He leaned forward and spoke in a frank, concerned tone. “I think I can get you out of here, Mr. Hel.”
“At what cost to me?”
“Does that matter?”
Hel considered this for a moment. “Yes.”
“Okay. We need a job done. You’re capable of doing it. We’ll pay you with your freedom.”
“I have my freedom. You mean you’ll pay me with my liberty.”
“Whatever.”
“What kind of liberty are you offering?”
“What?”
“Liberty to do what?”
“I don’t think I follow you there. Liberty, man. Freedom. You can do what you want, go where you want?”
“Oh, I see. You are offering me citizenship and a considerable amount of money as well.”
“Well… no. What I mean is… Look, I’m authorized to offer you your freedom, but no one said anything about money or citizenship.”
“Let me be sure I understand you. You are offering me a chance to wander around Japan, vulnerable to arrest at any moment, a citizen of no country, and free to go anywhere and do anything that doesn’t cost money. Is that it?”
The agents discomfort pleased Hel. “Ah… I’m only saying that the matter of money and citizenship hadn’t been discussed.”
“I see.” Hel rose. “Why don’t you return when you have worked out the details of your proposal.”
“Aren’t you going to ask about the task we want you to perform?”
“No. I assume it to be maximally difficult. Very dangerous. Probably involving murder. Otherwise, you wouldn’t be here.”
“Oh, I don’t think I’d call it murder, Mr. Hel. I wouldn’t use that word. It’s more like… like a soldier fighting for his country and killing one of the enemy.”
“That’s what I said: murder.”
“Have it your own way then.”
“I shall. Good afternoon.”
The agent began to have the impression that he was being handled, while all of his persuasion training had insisted that he do the handling. He fell back upon his natural defense of playing it for the hale good fellow. “Okay, Mr. Hel. I’ll have a talk with my superiors and see what I can get for you. I’m on your side in this, you know. Hey, know what? I haven’t even introduced myself. Sorry about that.”
“Don’t bother. I am not interested in who you are.”
“All right. But take my advice, Mr. Hel. Don’t let this chance get away. Opportunity doesn’t knock twice, you know.”
“Penetrating observation. Did you make up the epigram?”
“I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“Very well. And ask the guard to knock on my cell door twice. I wouldn’t want to confuse him with opportunity.”
Back in CIA Far East Headquarters in the basement of the Dai Ichi Building, Hel’s demands were discussed. Citizenship was easy enough. Not American citizenship, of course. That high privilege was reserved for defecting Soviet dancers. But they could arrange citizenship of Panama or Nicaragua or Costa Rica—any of the CIA control areas. It would cost a bit in local baksheesh, but it could be done.
About payment they were more reluctant, not because they had any need to economize within their elastic budget, but a Protestant respect for lucre as a sign of God’s grace made them regret seeing it wasted. And wasted it would probably be, as the mathematical likelihood of Hel’s returning alive was slim. Another fiscal consideration was the expense they would be put to in transporting Hel to the United States for cosmetic surgery, as he had no chance of getting to Peking with a memorable face like that. Still, they decided at last, they really had no choice. Their key-way sort had delivered only one punch card for a man qualified to do the job.
Okay. Make it Costa Rican citizenship and 100 K.
Next problem…
But when they met the next morning in the visitor’s room, the American agent discovered that Hel had yet another request to make. He would take the assignment on only if CIA gave him the current addresses of the three men who had interrogated him: the “doctor,” the MP sergeant, and Major Diamond.
“Now, wait a minute, Mr. Hel. We can’t agree to that sort of thing. CIA takes care of its own. We can’t offer them to you on a platter like that. Be reasonable. Let bygones be bygones. What do you say?”
Hel rose and asked that the guard conduct him back to his cell.
The frank-faced young American sighed and shook his head. “All right. Let me call the office for an okay. Okay?”
Washington
“…and I assume Mr. Hel was successful in his enterprise,” Mr. Able said. “For, if he were not, we wouldn’t be sitting about here concerning ourselves with him.”
“That’s correct,” Diamond said. “We have no details, but about four months after he was introduced into China through Hong Kong, we got word that he had been picked up by a bush patrol of the Foreign Legion in French Indo-China. He was in pretty bad shape… spent a couple of months in a hospital in Saigon… then he disappeared from our observation for a period before emerging as a free-lance counterterrorist. We have him associated with a long list of hits against terrorist groups and individuals, usually in the pay of governments through their intelligence agencies.” He spoke to the First Assistant. “Let’s run through them at a high scan rate.”
Superficial details of one extermination action after another flashed up on the surface of the conference table as Nicholai Hel’s career from the early fifties to the mid-seventies was laid out by Fat Boy. Occasionally one or another of the men would ask for a freeze, as he questioned Diamond about some detail.
“Jesus H. Christ!” Darryl Starr said at one point. “This guy really works both sides of the street! In the States he’s hit both Weathermen and tri-K’s; in Belfast he’s moved against both parts of the Irish stew; he seems to have worked for just about everybody except the A-rabs, Junta Greeks, the Spanish, and the Argentines. And did you eyeball the weapons used in the hits? Along with the conventional stuff of handguns and nerve-gas pipes, there were such weirdo weapons as a pocket comb, a drinking straw, a folded sheet of paper, a door key, a light bulb… This guy’d strangle you with your own skivvies, if you wasn’t careful!”
“Yes,” Diamond said. “That has to do with his Naked/Kill training. It has been estimated that for Nicholai Hel, the average Western room contains just under two hundred lethal weapons.”
Starr shook his head and sucked his teeth aloud. “Gettin’ rid of a fella like that would be hardern’ snapping snot off a fingernail.”
Mr. Able paled at the earthy image.
The PLO goatherd shook his head and tished. “I cannot understand these sums so extravagant he receives for his servicing. In my country a man’s life can be purchased for what, in dollars, would be two bucks thirty-five cents.”
Diamond glanced at him tiredly. “That’s a fair price for one of your countrymen. The basic reason governments are willing to pay Hel so much for exterminating terrorists is that terrorism is the most economical means of warfare. Consider the cost of mounting a force capable of protecting every individual in a nation from attack in the street, in his home, in his car. It costs millions of dollars just to search for the victim of a terrorist kidnapping. It’s quite a bargain if the government can have the terrorist exterminated for a few hundred thousand, and avoid the antigovernment propaganda of a trial at the same time.” Diamond turned to the First Assistant. “What is the average fee Hel gets for a hit?”
The First Assistant posed the simple question to Fat Boy. “Just over quarter of a million, sir. That’s in dollars. But it seems he has refused to accept American dollars since 1963.”
Mr. Able chuckled. “An astute man. Even if one runs all the way to the bank to change dollars for real money, their plunging value will cost him some fiscal erosion.”
“Of course,” the First Assistant continued, “that average fee is skewed. You’d get a better idea of his pay if you used the mean.”