Soft Targets

He was answered by a grunt. The faulty cen­tipede was pocketed while another took its place. Pelletier fidgeted as two more microprocessors were tucked away. At last the belt was reassembled with its seventeen conforming units. `Trnka' snorted softly. 'It will be neces­sary to use your telephone.'

Pelletier indicated his desk phone and wad­dled out to give the illusion of privacy. `Trnka' was certain his call would be recorded. He had no other reason for the call.

He reached McEvoy with the phone's third buzz. Mr. Trnka was unavoidably detained. No, nothing serious. Yes, he was still interested but must delay his trip a few days. Still, they might meet today as planned. Two o'clock? Fine; Slip Three.

Pelletier, in his photoreduction lab, listened to the call while querying his own system at his lab computer terminal. The detectors built into his entryway insisted that Mr. Trnka carried roughly a kilogram of some dense metallic arti­cle near his left armpit. Pelletier was not sur­prised, but he was perspiring lightly now. How could he have known the salaud would have such a test rig? He considered the alarm button, then the money, which Trnka had promised would be in cash. If Trnka paid fifty cents on the dollar for such faulty units, Pelletier and his partner would lose little. If Pelletier got more, he could still claim it was fifty, and then Pelletier alone would profit very well indeed.

And the damned Czech expected to be in To­ronto a few more days. Pelletier wondered why, and then heard the conversation end. He allowed the little foreigner, still grafted to his attache case, to find him slurping coffee from a foam cup in the hall. Then—insultingly—he was ushered back into his own office.

'I am prepared to discount the entire lot of four hundred microprocessors, Mr. Trnka, by fifteen per cent,' Pelletier said blandly.

'I need four hundred units, twenty of the belts. And I shall take delivery of four hundred,' the smaller man lied. 'With such a high failure rate we must test them all. Do you agree?' A glum nod from the fat man. 'It is my intention to pay you in cash for half of them now, discounted as you suggest, and to test them. You, meanwhile, will test the rest—all of them—and man­ufacture a sufficient number that I will have,' he paused, closed his eyes and said as though to a child, 'four hundred microprocessors.'

Pelletier's mental circuits flickered. Eighty-five hundred dollars in the raw, today, and an equal amount to come later. He debated the ways in which he could profit from this frightening little Czech. 'I could have them in a week,' he offered.

'Tuesday,' the man said. Pelletier did not like even a little piece of the smile that accompanied the ultimatum.

'I will do what I can.' To see the last of you, he added to himself.

The attache case opened and the visitor counted out eighty-five brown Elizabeths. He pushed them across the desk. 'You will want to count them.'

'I trust you,' said Pelletier, his voice quaver­ing as he stroked the cash. He watched the swar­thy little man walk to a small sedan, the attache case burdened with nearly two hundred micro-processors. Then Pelletier counted the money. Next he replayed the telephone call. The number was that of a fly-for-hire outfit located at Island Airport just south of Toronto. McEvoy did not seem to know Trnka well, and Slip Threesuggested a boat rather than an aircraft. Pelletier knew little of such things and did not much care. It was enough to know that Trnka would be good for another eighty-five hundred, after which Pel­letier could pay his respects to the police in return for a certain latitude they allowed him in business. Trnka was a fool, thought Pelletier, to deal directly in cash. Even though his micro-processors were very, very smart.

`Trnka' did not assume that Pelletier was a fool. He drove directly to the new bridge over the Western Gap and onto the seaplane slips on To­ronto Island. At one o'clock he found the de­crepit old Republic Seabee wallowing in its slip, its high wing seesawing gently. The amiable curmudgeon pumping water from the fuselage bilge turned out to be Ian McEvoy, and soon they were sharing lunch at a counter with a view. The little man could spot anyone approaching the aircraft, the better to learn if Pelletier really wanted his anonymous cash more than he wanted to inform. He had seen Pelletier tremble like a pointer while raking the money in; but he had not come this far by trusting nuances.

McEvoy accepted the stranger at face value: a sinewy little Czech given to expensive clothes, on the long side of thirty and able to pay for eccentric notions. Between bites of his sandwich, McEvoy said, 'Sure she'll get you and the lady to Lake Chautauqua, Mr. Trnka. It's maybe an hour's flight time, but there isn't much to do when you get there.' He brightened. 'For a little more I could take you to the Finger Lakes. They're in New York State too. A little more action.'

A pause, as though genuinely pondering the idea; as though there really was a woman. Then, 'She humors me, Mr. McEvoy, and I shall humor her. She tells me that Lake Chautauqua is a good location for the film and I need to take some footage along the shoreline for study. You are famil­iar with cine cameras?'

'Just home movie stuff.' McEvoy held a hunk of bread to his face. 'Clickety-click, and off to be developed. Nothin' like an honest-to-God movie. You mean you aren't interested in land­ing at all?'

'We hadn't considered it. Why?'

A shrug of the narrow shoulders. 'Just makes it simpler. If we land, I hafta notify Customs when I file my flight plan. They say it's recip­rocal clearance, I say it's a hassle.' A twinkle in the moist blue eyes as McEvoy studied his client's tailoring. 'But you don't look like a shit-runner to me.' He took another mouthful of his monte cristo.

'Trnka' assembled a smile for the pilot. 'I am merely combining business with pleasure, Mr. McEvoy.' He watched two people stroll toward the seaplane in the distance, spied the cameras, noted that the woman was stout, the man clum­sy. He continued talking with McEvoy, discussing fees and weather, increasingly sure that the pair at the slip were only tourists. The couple continued their stroll and presently passed beyond the slips. Pressed for a time estimate by McEvoy, he said, 'Wednesday or Thursday. We may pay you a visit before that.' He left the buried implication that he would be somewhere in Toronto.

'Speaking of pay,' McEvoy put in slyly. The little man's blue jacket yielded a slender envelope which McEvoy inspected. He withdrew the three hundred dollars, then absently stuffed the bank notes into his oil-stained leather jacket. 'Half of that would've done it, Mr. Tee,' he grinned. 'This retainer just bought me a fathometer.'

'And your silence,' said the smaller man. 'Film companies have their little secrets. There is one more thing ...'

'I thought there might be,' McEvoy mumbled. He seemed ready to give back the retainer.

'You can stow some equipment for me un­til then. Just a piece of luggage; camera, film, clothing. But my car is very small and the suitcase is both a bother and a temptation to thieves.' He saw strain lines disappearing from McEvoy's face and continued, 'A pilot of your years must be a careful man. I think the cine camera equipment may be safer in your care than in mine. I have a tendency to forget things.' He delivered this last phrase sadly, tentatively, the confession of one ill-equipped to deal with details.

McEvoy sealed his agreement by paying for lunch, then walked with his client to the Toyota. If he had any lingering worry, it evaporated when `Trnka' opened the suitcase, poked among the clothing and equipment. These were not the actions of a guy running heavy shit, McEvoy thought; the thing wasn't even locked. He hefted the suitcase and shook the small man's hand. 'What you need is a bigger car,' he joked.

'And struggle to fuel and steer and park it? How I loathe the American product,' said `Trnka,' frowning, pleased to wedge more mis­direction in as he climbed into the Toyota.

Ian McEvoy trudged back to his Seabee, pleased with an honest negotiation, cudgeling his memory to recall where he had seen Trnka before. Movies? He had heard that voice somewhere, for sure. Maybe on the TV ...

The telltales in the apartment were undis­turbed, the weather report optimistic. He left the clothes on their hangers but applied more ce­ment to his fingertips, scrubbing glassware and fingers meticulously as he had the Toyota's in­terior. Then he turned his attention to the telephones. First there was the microprocessor, which passed an on-the-spot function check before he installed it on a circuit board and patched the tiny rig into the automatic answering device. He disconnected the smoke alarm in his kitchen, then placed the answering device, connected to both telephones, in the sink. He dumped his small potted plant on the floor, cleared the hole in the pot's bottom only to cover the hole with tape, and twisted coat hangers into a sling that suspended the empty clay pot over the circuit board.

Next he mixed a cupful of magnetite and aluminum powder, pouring the potent stuff into the clay pot. He used squibs and an igniter com­mon to model rocketry though he always, always employed them in threes, wired in parallel for reliability. Finally, though its crudeness irri­tated him, he