“What do you mean blackmail?” Burchwood asked.
“As you’ve gathered, my former employers and I don’t quite see eye to eye. Either they give you a break—and I get good evidence of it every six months—or I call in the press and then they can explain how come two top staff members of NSA defected to the Russians.”
“We weren’t top staff members,” Symmes said.
“The way I’d tell it you would be.”
Symmes and Burchwood looked at each other and their mental telegraphic systems seemed to be functioning as well as ever. They nodded their heads simultaneously.
“Do we have to hit anybody?” Burchwood asked.
“It might come to that. If it does, hit as hard as you can. If there’s something lying around, like a bottle, use that. There’re four of them—Ku, Maas and the two Albanians.”
“I was wondering what they were,” I said.
“There’s also somebody in the room that Jimmy Ku came out of—probably a Dutch couple who owns the barge.”
Padillo outlined his plan. Like most of his ideas, its merit lay in its simplicity. We wouldn’t have to sink the barge or set the Rhine on fire. All we had to do was run an excellent chance of being shot and dumped over the side.
“How about it?” Padillo asked Burchwood and Symmes.
“Isn’t there some other way?” Symmes asked. “All that violence.”
“If you’ve got something better, lay it on.”
Symmes and Burchwood telegraphed their messages to each other. They nodded agreement. I shrugged.
“O.K., Mac, here’s the bottle.”
“No sense in waste,” I said, and took a drink and gave it back. “Hand it up to me.” I heaved myself up to the top bunk. Padillo took a drink and passed me the bottle. I poked its neck through the metal-wire mesh that covered the red light and smashed the bulb. I turned and lay lengthwise along the bunk, which was only eighteen inches or so from the ceiling. The door was to the right of the bunk and I held the bottle in my right hand.
“O.K.?” Padillo whispered.
“Ready,” I said.
“Go ahead, Symmes,” Padillo said.
I could hear but not see Symmes moving toward the door. He let out a scream, a good loud one that ranged up and down the scale. He began to pound on the door with his fists. I took a tighter grip on the bottle.
“Let us out!” Symmes yelled. He made his voice crack. “He’s vomiting blood. Let us out, for God’s sake; let us out!” He moaned and whimpered. He was very good.
“What is it—what’s going on?” It was one of the Albanians calling through the door in German.
“This man—this Padillo is sick—he’s getting blood all over everything. He’s dying.”
Some voices murmured in the other room. A key turned in the lock. The door opened and light from the other room shafted in to show Padillo bent over in a corner, his head cradled in his arms. The Albanian came through the door, gun drawn, his eyes on Padillo. I swung the bottle in a flat sidearm, backhand motion. It hit the back of his neck and shattered. The pieces tinkled as they fell to the floor. Padillo sprang from the floor and chopped the Albanian across the throat and grabbed his gun. The Albanian crumpled. I rolled out of the bunk and snatched Symmes’s left arm and bent it backward behind him until it almost touched his neck. He screamed and this time it was sheer pain. I jabbed the broken shard of the bottle against his neck with my right hand. Padillo had the Albanian’s gun up against Burchwood’s neck, just below the right ear.
“We’re coming out, Jimmy,” he called. “Just stand there. If you blink, I’ll shoot Burchwood and Mac will slice Symmes’s throat.”
Looking over Symmes’s shoulder, I could see Ku and Maas through the doorway, standing by the table. Maas’s mouth was slightly open. Ku’s hands were in his jacket pockets, his face impassive except for a slight, bemused smile. “How’d you fake the blood, Mike?” Ku asked.
We moved out into the room slowly, turned, and backed toward the stairs.
“I didn’t,” Padillo lied. “I just stuck my finger down my throat and it came up. I’ve got a couple of cracked ribs and something’s bleeding inside. Call your man down from topside, Jimmy.”
Ku called him and the other Albanian clattered down the stairs backward. Padillo clipped him hard across the back of the neck with the barrel of the gun. He fell forward on the stairs and then bumped down the steps to the floor. He didn’t move.
“That wasn’t necessary,” Ku said.
“I evened the odds,” Padillo said.
“You know I have a gun in my hand?”
“I don’t doubt it. But shooting through a coat pocket is tricky, Jimmy. You might hit me, but more likely you’d hit Burchwood here. And anyway I’d pull the trigger and he wouldn’t have any ear left or any face. As for Mac, he’d probably cut the big vein or at least make Symmes whisper for the rest of his life.”
“Shoot,” Maas whispered to Ku, his eyes bulging a little. “Shoot, you fool.”
“I would just as soon shoot you, Maas,” Padillo said, “and make my deal with Jimmy alone.”
Ku’s smile grew broader and he exposed some very good teeth or an excellent cap job. “Make your proposition, Mike.”
