Soft Targets

deployed the twenty-meter exten­sion cord and connected its bared wires directly to the squib circuit. He knotted the free end of the extension cord around a chair leg near a wall socket and spent several minutes taping the mousetrap firmly to the chair. Adhesive tape was so damnably adhesive it could take a faint impression of a fingerprint even through the protective cement. He had plenty of time, and he knew how to use it.

After he wired one leg of the extension cord to the trap, arranging it to complete the circuit when triggered, he deformed another coat hanger and taped it, centered vertically, to the inside door knob. He measured a length of cord with great care, tying a loop in its exact center and securing the loop over the mousetrap's trig­ger. Each end of the cord was then loop-knotted to an extremity of the coat hanger. The cord was very slightly slack. He turned the door knob sev­eral times. Either way the knob turned, the lengthened arm of the coat hanger would assure triggering, completed circuit, squib ignition—and a few more gray hairs for the apartment manager.

At last he was ready, going through his prep­arations again, checking every connection. It was rush hour by now on a Friday afternoon, and he would be all the more anonymous. He took up the attache case, studied the entry rig again, and then plugged the extension cord into the wall. That moment always set him on edge: you never knew.

Then he slid one loop knot loose and opened the door, peering casually into the empty hall before he swiftly secured the loop again and tightened it. He set the lock on the inside, picked up the attache case, and stepped into the hall, pulling the door closed. He did not test the knob. If the lock was faulty the knob would turn, and if the knob turned much he would get the gray hairs. He strode from the building and down the street to another parking complex where an at­tendant brought all six meters of his dun-brown Pontiac Parisienne, the Canadian version of a Catalina. Moments later he turned north on Route Eleven toward Lake Simcoe, chafing at the need to drive around Lake Huron en route to Winnipeg. But, 'To regain the initiative we must ignore the main body of the enemy and concen­trate far off,' he quoted silently. El Aurans had known.

He held the big Pontiac at the legal maximum, unmoved by the occasional view of sunset over inlets from Georgian Bay. At Parry Sound he fed seventeen imperial gallons to his brute, nagged himself into checking the equipment in its trunk, and made a toll call to one of his two Toronto numbers. His own voice said, 'Mr. Trnka regrets that he is unable to take your call at the moment. At the tone, please leave your name and number.^' The response tape was blank. More important, his communication center was still functioning, which meant that no one had traced him to the apartment. Yet.

He drove nearly to Marathon before he entered a rest stop, evacuated himself, and fluffed out the slender goosedown mummy bag. It was not op­timal, but neither was confrontation in a motel by some red-suited lackey of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. He slept.

On Saturday he passed Winnipeg ahead of schedule, crossed Manitoba, stopped well into

Saskatchewan. Hunger, as he knew, kept a healthy animal poised for the hunt—whichever end of the hunt it was on. He nibbled at fruit, then, in the mornings and feasted at the end of each day's travel.

Sunday he was immersed in listening to a mysterious noise in the Parisienne's luxurious vee-eight and nearly failed to hear a news item on the radio. Government sources had disarmed two charges of high explosive hidden in the structure of the Cap Rouge Bridge north of Quebec City. The massive charges would have rendered the bridge useless for weeks. On un­disclosed evidence, both metropolitan police and the RCMP sought one Jean Bonin, known as a violent Quebecois separatist.

He snorted to himself, certain that the evi­dence was as simple as fingerprint impressions in the plastique. Bonin was an excellent pro­vider, but an idiot with explosives. He would wind up in Archambault Penitentiary yet. The Cap Rouge fiasco, at least, explained why Bonin had refused him even a kilo of plastique. And now it belonged to the government! C'est la guerre; another toll call assured him that in To­ronto, Mr. Trnka still regretted .. .

The terrain was a distinct drawback as the Parisienne labored into the Canadian Rockies, its malaise now more pronounced. He skirted Banff, stopped near Lake Louise, and nestled into the mummy bag at midnight. The cold was one thing he had never mastered, and anger at this failure in himself kept him awake too long.

Monday he flogged the car through Kamloops and past Ashcroft, unwilling to admit that the

Parisienne was no vehicle for mountain driving. He found a turnoff with a downhill slope leading to the highway, nearly backing the big machine over a precipice. He was grimy, he was hungry, he was in no mood to appreciate the cataclysmic rush of the Thompson River that boiled southward below him in the moonlight.

He was in the same mood at dawn on Tuesday and feared for long minutes that, even after glid­ing down onto the highway and building up to cruising speed, the Parisienne might not start. It guzzled fuel at an infuriating rate but, once past Chilliwack, he knew he would make it to the ferry south of Vancouver.

Thirty-three hundred kilometers to the east in the offices of Salon du Nord, Pelletier gnawed a cuticle and waited for a call which, he was in­creasingly sure, would not come. If Trnka was buying the remaining microprocessors, he was infernally slow about it. If Trnka was buying time, Pelletier himself was dilatory. He thought about the anonymous cash again. He would wait one more day.

TUESDAY, 23 SEPTEMBER, 1980:

During the long ferry ride across the Strait of Georgia to Sidney on Vancouver Island, the little man poked at the vast pig-iron innards of the Parisienne as long as light permitted. Unknow­ingly he moved two frayed plug leads apart and, at Sidney, was intensely relieved to hear the engine splutter to something like a willingness to move the two thousand-kilo machine. He drove to Victoria, found the upper harbor, and left the car near the small boat flotilla off Wharf Street. It might never start again, but this possi­bility did not disturb him.

Wednesday morning he contacted Bonin's man, Charles Graham, identifying himself as Domingo Baztan. The Basques, too, had a separatist movement and unusual accents.

He stood some distance from the boathouse at first, pleased that the long individual boathouse was in good repair. The man who unlocked the door was a tall windburned specimen dressed in ducking to his shoes. The beret said he was Graham. The accent suggested he was a New Jersey transplant. They met inside the boathouse and traded ritual handclasps, Graham standing so near he seemed to loom.

'Hope you didn't want me to pick up your man today, Baztan,' the larger man said. 'I've got to put her in tune first.' He indicated a powerboat that lurked beyond.

Forgetting himself, 'Baztan' cursed in Arabic. The boat was fifteen meters long, eel-slender, its lines promising great speed and minimal radar echo. Though no sailor he knew instantly that some rational alternative must be found. 'It looks very fast,' he said.

'Runs like a striped-assed ape,' Graham chuckled, motioning `Baztan' alongside the craft. 'Twin turbocharged chevy four-fifty-­fours, sixteen hundred shaft horses between 'em. A Cigarette will cross Juan De Fuca Strait in fifteen minutes with weather like this.'

'Cigarette?'

'That's what they call this breed. Designed for ocean racing; the only thing that'll catch it is a bullet. They're sots for fuel, though. That's part of the three thousand you're paying.'

The little man studied the boat, realizing that it would have to reach one hundred forty kilometers per hour to cross the treacherous ocean strait as Graham boasted. Anyone lying under its hull would be pounded to marmalade at that speed. No, the Cigarette would not do. Well enough for Bonin's uses, perhaps. He cleared his throat, choosing to sound vulnerable.' Is it a smooth crossing? The man is very old, very frail.'

Graham thought about it. 'Maybe I could strap him in foam cushions, when we clear Port Angeles on the way back.' He jerked a thumb at the sleek craft. 'This thing is the Can-Am car of powerboats, Baztan, at eighty knots she'll rearrange his guts. There's nothing I can do about that,' he smiled.

'His heart is very bad,' was the response.

'Then he'd need a transplant in ten seconds. Do you care?'

The little man brightened. Graham had given him another idea in his cover story. 'After I cross over tonight and bring him to meet you at Port Angeles tomorrow, my responsibility is dis­charged. If he arrives with you here in Victoria, well and good. If he should happen to fall overboard and you arrive back here alone—again, well and good.' A brief smile for Graham. 'But he is not a fool, and I think he would refuse to accept your trick Cigarette. And then I would not be paid.'

'I'm not the dumbest jack-off in the world either. If you can't drive him across the border he must be pretty hot.'

A shrug. 'What we need is a craft that is docile and looks it.'

Graham led him along creaking planks until they stood at the mouth of the boathouse, blink­ing in the strong