The Eiger Sanction

'Don't make book on it, baby. SS has a long arm.'

'Next card?'

Pope slipped the top card to the bottom of the pack and glanced at the next. 'Oh, yeah. You really left us with a mess, baby.'

Jonathan smiled, a gentle calm in his eyes. 'That's twice you've called me 'baby.' '

'That's kind of a burr under your blanket, isn't it?'

'Yes. Yes, it is,' Jonathan admitted with quiet honesty.

'Well, that's just tough titty, pal. The days are long gone when we had to worry about your feelings.'

Jonathan took a long breath to contain his feelings, and he asked, 'You were saying something about a mess?'

'Yeah. We had teams all over that desert trying to find out what happened.'

'And did you?'

'The second day we came across the car and that guy you blew out of it.'

'What about the other one?'

'Miles Mellough? I had to leave before we found him. But I got word just before I left New York that one of our teams had located him.'

'Dead, I presume.'

'Plenty dead. Exposure, hunger, thirst. They don't know which he died of first. But he was beaucoup dead. They buried him out on the desert.' Pope snickered. 'Weird thing.'

'Weird?'

'He must have been real hard up for chow there toward the last.'

'Oh?'

'Yeah. He ate a dog.'

Jonathan glanced down.

Pope went on. 'You know how much it cost us? That search? And keeping the whole thing quiet?'

'No. But I assume you'll tell me.'

'No, I won't. That information's classified. But we get a little tired of the way you irregulars burn money like it was going out of style.'

'That's always been a burr under your blanket, hasn't it, Pope? The fact that men like me earn more for one job than you get in three years.'

Pope sneered, an expression his face seemed particularly designed for.

'I admit that it would be more economical,' Jonathan said, 'if you SS regulars did your own sanctioning. But the work requires skill and some physical courage. And those qualities are not available on government requisition forms.'

'I'm not pissed about the money you're making on this particular job. This time you're going to earn it, baby.'

'I was hoping you'd get around to that.'

'You've already guessed—a big university professor like you must have guessed by now.'

'I'd enjoy hearing it from you.'

'Whatever turns you on. It's different strokes for different folks, I guess.' He flicked to the next card. 'Search has drawn a blank on your target. We know he's here. And he's on this climb with you. But we don't know which one for sure.'

'Miles Mellough knew.'

'Did he tell you?'

'He offered to. The price was too high.'

'What did he want?'

'To live.'

Pope looked up from the note card. He did his best to appear coldly professional as he nodded in sober understanding. But the cards fell from his knee, and he had to paw around to collect them.

Jonathan watched him with distaste. 'So you've set me up to make the target commit himself, right?'

'No other way, buddy-boy. We figured the target would recognize me on sight. And now he has you spotted as a Sanction man. He's got to take a crack at you before you get him. And when he does, I have him identified.'

'And who would do the sanction, if he got me?' Jonathan looked Pope over leisurely. 'You?'

'You don't think I could handle it?'

Jonathan smiled. 'In a locked closet, maybe. With a grenade.'

'Don't bet on that, buddy. As it happens, we're going to bring in another Sanction man to do the job.'

'I assume this was your idea?'

'Dragon OK'd it, but it came from me.'

Jonathan's face was set in his gentle combat smile. 'And it really doesn't matter that you've blown my cover, now that I have decided to stop working for you.'

'That is exactly the way it crumbles.' Pope was enjoying his moment of victory after so many years of smarting under Jonathan's open disdain.

'What if I just walk away and forget the whole thing?'

'No way, pal. You wouldn't get your hundred thousand; you'd lose your house; we'd confiscate your paintings; and you'd probably do a little time for smuggling them into the country. How does it feel to be in a box, pal?'

Jonathan crossed to pour himself a Laphroaig. Then he laughed aloud. 'You've done well, Pope. Really very well! Want a drink?'

Pope was not sure how to handle this sudden cordiality. 'Well, that's mighty white of you, Hemlock.' He laughed as he received his glass. 'Hey, I just said that was mighty white of you. I'll bet this Jemima Brown never said that to you. Right?'

Jonathan smiled beautifically. 'No. As a matter of fact, she never did.'

'Hey, tell me. How is that black stuff? Good, eh?'

Jonathan drank off half his glass and sat in a chair opposite Pope's, leaning toward him confidentially. 'You know, Pope, I really ought to tell you in advance that I intend to waste you a little.' He winked playfully. 'You would understand that, in a case like this, wouldn't you?'

'Waste me? What do you mean?'

'Oh, Just West Side slang. Look, if Dragon would rather I did the sanction myself—and I assume he would— I'm going to need a little information. Go over the Montreal thing with me. There were two men involved in the hit on whatshisname, right?'

'His name was Wormwood. He was a good man. A regular.' Pope flipped through several cards and scanned one rapidly. 'That's right. Two men.'

'Now, you're sure of that? Not a man and a woman?'

'It says two men.'

'All right. Are you sure Wormwood wounded one of the men?'

'That's what the report said. One of the two men was limping when he left the hotel.'

'But are you sure he was wounded? Could he have been hurt earlier? Maybe in a mountain accident?'

'The report said he limped. Why are you asking? Was one of your people hurt in some kind of accident?'

'Karl Freytag says he hurt his leg in a short fall last month.'

'Then Freytag could be your man.'

'Possibly. What else have the Search people dragged up about our man?'

'Almost nothing. Couldn't have been a professional. We'd have gotten a line on him by now, if he were a professional.'

'Could he have been the one who cut Wormwood open?'

'Maybe. We always assumed Kruger did the actual cutting. It's his kind of thing. But it could have been the other way, I suppose. Why?'

'One of the climbers had the capacity to kill a man with a knife. Very few people can do that.'

'Maybe he's your man. Whoever it was, he has a weak stomach.'