Shoot It Again, Sam Read online

  He was coming down the walk toward me, about fifty yards from the base of the Memorial. He was easy to spot because he was very nearly a giant. I've seen a lot of basketball players who look like that in a flock of people. The Chinaman did, too. He was head and shoulders above everybody. And he wore a seersucker suit with pink lines running up and down. And he wore no hat. As the yardage between us dissolved with the long strides he was taking, it was also easy to see that his right ear was missing. The left one stuck like a flap from the side of his head. Since he was so very thin, his incredible height made him look like a telephone pole walking. And he came on, smiling from ear to no ear, his face an unwrinkled, tight mask of placidity. That reminded me of somebody—but only for a second—and then the image was gone because the Chinaman had loped up to me, stuck out his hand in greeting and was vising my mitt.

  He stared down at me, still grinning.

  I hadn't been seeing things. He was tall.

  My eyes just about made his chin level.

  My immediate impression was that he was very young. Too young to be anybody important in an espionage hierarchy. Or any kind of big deal spy complex but I still wasn't thinking too clearly.

  "Ah," he said in a low but very plain singsong, "Mister Noon!"

  I nodded. "Mister Too?"

  He nodded. "We will talk here. Two old friends who have run into each other while sightseeing."

  "Okay. Talk."

  He placed a hand on my shoulder and squeezed it warmly so that anyone watching us, who cared to or were the least bit interested, could have easily pictured us as very old chums.

  "From this moment on, Mister Noon, you are on your way. At the first opportunity, you will do the thing you have come to do."

  "Sure," I said.

  His eyes glittered in the smooth mask of his face.

  "You will not be going back to the motel. It has been arranged. You will see your lady friend again later. For now, the operation is in motion. It is as inevitable as the night following the day."

  "Philosophy, Mister Too?"

  "Fact, Mister Noon."

  I restrained a polite yawn because, of course, I didn't know what he was talking about. I didn't care very much, either.

  All around us, the tourists and passersby straggled on up the path toward the white obelisk still trying to gleam in the dying daylight. It might have been a late afternoon in October instead of June. Charles Too stared down at me some more and then the ghost of a tragic, almost defeatist smile bent the corners of his mouth. I blinked. The expression was so unexpected. Uncalled for.

  "You look funny, Charles," I suggested.

  His shrug, as thin as he was, seemed to dislocate his gaunt shoulders. And the smile didn't go away.

  "When a man has but a few seconds left to live, Mister Noon, he can be forgiven for smiling, can he not?"

  "I don't know what the hell you're talking about," I said.

  "They are coming, Mister Noon," Charles Too said. "Even now as we stand here talking. Look over there—"

  He pointed and I looked.

  Suddenly, an enormous sense-memory overcame me. I felt like I was reliving some exceptional moment in my life. Something I had been through before. The feeling was uniquely upsetting. And puzzling. I stepped away from the tall Chinaman named Charles Too and went for the shoulder-harnessed .45 at my armpit. Too late, I remembered I had left the Arva Motel without it. Now why in hell had I done that?

  The sense-memory was the sight of two grim-faced civilians in porkpie fedoras and nice business suits coming toward me and the tall Chinaman on the dead run.

  They weren't using the curving stone pathway, either.

  They were bulling across the wide, green lawn at right angles from where we stood, as if they had both come charging out of the copse of green shrubbery behind us, along the outer base of the monument proper. They were moving fast, their feet flying and both men had their right hands up. Guns jutted from those hands and seldom have I seen two faces more likely to make use of gunfire as an answer to all problems of protocol, dispute and differences of a way of life.

  Gunless, I didn't know which way to move.

  Charles Too wasn't. And he did have some idea about a plan of action. And somehow I knew what his tragic smile had meant.

  He fell back, pawed at the inside of his seersucker jacket, produced a long-nosed, sleek pistol of some kind and began to blast away. I hit the ground, rolling away from him. Old instincts are hard to break. And with four shots ripped off, Charles Too whirled and began to spring away from the pathway, toward another thick copse of shrubs on the right side of the monument area.

  He never made it.

  The last thing I remember about him was the way his one-eared head jerked and bobbed on his thin shoulders as a combined rattle of gunfire drummed into his tall body as he sprang across the lawn. The two grim-faced civilians behind me had opened up on him with all they had. And it was plenty good enough.

  Charles Too sprawled on the green grass, rolled a few feet more and lay quite still. Somebody up near the monument screamed like a banshee and after that, I could hear the frightened, almost mewing whimper of a small child suddenly crying for his Mommie.

  Everything went too fast, after that.

  Like a kaleidoscope of changing colors, scenes, sights and sounds. The Washington Monument reeled, the multiple flags swirled, the grey skies looked more leaden than ever and a dizzy sense of mad ideas, quick images and reversed reflexes took over me.

  Rough hands were pulling me to my feet. Rougher voices were grating in my ear. Along with all the screaming and yelling and unclear, out-of-focus happenings. I was riding on a cockeyed carousel.

  The two grim-faced men, guns smoking, were crowding me, buffeting me around between them, as if they were bookends and I was an unruly volume trying to break away. I fought for outer air.

  And then, the topmost totem of unreality, fell right into my sanity. The closest face to me, big, red-skinned and freckled with blue eyes targeting in on me, wildly, suddenly, opened its mouth and out poured the very last straw for my weary consciousness:

  "For Chrissakes—it's Noon. That one. The Chief's missing man. Let's get him the hell out of here before the locals show up—"

  And that, boys and girls, is how I fell into the not-so-tender hands of the Secret Service.

  The Secret Service of the United States of America.

  The men sworn to uphold, protect and preserve the life of the President of the United States.

  From all comers, foreign and domestic.

  And God alone knows what else.

  " . . . to hell, Sharpe. Or to glory. It depends upon the point of view."

  Errol Flynn as George Armstrong Custer in

  They Died With Their Boots On. (1942)

  MAN

  □ The room was one I had been in before.

  The Situation Room.

  I couldn't quite place that other time, that other occasion, that other reason for being in that room but it was all so familiar. The red-skinned, freckle-faced Secret Service man and his partner, who had whisked me away from the green world of the Washington Monument and the silent corpse of Charles Too on the damp grass, had transplanted me to another world. I had a dim recollection of a racing Lincoln, paved streets, the solemnly fixed image of the White House standing back from Pennsylvania Avenue in all its historic matter-of-factness. Then an elevator somewhere inside and a quick, quiet trip upstairs. And then finally, a hush, a carpeted stillness of polished floors, polished walls and shellacked and varnished secrecy. And very suddenly, I was standing in the Situation Room, a room that very probably had not changed since my last visit so long ago. When was that? I couldn't really remember. Nor could I piece together the luxury and importance of my surroundings. It was a room in which Eisenhower had stood, Kennedy had planned a bright new world; a place where Nixon had grappled with an awful period of history. And now the new Man was here. The one who had inherited the entire world of problems. A
nd complex machinations to keep a globe spinning peacefully on its axis.

  The two Secret Service men flanked me as they quietly led me into the heart of the room. The elevator doors behind us had slid shut with a hiss of sound. Like a velvety snake coiling across the floor.

  It was a wide room, high-ceilinged, with an armada of soft chairs, steel filing cabinets and a woodsey, outdoorsey motif of browns, mahoganys and burnt umbers to underline a generous scheme of masculinity and power. There wasn't a frilly thing in sight. Not so much as a white bit of fluff. With all that, adding to the scene and perhaps overpowering it, were illuminated wall maps, huge globes on pedestals, as well as the flag of the United States of America and the Presidential Seal, riding tandem on the back wall just behind a large, glass-topped mahogany desk which was about as neat and orderly as any desk can be. The picture window was red-draped, facing the West and I could see the Senate Office Building lit up in the gloom. The Capitol Dome, a bit to the left, glowed like a beacon against a foggy sky. There was another glow out there on the panorama—the Treasury Building. Another changeless feature in the Great Society, the American way of life.

  The Man was seated at the desk when we came in.

  He wasn't smiling. And he didn't extend his hand in hello. Briefly, his eyes swept over me and then very calmly he tilted his handsome head toward the elevators.

  "Leave us," he said very distinctly. "I want to talk to Mr. Noon alone for a few minutes."

  "Chief—" the freckled Secret Service man protested in a respectful but slightly angry voice. "I wouldn't chance it—"

  "I would, Tommy. Mr. Noon and I are old friends."

  I just stood there, staring at him, trying to read his face, trying to assort a dozen different thoughts in my own mind. I barely heard Tommy of the Secret Service and his partner, make their grudging departure. The elevator doors hissed again. In the hush of the room, it was a kind of ominous sound. The Man remained seated at his glass-topped desk. Sitting back in a leather contour swivel chair. He raised an arm and motioned me to a chair.

  "Sit down, Ed. It's been a long, long time."

  I nodded and sleepwalked into the chair closest to the desk. The polished glass top seemed to throw off reflections. I sat down and leaned back in the chair and closed my eyes.

  His voice floated across the room at me.

  "Are you all right, Ed?"

  There was genuine concern in the voice but it was a controlled kind of worry. He wasn't just being polite, though; I could feel the difference in spite of the cloudy scenery of my thinking. I was suddenly trying to hold onto something. An idea, a face—and I couldn't. My mind was full of sudden flashes of the rounded Lorre face of Dr. Hilton asking me questions about the movies. And Brigid O'Shaughnessy biting her red lips with a pink tongue as I made love to her in a narrow motel bed. And the faces of Gary Cooper, Marlene Dietrich, Gable, President John F. Kennedy and Bogart—

  I opened my eyes and took a deep breath.

  The President was still watching my face.

  I nodded, indicating I was fine.

  He picked a golden ball pen from somewhere on the desktop and began to fiddle with it, almost mechanically. But his voice and his eyes kept after me.

  "Where have you been, Ed?"

  I shrugged. "Oh, around." My voice sounded far away to me.

  "I see. With Dan Davis?"

  I frowned. "Dan Davis?"

  "Or his body. Or God knows—" Suddenly, the President forgot about the golden pen, rocked forward in his chair and pyramided both hands as he leveled his keen gaze at me across the horizon of his knuckles. For a sudden flash of awareness, I recognized the trouble and worry in the most famous face in the country. His eyes had a haunted look.

  "Ed, we've been down the road too many times to play games with each other. I don't know where you've been or what you've been doing. Something's wrong with you. I can see that. But, Ed—hear me out. When you disappeared off that train and Davis disappeared too—coffin and all—" He shuddered. "I think you can realize what a position I've been in around here. The Security people insist I blew it. By calling you in. I didn't give your cover away. That's still our little secret. But, Ed—" His tone was nearly a plea now. "You've been gone three whole weeks. We lost track of you. You, the coffin, Davis—not a trace. Like the earth swallowed you up. I have to have some answers for a lot of people, Ed. Answers only you can give. And right now. Today. You understand me, Ed?"

  "Yes, Chief."

  "Good. Forgive me. Drink? You look like you could use one."

  "Yes," I said. "Scotch, please."

  He fairly leaped from behind the desk, obviously satisfied I was about to tell him everything. Of course, I was about to do no such thing. I didn't have the foggiest notion what he was talking about. Dan Davis? Coffin? Train? Disappeared? He must have been talking about two other guys. Either that or the Ed Noon character I was impersonating was simply a dead ringer for me. But it didn't matter, naturally. I was very well satisfied. I was alone with him in the Situation Room. The Secret Service men were gone. Any bodyguards he might have had on tap were nowhere to be seen. I had a clear field.

  Suddenly, it was all very crystal clear what I was supposed to do. My assignment had very quickly materialized and magnified in the dark areas of my thinking.

  His back was to me.

  He had gone to a sideboard of some kind; a wooden panel which dropped out from a wall niche and there he was busily mixing drinks for both of us. He was still talking, too. Saying how glad he was to see me and how worried he had been and his firm, enthusiastic voice seemed to vie with the clink of ice and glasses and the metallic click of a chrome decanter of some kind. I drifted off to one side of the desk and I was an automaton. I might have been standing to one side, watching each of my own movements, marveling at how skillfully and professionally I was executing them. It was like something seen through a glass, all too clearly.

  While the President had his back to me, I moved toward him with smooth gliding steps. When I was no more than two feet from him, he started to turn, extending a tall glass of Scotch for me. It was at that precise moment that I drew back my right leg and propelled my black-and-white Oxford shoe toward the fleshy part of his left thigh. Even as I did so, I was finally aware of the tiny row of jagged needles, barely jutting from the blunted nose of the Oxford. I somehow seemed to know that the needle tips were saturated with enough poison to have killed three men.

  It was all so simple, really.

  My assignment.

  I had come to kill the President of the United States.

  " . . . if that were true, Mr. Byam, I would have

  found you dead!"

  Charles Laughton as Captain Bligh in

  Mutiny On The Bounty. (1935)

  SPADE

  □ There can't have been very many men who had been hit by a President of this country. I doubt very much if Lincoln or Roosevelt or even Fillmore Hyde went around slugging people. It just is not in the protocol books as a recommended way for the First Man of a nation to behave.

  Even so, the President—this one—hit me.

  Hit me hard.

  And I wasn't ready for him. Because I had foolishly imagined in my scheme that he hadn't at all tumbled to my troubled mind and weird party manners. I must have been a goggle-eyed spectre of my old self at that. The President had known me all too well. Which is probably what saved his life. And kept me from being an assassin of the worst kind.

  In any case, he was ready for me. Oh, was he ready.

  As my secret weapon shoetip shot toward his thigh, he very adroitly dodged, swiveling his body like a broken field runner and deftly jumped to one side. My foot jabbed harmlessly by and I staggered because I made no contact. Then the Man hurled his drink into my face, glass and all. I caught it flush, the ice, stinging gin hitting my eyes and the glass thudding off my chin. I kept moving somehow, still caught up in the vortex of whatever it was that was propelling me into an act my own volition had no consci
ous part of. I've rough-and-tumbled too many times in too many places to be baffled on my very first try at a target.

  But the Man was no First of May, either.

  He was as tall as I was and even though he had about ten years on me, he had kept in condition with his golf game, isometric exercises and general good health. Also, he had always been one of those alert, quick men who can respond to danger, both academic and actual, with easy reflexes that never got stalled by shock, surprise or weak-kneed wonder. He had starred on the football field in his Dartmouth days and it wasn't hard to believe, now.

  It was then that he hit me.

  A bunched fist, slugging projectile that landed somewhere on my left jawbone. My head rang, my eyes clouded and I was careening backward, away from the desk, across the thickly carpeted floor until a chair cut my legs in half and set me down on the floor.

  Like a mechanical idiot whose brain and nerve centers are controlled from some remote distance, all I could think of was my shoe. The jagged, needled tip with all the poison in its teeth. I sprang erect, head still ringing and shook my head. Then I danced toward the target near the desk. The tall man who was bobbing and weaving, hands outspread in the approved self-defense karate style. I saw the famous face through a haze of insanity. It was pale, now, the eyes fixed in an expression of fear and wonder. I must have looked like some kind of mad ghoul. The President backed away from me. Warily, moving slowly but nimbly, keeping his body well away from the menace he obviously saw in my shoe.

  I was hardly breathing. Like some wound-up toy, all of my attention and muscled coordination was focussed on the man just before me. And he was ever just beyond my reach, no matter how many times I kicked out with my foot, lashed toward him with the shoe. In a short, deadly span of time—seconds, probably—the Situation Room had become an arena. A hushed, ominous combat area. A battleground between a private citizen and the most important man in America. Somebody, someplace, somewhere, had to be laughing their heads off.

  The Man backed away steadily, working his way around toward the polished wooden floor of the foyer that led out to the private elevator. I kept him in sight, slowly cutting away the precious distance between us. I was moving like a robot. Without wasting breath, energy or will power. I saw his eyes jump once; an electric something of recognition but I was too intent on reaching him and killing him to pay much attention. I was a soulless body with one fixed plan of operation, one raison d'etre of sheer improbability.