“Bad,” I said simply.
“Then why are you alone on this?”
“I’m not. You just haven’t seen the others.”
“Publicity could blow something then?”
“All the way.”
“Okay, I’ll go along. I’ll be damned if I don’t dig something up on this guy.” He caught the look on my face and said, “Don’t worry. We know how to ask questions too. We have our own ways and our own people. I’ll give you a call if something turns up.”
“Thanks.” I flicked my finger against Henri Frank’s picture. “Mind if I keep this?”
“It’s yours.” I looked at it again, saw the face of the one who wasn’t any more, a partially bald-headed guy with a sallow face and eyes too close together. He had a mouth like he had just tasted something sour and the expression of those who had nothing but dislike for the rest of the world. Perhaps before he would have seemed ordinary, another guy out of step with himself, fighting everything because he was inadequate for survival unless he was handed it on a platter, but now, knowing what he was really like inside, the picture fitted him perfectly. I stuck it in my pocket, nodded to Hardecker and left.
Outside the rain had lost its original fury, settling into a monotonous drumbeat that raised the salt out of the sand and laid the smell of the sea on the air. The quiet of a small town at rest was almost a strange noise in itself. Like someone waiting, I thought. It was sitting there marking time, knowing something was going to happen and almost anxious to be an unseen spectator.
I jumped in the car, made a U turn and picked my way back toward Vincent Small’s house. The time-drag was beginning to get me. Impatience made me run through the pack of cigarettes and rip the top off a fresh deck, swearing softly at the inconvenience. The whole situation was like a huge bowl of Jell-o that was liquid-hot and you had to stand by until it set before it could be handled properly. And you knew there wouldn’t be that much time allotted you.
It needed a catalyst. It needed an agent to cool it suddenly and shorten the time period. Somewhere in the night hundreds of personnel were on the hunt. A thousand technicians were running down the circuits of Agrounsky’s electronic installation looking for the bug. The night was crawling with faceless men, looking for one lone man who seemed to have removed himself from the world... and in their midst was another loner, another faceless one who might be steps ahead in the game, getting closer all the time to Agrounsky who was holding the world in his hands, trying to decide just what to do with it.
There was a light on in Vincent Small’s house, his car back in the garage. I nosed up the driveway, cut the engine and hopped out. Before I rang the bell I glanced in the window beside the door and saw him pacing the floor, talking heatedly to someone in a chair with his back to me. The figure shifted slightly and I saw the side of Claude Boster’s face, his mouth drawn tight with some fierce emotion.
Vincent Small opened the door, nodded as though he were expecting me and stepped aside to let me in. “Ah, Mr. Mann. Please join us.” A worried expression creased his forehead and he couldn’t seem to keep his hands still.
“I’ve been trying to reach you,” I said.
“Yes, indeed. I have been... out.” He waved with one hand. “This way, please.”
Claude Boster made a noncommittal gesture with his head when I walked in, looking at me with that strange stare professionals have for someone not in their field, and picked up his drink. He fidgeted nervously, squirming in his chair, sipping at his drink every few seconds.
Small said, “Can I get you anything?”
“No thanks.”
“May I ask a question then?”
“Go ahead.”
“That bombing affair at the motel... did it have anything to do with—” he glanced around and added with a helpless note — “us?”
“It was meant to take me out of the action,” I told him, “the same way those shots were supposed to remove Boster or me the other night. So, friend, it has a lot to do with you. The key factor is Louis Agrounsky and unless we turn him up soon you’d better get used to the sight of dead bodies.”
“Mr. Mann... please.”
Vincent Small gave me a glance of pathetic hopelessness and sat down on the edge of a chair, staring at his hands in his lap. “We... we’ve talked about it.” He looked up at Claude Boster who tried to shrink back into the overstuffed cushions. “It... well, begins to make sense.”
“How?”
“Louis... the way he acted. Something was wrong.”
“Did you know he was a narcotics addict?”
Once again there was that quick exchange of glances, the slight hesitation and the feeling of nervous tension in the air. This time Claude Boster wet his lips and said, “We... thought it was something like that. Vince and I... talked about it.”
“Recently?”
“No... earlier, before Louis disappeared. He was developing some peculiar traits... and we both noticed how quickly he could recover from a tense period by a trip to the bathroom. There were... other things, too.”
“For instance?” I asked them.
Small said, “I laid his jacket on the bed one time and a packet fell out. There were... well, he had a syringe and several capsules in there. At the time I assumed it was all prescribed by a physician following his accident and had no reason to believe otherwise until... well, as Claude mentioned... he began to act rather strange at times.”
“I’ll tell you how strange he was,” I said. “This man has an unusual susceptibility to narcotics. He became an addict accidentally but immediately, and it’s distorted his entire personality.”
Vincent Small’s face paled and his lips were held together tightly. “To... what extent, Mr. Mann?”
“Let me shock you... but first let me remind you that if this goes any further you’ll both find yourselves in the cooler so fast your eyes’ll cross... and you’ll be lucky because otherwise you might be dead.” I let it sink in a moment before saying, “Agrounsky holds something that can tumble this whole world. He gimmicked our ICBM system with a by-pass control that gives him the ability to activate or deactivate it. If we don’t get him before he makes his decision we’ve lost it, buddies. Either way we can all go down the drain.”
Vincent Small swallowed hard, fumbling for words. Boster just sat there staring at his hands. Slowly Small raised his eyes to mine. “Louis used to talk... about a place he had. He was very... secretive about it.”
And there it was. Close. I could feel my hands tighten and the muscles bunch up in my neck.
“Where?”
Vincent Small made a tiny negative with his head. He looked across at Boster, shoulders bent in a slump of defeat. “We... talked about it. He mentioned a few things... a fish store run by a man named Wax... Louis liked fish. He said it was perfect for what he needed... a place to think or to work out what he called... his problems.”
“And you found it?”
“No. We asked the realtors in town and saw people Louis knew but they couldn’t tell us anything. We even tried locating the fish store and the man he called Wax, but that wasn’t any good either.”
I could see everything going up in smoke. Here it was in my hands, right on top of me, yet a million miles away. But if Agrounsky had said one thing he might have said another they didn’t recall yet.