Last Gasp

closing. The woman inside, feathered hat swaying above a face like a weathered prune, regarded him with distinct hostility as he tried to contain a rippling belch, failed, and didn't get his handkerchief out in time either. The reverberation seemed to rock the elevator.

The feathered prune got out at the second floor, much to Chase's relief. He carried on to the third and walked along the densely carpeted corridor, trying not to think about what Angie was doing, and by default thinking about it. The strident cry stopped him in his tracks, and he stood, caught in midstride, his mouth instantly dry.

'You heard me--get out, you bastard!'

A woman's voice, very angry, frayed at the edges with fear.

The corridor seemed to have swallowed up the sound and in the silence Chase wasn't sure he'd actually heard anything.

'Get out or I'll call the police! I mean it, I mean it!'

It was coming from the room two doors down from his. Chase's first instinct was not to interfere. He thought it might be a domestic quarrel. He moved softly onward until he was level with the door, paused, and stood listening. There was a sound, one he couldn't identify, and then a kind of strangled half-sob.

Chase tapped on the door. 'Are you all right in there?' It sounded fatuous, but he didn't know what else to say.

'No, I'm not all right. Come in please, come in!'

He grasped the knob and turned it and pushed the door open, but after a few inches it was impeded by something, probably a foot.

There was another unidentifiable sound followed by the woman's shrill, 'If you're coming in, for Christ's sake get in here!' and when Chase used his full weight the impediment (foot?) shifted and he was inside, staring hard at a young woman with short, sun-streaked hair who was standing on the far side of the bed holding a tiny traveling clock above her head.

As an object of aggression it seemed rather puny.

Then Chase saw the other participant in the drama. Or rather his hairy wrist emerging from the embroidered cuff of a white jacket, his thick brown fingers gripping the edge of the door.

'Is this a private quarrel?' Chase asked. More fatuousness.

'No, everybody's Welcome to join in,' the girl answered, tight-lipped.

The man said nothing. He opened the door still farther. Chase was six feet tall and this fellow topped him by a good three inches. Still holding the door, not looking at Chase but at the girl, the man in the white suit said in a low American accent, 'You get the message. I'm not going to repeat it. Tell your father we mean what we say.'

The girl swung the clock back. 'Take a running jump, you creep,' she spat at him.

It was then that Chase recognized her--the girl in the hall arguing with the officials--and was about to open his mouth to say something when the man in white pushed him aside and went out without bothering to look at him.

'Shut the door,' the girl said at once. 'Lock it.' She wasn't much over five feet, with a full figure, and still wearing faded blue jeans.

Chase did so. 'You seem to cause trouble wherever you go,' he said conversationally.

'I don't know you,' Cheryl said, 'but you seem okay.'

'In that case would you mind putting the clock down?' Chase stood with his back pressed against the door. He wasn't keen on any more surprises. He stifled a belch and said, 'Who the hell was that?'

'I don't know.' She was massaging her left wrist, which he saw was inflamed with fingermarks. 'The bastard, whoever he is, was in the elevator. He followed me to the room and when I tried to shut the door in his face he grabbed me and threw me inside.'

'Why was he threatening you?'

'No idea. I should have gone for his privates. That's if he's got any.'

'Hadn't you better call the police?'

'And tell them I was attacked by a tall American in a white suit?'

'There can't be that many in Geneva.'

'He can easily change his suit.'

'But not his height.'

Cheryl nodded swiftly. '1 guess you're right, I ought to report it. But I want to see my father first. Will you-- would you mind coming down with me to the hotel restaurant? I don't like to impose, Mr.--'

'Chase. No, I don't mind,' Chase said. Then it would be her father's problem and not his.

On the way to the elevator she said, 'My name is Cheryl Detrick. Thanks for coming in, Mr. Chase. I nearly ruined my traveling clock.'

There was a moment's delayed reaction before he said, 'Detrick? Is your father Theo Detrick, the marine biologist?'

'You know of him?' It seemed to please her.

'He wrote the bible,' Chase said sincerely.

'Are you a delegate?'

'Yes. Sort of. That's my field too.'

'And mine. Postgraduate at Scripps.'

'We marine biologists should stick together,' Chase said, smiling down at her.

'My sentiments precisely,' Cheryl said with feeling.

The doors opened and Cheryl moved ahead of him into the elevator. Chase wouldn't have credited himself with such lightning reactions. Mindful of her sore wrist, he took her by the scruff of the neck and pulled her out again as the man in white lunged forward, hands outspread like brown claws. Chase kicked instinctively, aiming for the crotch, and missed, landing just below the second button of the immaculate white suit.

The man grunted and snarled a curse and fell backward, sprawling, as the elevator doors mercifully closed.

8

Perhaps coincidence ran deeper than anyone suspected. Conceivably there was an ordered pattern, a system, to which everyone was blind, perceiving it only as a series of random events conglomerating at a particular point in time and space, which for the sake of convenience and for want of anything better they called 'coincidence.'

'Can I get you a drink?'

Chase started, broke from his contemplation.

'The refrigerator is full of stuff,' Cheryl said, smiling warmly at him. 'What would you like?'

'Er--whiskey, with ice. Thanks.'

Cheryl gave a cute little bunny dip. 'Coming right up, sir.'

Boris Stanovnik shook his head in a perplexed fashion, though he was half-smiling. 'I like your daughter very much, Theo, but I do not understand her. She dictates to life, not life to her.'

Yet another coincidence, Chase was thinking. That he should be sitting in Theo Detrick's hotel room with Boris Stanovnik, the man he had come all this way to meet. It gave him a prickly feeling on the back of his neck and he was conscious of a vague sense of unreality. But the glass of Scotch in his hand was real enough, and the taste reassuringly familiar.

The big Russian leaned forward, elbows on knees, a glass of beer looking tiny in his clasped hands. 'You think what happened is to do with what we were discussing?' he asked Theo.

'Of course it is.' Sitting in the bright halo of light from the corner lamp Theo Detrick's face seemed darker and craggier than ever. 'They warned me officially, through the proper channels, and then thought it necessary to make the warning more direct. More personal.'

'They?' Boris said in amazement. 'The conference committee?'

'No, the people acting through the committee.'

'But who are 'they'?'

'The State Department. The CIA. Some political lobby or other. I don't know, Boris. Somebody with something to lose.'