Текст книги "[The Girl From UNCLE 01] - The Global Globules Affair"

Автор книги: Simon Latter

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"Is the track dangerous, Papa?"

"Not if you keep to it and do not wander off on to the moor. Where is Ginger now?"

"I heard him ring the alarm for the guards. I expect they've taken Slate down to the basement."

"Good. You keep out of it—understand? As soon as the cook leaves, Ginger will send for the transport to take Slate away. You did very well, Suzanne—very well indeed. We have taken two very dangerous people out of circulation. It was disturbing that they should be in London, and at that particular place, at such a vital time. But we gave them no opportunity to report to their organization. Now, I must go. Be good, my little one. We will meet soon."

Mark Slate carefully slid open the drawer while Suzanne was saying her long-winded goodbyes, found the map, checked it, then stowed it in his pocket. He was already on the second floor by the time she had replaced the receiver, and the faint tinkle as she dropped the handset guided him to her room.

He halted at the open door, momentarily surprised by the startling decor and furnishings. Most rooms in these old Nash houses were spacious with high ceilings. Here, false ceiling, curved, painted brilliant sky-blue with coils of white cloud, suffused with golden light from hidden lamps, gave greater depth and breadth to the room.

Bright red and blue sail cloths were angled across the high windows, fore-standing against the superbly simulated sea scene painted on three of the walls. The door side of the room was a stone jetty. Rope bollards with padded tops faced a small, low stall with a backdrop painting of a life-like water side bistro. A capstan stood in front of a dressing table, set against the background of a ship's chandler's store, the table being the counter, To the left were sliding doors of a floor-to-ceiling wardrobe, the doors painted to appear like loaded shelves of the store.

The centre of the floor was one step below the "jetty"—a sand-colored, nylon-tufted carpet spread to meet the seascape walls. Resting on the carpet was a miniature yacht—white, sleek and beautiful—with one brilliant tangerine sail suspended from its mast. Aft of the mast, white and blue lounging chairs, deck lockers, tables were spaced below a slender guardrail. Fishing nets were draped from the "jetty" to this rail.

He couldn't see the stern half clearly because the sail was so fixed that it could be swung to partition or blank off each end. But under its boom he saw the lower portion of a bed, part of a cabin washbasin and bedside cabinets. He trod softly over the "jetty" as he heard the telephone being pushed over a hard surface.

Then the sail swung around to disclose the bed and top half of the furniture. It also disclosed Suzanne, stretching arms wide, yawning. Against the background of sails and sea she looked like—well, what she was. There was no time for Mark to indulge in fanciful allusions to water nymphs or mermaids. He had to cover the distance in two massive leaps to clamp his hand over her mouth.

He almost laughed because surprise, then fright, had frozen her body to the arms-stretched stance she had taken. Only her mouth and eyes moved. Both grew wider and wider. Mark grabbed her before the mouth was open wide enough to release the screaming bellow which, from such a chest development, might well have aroused the interest of the neighbors.

"I'll be very brisk and business-like," said Mark, holding her squirming body. "If you give me trouble, I shall make you unconscious very quickly. I don't want to do that, but I most certainly can—and will. Trouble from you means screaming or trying to run away. I'll give you an example." He pressed his finger into one side of her neck. Her body began to droop in his arms. "You see? Your head started to buzz and the life seemed to go out of you. If you give me trouble, I'll cripple you—understand?"

She nodded, fiercely jerking her head against his restraining hand, which he now removed from her mouth.

"Please," she whispered. "Please don't hurt me—please!"

A negligee lay across the foot of the bed. He flung it at her. "Put it on."

She recovered now. "Ginger? What has happened to my Ginger?"

"He's sleeping downstairs."

"You have hurt him! I will kill you!" She sprang at him, hands clawing for his eyes.

He gripped her wrists. "Trouble—don't give it—remember? No, he's not dead. But I'll go down and finish him off if you don't behave." His gay manner changed swiftly, menacing power flowing out of him. She cowered back. Her gaze flicked to a row of switches.

"Don't try it," said Mark. "The guards are sleeping too. So is the cook."

A gleam of admiration lighted her eyes.

"You have done that to all of them? You are a very strong man." Then she shrugged and pouted—a little girl coy again. "But I am no use to you." She came close, sliding her hands up his chest. "I think perhaps you are stronger than my Gingaire."

He grinned. "I'm bloody sure I'm stronger than your Gingaire." He looked into her eyes. "If I were your Papa I'd paddle your rear end. Why don't you grow up, Suzanne? Get yourself married and have half a dozen kids." He paused. "Aw! What the hell!" He thrust her away. "So who told you to play up to me?"

"You know who."

"Gingaire, of course."

"Of course."

"To get me here?" He nodded. "Of course. Silly question, but I don't like loose ends. Why, Suzanne?"

She shrugged again. "Ask Ginger."

He flared at her. "If I have to ask Ginger, he'll die. Don't you understand that? or do you think this is just a pretty game?"

She shook her head. "No, not a game. It frightens me. Last night, a telephone call told them you and that woman had arrived. This morning you were followed. I saw you in Carnaby Street."

"Where were you?"

She giggled. "I was one of the models. Then I changed and went to the Tower with Ginger." She fluttered her eyelids. "I did it very good—yes?"

He sighed. "You did it bloody terrible—yes. We knew exactly who you were. All we didn't know was why, so we helped you to tell us. Now we know—and Ginger is sleeping and you are not going any place."

Anger and fear filled her eyes, then a crafty look appeared in them. "She is not going any place either—your April Dancer." She spat childishly. "Oh so clever, so grand. You torture me, but I do not tell you where she is. Ah! You see—that is not so good for you now, is it? You hurt my Ginger. We hurt your April Dancer. Now who is so clever?"

"You have a point there, darling. You're a very clever girl. I think you're much more experienced than I believed."

She was suddenly gay. "See? Not so blerdy terrible after all, eh? I tell you something, Mister Big Strong Man. This is the first time I help Papa. Because it is a big time and he must have only people he can trust to help him."

Mark nodded sadly. "I'm not very clever."

"Pooh!" she scoffed. "There is no one as clever as Papa—no one." She came close, moving her breasts against his arm, her wiggling finger digging under his chin—little dog teasing. "I tell you something else—soon the whole world will know how clever my Papa is!" She stepped back, snapped her finger under his nose. "Now we go wake up my Ginger. I tell him you do not hurt me, then he will not hurt you." She drew the negligee closer around her nakedness. "I think he will like to wake up and see me like this, eh?"

Mark stepped around her. "Better like this," he said quietly, and in a few deft actions had flung the nylon fishing net over her, picked her up and rolled her in it. A coiled rope hung picturesquely from the "jetty". He fastened her in a net cocoon.

Gasping and struggling, her eyes glared at him through the mesh.

"You're just a little fish, darling," he said. "A little tiddler. You don't know enough to tell me the time."

She began to scream. Mark was prepared for it. He had already picked up a cake of soap shaped like a baby dolphin, and this he thrust through the mesh into her mouth.

"Have yourself a bubble bath!" He hoisted her over his shoulder, moved to the landing, found the bathroom, dumped her in the bath and left her frothing at the mouth.

He searched the house, swiftly, expertly. It seemed that Karadin and his daughter had furnished their own quarters with no expense spared, because the remaining rooms were tastefully but not luxuriously fitted. He found a group photo graph in one room: "Lord Larnous and family at their Bahamas home." The caption from a glossy magazine was stuck on the frame base. Mark winked at the big, frozen-faced woman standing next to his Lordship. "I can't imagine you in that yacht bed, duckie. But at the rent this place is paying—you should worry!"

The downstairs study was like a lush sleeping barrack room. Two men were semi-conscious, one was moaning. Ginger Coke was still out cold. Mark shoveled them on one side, after emptying their pockets. They all carried THRUSH identity discs. He pocketed these and went to the files. A special U.N.C.L.E. device soon had the locks freed.

The files were crammed with photostat maps of shopping centers in towns all over the British Isles. The notes below each map made it clear that these were sites of branches of a nation-wide group of fashion shops. Bus stops, supermarkets, banks and post offices also were marked in relation to the site of each shop. Figures gave peak density hours, halfday closing and, where applicable, the town's market day. Mark extracted several photostats as samples, went up to the yacht room, contacted London Headquarters, gave and received information crisply and clearly.

He sat quietly for exactly five minutes before he dialed the phone.

Jeff's voice said: "Key one speaking. Mark? Answer."

"U to Key one. London H.Q. cleared. This is priority. You agree?"

"Key one agreed." Jeff chuckled. "Things happen when you're around, old boy. They tell me in France the choppers are away."

"I so heard. What can you offer me?"

"A twin-engined Alster cabin job. No good for moor landing. Only a chopper's safe for that. Use Plymouth or Exeter. Our strips. Car from there. Snag arises. Jaguar available Plymouth. Aston Martin Exeter. You takes yer choice, mate."

"Exeter."

"Will do. Have Ministry Pool car standing by here. Velly pretty driver. Knows all short cuts to Hendon."

"You're wizzo, chum. Who said the Limeys were slow?"

"You did, if I recall aright. No matter. We survive. Make for York Gate entrance to Regent's Park. Driver will have envelope of money. Her name is Daphne. Lay off. Her and me have an understanding. And sign for that ruddy money! Wreck the car and the plane if you so desire, but leave not one chit unsigned, else all is chaos. The S.B. are sending a meat wagon to pick up your bods in fifteen minutes, so get clear—fast."

"I go," said Mark.

"Lucky perisher!" said Jeff plaintively. "Why did I give up field work? So long, glamour boy."

"Bless you, Jeff. See you!"

He raced down the stairs, opened the front door, surveyed the street, then closing the door gently sauntered nonchalantly away in the direction of York Gate.

Count Kazan drove down to the valley, skirting the town to reach the small heliport. A helicopter, rotors idling, stood waiting. He checked in at the office to obtain formal clearance and sign for the machine which was always hired to a company he used for the purpose.

"Alphonse is very quick today," said Kazan.

"It is not Alphonse," said the office manager. "He's sick, but the new man, Gaston, is very efficient."

"So it seems." Kazan left the office, suspicions aroused. Any change made him suspicious, but he sauntered towards the machine as if he had no thought of anything but the pleasant time ahead, a rich man indulging himself. He climbed into the chopper. The pilot, helmeted and goggled, nodded to him.

"Thank you, Gaston. I will take her now."

"My orders are to stay."

"And my orders are for you to go," Kazan snapped, then whirled as he sensed danger.

A man was launching himself from the shadow behind the seats, cosh raised. Kazan flung himself to one side. His tiny sleep gun spat once. The dart hit the man in the neck. Kazan parried the down-slashing arm, thrusting the man away from him with such force that he plummeted through the open hatchway. In that same moment, searing pain lashed the back of his bead. Count Kazan pitched forward, dazed.

The helicopter then lifted swiftly, sending him headlong against the strutting, thus completing his collapse.

He came out of the blackness slowly. The rush of cold air through the open hatch helped to revive him quickly, but Kazan was too old a hand to show he was awake. The pilot had to turn at an awkward angle before he could see Kazan, and this gave him plenty of warning; so Kazan took his time, inhaling deeply and letting the throbbing ache pass away. He glimpsed the terrain through the opening and was surprised to recognize the beaches and hills of Monte Carlo. He must have been unconscious for a long time.

Slowly he edged a few inches at a time to a position directly behind the pilot, making it almost impossible for the man to sight him quickly. But Gaston became suspicious. He glanced back, hefting a stubby automatic.

"Don't try anything," he warned. "I'm putting down in a few minutes. If we crash, you'll be killed first—I'll see to that."

Kazan fired once, then leapt, his hand a searing edge slashing across the back of Gaston's neck. The gun fired upwards. The bullet sped through the perspex canopy and pinged off one of the rotor blades.

The helicopter juddered and began to slip sideways, then dipped sharply earthwards. Kazan had to use all his supple strength to roll the senseless pilot clear of the controls and then fight the now dangerously sliding chopper. The whole frame juddered as the chipped rotor caused an uneven swing. He cut power as low as he dared and kept the machine dipping and sliding in slowly descending spirals. A forest passed beneath him–then miraculously a tiny apron of a landing site appeared on his port side.

The thought occurred to him that this was the very landing site for which Gaston had been aiming. Kazan shrugged.

After all, whoever was waiting would not know Gaston was not in control. The radio was off, and to ground watchers the chopper obviously was in trouble. He snatched vital seconds to secure the gun lying between the seats before he coasted the machine to a lop-sided landing and switched off. The helicopter scuttled sideways, hopping crab-like. The action shot Kazan out of the hatchway.

He landed, cat-like, rolled several times to give his body impetus and any marksman a difficult target, then scrabbled to his feet and raced for the trees. He went deep among them to a small clearing with paths leading across it and sat beside a bush, gulping in air. Once his breath was under control he pulled out his communicator and called up Paris H.Q.

"Channel D—Channel D. Hear me. Kazan, helicopter, in woods north about twenty kilometers from Monte Carlo. Chopper damaged. Am making my way to a road. Will contact when clear of woods." Suddenly he saw movements glinting among the trees. Movements from all sides of him. He watched them come closer and closer until they ringed him with a circle of shimmering metal-clad forms.

"Mon Dieu!" said Kazan. "Rush me also a can opener—I am surrounded by canned goods! Over and out."

CHAPTER FIVE: THE PLUS FACTOR

DARTMOOR rain has a quality all its own. There is Dartmoor fog, and Dartmoor mist, and Dartmoor haze. Low cloud sweeping over the tors often will provide a mixture of all four, giving areas of sheets of penetrating rain over the highest points. On the slopes these will produce a form of fog—actually a whitish shroud of miniscule moisture globules which lies on clothing, hair, beards or eyebrows in tiny quivering haloes.

In the depressions and hollows and over the rare level areas of ground this becomes a fairy mist—light, gossamer, and cruelly unreliable. It will caress you damply one minute, give a glowing effect around you, causing an illusion of sunshine about to burst through the clouds. The next minute you are lost and stumbling through a thick grey wall. Then, according to your proximity to a tor, the wind direction and force, it will speed away, allowing you to discover you should have been on a track somewhere else. As you hurry towards another path, thankful for deliverance, the fairy mist swoops up behind you, to again wrap you in its ghostie embrace.

You forge ahead in a straight line, not realizing that one of the most joyous results of being caught in it is that you immediately walk in a circle. You usually discover this when you sink oozily in a patch of bog, or break your leg in fissure or over a rock. For the walker caught on Dartmoor in such conditions there is one golden rule—don't. Don't walk, don't move. Stay put.

The so-called enlightened Victorians knew all about Dartmoor. They knew and appreciated its wild beauty, its sweep of purple-gold, undulating to the serene summer horizon. Here, a man could walk free with only the sky and the wheeling hawks above him, the heather beneath his feet, the shy ballet dance of gamboling sheep over the hillside, and the tumbling streams, fish-laden, joyously bubbling. Which is why they built a massive grey granite prison to house the most desperate of their criminals here on Dartmoor.

There are more houses now, but the prison still stands, the moors and quarries around it—an ugly, monstrous excrement of a monument to the glory of justice and retribution so beloved by those who built it. Occasionally some prisoners escape. A few have succeeded in breaking out of the moor itself, and reaching towns. But mostly they run from working parties outside the prison, seeking shelter in the fairy mist which proves to be a more unholy prison than the grey granite walls. Many are only too glad to be recaptured. Some die—lonely and afraid in the sibilant silence of the rain and mist—or lie wracked with pneumonia after falling into the river Dart—from which the moor is named—and slowly collapse in the shivering mist.

April Dancer had read a lot about Dartmoor. In her student days she had visited the prison as part of her studies on criminal codes, patterns and behaviors as well as to aid her work on a social science degree. She could, in fact, have told Dr. Karadin a lot about Dartmoor. She'd stayed in at least three of the villages and hiked over its tors from each direction, as she also had done on Exmoor—a northerly range of hills and moors edged by the Bristol Channel. So she wondered why Karadin and the obviously wealthy organization behind him had chosen a house on Dartmoor as a research base.

Remoteness, quietness, away from prying eyes and gossiping mouths—those were reasonable factors; but were offset by the conditions of climate, time taken to reach town centers and London, and the normal difficulties of provisioning and communications, for in the very bad winters many parts of Dartmoor are cut off. Yet, she reasoned, organizations calculate all factors and their decisions are reached on the plus factor. What was the plus factor of Moorfell? If her own hunch was right, the climate itself could be this plus factor.

For that matter, why England at all? Karadin was French. Wouldn't he know of many isolated places in France? April Dancer had not yet received sufficient proof that THRUSH was the organization back of Karadin, but there were pointers which made her feel it safer to assume that this—whatever it was—had all the mark of a THRUSH project. And THRUSH had the world to choose from. She didn't believe for one moment that research into air pollution was Dr. Karadin's sole purpose in England. The British were well aware of their own air-pollution problems. Still, they might welcome Karadin and grant him certain facilities—such as permits to obtain drugs or chemicals needed for research, or to smooth the way a little by allowing a helicopter to land and take off near his base.

April had long since given up trying to analyze hunches which, in the past, had saved her life or that of a companion. She was aware that it was illogical and against the concepts of her training, but when these hunches were linked to fact they had previously been proved valid. It was too early for full understanding of the forces at work, and why, but with out doubt there was a tie-up between Carnaby Street, Karadin and incidents in America and Paris.

She had another hunch that Mark Slate would be discovering other links through the over-obvious attachment of Suzanne. April had knowledge that the vast network of U.N.C.L.E. was now following up her early reports, so that from a purely personal endeavor she now was on an assignment. She stepped from the helicopter, calmly dignified, having shed her Miss Babbling Tourist character and freed herself of the uncomfortable sticking plaster.

"I'm so glad I got to you." She smiled sweetly at Karadin. "Up to the moment when you pulled a gun on me and struck me with it, you were, as far as I'm concerned, completely within the law. Now you're guilty of assault with a deadly weapon, assault upon the person and detention by force. You're really not very bright are you?"

"Your trick was more clever than you think." He guided her towards the car. "My wife was a virago, a screaming shrew who babbled and screeched until she wore me out. So I am particularly vulnerable on that score. But I do not believe any great harm has been done. Once inside Moorfell you would have discovered you were a prisoner. Your torment of me merely caused that knowledge to be advanced."

They entered a closed car. The two attendants squeezed on to small occasional seats facing them. They were swarthy, impassive men.

"Manou and Greco," said Karadin. "Nice fellows, unless you upset them. They look like brothers but are not."

"You have some funny types working for you," said April. "Almost as if you expected prisoners."

"All secret projects must have a security force. I have overriding authority, but it is not strictly my affair. Once I hand you over to Sirdar's department, I am free of you."

"Sirdar the Turk?" said April. "I thought these two play mates looked familiar. Although you see their breed in every country. They all look as if they had the same mother—or perhaps I mean father?"

"Ah yes, of course—you would know of Sirdar the Turk in your business. It shows what an innocent I am in these international affairs. I had never heard of him. Have you ever met him?"

"Once," said April. "I broke both his arms."

"Oh dear!" said Karadin. "Then he will not like you very much, will he? But not to worry. He is not in England right now."

"He's prospered during these last few years. There seems to be limitless money to hire bodyguards, security guards and other thick-necked scum of our modern society. Oh, by the way, Doctor, I forgot to tell you..."

The car had entered a curving driveway. Karadin was moving in his seat, hand on door. He paused and looked back at her. "Yes?"

"Oh, nothing!" She smiled brightly. "It'll keep." The house was squat, dark-stoned under the dripping canopy of the trees surrounding it. Once a small moorland house, it obviously had been enlarged by wings at each side and a glass-enclosed verandah stretching from end to end, so that the original upper floor and roof appeared to have been stuck on as a builder's afterthought.

The hail was bright with fluorescent lighting, reflecting from white paint on walls and a number of smooth-paneled doors. A stone-flagged floor with a large refectory table dead center gave the place the air of a morgue. In an alcove beside the front door, an elderly man sat at a console of switches and dials. April noticed also a short-wave sender/ receiver radio.

Karadin said: "Your purse, Miss Dancer." He held out his hand.

"Oh, please!" she protested. "There's only a lady's doodads in it. Let me keep my self-respect!"

As she already had transferred certain vital U.N.C.L.E. devices to special pockets in her attractively fitting costume, she didn't really care whether or not they took it. She was not surprised when Greco snatched it from her.

Karadin searched it, tipping out the contents on to the table. The safety-catch was on the compact, so that when he flipped it open it appeared to be a harmless toiletry, as did the stiletto comb and the lipstick. April had had to take a chance on these remaining if she were made prisoner. No modern miss would be without such items in her purse. She left one red-herring—an obsolete U.N.C.L.E. communicator.

"Ah!" said Karadin, seizing it. "This is one lady's doodad you will not need!" He shrugged. "Otherwise—who wants such clutter?" He prodded the lining, then threw the purse across the table.

As her real communicator was tucked safely on her person she made a show of protest by swearing softly in French, a fact which seemed to please Karadin. He patted her hand.

"You must believe me—I am so sorry you forced me to take this action. I am not a fanatic, though many have called me one. I am sorry too that with your beauty and talents you should have chosen such a hazardous and unrewarding career." He gave a despairing gesture with his hands. "Oh, I do not mean money—no doubt you are highly paid—but you could have been a physicist, a doctor, a great sociologist—the world was yours to choose. I was one teacher who gave you the foundation on which to build. You took my teaching but laughed at my ideals and my ideas. Now, you are still the pupil and I am still the master, but this time your lesson is going to be painful—and possibly final."

"Yet you would send me to it?" she enquired.

Again he spread his hands. "As I would send a child for correction. If you will not learn, then you must suffer. If you seek only to destroy all that you do not understand or agree with, then it may be necessary that you be destroyed."

She stared at him with level, unblinking gaze.

"I believe you are planning to create a currency chaos. If you do so, then you and your associates may become the rulers of the world. Would you expect us to stand by and applaud your efforts to achieve a near-world domination?"

His eyes glittered. "Oh yes, indeed you are dangerous, my dear Miss Dancer. And I am an emotional old fool to even try respecting your womanhood. Your brain is fast and deep, and I think you too have your dreams of power, yet you deny them to others." He snapped his fingers at Manou and Greco. "Take her—you know where."

She let them—in fact, made them—carry her up the stairs. They dumped her on a divan bed in a small, sparsely furnished room overlooking the rear of the house. The window was barred, but close inspection showed these were old fittings from the days when the room might have been a nursery.

"Well, sweetie," she said to herself, "you've got yourself just where you wanted to be—nicely helped along by K, the nutcase. We will now get organized." She began testing various items of equipment, and rearranging the U.N.C.L.E. devices about her person.

The house was quiet. The rain pattered hesitantly against the window, easing off now, the mist clearing from the lower slopes of the moors it had shrouded. She tested the compact TV circuit. Reception was poor, but by climbing on a chair and reaching up to where a TV aerial lead-in passed the window she obtained a stronger signal.

The voice was mushy and his picture blurred, but Roberts, the link man in London, could hear her. He listened carefully to her report and gave her the information for which she'd been waiting. "Good," she said. "Just what I wanted. But the British S.B. aren't holding the girl, are they?"

"There's not really any charge against her. In fact, she could charge Mr. Slate with assault."

April chuckled softly. "I bet she would too. Now listen, Robbo—get on to Slate's friend Jeff and fix for him to hustle Suzanne into that nursing home we control in London. You know?"

"I know. Are you asking for assistance?"

"Not yet. I must find out the purpose of this place before we make any attack. This is a lone-wolf job. If we bungle it, the whole organization may fade away." She paused, hearing footsteps. "Danger comes. Over and out."

She leapt to the door, hammering on it with her fists and yelling: "Hey—you there—hey!" The lock snicked back. She had to jump away to avoid being hit by the door as it crashed inwards.

"You stop," said Greco. "No shout—see?" His big hand stretched out, dirty spatulate fingers almost touching her lips.

Revulsion filled her with sudden fury.

"Don't paw me—you big clunk!" Her hands fastened on wrist and elbow. She moved fast and sure. Greco yelled as the bone snapped in the same second that his body was impelled in a flying arc across the room. He crashed on to the washbowl, head first. It split asunder as his head lolled back among the debris. She stepped across and took the gun from his pocket.

"Oh, well!" April Dancer shrugged. "I guess I was too good to last." She walked downstairs.

The elderly man at the console stared at her. Then at the leveled gun. His fingers eeked towards a red button.

"Please don't," said April. "I dislike killing, and wounding is messy."

The man's fingers stopped moving.

"I want one thing from you, Pop—just one. On which extension can I speak to Dr. Karadin?"

"Extension 12." He flicked a finger towards the board. "You just depress this key." He grinned. "You've got guts, lass, but you'll not get out of here. Yon moor is a scary place for a girl on her own, even if you do."

"Well, well! A soft-hearted custodian. And Yorkshire to boot!"

"Aye." His eyes widened. "Nay, lass, wait..."

The tiny sleep gun spat accurately. He clapped a hand to his chest, his eyes filled with fear.

"It's okay, Pop," she said softly, coming close. "You'll just sleep, that's all—just sleep."

His eyes glazed even as she spoke. April eased him into the corner, where the console hid him from a casual glance. She sped to the front door, turned a massive key and gently opened the heavy door. The rain had stopped. Golden shreds patterned the sky. She surveyed the path curving between shrubbery to the eastern wing, paused for a moment, then stepped hack into the morgue-like hall. She called extension 12.