I was lying in a clean bed in a sunny room, propped up on pillows. It
was a little like another room I had awakened in not so long before,
but there was one important difference. Barbro sat beside my bed,
knitting a ski stocking from red wool. Her hair was piled high on her
head, and the sun shone through it, coppery red. Her eyes were hazel,
and her features were perfect, and I liked lying there looking at her.
She had come every day since my return to the Imperium, and read to me,
talked to me, fed me soup and fluffed my pillows. I was enjoying my
convalescence.
"If you are good, Brion," Barbro said, "and eat all of your soup today,
perhaps by tomorrow evening you will be strong enough to accept the
king's invitation."
"OK," I said. "It's a deal."
"The Emperor Ball," Barbro said, "is the most brilliant affair of the
year and all the three kings and the Emperor with their ladies will be
there together."
I didn't answer; I was thinking. There seemed to be something I wasn't
figuring out. I had been leaving all the problems to the Intelligence
men, but I knew more than they did about Bale.
I thought of the last big affair, and the brutal attack. I suspected
that this time every man would wear a slug-gun under his braided cuff.
But the fight on the floor had been merely a diversion, designed to
allow the crew to set up an atomic bomb.
I sat bolt upright. That bomb had been turned over to Bale. There would
be no chance of surprise attack from a shuttle this time, with alert
crews watching around the clock for traces of unscheduled MC activity;
but there was no need to bring a bomb in. Bale had one here.
"What is it, Brion?" Barbro asked, leaning forward.
"What did Bale do with that bomb?" I said. "The one they tried to set
off at the dance. Where is it now?"
"I don't know. It was turned over to Inspector Bale...."
"When do the royal parties arrive for the Emperor Ball?" I asked.
"They are already in the city," Barbro said, "at Drottningholm."
I felt my heart start to beat a little faster. Bale wouldn't let this
opportunity pass. With the three kings here in the city, and an atomic
bomb hidden somewhere, he had to act. At one stroke he could wipe
out the leadership of the Imperium, and follow-up with a full-scale
assault; and against his atomic weapons, the fight would be hopeless.
"Call Manfred, Barbro," I said. "Tell him that bomb's got to be found
fast. The kings will have to be evacuated from the city; the ball will
have to be cancelled...."
Barbro spoke into the phone, looked back at me. "He has left the
building, Brion," she said. "Shall I try to reach Herr Goering?"
"Yes," I said. I started to tell her to hurry, but she was already
speaking rapidly to someone at Goering's office. Barbro was quick to
catch on.
"He also is out," Barbro said. "Is there anyone else?"
I thought furiously. Manfred or Hermann would listen to anything I
might say, but with their staffs it would be a different matter. To
call off the day of celebration, disturb the royal parties, alarm the
city, were serious measures. No one would act on my vague suspicions
alone. I had to find my friends in a hurry--or find Bale.
Imperial Intelligence had made a search, found nothing. His apartment
was deserted, as well as his small house at the edge of the city. And
the monitors had detected no shuttle not known to be an Imperium vessel
moving in the Net recently.
There were several possibilities; one was that Bale had returned almost
at the same time as I had, slipping in before the situation was known,
while some of his own men still manned the alert stations. A second
was that he planned to come in prepared to hold off attackers until he
could detonate the bomb. Or possibly an accomplice would act for him.
Somehow I liked the first thought best. It seemed more in keeping with
what I knew of Bale; shrewder, less dangerous. If I were right, Bale
was here now, somewhere in Stockholm, waiting for the hour to blow the
city sky-high.
As for the hour, he would wait for the arrival of the Emperor, not
longer.
"Barbro," I said, "when does the Emperor arrive?"
"I'm not sure, Brion," she said. "Possibly tonight, but perhaps this
afternoon."
That didn't give me much time. I jumped out of bed, and staggered.
"Here I come, ready or not," I said. "I can't just lie here, Barbro. Do
you have a car?"
"Yes, my car is downstairs, Brion. Sit down and let me help you." She
went to the closet and I sank down. I seemed always to be recuperating
lately. I had been through this shaky-legs business just a few days
ago, and here I was starting in again. Barbro turned, holding a brown
suit in her hands.
"This is all there is, Brion," she said. "It is the uniform of the
dictator, that you wore when you came here to the hospital."
"It will have to do," I said. Barbro helped me dress, and we left the
room as fast as I could walk. A passing nurse stared, but went on. I
was dizzy and panting already.
The elevator helped. I sank down on the stool, head spinning.
I felt something stiff in my chest pocket, and suddenly I had a vivid
recollection of Gaston giving me a card as we crouched in the dusk
behind the hideout near Algiers, telling me that he thought it was the
address of the Big Boss's out-of-town headquarters. I grabbed for the
card, squinted at it in the dim light of the ceiling lamp as the car
jolted to a stop.
"Östermalmsgatan 71" was scrawled across the card in blurred pencil. I
remembered how I had dismissed it from my mind as of no interest when
Gaston had handed it to me; I had hoped for something more useful. Now
this might be the little key that could save an empire.
"What is it, Brion?" Barbro asked. "Have you found something?"
"I don't know," I said. "Maybe just a dead end, but maybe not." I
handed her the card. "Do you know where this is?"
She read the address. "I think I know the street," she said. "It is not
far from the docks, in the warehouse district."
"Let's go," I said, with a fervent hope that we were right, and not too
late.
* * * * *
We squealed around a corner, slowed in a street of gloomy warehouses,
blind glass windows in looming brick-red facades, with yard-high
letters identifying the shipping lines which owned them.
"This is the street," Barbro said. "And the number was seventy-one?"
"That's right," I said. "This is seventy-three; stop here."
We stepped out onto a gritty sidewalk, shaded by the bulk of the
buildings, silent. There was a smell of tar and hemp in the air and a
hint of sea water.
I stared at the building before me. There was a small door set in the
front beside a loading platform. I went up to it, tried it. Locked. I
leaned against it and rested.
"Barbro," I said. "Get me a jack handle or tire tool from your car." I
hated to drag Barbro into this, but I had no choice. I couldn't do it
alone.
She came back with a flat piece of steel eighteen inches long. I
jammed it into the wide crack at the edge of the door and pulled.
Something snapped, and with a jerk the door popped open. A stair ran up
into gloom above. Barbro gave me an arm, and we started up. The hard
work helped to keep my mind off the second sun that might light the
Stockholm sky at any moment.
Five flights up, we reached a landing. The door we faced was of
red-stained wood, solid and with a new lock. I looked at the hinge
pins. They didn't look as good as the lock.
It took fifteen minutes, every one of which took a year off my life,
but after a final wrench with the steel bar, the last pin clattered to
the floor. The door pivoted out and fell against the wall.
"Wait here," I said. I started forward, into the papered hall.
"I'm going with you, Brion," Barbro said. I didn't argue.
We were in a handsome apartment, a little too lavishly furnished.
Persian rugs graced the floor, and in the bars of dusty sunlight that
slanted through shuttered windows, mellow old teak furniture gleamed,
and polished ivory figurines stood on dark shelves under silk scrolls
from Japan. An ornate screen stood in the center of the room. I walked
around a brocaded ottoman over to the screen and looked behind it. On a
light tripod of aluminium rods rested the bomb.
Two heavy castings, bolted together around a central flange, with a few
wires running along to a small metal box on the underside. Midway up
the curve of the side, four small holes, arranged in a square. That was
all there was; but it could make a mighty crater where a city had been.
I had no way of knowing whether it was armed or not. I leaned toward
the thing, listening. I could hear no sound of a timing device. I
thought of cutting the exposed wires, which looked like some sort of
jury-rig, but I couldn't risk it; that might set it off.
"Here it is," I said, "but when does it go up?" I had an odd sensation
of intangibility, as though I were already a puff of incandescent gas.
I tried to think.
"Start searching the place, Barbro," I said. "You might come across
something that will give us a hint. I'll phone Manfred's office and get
a squad up here to see if we can move the thing without blowing it."
* * * * *
I dialed Imperial Intelligence. Manfred wasn't in, and the fellow on
the phone was uncertain what he should do.
"Get a crew here on the double," I yelled. "Somebody who can at least
make a guess as to whether this thing can be disturbed."
He said he would confer with General Somebody.
"When does the Emperor arrive?" I asked him. He was sorry, but he
was not at liberty to discuss the Emperor's movements. I slammed the
receiver down.
"Brion," Barbro called. "Look what's here."
I went to the door which opened onto the next room. A two-man shuttle
filled the space. Its door stood open. I looked inside. It was fitted
out in luxury; Bale provided well for himself even for short trips.
This was what he used to travel from the home line to B-I Two. And the
fact that it was here should indicate that Bale was here also; and that
he would return to it before the bomb went off.
But then again, perhaps the bomb was even now ticking away its last
seconds, and Bale might be far away, safe from the blast. If the latter
were true, there was nothing I could do about it; but if he did plan to
return here, arm the bomb, set a timer and leave via the shuttle in the
bedroom--then maybe I could stop him.
"Barbro," I said, "you've got to find Manfred or Hermann. I'm going to
stay here and wait for Bale to come back. If you find them, tell them
to get men here fast who can make a try at disarming this thing. I
don't dare move it, and it will take at least two to handle it. If we
can move it, we can shove it in the shuttle and send it off; I'll keep
phoning. I don't know where you should look but do your best."
Barbro looked at me. "I would rather stay here with you, Brion," she
said. "But I understand that I must not."
"You're quite a girl, Barbro," I said.