Текст книги "The Doomsday Affair"

Автор книги: Harry Whittington

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“You will wait until I am on the balcony and have closed the doors. You will then admit your guests.”

“We’re eight stories up—”

“Do as I say.”

Illya shrugged and waited until the tall man crossed the room, retracting the blade of the dagger into the cane as he went. He stepped out on the balcony as the knocking grew louder and more impatient. He closed the doors and Illya saw his lean shadow through the fragile pink curtains.

He said, “All right. I’m coming.”

The knocking was repeated, louder this time.

He opened the door, seeing across its threshold the troubled face of the hotel manager and the chilled face of two men he supposed to be Honolulu homicide detectives.

They entered the room and then the three of them paused, staring down at the dead girl on the pink shag rug.

“How did this happen?” The hotel manager whispered it, sick.

“I don’t know,” Illya said. “I was not in the room.”

“Who is she?”

“I do not know. I got in the room by mistake. The wrong room. I found her here.” He hesitated, glanced toward the balcony, and added, “There was a man with her. A tall, Oriental-looking fellow.”

One of the detectives, slender and mahogany dark, said, “And where is this man now?”

Illya inclined his head toward the balcony. “He went out there when he heard you knock.”

The detective jerked his head toward the balcony. His fellow, a stout man in his thirties, his temples flecked with gray, strode across the room. “He’s armed,” Illya said mildly.

The detective paused at the door, removed a snub-nosed .38 police revolver from his belt holster. He turned the knobs, threw open the doors.

The balcony was bare.

“Very amusing,” the detective said at Illya’s shoulder.

“I didn’t think he’d hang around out there,” Illya said.

“We are on the eighth floor,” the detective reminded him.

“That’s what I told him,” Illya said.

“Oh?”

“Yes. He didn’t seem unduly impressed.”

The detective did not smile. “Neither am I,” he said.

“I was afraid that would be your attitude.”

“I better warn you. Anything you say may be used a against you.”

Illya shrugged. “I have just one thing to say.”

“Yes?”

“Have you ever had those days when nothing seemed to go right?”

IV

SOLO WALKED SLOWLY in the mid-morning heat reflected from the red-brick streets around the train station, College Park. He felt as if he were moving through an unfiltered nightmare where nothing went right and even the buildings seemed to waver rubber-like when he looked at them.

He’d been prowling for a long time. It had taken much indirect questioning to learn the names of the two young people who’d blasted over the bluff at Pall Pass.

“Polly Jade Ing,” they told him. “She was the girl who sold leis. Kaina Tamashiro worked as beach boy at Waikiki. They planned to marry.”

Beyond this, there was little he could learn. It consumed two hours to learn that Polly Jade Ing’s parents had returned to China six months earlier. She had lived over a tailor shop near the carnival park, on River Street. Her room revealed nothing to him except that she was a casual housekeeper who wrote no letters and kept none if she received any. She had a weakness for flashily colored spiked-heel slippers, shifts, and seemed unable to find a satisfactory hair lacquer. A dozen different brands lined her cluttered dresser.

The Honolulu Star listed Kaina Tamashiro’s address as only Aala Street. Solo had asked at a dozen houses, but the dark eyed people stared at him and shook their heads. Most of them did not even speak.

Solo sighed, walking in the sun. He no longer believed that either Kaina Tamashiro or the pretty Polly Jade were any more than pawns in the deadly game that had caused Ursula’s death. But he had to keep pushing it now because they were the only link to whoever had hired Polly Jade to deliver the lethal lei at the airport. And Polly Jade had known there was something wrong with the deal; that was fear he had seen in her face, fear that had made her run, fear that had sent her to her death. Clearly she had been hired by a more devious employer than the Honolulu Chamber of Commerce. The lei had been deadly, and Polly Jade had known this when she had tossed it over Ursula’s head—obviously she’d even known that only the upward pull on the lei would detonate it.

What else Polly had known he’d never be able to learn. But perhaps the beach boy might be involved—he had run, too, and had seemed to know why he was running. Anyhow it was a lane he had to follow all the way because he had no leads except a silver whip—and a letter of meaningless jargon.

Solo was near the shabby depot of the small-gauge railway when he first noticed the young boy. The child was the color of beer in the sun, about nine. He wore a flowered shirt, brown shorts. He was barefooted. Each time Solo glanced over his shoulder, the boy was somewhere near him.

He glanced at the small train pulling out of the station, windows open. Across the street the military had posted “‘Off Limit” signs. There were small stores, paint-peeled houses and narrow alleys.

Solo felt someone tug at his shirt. “Mister.”

Solo was not too astonished to see it was the boy, staring up at him with round, black eyes.

“Mister, you looking for something?”

Solo nodded. “A beach boy who’s supposed to live around here.”

“I know most everyone who lives around Aala Street, Mister.”

Solo said, “You know Kaina Tamashiro?”

“Oh.”

“Why do you say that?”

“He is dead, mister.”

“I know that. He lived around here, didn’t he?”

“I know where he lived.”

Solo flipped the child a fifty cent piece, tossing it so it fell into the boy’s shirt pocket. The boy grinned admiringly.

“Can you take me where he lived?” Solo asked.

The boy removed the coin from his pocket, clutching it tightly in his fist. “All right.”

He motioned Solo to follow, and ran across the street. A car wailed at him.

The boy waited at the mouth of a debris littered alley until Solo crossed the street and stepped up on the walk, then he moved away into the narrow passageway.

Solo glanced both ways and followed.

Cats slithered between cans and barrels of refuse. Rear windows opened on the alley and voices came from those windows, along with the smells of cooking, of rancid foods.

Solo watched the boy run cat-like ahead of him. As he walked deeper into the alley a strange quietness seemed to envelop him, and to move along with him. There was tension in the silence, watchful and waiting.

A cat screeched behind him and Solo glanced over his shoulder. Two men had entered the alley behind him. One of them had stepped on a cat’s tail. Solo saw that they looked young, about the age of the dead Kaina Tamashiro. They even resembled him in flesh color and body size, as well as the casual and gaudy garb affected by the surfers and the beach boys.

He would not have been certain they were following him except that they tried to hide when he turned.

Solo exhaled heavily, looking again for the child ahead of him. The boy waited impatiently where the alley intersected with another, even less prepossessing.

“How much further, boy?’

Something in his tone diluted the last ounce of the boy’s courage. The child gazed at Solo for one moment, then heeled and ran along the side alley.

Two more brightly garbed beach boys stepped from the alleyways, blocking Solo’s path.

Behind him, Solo heard the other two running toward him.

Solo moved to the wall and put his back to it. His face set, he watched the four youthful men advance upon him.

They began to talk to him, their voices flat and cold, not waiting for him to answer, not wanting him to.

“What you doing down here?”

“You looking for Kaina, huh?”

“Kaina’s not down here.”

“Not any more. Kaina’s dead.”

“You know he’s dead?”

“You know Polly’s dead?”

“You some kind of cop?”

“He’s a cop.”

“He’s down here looking for Kaina. But he knows he won’t find Kaina, huh? You know that? You know he’s dead, huh?”

“He knows they’re dead.”

“You killed Kaina, didn’t you?”

“You killed him.”

They had crowded in upon him now. The two immediately in front were the only ones able to get directly at him. The others were hampered by the refuse barrels on each side of him.

It happened quickly. The two boys before him pulled out switch-blade knives, flicked out the blades.

Solo was forced to give them his entire attention. The gun in his holster seemed to press against his ribs, reminding him it was there to equalize the odds. But he did not touch it for the moment. Polly and Kaina had been mixed up in something evil, but these boys were Kaina’s friends, saddened and enraged by his death, and they were boys. There had been killing enough if he could escape without it. The odds didn’t make it seem likely.

One boy on each side of Solo grabbed a refuse barrel and upset it in the alley, rolling it toward him as the two knife wielders sprang at him.

Solo saw the glint of knife blades, the gleam of teeth bared in rage, black eyes wild with hatred.

As the barrels reached him, he lunged upward, going to his left over one and using its forward motion to propel himself hard against the first armed thug.

He heard the boy cry out and try to straighten. Solo chopped down, feeling the side of his hand contact across the boy’s neck. The boy sprawled face down across the rolling barrel and Solo was free beyond him. The three remaining attackers were for the moment caught in a confusion of their own making.

As the nearest knife-carrier whipped around and sprang at Solo, Solo shook free of his jacket, snagging it by the collar as it crumpled almost to the ground.

He brought it upward, feeling the tug as the knife was thrust into it. Solo jerked the coat past him, carrying the boy with it. With his free hand Solo clipped the falling boy in the throat and at the same instant released his jacket. The boy fell gasping and writhing three feet beyond him in the alley.

The last two boys hesitated one moment, glancing at each other, their dark faces troubled. The second knifer jerked his head forward and they leaped upon Solo at the same time, the unarmed youth striking high and the other crouching to rip upward with his switchblade. Solo felt the fierce impact of the two stocky boys and he gave with it, going against the wall again. Another barrel was overturned; another cat howled. Otherwise the alley silence remained unbroken.

The unarmed boy tackled Solo about the shoulders, trying to pin his arms to his side. Solo could hear his heavy breathing.

Solo let the boy clutch him with both arms, still retreating. As he toppled back, he caught the youth with his fingers thrust deeply into his nostrils. He thrust upward, hard, and the boy screamed, releasing his grip.

Still holding him helpless with his fingers in his nostrils, Solo caught his collar and slammed him down on the crouching knifer. Both of them went down, but the knifer was still scrambling forward, and Solo felt the slicing of the knife along his trousers.

From behind him, the other boy had gotten to his feet, still gagging and unable to catch a full breath. He swung wildly with his knife and Solo snagged his wrist, jerking him forward off his feet. He chopped him across the neck, letting him fall into the tangle of bodies and arms and legs and alley refuse.

Solo retreated again, but the second knifer had leaped free, tackling Solo at the ankles. Solo saw the alley springing upward toward him. As he struck, the other two boys turned and leaped upon him. Beat across the face, Solo sagged against the wall, momentarily stunned.

They swarmed over him, taking advantage of this momentary edge. Solo saw the bright gleam of switchblades, silver in the alley light. Silver. The silver whip. Why would he be thinking about a thing like that in a moment like this? A knife sliced at his shirt, scratching at his flesh. He used his knee to checkmate that knifer and saw him fall away, heard the clatter of the knife on the ground. His extended fingers sank into the solar plexus of the next boy, pressing him downward, relieved him of his weight, and he locked the fingers of both hands, catching them under the chin of the last one, knowing that in his rage he might decapitate him as he hurled him backwards. But he was not really thinking about the four boys, or this alley, or their knives. He was thinking about that silver whip he’d seen in Ursula’s suitcase, and even as the knife point made another swipe at him, he was grinning coldly because suddenly he remembered where he had seen that silver whip before…

V

ILLYA KURYAKIN PROWLED the cell in the Honolulu jail. Outside his cell, the detective lieutenant who had arrested him sat relaxed in a cane-bottomed straight chair.

“You will make it easier on all of us to talk,” he said.

Illya sighed. “I have told you for three hours straight, I have nothing to say.”

“You will beg to talk before I am through with you.”

“Perhaps I will. But I am not begging yet.”

“Listen.” The slender man leaned forward, speaking in a conciliatory and confidential tone. “I am Lieutenant Yakato Guerrero. Perhaps you have heard of me.”

“I am afraid not.”

“If you had been long in Honolulu, you would have heard of me. My record as a police detective is without flaw. I did not get my promotion through any influence, only because of my record. I have no blemishes. Each case I have been assigned to, I have completed most successfully.”

“Very commendable.”

“Yes. It is. On this island, people know Lieutenant Yakato Guerrero. The law-abiding feel safer because of me. The criminal hopes I will not set myself on his trail, because I end my cases in only one way—”

“I know. Most successfully. Perhaps you will succeed with the death of that girl, but not by sitting there harassing me. You’re barking up the wrong red herring. I told you. I know nothing of her death.”

“You will talk to me of it before I am through. I am a patient man and I do not anticipate you to spoil my record that has no blemish.”

“Consider me as a nothing, as an innocent bystander caught in this situation. Let me be neither a triumph nor loss to you.”

Guerrero pushed back in his chair and did not speak. For some time there was silence between them, and Illya began to see that Guerrero had not lied. The police lieutenant was a patient man, with an Oriental patience in which time hung suspended, without meaning.

Illya drew his hand across his mouth, knowing that time was not suspended for him. Sam—the mismatched, ugly Eurasian—was incontestably a link in the Tixe Ylno matter, the affair that had seemed blown apart with the death of the beautiful defecting spy.

Finally, as if he had been continuing an unbroken dialogue, the police lieutenant said, “Who are you?”

“I told you. I am George Yorkvitz, a bellhop at the hotel.”

“Who are you really?”

“Oh, come on now, Guerrero. You must have more to do than this! The hotel manager recognized me. I didn’t even ask him. He looked at me, and told you himself that I was employed at the hotel.”

“But he could not tell us what you were doing up there. Only you can tell us this. And this is what you will tell me.”

“I told you. I was called up there.”

The dark face twisted into a pained smile. “By the dead girl, I suppose?”

“No. I never talked to her. Someone called me. A man. Why would I call the police and report her death?”

“If you are the one who did—”

“The hotel manager himself told you that I reported the death to the desk. As an employee of the hotel, I had a right to be up there.”

The lieutenant shook his head. “In civilian clothes?”

“I was getting ready to quit my job. I changed my clothes on the way up there.”

“Why?”

“I told you. I was getting ready to quit my job.”

“Why?”

“I came out here for a vacation. I was tired of the work. That’s all. You can’t make any more out of it. I don’t know the dead girl. Why don’t you try to find that man?”

“What man is that?”

“You could get on a person’s nerves. You know that, don’t you?”

“I never took this job to be popular.”

“I know. Only to be without a flaw.”

“I saw no man in that room with you. No trace. I found only an empty suitcase that may have belonged to the dead girl.”

“There was a man in that room. He forced me to stay there until you and the hotel manager arrived. I’m telling you the truth.”

“Perhaps you are.” The voice was low. “If you are, you then have nothing to fear.”

“I have to fear you. You won’t listen to me. You’re more interested in a perfect record of solved cases than you are in the truth. How many people have you forced to confess to crimes when they weren’t even guilty?”

Kuryakin had found Guerrero’s Achilles’ heel. The youthful detective sprang up, gripping the bars, his black eyes fixed on Illya’s impassive face.

“Don’t say such things to me! Don’t ever say such things to me!”

“Then why don’t you let me try to prove to you that man was in the room with me?”

Guerrero relaxed. He straightened, allowing himself a faint, superior smile. “I think we will keep you here. We will wait for the results of your fingerprints.”

He turned and walked away, going leisurely out of the cell-block.

Illya stood unmoving at the bars, staring at the man’s back. He shook his head, now deeply troubled because of what those fingerprints would reveal about him to Guerrero.

He prowled the cell. He ran his fingers through his wheat-colored hair. It flopped back across his forehead. He knew what the results of the fingerprints inquiry would be. The FBI would send word to the Honolulu police, showing not only that his name was Illya Kuryakin, but then it would have to be shown who he was and for whom he worked.

He shook his head. The assignment was already going too badly for him to involve U.N.C.L.E. in his presence in the islands. He and Napoleon Solo had been assigned by Alexander Waverly to find a person named Tixe Ylno who might be male or female, or who might not exist at all. No one in U.N.C.L.E. had ever seen Tixe Ylno—they knew only that code name which Thrush had given him. Spelled backwards Tixe Ylno was simply Exit Only—which, from the meager clues and information gathered by agents for U.N.C.L.E., was Tixe Ylno’s plan for humanity. A female spy, frightened and almost hysterical in her desire to come in from the cold, had managed to contact U.N.C.L.E. and make known her desire to defect from Thrush. Word came that the woman agent was one of the few people who actually had known, seen and talked with Tixe Ylno. She was anxious to trade her information for U.N.C.L.E.’s protection.

The frightened spy’s name of course was Ursula Baynes-Neefirth.

Even the suggestion that agents for U.N.C.L.E. were remotely involved in the murder of the fleeing spy would completely destroy all chance of continuing the pursuit of Tixe Ylno. There was no doubt about it. Tixe Ylno appeared to be the most dangerous foe yet encountered by the agents for U.N.C.L.E.

He worked from the deepest network of secrecy—as attested to by the fact that not even U.N.C.L.E. knew whether Tixe Ylno was a man or a woman, an individual, or a conspiracy.

Whoever or whatever Tixe Ylno was, the countermeasures had to be accomplished in a matching veil of secrecy.

Illya stared at the bars of his cell. One thought kept wheeling through his brain. He had to get out of here before there was any answer on his fingerprints which had already been flashed across ocean and continent to Washington, D.C.

He had to get out of here.

“You! George.”

When Illya, lost in savage concentration, did not reply to the unfamiliar name he had assumed as a hotel bellhop, the jailer scraped his nightstick along the cell bars.

“You. Yorkvitz. George!”

Illya turned from his contemplation of the barred window, staring at the jailer. “What do you want?”

“You got company,” the jailer said. “A friend of yours.”

Illya felt the breath exhale from him as if he had not been breathing for an incredible time. Solo must have somehow learned of his plight.

He strode across the cell. “Yes,” he said. “Take me to him.”

“Relax,” the jailer said. “We’ll bring him back here. He says he’s a bellhop from your hotel at Waikiki.”

Illya nodded, waiting expectantly. The jailer went along the corridor to the entrance of the cell-block. The door was opened and a man came through it. Illya stared, his heart sinking.

This was not Solo. It was no bellhop from the hotel. It was no one he had ever seen.

He shook his head. The man came toward him, smiling confidently. The jailer pointed out the cell, and leaned against the wall. “You got three minutes, fellow.” The man nodded and walked to the bars where Illya awaited him, puzzled and watchful.

“Hello, George.” The man was obviously Chinese, smartly dressed, his shoes shining and black. His mouth smiled, but there was no light in his eyes.

“I don’t know you,” Illya said.

The mouth went on smiling; the man peered at him. “Sure you know me, George.” His voice was louder than necessary. Illya saw he was speaking for the guard’s benefit. “We work together. Why, when I came in here, they frisked me, George: He laughed loudly. “How about that? Afraid I would bring you something to help you escape. How about that, George?”

“How about that,” Illya said. “I don’t know you, and I don’t know what you want. Get out of here.”

“Take it easy, George. Why, I went through a lot to get in here. They took everything from me, George. Everything except this fountain pen. How about that, George?” He took the fountain pen from his shirt pocket, extending it suddenly toward Illya.

Illya stared at it, lunged backward, crying out. In that same instant, the visitor pressed on the end of the pen and white liquid flushed out of it, striking Kuryakin in the face.

Illya tried to cry out, and could not. He tried to catch himself, but had lost all coordination. He was aware of nothing except the burn of the fluid on his skin, in his eyes and his nostrils.

He toppled back on the bed, for the moment suffocating and almost entirely paralyzed.

The man beyond the bars laughed again. “Well, all right, George, you don’t want to talk to me, I’ll clear out. We wanted to help you. You don’t want us to help you, that’s all right, too.”

He turned, thrust his fountain pen back into his shirt pocket and strode away, complaining loudly.

Sprawled on the cot, Illya stared after him, unable to move at all. He heard the cell-block door open and close distantly, and then there was silence in the cell.

He tried to turn and could not. He lay unmoving while the FBI investigated his fingerprints and flashed back word to the Honolulu police. Illya Kuryakin. Agent for the United Network Command for Law and Enforcement.

Sure, he’d be freed then—but he might as well be dead.

He struggled, his nerve centers frantically ordering his numbed muscles to move, even to twitch, to show any sign of life at all.

He tried to cry out, and he could not even speak. Whoever had put him here meant to see he stayed here until he was framed for a crime he had not committed, or until his true identity was established and his usefulness destroyed.

He stared furiously, frustrated and enraged, at his hands, at his feet. And he was struck fiercely again with the simplicity of the attack. First, Ursula’s face was blown away by a mechanism concealed in a lei—flowers given a hundred times a day to visitors to Hawaii. Now, a visitor to the jail was carefully searched, and allowed to enter the cell-block with a lethal fountain pen—who even looked at a fountain pen in a man’s pocket?

VI

SOLO STRAIGHTENED up in the littered alley and put his back against the wall. Around him, the refuse barrels were overturned, a stocky beach boy folded neatly over one of them, the other three lying face down in the scattered garbage.

Solo felt a stab of pain going through him and he touched gingerly at the fire in his side. He tried to keep his face expressionless, disliking the thought of giving in to the sharp burn of abrasion and contusion marring his face. His eye was swelling, purpling, and he tasted blood in the corner of his mouth.

He experienced some small satisfaction when he looked at the four young thugs sprawled unconscious around him. The hell with them. He had not bowed to them, though his jacket was knife-ripped and stained with rancid refuse. His shirt was torn.

But he had another lead—the silver whip—despite the deaths of Ursula and the flower girl and her beach boy. He tried to smile. He had walked into a wall—and he looked it. Solo raised the back of his hand and drew it across his mouth.

After a long time, when he was sure his legs would support him, he straightened from the wall and gave his opponents a sardonic bow, but carefully and not very deeply. Even so, the sky and the littered pavement changed places for a second.

He turned to walk away, but a movement caught his attention and he stopped.

The stocky boy folded across the barrel was coming around. Solo turned to him, almost sadly, caught him by the collar and forcibly lifted him to his feet, bracing him against the wall.

Solo shook him, both hands holding his bright shirt.

“Who hired you to do this?” He kept asking the question until he saw those dark eyes focus, and comprehension return to them.

The boy shook his head. Solo saw fear and admiration in the youth’s face where there had once been only cold contempt. “No. No, sir. Nobody. You see, Kaina was our friend…”

“Who did he work for?”

“With us, sir. At the beach.”

“Who else? Answer me! Who else?”

The boy shook his head, frightened. “No. No, sir. No one.”

Solo stared at him, seeing that the boy was not lying. He was too frightened to dissemble.

Solo was calm. He held the youth’s shirt, forcing him to meet his gaze.

“And this girl? Polly Jade Ing? What about her? What do you know of her?”

“I have known her many years. She and Kaina. They were to marry.”

“Did you know who she worked for?”

“Only with the Chamber—that’s all. I swear it, sir! Are you a cop? Some kind of a cop?”

Solo sighed, deciding that the attack on him was a matter of vengeance, the need to cleanse Kaina’s honor, and nothing more—unless you counted the need for violence that had spurred them.

He tightened his grip on the boy’s shirt. “I’m going to give you a chance to get out of here, away from these others. If not, I’ll put you right back to sleep with them—”

“Oh, no, sir. No. That won’t be needed. I should be at work already. I am much late already. There’s no need.”

“Then get out of here. Move and keep moving.”

“Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.”

When the boy was gone, running through the littered alley, Solo remained where he was for another moment From the pocket of his jacket, he removed the sender-receiver he had used in the hotel room to summon Kuryakin. Now, after checking the alley and finding it empty and silent, he pulled out the antennae and said into the speaker:

“Bubba. Acknowledge. Acknowledge.”

He frowned, waiting. The call should have carried at least five miles. He glanced around him, thinking he wanted to clear out of here. A man could get hurt in this island paradise. Further, he wanted to communicate to Illya his need to pursue the clues offered by that silver whip.

“Bubba. Acknowledge, please.,

He spoke calmly and clearly, but without emotion. He touched at the darkening spot beside his mouth.

He pressed the button, listening.

He made one last effort. “Bubba. Come in please. Acknowledge.”

There was no answer and he stopped listening. He reset the antennae, replaced the set in his jacket pocket and walked toward the train station in the distance, carrying the soiled, slashed coat across his shoulder.

He decided that Illya had gone off alert, because it was basic computing inside the machinery of Kuryakin’s unemotional mind that if he did not hear from Solo, it was no signal to hit the panic switch. If anything he became calmer than ever, certain he was on a DC-7 winging stateside.

VII

SPRAWLED on the cot in his darkening cell at the Honolulu jail, Illya looked through the bars at the lighted corridor, at the guards and trustys moving around out there in the onion yellow light.

He struggled violently, in a way he had never struggled before. It had nothing to do with actual movement, action of any kind. His body was stilled as if in a catatonic trance. His eyes were still tear-clouded, burning from the fluid sprayed into them. The struggling was all inside his mind.

He began to be filled with a distracting terror that this paralysis might be permanent. Suddenly this cell was like a tiny box, a cheap coffin. He wondered if this were what it all finally added up to: lying helpless in an alien cell, among strangers. It had never occurred to him that he would not have to pay for having served U.N.C.L.E., the things he had done for the united command, and the misdoings in the years before he had joined them. He had not looked for a reward—no more than a few hours off once in a while to enjoy his collection of jazz. But it was bad to know one was so alone, and helpless.

Lying there, he watched the cell-block door open and then close. Trustys were carrying tin plates of food to the inmates. He wondered how long it would be before they came and found him like this. He struggled again, ordering his hands to move. He didn’t want to be found here like this.

He heard the distant ring of a telephone. It was silenced and he sweated, concentrating on moving his hands.

Inside his skull he laughed when his fingers twitched, and then bent, and then straightened. Now he concentrated fiercely upon his feet and his legs, forcing his conscious mind to ignore the bite of acid in his eyes and nostrils.

His feet moved. His legs moved. He did not know how long it was but finally he was able to sit up on the edge of the cot. His clothing was sweat damp, and he was wide-eyed and tense.

He reached out his arms, found support and pulled himself to his feet. He attempted to take a forward step, but lost his balance and sprawled outward. He caught himself on the lavatory, and then dragged his legs after him, straightening.

He turned the tap water on full. Slowly he lowered his face into the rush of water. He let it run for a long time.

The burn lessened in his eyes, and the sting ceased in his nostrils. He kept bathing his face with the water. He realized that feeling had returned to his legs, and his hands and forearms ached with the returning strength. He bent slowly forward and immersed his face in the water.