Shuttleport, Venner's people will take over there.'
The Wobbly organizer's lips were pale.
It was then the phone screen buzzed. Mary Ann, in a daze, went to it. She said blankly, 'It's Ron, at the hospital.'
Billy got it out first. 'How's Forry?'
But Mary Ann was listening, shaking her head as though in disbelief. Finally, she switched the screen off.
She turned back to them and said simply, 'He—didn't make it. And then, 'It wasn't a heart attack. It was murder.'
'It couldn't have been,' Roy blurted. 'I was right there!'
Mary Ann said emptily, 'Something long, very thin, very sharp. Something like an antique woman's hatpin. Stuck up through the diaphragm, perforating the heart and flooding it with blood.'
'He would have yelled,' Les said in utter disbelief.
She said, 'Maybe. But from what the doctors told Ron, at first he'd only feel mild discomfort, and especially if he had any lung or stomach or digestive disorders, he wouldn't particularly have noticed the pain. But then the pressure would slow the heart down until it stopped. He'd feel faint, breathless, dizzy, as though he'd had a small aortal attack. He'd be dead in five minutes.'
Roy said emptily, 'It was meant for me.'
Hamp stood up and looked at the Wobbly organizer. 'No. It was meant for Forrest Brown. The guards were too tight around you. It's gotten to the point where the Graf's men are out to get anybody associated with you, anybody helping you.' He looked at Roy Cos's secretary. 'Including Ms. Elwyn. That's why you'd better make a beeline for that shuttleport in New Mexico, Cos.'
Roy Cos stood too, and said, 'What's all this to you, Hampton? I don't even know you. Certainly, you're no Wobbly. But you've gone far out of your way to extend a life I'd given up.'
Hamp tossed his head, brushing it off. 'You're a man, Cos, and I believe in a man having a chance to have his say.
What was the quote of Voltaire? 'I disagree with what you say but will defend with my life your right to say it.' A lot of your program doesn't come through to me. For one thing, I think you're out of the times. Maybe, up there in the Belt, you'll learn some things and update what you stand for. And maybe—just maybe—they'll learn some things from you.'
Chapter Twenty-Two: Jeremiah Auburn_____
Hamp stood before the identity screen on the hotel door and looked at it sardonically. The door buzzed open and he entered. The room was on the small, austere side considering that this was the age-old prestigious Drake.
Frank Pinell was seated, watching a news commentator. Now he took in the chocolate features of the newcomer without expression. Without waiting for an invitation, Hamp went over to the autobar and dialed himself a double brandy. He brought the snifter glass back and settled himself into the room's second chair.
Frank reached over to click the screen off but Hamp said, 'No, just a minute. What's he saying?'
The commentator was saying, '… and if the victim's identification is genuine, the notorious Luca Cellini, long suspected by the IABI to be Lothar von Brandenburg's top representative in the Americas, has been shot to death on the streets of New York.'
'I'll be damned,' Hamp said. 'Peter Windsor is even more efficient than I thought.'
The younger man had been staring bug-eyed at the commentator. Now he shakily reached out and turned down the audio. He sucked in air before saying to the black, 'You know Peter Windsor?'
'Yes. One of the most competent snakes this side of the Garden of Eden. How he learned that Cellini had sold out, I'll probably never know.'
'Sold out?' Frank said. 'I… I was just talking to him a few days ago.'
'Yes, I know,' Hamp said, taking an appreciative sip of his cognac. 'He was how I found out that Windsor and the Graf had sent you to finish me off.'
Frank said, a touch of irritation in his voice, 'If you knew that, why in the devil have you come here? Aren't you afraid I'll carry out the assignment?'
'No,' Hamp said. 'Why did they send you?'
'I'm not too clear about the details. Evidently, it was more or less a standard assignment. Somebody in the World Club wanted you eliminated.'
Hamp stared at him. 'The World Club! Wanted Horace Hampton eliminated?'
'Yes. If I understand correctly, they're becoming increasingly conscious of the part the Anti-Racist League might play when the World State begins to embrace third-world countries.'
'But why
'If I have it right, there are some strange angles to your Dossier Complete. You're kind of a mystery figure. You're also said to be the Anti-Racist League's most efficient man. Somebody figured that if half a dozen of your key members were eliminated, it would be considerably easier to control the organization.'
'I'll be damned,' Hamp said thoughtfully. He finished his brandy, went back to the autobar and dialed another. He looked at his reluctant host. 'Want a drink? It's a pleasure for me to be knocking back guzzle that the Graf will eventually pay for.'
'Beer,' Frank said.
Hamp dialed the brew, brought it over, and resumed his own place.
Frank said cautiously, 'Why did you think I wasn't a danger to you?'
'Because you're a fake. When I told you I own the bank your father used in Berne, I wasn't joking. I own controlling interests in various other banks as well. When Cellini told me you'd been sent to hit me, I had you checked out and then your father as well.'
'All right, great. But why do you say I'm a fake?'
'You were deported, picking Tangier. Tangier is the biggest base of Mercenaries, Incorporated outside Liechtenstein. Anybody wanting to make contact with the organization couldn't do better than to go there. You were deported because you had supposedly committed four felonies and the legal computers automatically ordered your deportation.'
'What do you mean supposedly?' Frank said, his voice flat.
'The first two felonies, well, they were probably genuine. Certainly the first one, back when you were a kid. Kind of a kid's prank which turned sour. But the third one and the fourth? Nope; you faked them. The murder, the crime that made it definite that you'd be deported, you didn't commit. You confessed to it, but you didn't do it. The way my agents reconstructed the thing, you hung around in the most rugged area of Detroit, possibly the toughest big city in the country, during the most dangerous time of night, for a period of weeks. Eventually, you found what you were looking for, a fresh corpse. You set the stage for getting the blame and you got it, guaranteeing deportation.' Hamp took another pull at his brandy. 'You're no killer, Pinell. It was all a scheme to get next to the Graf and it evidently worked out even better than you must have hoped.'
Frank glared at him. 'Why would I do that?'
Hamp shrugged. 'It would seem obvious that you want to get your hands on that money your father left. Forty-five million pseudo-dollars isn't chicken feed—not a poultry sum, as the expression goes.'
The younger man ignored the pun and said sullenly, 'I had no idea it was that much.'
'It wasn't originally, but it's been sitting there in Berne for almost twenty years, invested in Swiss gilt-edged securities.'
'It's my money,' Frank said. 'I didn't even know about it until my mother told me on her deathbed. She hated the very thought of the stuff but she hated the Graf even more and didn't want him to get his hands on it. I'm my father's only living relative. My mother suspected, but had no proof, that my father was killed by the Graf. The last time she saw him, he hinted that they were on the outs with each other. My father, it would seem, didn't like some of the new fields into which Brandenburg was expanding. My father was a soldier of fortune, not a hit man.'
The black eyed him questioningly. 'Why didn't you just go to Switzerland and demand your inheritance?'
'It's tied up in some complicated way I don't understand.
Evidently, my father was on the way to change that when he was killed. I'm not sure about the details but I
