The night clouds rolled across the steeples of Bristol and the muffled
voice of a church clock somberly rolled across the city, striking the
hour of ten. The hush of a chill autumn night lay across the city,
mantling the fog that started to deepen in the city streets.
In a small apartment on Regent street, a box-like machine sat quietly
in a corner, staring at the growing gloom with fifty red, unwinking
eyes.
At five minutes after the hour, there was a flickering and then there
were only forty-nine. By eleven o'clock, the eyes had been cut down to
forty-six.
The evening of the first, there were only thirty-nine.
By the third, there was only a dozen. And every hour that went by saw
another light wink out....
He stood in a Moscow subway station, watching the trains thunder past
and keeping an eye on a trash can in a little niche near an elaborate
mosaic of Malenkov. None of the comrades, he thought, would think of
depositing litter near the mosaic of the leader and so the can had
never been used.
And since the cleaners knew it was never used, there was no earthly
reason why it should have to be disturbed and emptied. So the can sat
there and had never been touched.
Except once.
For a moment the platform was deserted and Stan walked rapidly back to
the can. A moment later he held the fusion package in his hand....
Somebody barked something at him and he looked up, startled.
A few yards away, there was a man in the uniform of the people's
police. He could have been hiding for any one of a number of reasons,
Stan thought. He could have been watching for petty thievery or perhaps
there had been a drive against littering the platforms.
But it didn't matter why he was there. The point was he was asking
questions in Russian and Stan couldn't answer him.
Another train roared in and people poured out of it, crowding together
on the platform. Stan turned and darted for a washroom, breaking
the wrappings on the fusion package as he ran. A moment later he
had snapped the detonating wires and broken the delicate, clockwork
mechanism and the almost infinitesimally small transceiver.
He threw the remains of the package under the wheels of the train at
the same time a pistol shot roared above his head, chipping off some of
the tile of the ceiling.
Then he had made it to the washroom door, passed his hand over a brass
plaque, and darted through the circle of black that appeared into....
... a dark corner of a bazaar in Damascus.
The bazaar stretched down both sides of the street, terminating against
a mosque at one end. There were small, open shops that sold copperware
and incense burners and large metal dishes, ornately tooled. There were
tables and boxes of elaborate mosaic work--tables with veneers of rare
wood and inlaid with mother of pearl. There were small restaurants and
notion stores and shops that displayed bolt after bolt of silk and
brocade.
* * * * *
Stan watched the people wandering past, then brushed past a small
native boy begging for coins, and walked into one of the silk shops.
"Yes, M'sieur?"
"You're holding a bolt of brocade for a Mr. Liebman. May I see it
please?" Stan flashed a card.
The little clerk waddled to the back of the store and returned with a
small bolt of silk. Stan reached for it but the small man held it back.
"You are Mr. Liebman?"
Stan was sweating. "I'm a friend of his."
"I'm sorry, M'sieur. I was told not to release this to anybody but Mr.
Liebman."
The little man wanted to stand and argue while the world went up in
flames, Stan thought. He pulled out his wallet and slid a five dollar
bill across the counter.
"I don't think Mr. Liebman would want this quite as much as I would."
The little man was not convinced. "Perhaps not but...."
Stan thrust out the flat of his left hand and pushed the clerk back
against the shelves. Bolts of cloth rippled down from them and Stan had
to dig beneath them to get the one he wanted.
A moment to open the bolt and cut the wires of the package and then he
was out in the street once more, the clerk's shrill, indignant screams
echoing after him.
He raced to the end of the street, near the mosque, for the dark corner
that looked a little too dark and a little too glossy and then....
... out again in a small street a block from the Vatican in Rome. It
was early evening. Twelve more hours to go, he thought, for the last
one. That wouldn't take long and he could double-check any that Avis'
agents might have missed.
He hailed a taxi and sped out to the ruins of the old Forum. He
waited until the taxi had left and then walked over to the column of
Trajan--the tall, marble column that had been erected in order to
commemorate the victories and the accomplishments of the old Roman
emperor. He vaulted the low iron fence that surrounded the column and
broke the lock on the door that led to an interior stairway.
The package was still in its niche at the top of the stairs. Stan tore
at the wrappings and pulled, its teeth, then crushed the package in his
hands. That was the end of....
There was the sound of racing footsteps up the winding stairwell.
* * * * *
He flattened himself against the wall until they came into view, then
launched himself down the stairs, landing squarely on the chest of a
burly man so they both rolled down the steep flight of stairs.
Tanner had finally gotten wind of what was going on, Stan thought
sharply. But it was too late to do anything about it now. The invasion
had been set, you couldn't stop a fleet once it rolled into motion.
The overconfident Thuscans would land--to discover to their shocked
surprise that there was organized resistance.
Mr. Ainsworth's "apes" wouldn't be a pushover....
"_Bastarde...._"
The burly man wasn't alone. There was another at the bottom of the
stairs. Stan twisted his body, holding the first Italian in front of
him. There was a pistol shot and the sound of a bullet smacking into
solid flesh. The man whom Stan held screamed shrilly, his eyes flaring
wide.
Then all three of them were down. Stan leaped for the door and slammed
it after him. A moment later he was sprinting through the low midway of
tumbled arches and forlorn columns of the glory that had once been Rome.
He caught another taxicab by the Colliseum, slipped the driver the
contents of his wallet, and sagged against the cushions exhausted.
A shot shattered the rear window of the cab and he felt vainly in his
coat pocket for his heater. It must have fallen out during the long
fall down the flight of stairs, he thought. Which meant that he was
defenseless.
He left the cab a few doors down from the alley and sprinted into the
darkness, another shot whistling past his ear. He was almost up to the
circle of shining black when the bullet plowed into the fleshy part
of his back and he half stumbled, half fell into the pool of whirling
blackness....