"Never mind," Malone said. "I mean listen to me. I know it's pretty
early out where O'Connor is, but that doesn't matter now. Wake him up.
Wake everybody up, for all I care."
"Malone," Boyd said carefully, "are you sure you haven't gone nuts?"
Malone grinned cheerfully. "No," he said. "Are you? Now listen: find
out what effect drugs have on psionic abilities."
"Drugs?" Boyd said, and then his eyes lit up. "My God!" he said. "We
might have something, at that!"
"Get the Queen up too," Malone said. "Ask her the same question. I
hope we do have something."
"So do I," Dorothea said.
"And if we get the information we're hoping to get, I want Her Majesty
on the first plane to New York," Malone said. "I don't care what
strings you have to pull to get that done. Call Burris if you have to.
It'll be worth it." Malone paused. "Hell," he said, "call him anyway
and tell him what's happened. But get the Queen here!"
"Right!" Boyd said. He dove for the phone and started dialing.
Suddenly he looked around. "Hey!" he yelled. "Where are you going?"
Malone, one hand on the door, turned. "Down to see Fernack," he said.
"I've got to make some arrangements. I'm betting we're right, Tom!" He
charged out the door, slamming it. A second passed and it opened
again. Malone's head popped back in. "Dorothea," he said. "When Tom
gets off the phone call your mother. Tell her you're going to be away
for a day or two--two at the most--and she's not to worry. We'll need
you, and her, too, to talk to Mike when the time comes. So stick
around."
Then he was gone.
* * * * *
Twelve hours later, Kenneth J. Malone was sitting quietly in a small
room at the rear of a sporting-goods store on upper Madison Avenue,
trying to remain calm and hoping that the finest, most beautiful hunch
he had ever had in his life was going to pay off. With him were Boyd
and two agents from the 69th Street office. They were sitting quietly
too, but there was a sense of enormous excitement in the air. Malone
wanted to get up and walk around, but he didn't dare. He clamped his
hands in his lap and sat tight.
They waited in silence, not daring to talk. There was no sound except
for the faint whoosh of their breathing through the gas masks they
were wearing, and the muffled hiss from a tank nearby.
There was no reason why the plan shouldn't work. Malone told himself.
It looked foolproof. But he didn't believe it would work. This was the
time, he assured himself, that his luck ran out. He'd been lucky for
too long, and now the wheel was going to turn and he'd be lost. All he
could do was wait for it, and hope.
Her Majesty had said definitely that this would be the place the
Spooks would hit tonight. She had no doubts about it. And Malone
couldn't think of a single reason why she might be wrong. But maybe
he'd got the address mixed up. Maybe the Spooks were somewhere else
right now, robbing what they pleased, safe from capture....
His hunch about drugs had been correct, or at least everybody had said
it was correct. Dr. O'Connor had assured Boyd that the deleterious
effects of drugs on psionic abilities had been known ever since the
early days of Dr. Rhine's pioneering work, more than twenty years
before. And Good Queen Bess had admitted the same thing. She never
drank, she said, because on the one occasion when she'd tried it,
she'd lost her telepathic ability, and "My goodness, it was just like
going blind."
Burris had had to put on the pressure, but it had worked. The Queen
had been flown to New York, under psychiatric guard just as soon as
possible after Boyd's phone call, and she'd been able to pick up Mike
Fueyo without any trouble at all as soon as she was within the same
city, and close enough to him.
It doesn't do much good to know where a teleporter _is_, Malone
thought. But it's extremely handy to know where he's _going to be_.
And if you also know what he plans to do when he gets where he's
going, you've got an absolute lead-pipe cinch to work with.
The Queen had provided that lead-pipe cinch. Reading Mike's mind,
she'd told Malone that he planned to raid the sporting-goods store
with the rest of the Spooks that night. Lucky again, Malone thought;
he might have had to wait two or three days before the Spooks set up a
robbery.
But, of course, he might just be riding for some kind of horrible,
unforeseen fall.
The main part of the sporting-goods store was fairly well lit, even at
night, though it was by no means brightly illuminated. There were
show-window lights on, and the street lamp from outside cast a nice
glow. But the back room was dark, and the four men there were well
concealed. A curtain closed the room off, and Malone watched the front
of the store through a narrow opening in it. He stared through it
until his eyes ached, afraid to blink in case he missed the appearance
of the Spooks. Everything had to go off just right, precisely on
schedule.
And it was going to happen any minute, he told himself nervously. In
just a few minutes, everything would be over.
Malone held his breath.
Then he saw the figure walk slowly by the glass front of the shop,
looking in with elaborate casualness. He was casing the joint, making
sure there were none left in it.
Mike Fueyo.
Malone tried to breathe, and couldn't.
Seconds ticked by.
And then--almost magically--they appeared. Eight of them, almost
simultaneously, in the center of the room.
Mike Fueyo spoke in a low, controlled voice. "Okay, now," he said.
"Let's move fast. We--"
And that was all he said.
The odorless anesthetic gas that filled the room had its sudden
effect. Fueyo dropped out like a light.
The other seven followed him within seconds. Ramon Otravez, the
tallest of them, stayed on his feet a little longer than the rest,
obviously trying with all his strength to teleport himself out of
danger, but the effects of the fast-working gas had already been felt.
He was, literally, too stunned to move.
He too slumped to the floor.
For a second after that, none of the men in the rear room moved.
Then Malone said, "All right, boys. Let's get them out of here. They
can't stay too long in this atmosphere." The men started forward into
the front room, toward the still bodies. "Boyd," Malone said. "Get out
front and wave the ambulance over here. I'll get the air-conditioners
working and stop the gas."
He reached down and turned off the valve on the gently hissing tank of
anesthetic gas that sat on the floor near him. "You guys get the
kids," he said. "And let's make it fast, okay?"
14
"The one thing we had to worry about," Malone said, pouring some more
champagne into the two hollow-stemmed glasses, "was whether it was
possible to give them just enough synthecaine. Too little, and they'd
still be able to teleport. Too much, and they'd be too groggy."
Dorothea relaxed in her chair and looked around at the hotel room
walls with contentment. She looked like the proverbial cat who has
swallowed the cream. "It looked to me as if it worked," she said.
"Mike seemed pretty normal--except that he had that awful _trapped_
feeling."
Malone handed her one of the filled glasses with an air. He was
beginning slowly to feel less like the nervous, uncertain Kenneth J.
Malone, and more and more like Sir Kenneth Malone. "I can see why he
felt trapped," he said. "If a guy's been unhampered by four walls all
the time, even only for a year or so, he's certainly going to feel
penned in when he loses the ability to get through them. It might be
just a little claustrophobic." He grinned, proud of himself.
"Claustrophobic," he said again. "My tongue and palate are in
excellent condition."
"The main thing is," Dorothea said, "that everybody's so happy.
Commissioner Fernack, even--with Mr. Burris promising to give him a
medal."
"And Lynch," Malone said reflectively. "He'll get a promotion out of
this for sure. And good old Kettleman."
"Kettleman?" Dorothea said. "Oh, the funny fat man. He's some kind of
social worker or something."
"And now he's getting a scroll from the FBI," Malone said. "A citation
for coming up with the essential clue in this case. Even though he
didn't know it _was_ the essential clue. You know," he added
reflectively, "one thing puzzles me about that man."
"Yes?"
"Well," Malone said, "he worked in your neighborhood. You knew him."
"Of course I did," Dorothea said. "We all knew Kettleman."
"He said he had a lot of success as a social worker," Malone said.
"Now, I've met him. And talked with him. And I just can't picture--"
"Oh," Dorothea said. "We keep him around--kept him around, I mean--as
a sort of joke. A pet, or a mascot. Of course, he never did catch on.
I don't suppose he has yet."