The Mercenaries Read online

entirely sure. The shrinkage may be all in the crystallinelattice: the atomic structure may be unchanged. What we need is matterthat is really collapsed."

  "I'll do that," Kato said. "Barida, I'll have all my data available foryou before noon tomorrow: you can make up copies for all Team members."

  "Make mine on microfilm, for projection," von Heldenfeld said.

  "Mine, too," Sir Neville Lawton added.

  "Better make microfilm copies for everybody," Heym ben-Hillel suggested."They're handier than type-script."

  MacLeod rose silently and tiptoed around behind his wife and Rudolf vonHeldenfeld, to touch Kato Sugihara on the shoulder.

  "Come on outside, Kato," he whispered. "I want to talk to you."

  * * * * *

  The Japanese nodded and rose, following him outside onto the roof abovethe laboratories. They walked over to the edge and stopped at thebalustrade.

  "Kato, when you write up your stuff, I want you to falsify everythingyou can. Put it in such form that the data will be absolutely worthless,but also in such form that nobody, not even Team members, will know ithas been falsified. Can you do that?"

  Kato's almond-shaped eyes widened. "Of course I can, Dunc," he replied."But why--?"

  "I hate to say this, but we have a traitor in the Team. One of thosepeople back in the dining room is selling us out to the FourthKomintern. I know it's not Karen, and I know it's not you, and that's asmuch as I do know, now."

  The Japanese sucked in his breath in a sharp hiss. "You wouldn't saythat unless you were sure, Dunc," he said.

  "No. At about 1000 this morning, Dr. Weissberg, the civilian director,called me to his office. I found him very much upset. He told me thatGeneral Nayland is accusing us--by which he meant this Team--offurnishing secret information on our subproject to Komintern agents. Hesaid that British Intelligence agents at Smolensk had learned that theRed Triumph laboratories there were working along lines of researchoriginated at MacLeod Team Center here. They relayed the information toWestern Union Central Intelligence, and WU passed it on to United StatesCentral Intelligence, and now Counter Espionage is riding Nayland aboutit, and he's trying to make us the goat."

  "He would love to get some of us shot," Kato said. "And that couldhappen. They took a long time getting tough about espionage in thiscountry, but when Americans get tough about something, they get toughright. But look here; we handed in our progress-reports to FelixWeissberg, and he passed them on to Nayland. Couldn't the leak be rightin Nayland's own HQ?"

  "That's what I thought, at first," MacLeod replied. "Just wishfulthinking, though. Fact is, I went up to Nayland's HQ and had it out withhim; accused him of just that. I think I threw enough of a scare intohim to hold him for a couple of days. I wanted to know just what it wasthe Komintern was supposed to have got from us, but he wouldn't tell me.That, of course, was classified-stuff."

  "Well?"

  "Well then, Karen and I got our digestive tracts emptied and went in totown, where I could use a phone that didn't go through a militaryswitch-board, and I put through a call to Allan Hartley, PresidentHartley's son. He owes us a break, after the work we did in Puerto Rico.I told him all I wanted was some information to help clear ourselves,and he told me to wait a half an hour and then call Counter EspionageOffice in Washington and talk to General Hammond."

  "Ha! If Allan Hartley's for us, what are we worried about?" Kato asked."I always knew he was the power back of Associated Enterprises and hisfather was the front-man: I'll bet it's the same with the Government."

  "Allan Hartley's for us as long as our nose is clean. If we let it getdirty, we get it bloodied, too. We have to clean it ourselves," MacLeodtold him. "But here's what Hammond gave me: The Komintern knows allabout our collapsed-matter experiments with zinc, titanium and nickel.They know about our theoretical work on cosmic rays, including Suzanne'swork up to about a month ago. They know about that effect Sir Nevilleand Heym discovered two months ago." He paused. "And they know about thephoton-neutrino-electron interchange."

  Kato responded to this with a gruesome double-take that gave his facethe fleeting appearance of an ancient samurai war mask.

  "That wasn't included in any report we ever made," he said. "You'reright: the leak comes from inside the Team. It must be Sir Neville, orSuzanne, or Heym ben-Hillel, or Adam Lowiewski, or Rudolf vonHeldenfeld, or--No! No, I can't believe it could be Farida!" He lookedat MacLeod pleadingly. "You don't think she could have--?"

  "No, Kato. The Team's her whole life, even more than it is mine. Shecame with us when she was only twelve, and grew up with us. She doesn'tknow any other life than this, and wouldn't want any other. It has to beone of the other five."

  "Well, there's Suzanne," Kato began. "She had to clear out of Francebecause of political activities, after the collapse of the FourthRepublic and the establishment of the Rightist Directoire in '57. Andshe worked with Joliot-Curie, and she was at the University of Louvainin the early '50s, when that place was crawling with Commies."

  "And that brings us to Sir Neville," MacLeod added. "He dabbles inspiritualism; he and Suzanne do planchette-seances. A planchette can bemanipulated. Maybe Suzanne produced a communication advising Sir Nevilleto help the Komintern."

  "Could be. Then, how about Lowiewski? He's a Pole who can't go back toPoland, and Poland's a Komintern country." Kato pointed out. "Maybe he'dsell us out for amnesty, though why he'd want to go back there, the waythings are now--?"

  "His vanity. You know, missionary-school native going back to thevillage wearing real pants, to show off to the savages. Used to be astanding joke, down where I came from." MacLeod thought for a moment."And Rudolf: he's always had a poor view of the democratic system ofgovernment. He might feel more at home with the Komintern. Of course,the Ruskis killed his parents in 1945--"

  "So what?" Kato retorted. "The Americans killed my father in 1942, butI'm not making an issue out of it. That was another war; Japan's aWestern Union country, now. So's Germany----How about Heym, by the way?Remember when the Komintern wanted us to come to Russia and do the samework we're doing here?"

  "I remember that after we turned them down, somebody tried to kidnapKaren," MacLeod said grimly. "I remember a couple of Russians got rathersuddenly dead trying it, too."

  "I wasn't thinking of that. I was thinking of our round-table argumentwhen the proposition was considered. Heym was in favor of accepting. Nowthat, I would say, indicates either Communist sympathies or anovertrusting nature," Kato submitted. "And a lot of grade-A traitorshave been made out of people with trusting natures."

  MacLeod got out his pipe and lit it. For a long time, he stared outacross the mountain-ringed vista of sagebrush, dotted at wide intervalswith the bulks of research-centers and the red roofs of the villages.

  "Kato, I think I know how we're going to find out which one it is," hesaid. "First of all, you write up your data, and falsify it so that itwon't do any damage if it gets into Komintern hands. And then--"

  * * * * *

  The next day started in an atmosphere of suppressed excitement andanxiety, which, beginning with MacLeod and Karen and Kato Sugihara,seemed to communicate itself by contagion to everybody in the MacLeodTeam's laboratories. The top researchers and their immediate assistantsand students were the first to catch it; they ascribed the tension underwhich their leader and his wife and the Japanese labored to the recentdevelopments in the collapsed-matter problem. Then, there were about adozen implicitly-trusted technicians and guards, who had been secretlygathered in MacLeod's office the night before and informed of the crisisthat had arisen. Their associates could not miss the fact that they werepreoccupied with something unusual.

  They were a variegated crew; men who had been added to the Team in everycorner of the world. There was Ahmed Abd-el-Rahman, the Arab jeep-driverwho had joined them in Basra. There was the wiry little Greek whomeverybody called Alex Unpronounceable. There was an Italian, and twoChinese, and a cashiered French Air Forc
e officer, and a Malay, and theson of an English earl who insisted that his name was Bertie Wooster.They had sworn themselves to secrecy, had heard MacLeod's story with apolylingual burst of pious or blasphemous exclamations, and then theyhad scattered, each to the work assigned him.

  MacLeod had risen early and submitted to the ordeal of the search toleave the reservation and go to town again, this time for a conferenceat the shabby back-street cigar store that concealed a Counter