Because,” Brook said bitterly, “agents are ten kopeks a dozen.”
“Hardly,” Holloway said. “Agents cost the government forty-two thousand dollars a head before they’re trained and ready for assignment with FACE to my satisfaction. I don’t say I haven’t thrown my agents to the wolves on occasion, Mr. Brook, but the sacrifice is always carefully weighed against the benefits. In this case you and Mr. Lopez were expendable, valuable as you are. Also, knowing that Krylov’s real mission was to kill Levashev, I could count on his completing his fake defection whether you had blown your cover or not.”
“I guess I am slowing down. I don’t understand any of this. From the way things have turned out, you wanted Krylov to kill General Levashev. For God’s sake, why?”