The Doomsday Bag Read online

  I took myself over to the other corner of the room. Ten feet isn't much room, but again, there wasn't much choice. If we waited too long, when they came for us, there might be too many people to do anything constructive. Also, it was time the Bagman got home where he belonged.

  I drew my arm back. "Kanin," I said.

  "Yeah?" His voice was muffled.

  "You're a gutsy bastard, you know that?"

  "So's your Aunt Tillie. Do it, will you, huh?"

  It was all I needed. I brought my arm down in a vicious arc and followed the motion to the floor. In that interim of sight and movement, I saw the balled-up gum, no bigger than a kid's jawbreaker, shoot for the left side of the door. My aim was pretty good.

  There wasn't time to see anything else. I flung to the floor, arms overhead, my legs doubled under me. For only a second longer, the momentous silence held.

  The explosion when it came was baffling.

  It was almost a muted roar, containing thunder and pocketed violence. Maybe the fact that the door was built to open outward had something to do with it. But my ears rang, the room spun for a second, smoke, splintered wood, and flying chips of stone peppered the air with jagged hails of trouble inundating the space left. I heard Kanin let out a yelp of pain and something tore into the upper part of my left thigh. But the thunder died down and only the smoke and reverberating echoes were left as I lurched to my feet. To see Kanin staggering with me toward the new exit we had created. He had a hand clapped to his shoulder. Fresh blood gleamed through his fingers. A shard of wood had knifed into him like a dagger but he had plucked it out, cursing. I looked down at my thigh. A bit of stone shrapnel had ripped into my leg, bounced off somewhere, leaving one of those real strawberry patches. The kind you used to get sliding into second base. Kanin was beginning to look like a disaster area.

  But we were still alive and operative, and the corridor outside was visible with the door, split and blasted, lying at crazy right angles off its hinging. The powdered smoke thinned out.

  "C'mon, we've got them all up now. Let's move!"

  We did, barging out of the door like a two-man Commando team. Kanin led the way. He knew the layout. I didn't. I flung out after him, following his big running figure down a low stone corridor. All we wanted was to get out, not stop to ask questions or pick up prisoners. There was a hanging lamp of some kind and his head brushed that as he plunged by. I dodged the thing but its swinging, splashing yellow illumination reflected off tier upon tier of carefully stacked bottles. This was where the short corridor ended, widening into a very lavish, enormously supplied wine cellar. The musty smell of dried excelsior, wickered liquid stock, and antique dust filled the senses. My eyes had cleared up 100 percent now, and I completely ignored the bruise on my thigh. Just as Kanin paid no attention to his own aches and pains. With freedom close, we were like two kids being let out of school.

  "The garage," he panted. "Should be right back of this cellar. I saw some Caddies and Lincolns and a sports car when they brought me here. Jeezis, you don't suppose everybody took off and nobody heard that firecracker going off?"

  It was a thought but, like whistling in the cemetery, unreal. From overhead, beyond the rafters of the wine cellar, we could hear shouts of alarm, running feet. Within moments, as Kanin and I reached a curtained glass door somewhere behind the high tiers of bottles, the room flooded with electric lighting. Kanin grabbed the doorknob and the door didn't budge. It was locked. He swore. Now heavy shoes were murdering a stairway, unseen by us, but obviously leading down into the cellar proper. A voice shouted something in Spanish. Kanin, impelled by the situation, hurled himself like a football lineman at the curtained door. Through the filmy curtain I could see the dark outlines of a low structure, the gleam of chrome and metal. But it was dim out there. Like sunset or dusk. The shades of night had fallen fast. It was late in the day.

  As Kanin battered away, I probed on the nearest tier and grabbed an armful of bottles. Down the long aisle between the two high bins, a man had burgeoned into view. He was wearing a light suit and a dark tie, but more importantly, he was holding a long pistol, attached with a silencer. Right at his heels, another colleague. Also with a gun.

  I let two of the bottles go, sailing them in a high parabola that set them down right at the feet of the two men. They scooted back, but just as they did, the bottles crashed like a christening of an ocean liner. Red and white wine splattered, staining the wall and flanking tiers. One of the men ducked his head out, the gun hand raised. I flung another bottle. But not before he got a shot off. A cough of sound, a pffhtt of noise, and a wooden shelf near my face spit splinters and sawdust. But my aim was better this time. The long-necked bottle came down right on top of the man's head and he howled before he sprawled. I didn't stop to look. More footsteps were racing down the next aisle as if the other man had decided to circle us on the left. You could hear his shoe leather slapping concrete.

  He had and Leonard Kanin was wailing for him.

  He stopped his shouldering the door long enough to stick out a big leg. The second man with a gun dumped over like a woman. All arms and legs. Before he could get up, Kanin had lashed out with his shoe and the kick caught the man across the back of the spine. He went down and stayed down. Then Kanin got back to the door and, growling, broke his elbow through the glass, fumbling for the outside latch. He was heedless of cuts and blood now. He was operating like a relentless dynamo. In seconds the door was open and we spilled out into the dim driveway. We pounded for the line of cars whose chrome and metal hoods gleamed from beneath a low stone roof of some kind. Wordlessly, we examined the ignitions of all the cars. Kanin grunted when he came to the sports car. A firehouse-red Jaguar. It shone like a brand-new star.

  "Jeezis, what luck," he mumbled. "Key in this one."

  Even as I scrambled in, he was already pumping the motor into life. The smooth mighty throb sounded like thunder in the alcove. I kept an eye at our rear. Seeing a line of dogwood trees practically hiding a rambling, dormered mansion. It was getting darker by the second. Purple streaks and dull amber glittered faintly through the treetops. It had to be about six thirty, at least. There was no more noise from inside the house. I wondered, but only for a second more, where Felicia Carr and her friends had gotten to. It began to look like Kanin was right. The brains had all left for someplace leaving only some muscle behind. Nobody else was running out of the house behind us to block our flight. If the house had held only two gunnies, they were out.

  Kanin zoomed the Jaguar into a racing-car turn, clearing the alcove and pointing it down a slanted macadam driveway. Up ahead I could see the high metal-spike fence, the one he claimed was electrically charged to keep out trespassers. There had to be a gateman, then. An alarm system of some kind. But curiously, nothing was stirring now. The house, the green lawn, the surrounding grounds were all quiet. Too quiet. I searched in the glove compartment of the Jag for a weapon. I found a heavy flashlight and nothing else. Except the usual gasoline-station maps and a package of Kleenex. I gripped the flash tightly. It was better than nothing. We'd been luckier than two rabbits with time to multiply.

  Kanin was letting no grass grow under his wheels. The Jag gained the metal fence in two shakes, and just as the closed gates loomed no more than ten yards from the nose of the vehicle, he slammed on the brakes. I hung on. The Jag lurched and a stone pillbox to the left of the entrance disgorged a man with a shotgun. He was tall, thin, and old. He came toward us quickly on arthritic legs, the gun aimed high. He was wearing a uniform and a peaked cap that showed a title plate of some kind. Kanin swore under his breath. The gateman looked tough.

  "All right," the old-timer said querulously. "Just back that car up and go on back to the house. Mr. Ardway didn't say anything about the Jaguar, and what was all that noise back there—?"

  We didn't say a word and his curiosity brought him closer. After all, he had the shotgun and we looked every bit like trespassers and people he had never seen before. Maybe Mr. A
rdway knew how to keep up a front, too. This character looked like the old family retainer who wouldn't know if the world was blowing up right under his nose.

  "Who are you people?" he asked, his voice getting mad. He peered down at Leonard Kanin and while he was wondering how anyone could get so bloody-looking without being a troublemaker of some kind, I let him have it with the flashlight. Kanin leaned back as if to wipe his eyes of blood and I threw the flash into the old-timer's face. While he was dodging, Kanin reached out a big hand, plucked the shotgun from his fingers, and shoved him disgustedly away. The old-timer sat down on his fanny on the lawn and I got out and opened the gates. The poor old geezer was still sitting there perplexed as the Jaguar raced off in a cloud of exhaust and power. He started to yell as we drove off.

  Kanin knew his way.

  We hit the next fork in the macadam, he took it, and pretty soon we could see the lights of D.C. adrift in the gathering darkness like a sea of a million buoys. The far-off glitter and gleam of a city at dusk.

  With the wind fanning our faces and the late dusk closing over the land, I felt better than I had in a day. The battered profile of the man at the wheel was strangely still and he didn't talk much now that we had crashed out. The habits of a lifetime are hard to break, I suppose. In the lockup, faced with maybe total obliteration, he had been voluble and excitable. Almost a chatterbox. Free again, at least for the time being, he was Kanin the loner. Kanin the Bagman once more. The boy who had always made his own decisions. Even the worst one.

  "Where are you going?" I asked softly.

  "The White House."

  "It's the only game in town," I agreed.

  He shook his head, brushing at his eyes, intent on the ribbon of highway. Tall measured trees were flashing by us in waves of orderly Audubon splendor. It was a nice section of real estate. The far-off lights of Washington grew larger. There was a glow to the east. The Capitol dome. From the sky it was the most recognizable landmark in the world for pilots. Even better than the Empire State Building whose top too often, because it is so far up, is obscured by fog and clouds.

  I was thinking about a lot of things. About a man who shouted in Spanish in that wine cellar, about Manuel de Rojas, about a rich man named Walter Ardway who seemed to have financed and organized this entire Bagman scheme. Mostly I was thinking of Felicia Carr giving Kanin the package of chewing gum. Gum she should have known was mine, one way or the other. I also thought about a Jaguar with the keys left in the ignition. Except by wicked error, how many drivers do that?

  "Kanin?"

  "Yeah?"

  "Is there a registration card on your side of the car?"

  "What the hell do you—yeah, here it is—" He craned his head around to read the plastic card insert looped to the steerage on a beaded chain. "What about it?"

  "Who's it made out to?"

  He grunted. "Fe—Felicia Carr, and who cares? I'm just glad the dopey broad left her keys in the ignition."

  I let it go at that. I didn't argue with him. Despite the fact that nothing was settled yet about the Bagman business, a deep peace filled me. I felt like humming. But I didn't. Kanin wouldn't have understood. And he was a man whose whole future was still at stake. He had fumbled the football, passed it on to the wrong receiver, and the interference might cost him his life. And his freedom. Nobody knew it better than he did. I could only wonder if I was right about Felicia Carr.

  "Noon." The need to speak was weighing heavily on him. Driving a hot Jaguar that responded to his touch magically wasn't everything in the world. Other things obviously weren't going to be so easy.

  It was my turn to say, "Yeah?" so I said it.

  "When I explain to them—when I tell them—will you put in a word for me? Maybe you carry some weight with the Man. I don't know. But I loused this up so badly I'm going to need all the friends in court I can get."

  "You got one. Coming back like this and giving them the story will make all the difference in the world. Wait and see."

  "I hope to hell it does," he murmured fervently. "Didn't tell you—you did all right back there. Good moves, fine timing."

  "You managed all right yourself. You move pretty fast for a big man." He almost sounded like Rowles complimenting me like that.

  He nodded happily, said no more, and settled down to driving us back to the White House. The Jaguar rocketed like a streamlined juggernaut toward Pennsylvania Avenue. Magenta tinted the evening sky.

  The moon came out and looked just as Leonard Kanin reached the southwest gates beyond the Ellipse.

  The White House showed gray and shadowy in the night.

  And it came to me with a stunning jolt that the President wouldn't be at the White House. He would be at the Pentagon in closed conference with the Joint Chiefs. Seven o'clock. It had to be later than that now. And my absence had probably already been a subject for concern. But at least I was bringing the Bagman back. Satchel. Even if the contents of the black bag were missing, he no longer was. That had to mean something. On the plus side of the Doomsday Book.

  I didn't have the blue pass anymore, but the White House guard on the gate recognized Leonard Kanin whom he must have seen a thousand times. His jaw dropped, his eyes popped, and he broke an arm waving us on through. Even then he was phoning ahead to tell somebody the good news.

  The Bagman had returned, bloody, battered, and looking like he had fallen from the tenth floor of a building, but he was back.

  Leonard Kanin chuckled grimly under his breath at the excitement his reappearance had evoked in the guard and swung the Jaguar easily and smoothly into the parking area where wide white lines designated the official parking. He pulled into an empty spot.

  "What do you know?" he breathed huskily, his swollen eyes shining. "Home again and I like it."

  I tagged after him, right up to the front door.

  All things considered, it was a historic moment in American annals, you might say.

  Advise and Kill

  Markham met us in the Situation Room. Commander Markham of the lean figure and all the formidable fruit salad on his Navy uniform. The Chief's aide whose shrewd blue eyes and alert trim bearing masked a man who would give up his life for his President. He greeted Leonard Kanin with mingled disapproval and vast affection. Something the Bagman wasn't prepared for. The affection, I mean. He'd been alone on the important job so long, he couldn't believe his ears. But there was no mistaking Markham's covering brusqueness and gruffness. He was glad Kanin was alive and well. You can't fake a thing like that.

  I bummed one of the Commander's slim cigarettes as Kanin poured out his story of stupidity, silliness, and misery. The Situation Room hadn't changed an iota since yesterday afternoon. The armada of soft chairs and lounges, the illuminated maps and globes, the American flag and presidential seal, were intact. The polished wood paneling and the impressive files and books all shone as if they had just rolled off the assembly line. Beyond the wide windows in back of the President's desk, the Capitol dome glowed like a beacon in the dark.

  "It's too—incredible," Markham said slowly when Kanin had run down, blinking his battered eyes. "The Vice-President of the United States."

  "There's no physical proof yet," I pointed out. "Just all the signs. This Walter Ardway could be doing this just to get his man in the chair. Think about that."

  "I am thinking," Markham muttered. His fingers jabbed at the phone console board on the big desk. More than twenty buttons of all colors glittered there. "The Pentagon. I'll call. That meeting, those brass hats—they'll have to know Knain is back. Even if the bag isn't. It's after eight o'clock and—" I didn't hear the rest of what he said. The time jarred me. I had miscalculated. The D.C. climate had fooled me. I must have been pounding my ear longer than I thought. Markham pressed a button, draped himself in the President's chair, and tried not to drum his gifted fingers on the polished desk. There were no outside sounds in the big room. It was as if the world were soundproofed.

  "Give them my regrets," I said
blankly. "Tell them I was detained."

  Kanin snorted, rubbing one of his more severe bruises. A great ugly purple lump on the right side of his jaw. "I'd like to get my hands on those rats—"

  Markham waved a hand at us both, cutting us off. His eyes frowned. He looked younger and vulnerable behind the big desk. In spite of the impressive uniform, the medals, the bearing. His sandy hair was somehow very juvenile.

  "Markham here. Can you put me through to the President?"

  I lost myself in contemplation of a wall map of the country, trying to find Ishpeming among the pale greens of Michigan. I found it behind the spot marked Big Bay, just off Lake Superior. You learn something new every day. I heard Markham grate out a curse then snap something rapid-fire in a low voice at the phone. When I turned back again, his fists were balled and he was glaring futilely up at big Leonard Kanin. The Bagman was looking a little green, too. Just like Ishpeming.

  "What gives?" I asked, going back to the desk.

  "They called the meeting off. Last minute. There was a power failure in the Pentagon. They waited, but the repairs took too long. They're all on their way back here—maybe it's all to the good. But Noon, you and Kanin will have to stay under wraps, out of sight, until I warn him. Then he'll know what to say to the Joint Chiefs." He sank back in the chair, looking defeated. "God, a power failure. It's not possible. All those auxiliary switches and generators. It's incredible. Could be an accident, of course, but the way things have been going, we have to look at it with a lot of salt."

  "The moles have been working underground for a long time now," I said. "They're ready for something."

  "Those codes and patterns," Kanin mumbled, almost apologetically. "We got to get them back. No two ways about that."

  Markham rose from behind the desk. His manner of efficiency and no-wasted-moves was back with a vengeance. For a rapid second I could understand how so young a man could have risen to such an imposing rank. Command and authority were second nature to him.