The Killing Man

positioning themselves into faraway circuits, then returning in seconds.

The general had entered his request for knowledge of the one called Penta. It was caught up in the wizardry of electronics and General Skubal sat back and let the machine take over. While it worked, he said to me, 'In case you're interested . . .'

'General, I'm very interested.'

'My so-called retirement was not for very long. The idiots who pulled me were dumped at the next election and I was reinstated right where I wanted to be . . . here, and at government expense. These machines are owned and serviced by federal funds and are state-of-the-art equipment. And believe me,' he added, 'the government is getting their money's worth . . . and I'm living doing what I can do best.'

'Tell me, General, how secure are you here?' I looked around at the enormity of the project, knowing that this was the best of miniaturization.

He said, 'There are eighty people billeted here. That placid landscape you saw outside is one huge deathtrap of a minefield, each charge being detonated electrically from inside here, or isolated to operate independently. With the electronic sensors we use, no dogs are necessary, no patrols needed, so we look indeed like a quiet retreat in the country.'

'How about power?'

'There's a solar collector on the roof. Storage batteries can last two weeks at full power. Of course, this is in addition to regular power supplied by underground cable. Beneath the building is a deep well with reserves for fire- fighting supplies. Our food larder can last a month and if you're a drinking man, those needs are supplied too.'

'That's a siege condition, General.'

'Yes. But these days, you never know, do you? At least this is what we're protecting.' His hand indicated his vast electronic battlefield.

Then the face of the screen that was blank lit up. The name Penta appeared, then the sketch story about the one who appeared as a will-o'-the-wisp on the world scene.

Penta meant nothing. It was a code name assigned by the CIA. There was no physical description. Penta's activities had been linked with the Stern Gang and the Red Brigade. His terrorist actions were noted by certain dictatorship governments, and it is suspected that he often worked on their behalf. Sixteen known assassinations were attributed to him, all of them with various forms of digital butchery done to the victims.

I said, 'Digital butchery?'

'Newspeak for finger-chopping.'

'Great.'

'Interesting note here . . . Penta is suspected of being a mole in the NATO organization. He had to have inside information to accomplish several of his kills. No proof offered, but circumstantial evidence is hard. Now look at this.'

Three CIA reports came on-screen with information compiled by Bennett Bradley. Twice he had almost cornered Penta when national police action of one foreign country stymied his move. The third time he was shot in the thigh by Penta and his quarry got away. There was a fourth item suggesting Bradley be removed from the assignment. Now I could understand his last-ditch attitude, wanting to grab Penta before his replacement got into the act.

The words stopped appearing. Two lines of dots went across the screen, then five groups of letters, six letters to a set, appeared, the last group flashing on and off regularly. The general grunted, took a key from his pocket and walked to a safe against the wall. He spun the dial three times, opened the thick door, then used the key on a box inside.

'What are the letters in the last group?'' he called out.

'R T V W Y,' I called back.

He closed the box, put it back and slammed the safe shut. When he sat down again he punched a key and the screen went blank. 'This Penta person is over here on one hell of a high-level assignment.'

'To kill me, General?' Damn, it was starting again, right here.

'You worth killing?'

'Not to anybody I know.'

'How about to somebody you don't know?'

I sat down and my teeth were grinding together. I took a couple of breaths, relaxed and looked at the old guy. There was knowledge and patience and wisdom sitting there, and somehow he knew what I was thinking and was trying to direct my own thoughts in a logical direction.

This was one direction that didn't allow for logic. I shook my head. 'No way. You can't go through me and locate Penta. The road to that guy is through Bern and Fells. That's the connection. Those two are looking for Penta and if we can run them down, we can get inside the reasoning behind all this. There's a motive, General. It's good enough to kill and destroy for and when we have that, we have Penta.'

'I can give you Fells and Bern,' he said simply. 'You familiar with their history?'

'Somewhat.'

'Wild ducks, that pair. Unstable, adventuresome . . . after they left the service, they laid down a pretty greasy trail. Three different countries hired them for covert work and they did a damn good job for them. Libya was their last employer.'

He wasn't finished and I didn't push him. 'The last three jobs attributed to Penta -- political assassinations of top personnel -- were at the behest of some Arab organization inside Libya.'

'So the three were contemporaries in possibly related actions.'

'Possibly.'

'And now Penta and Fells and Bern are over here together,' I said, 'only now they've lost touch. Bern and Fells want to locate Penta badly. They think I have a lead and try to squeeze it out of me. Question: How did they lose track of Penta?'

'I know a better question,' General Skubal told me. 'Why were they looking for him in the first place? Penta is not an organization man, Penta is a loner, a total loner absolutely dedicated to his work.'

'Let's go a step further, General,' I suggested. 'He is here, so his work is here. His targets never were minimal, so his target now isn't minimal, and so far he hasn't nailed his intended target.' I saw the way he was looking at me and added, 'Forget the crap about him going for me.'

'Who shot at you, Michael?'

I didn't say anything.

'Okay, you have another angle too. I suspected that.'

'I only want Penta. After what he did to Velda, he is mine. Just mine. What else he's here for won't matter. When I meet him, everything else gets wiped out along with him and it will all be over. Now tell me about Fells and Bern.'

The general poured himself another cup of coffee and popped in a few cubes of sugar. 'That pair are on FBI and CIA wanted lists, and that's for starters. Unfortunately, they've been too well trained for our people to put them down. So far, nobody made any inquiries to me, or I might have steered them to a few points that might bear fruit with a stakeout.'

'They know they're wanted?'

'No doubt,' he confirmed. 'But now they're here, and there's one thing they've probably forgotten about. Like any of the people in our work, they have safe houses to hole up in right in their enemies' backyard. We establish these places for them, or when necessary they can make the arrangements themselves. Fells and Bern like to do their own work. They didn't want anybody knowing where they had a safe house, including me. However, I realized that, and knowing the way their personalities were developing, I made sure I ran down the three places they had on the East Coast. They never found out and I never published the information because they were operating in Europe most of the time.'

'They came back often enough.'

'Sometimes it is better to watch the rats to see what's happening than kill them outright. They didn't make the high-priority wanted lists until fairly recently.'

'Where are the houses, General?'

'This I don't bring up on the computers. Wait here. I want to make some phone calls.'