expressionless, protruding eyes immobile and unblinking.
There was something reptilian about him, scaly and cold-blooded, that sent a shiver down Chase's spine. He almost expected to see a forked tongue flick out from the slit of a mouth.
The door closed and Chase was left alone with the image of Ingrid Van Dorn and the sound of her husky voice. But he wasn't really listening: He was thinking hard, trying to remember. What was the name of that religious sect? He'd heard of them before. The Faith. So what was one of them doing here, today of all days, wandering around the UN building? A hunchback kid in black robes . . .
Chase discovered that he was holding the soda bottle. It felt clammy in his hand. He put it down and ran to the door. The corridor was empty. In the distance he could hear the amplified voice of the secretary-general. His thoughts were racing too fast for his brain to keep up with them. An instinct, a gut reaction made the sweat break out all over his body. He became possessed of a morbid fantastic fear concerning that kid in the black robes, his unemotional and deadly purposeful-ness, those cold dead eyes behind the bent wire-frame spectacles.
Chase went to the telephone, punched the operator's button, and asked to be connected to the secretary- general's office. He waited, fist clenching, opening, clenching again. Senator Prothero, he was informed, had left with Madam Van Dorn for the General Assembly thirty minutes ago. From there he was to have met someone in the Kurt Waldheim hospitality suite.
Chase slammed the receiver down and stood looking at but not seeing the TV screen. In the corridor he turned toward the sound of the distantly echoing voice. His stride lengthened into a run. He turned a corner directed by a blue plastic arrow and leaped up a carpeted stairway, three at a time. Prothero was in the main chamber, had to be, and there at least he was safe, in full view of the assembly and the world's media. Nothing could happen to him there, surely not in front of all those watching billions. It was inconceivable. Wasn't it? A pyro-assassination attempt there?
Oh, please, God, pray he was wrong.
He turned a corner and stumbled up a short inclined tunnel that ended in black empty space. Sweat stung his eyes. He blinked it away, the lights in the domed ceiling fragmenting into splintered stars. The voice of Ingrid Van Dorn boomed loudly in his ears. To his left were rank after rank of white blobs fading into darkness. To his right and a little above him, Ingrid Van Dorn stood in the converging beams of a dozen spotlights, surrounded by microphones. Behind her was the UN crest in bas-relief. Behind and above that, on the upper dais, sat several rows of VIPs and UN officials.
Chase scanned every face there, not seeing Prothero among them. He looked to his left, seeing black faces, brown faces, pink and yellow faces all smearing into a creature with a thousand eyes, noses, and mouths. Where was he?
A hand touched his shoulder and he spun around, his heart crashing in his chest.
'Sorry I wasn't there to meet you.' Prothero leaned forward, speaking into his ear. 'I felt Ingrid deserved my moral support.'
Chase grinned stupidly. The man he was seeking had been sitting above the tunnel exit in a triangular wedge of seats, not five yards away.
Prothero was staring into Chase's sweat-drenched face. 'What is it? What's wrong?'
They withdrew a little way down the tunnel, out of sight of the auditorium. Chase spoke rapidly while the tall, immaculate senator listened gravely. Chase, was beginning to feel that his suspicions were imaginary, rather ludicrous in fact, though Prothero took it all very seriously. He suggested that they return to the hospitality suite, post two guards outside, and watch the rest of the speech on TV. 'You may or may not be right, Gavin, but I don't believe in taking risks.'
Back in the suite and with the guards outside, Chase wondered whether he was experiencing the thin end of paranoia. He'd been edgy to begin with and now he felt foolish.
Prothero stood in the middle of the room, his long tanned face pensive, eyes fixed on the large screen. 'Who are they?' he asked without turning his head.
'I think it's a religious sect that calls itself the Faith.'
'Black robes, shaved heads?' Prothero glanced swiftly at Chase, who nodded. Something was evidently troubling Prothero. He said, 'There was a mob of them at the entrance as I came in earlier. If it was me they were after they had their opportunity then. Why risk coming inside the building to make an attempt?'
Chase didn't know. He tried a weak guess. 'Perhaps that was a diversion. Perhaps they were hoping . . .' His voice trailed away. He'd run out of weak guesses.
Prothero gave him a long searching look. He went to the telephone and lifted the receiver. 'He was a kid, you say, the one you saw?'
'Eighteen, possibly even younger.'
The furrows in Prothero's forehead deepened into crevices. 'They'd send a young kid to assassinate somebody?'
'What better age for a fanatic? Their ideals are still potent and their convictions unshakable, and at that age violence is the one sure answer. It's only as you get older that the issues change from black and white to murky shades of gray.' Chase's voice had an ironic lilt to it. He realized that he was speaking from personal experience, defining his own present dilemma.
'The answer to what though?' Prothero said, punching buttons. 'What are these fanatics hoping to achieve? What is it they want? It can't be simply religious belief that motivates--' He broke off, requesting a full security alert and a thorough search of the building.
Chase listened, his eyes on the larger-than-life Ingrid Van Dorn in glowing color; even the giant screen didn't do her justice. The TV director cut from a close-up to a long shot of the podium. On a normal-size screen the background detail would have been lost, but here Chase could make out the features of the people on the dais behind her and even the faces of some of the audience on the extreme right of the platform, just within the arc of lights.
Something flashed and winked like two bright silver dollars. Light reflecting on spectacle lenses. Chase stiffened. He took a step nearer, staring, his eyes aching as they probed the picture for detail. And there --there it was--shaven head on the stalk of a neck, glasses flaring light. The kid was in the auditorium. He was watching his victim: Ingrid Van Dorn.
'It isn't you, it's her!' Chase was pointing. 'Can you see him, watching her, waiting!'
Prothero was turned to stone. He held the phone below the artful silver wing of hair, mouth half-open, arrested in midword. The mouth worked but no sound came out.
'Tell security,' Chase said rapidly, 'for God's sake they've got to stop him.'
'Go!' Prothero shouted.
The two white-helmeted guards, quietly conversing, were thrust apart as Chase charged from the room and ran toward the main chamber. He shouted at them to follow him but didn't waste time glancing over his shoulder to see if they had obeyed. He bounded up the stairs, along a corridor, turned a corner, and ran headlong up the short tunnel into the daylight brightness of the auditorium.
For one frozen panic-stricken instant he was disoriented. Left of the platform or right? He swung around and back again. Then got his bearings. Left, you bloody fool, left--the opposite side!
Chase leaped onto the platform. The dignitaries and officials seated behind the podium gaped. Ingrid Van Dorn looked up, her voice faltering and dying away until the auditorium was filled with a vast silence. It was as if time had stopped for the twenty-three hundred people in the main chamber, who sat transfixed.
Nobody moved except Chase. Oblivious to the silence, the ranks of watching people, the TV and movie cameras, he ran across the platform under the blazing lights, momentarily dazzled as he plunged off into the surrounding darkness, glimpsing a pair of skinny white ankles scrambling up the steps toward the nearest tunnel exit. The kid knew he'd been spotted. He was getting out fast while he had the chance.
It was then that the auditorium came suddenly, explosively, to life.
There were shouts and screams. Some of the delegates dived down for cover while others scrambled over seats, trying to get clear. Ingrid Van Dorn stood motionless and staring behind the microphones, spectacles in hand. All at once there were security guards everywhere, converging on the platform with weapons drawn. Whereas no one had noticed the black-robed figure, the sudden appearance of Chase was in the classic pattern of the lone assassin. At once he became the prime target of the security force--like the guard who now confronted him,
