A Jungle of Stars Read online

  They were close together; the little corporal could smell stale tobacco and the remains of a pizza on the other's breath. It was somehow reassuring. There just wasn't any way Savage could be here--but there'd always been stories of crazy things like this.

  "Can't tell you much about him, Lieutenant," Santori began. "None of us were regulars with each other, you know. We seemed to be just picked up if we was available, regardless of unit. Only three of us were from the same outfit. McNally was an add-on, like you. First time I ever saw him was during the mission briefing."

  "You talked, though. Did he say anything about himself--prior service, names, wife, anything?"

  Santori shook his head. "Nothin'. He talked all the time about how crappy it was to get picked for the mission, how we was all short-timers and all."

  "You were? All short-timers?" The little man nodded affirmatively. "Everybody but me," Savage mused, more to himself than to Santori. "And you say McNally kept this up?"

  "Yeah. Christ, Lieutenant, we was all spooked and sure we was all dead men by the time we hit the LZ."

  "What about after? What happened then?"

  "Well, McNally made his report in debriefing, then we both went over to the mess and had some coffee. He didn't talk much then. Well, hell, you know, after what happened and all. Just told me to stick to the story and all. Pretty soon this small chopper puts down and he says good-bye and goes over and gets in it. Zow, they're gone! Last I saw of him. I thought it was pretty weird at the time, but haven't thought about it since. Never saw or heard about him again. One thing bugged me at the time and keeps buggin' me, though."

  "What's that?" Savage prompted.

  "Well, if he was so set on killin' you, how come he pushes your body into the chopper bay instead of out of the way? I mean, if you'd rotted you couldn'ta come round like you did and maybe show the bullet was a frag."

  Savage's eyes seemed to glow in the darkness. "He did what?"

  "Pushed ya in, he did. A couple of the boys saw this, and figurin' McNally had a change of heart or somethin' they pulled you all the way in. If it hadn'ta been for McNally, you'd be worm bait in the 'Nam jungle right now."

  Savage stood for almost a minute in total silence, lost in thought. Then, deep inside, something seemed to snap. His head, which had started to droop, shot up, and a glazed look was in his eyes.

  "Tell me something, Joe," he said very quietly, without a trace of emotion. "That time you stuck that knife into my back--would you have used it on me if I hadn't given in?"

  Santori thought for a moment, then shrugged. "Hell, I really don't know. I wasn't gonna walk any five miles through Charley country."

  "Thanks, Joe," Savage acknowledged. "I think it's time we parted company."

  With that, the big man reached out and grabbed the little man in a bear hug. Santori had not survived the streets of Newark to be taken that easily. Groaning, straining for breath, he still managed to get his pocket-knife out and stab the larger man in the abdomen. Savage cried out in shock and pain and momentarily released his grip. Before he could recover, Santori was back at him, stabbing him repeatedly. In shock, Savage lost his balance and dropped to the ground. Santori efficiently cut his throat, and blood spurted all around.

  The victor sat down on the grassy plot between the barracks getting his breath back.

  Suddenly it occurred to him that Savage had survived worse, and he reached over and checked the fallen man's pulse, even though blood still flowed and the body's eyes were open and glazed. Nothing. Savage, he thought with satisfaction, was finally dead.

  He slowly rose and walked unsteadily to the barracks door. No one had heard. They would find the lieutenant in the morning, of course--but he would ditch the knife and burn the clothes. Tomorrow he'd be out of here, and there was nothing but that one bastard patrol to connect him to--

  "It's not that easy, Joe. You should have known that," came a voice behind him, and he whirled suddenly around.

  Savage struck him with the metal right hand, in the Adam's apple. Joe Santori died, eyes wide in disbelief.

  Except for some blood on his clothes, there wasn't a mark on his killer.

  ***

  Savage had barely gotten back to his motel room when his telephone started ringing. Since he had taken a great deal of care to make certain nobody knew he was there, his first thought was that it was the Desk on some matter. That anyone had connected Santori with "Robert Sanderson" in a motel forty miles away hardly even occurred to him.

  He picked up the phone and said, "Hello?"

  "Now that you've tended to personal business, Savage, are you ready to go to work?" a familiar voice asked cynically.

  Savage almost dropped the phone. Although he'd never actually physically heard the voice before, there was no doubting who it was.

  "Go ahead, Hunter," he said dryly.

  "Okay," The Hunter began cheerfully. "First, you go into town and find P.O. Box 716. The combination's A-B, D-E, B-C. There'll be an envelope with some front money, an address, and directions from Dulles to your new office."

  "Dulles?"

  "Yeah. You're a Washingtonian now, son. Be there sometime tomorrow, won't you?"

  "How are you so sure this package is there?" Savage asked skeptically. Hunter was just so damned sure of himself.

  "Why, because I mailed it almost two weeks ago, of course," came the reply.

  Savage felt that he was made of glass. "How long ago did you rent that box?" he asked.

  "One of my people rented it--let's see--two days after you were killed would be about right. Why?"

  "How the hell did you know I'd be here--in this town rather than another?" demanded Savage.

  If voices could shrug, this one did. "Hell, man, I know how your mind works better than you do. If it makes you feel any better, it took my men the better part of a day to find the motel, though. But, you're kind of conspicuous, you know, once somebody looking for you has your general area."

  "I don't think I like being so transparent," Savage commented. "Makes me nervous."

  The voice chuckled. "Savage, old buddy, as you're going to find out, you're one of the least transparent beings in the entire galaxy."

  Savage mulled the remark but didn't reply.

  "Well," Hunter continued, "I have other things to do. I'll see you in person in Washington. Want that box and combination again?"

  "I got it," Savage replied. "I'll be there."

  He heard a click and the line was dead.

  Savage slowly undressed and placed all the torn and bloody clothing in a laundry bag. He'd dispose of it tomorrow. No problem, really. He was certain that even if there had been forty witnesses to the killing, Hunter would have him free in no time.

  He felt suddenly very tired, and flopped nude on the bed.

  As he lay there in the darkness, he thought about the night's work. The McNally business still didn't make sense and he didn't dwell on it, but he was aware of a change within himself.

  He had killed a man in cold blood in such a way that the other man hadn't had a prayer. One can't murder The Flying Dutchman. And he found it curious that he felt no guilt, no pangs of conscience, no remorse--no more than if he'd swatted a fly.

  He had given the enemy better than that...

  CHAPTER FIVE

  The box contained a current airline schedule of Washington flights, a Xerox copy of directions on getting to an address on 16th Street in that city, and a certified check for $1,000. It was the latter that particularly interested him--it was drawn to the account of the SHW Tool & Die Company.

  Steve Wade's parent company.

  Wade was something of a legend among the powerful, although few people in the general public had ever heard of him. He kept out of the limelight, though not to the extent of a Howard Hughes. Wade was just not an outgoing person beyond his business, and he rarely if ever socialized. He was still, however, accessible--and he had been hauled up a few times by various congressional committees for meddling in some prici
ng schemes and making some questionable international trade deals. One national credit card magazine had profiled him as a "mover" and "shaker." Nobody really knew what he was worth, but his background had been profiled rather well in that article.

  The son of middle-class parents, he had been an undistinguished scholar and a somewhat introverted youth. Except for a small bald spot and obviously bad teeth, he'd kept his looks through the years--Savage could remember the tall but pudgy figure, perennially about twenty-five, peering out of the magazine's pages. After an unremarkable college career, he had finally graduated with a degree in political science and gone to work as a junior clerk in the State Department. Then, abruptly, he'd quit his job, borrowed capital from the wealthy parents of an old school friend, and started playing the stock market--with phenomenal results.

  In bullish times, he had always seemed to pick the $5 stocks that zoomed to $45 in a matter of weeks, then always sold the day before they dropped. Bearish times found him making more killings selling just the right things short. As he'd been a failure at math in school and had, according to all reports, never been seen near a copy of the Wall Street Journal until his sudden plunge into the financial world, this was considered pretty unusual. Unusual, hell! It was the stuff of pulp fiction!

  That Wade was very rich was beyond question--one of the richest in the United States, perhaps the world. But unglamorous, somewhat stuffy, never eccentric or colorful, and therefore of little interest in an age of men like Getty, Hughes, Onassis, and the like.

  This explained a lot, particularly Wade's sudden rise from mediocrity and obscurity. This was another Hunter operation beyond doubt--a very convenient way of financing almost anything behind an effective blind.

  Or did the "H" in SHW stand for "Hunter"?

  On an impulse, he called a local newspaper's financial editor and asked.

  It stood for Harold, and Wade never used it.

  Somehow this was reassuring.

  ***

  The plane didn't get into Washington until almost 9 P.M. due to the time difference, but he flew into National Airport instead of Dulles and therefore was ahead of the game, landing almost in the city instead of forty miles away. Because of his sudden affluence, he decided against cheap ground transportation and rented a car for his trip into downtown Washington. It was years since he'd been there, and the modern office complexes of Crystal City near the airport looked alien to him. He got on route I-95 heading into the city.

  The capital never seemed to change. It was still a gigantic slum, islands of fresh-looking picture-postcard government buildings and monuments standing alone on grassy spots like oases in a desert of seedy row houses and tenements. He recalled his first trip to D.C., years before, as well as his shock at how those wonderful pictures everyone sees were mirrored in fact only if viewed from the proper angle.

  Sixteenth Street, however, was different. Leading from the White House north, 16th Street had been envisioned by Washington's erratic French designer, Pierre L'Enfant, as a broad boulevard of stately homes, mansions, and foreign embassies, and it remained pretty much this way.

  The address he had was pretty far out, almost in the area of Walter Reed Army Hospital. It proved to be a stately home in the Georgian style up on a hill away from the street. It had, however, no driveway so he parked, with great difficulty, on a nearby side street and walked around to it. Although the house looked like a private residence, and had no signs or other indications that it was not, there was the feel of an office about it--the half-door, oversized mailbox, carefully manicured lawn, and freshly painted exterior seemed too artificial and too carefully maintained to be someone's home.

  He rang the bell, and was answered by a buzzing sound from the door itself. Realizing it had an electric lock, he pushed open the door and confirmed his suspicions about the place.

  A fairly good-looking red-headed receptionist sat just inside and he could see a waiting room and a series of closed doors going down a long hall. A large oak staircase led off to the right. The sounds of several typewriters clacking away confirmed that this was a working area.

  But it was pretty damned busy and full-staffed for nighttime.

  The receptionist glanced up, and he saw in her eyes the usual reaction of people when they first caught sight of him--women particularly. Sort of the way you'd look at the bearded lady or Jo-Jo the Dog-Faced Boy, if you met them on the street rather than in a sideshow: a mixture of fear, apprehension, and pity. He had almost learned to ignore it.

  Notwithstanding her transparent reaction, she put on her best receptionist's plastic smile and cheery voice. "Yes?" she asked.

  "Paul Savage," he replied. "I was told to report here as soon as I got into Washington."

  "Oh, yes, Mr. Savage. Mr. Wade is expecting you. Go up the stairs and all the way back to the end of the hall."

  He mumbled his thanks and climbed the stairs. The second level appeared to be the same as below, but at the end of the hall he saw a set of double doors marked CONFERENCE ROOM. He glimpsed activity in some of the offices as he proceeded down the hallway toward the room: busy secretaries typing reports, a key-punch room, and some computer terminals.

  Hesitating before the large double doors for a second, he turned the ornate, old-fashioned handle and went in.

  The room was elegantly furnished, in the manner of foreign embassies, with lush carpeting, velvety drapes, and, in the center, a long table of walnut or teak around which were placed about twenty very plush chairs. He noticed a door with frosted glass leading off, apparently to another office at the far end.

  Closing the doors made the room completely soundproof. He could hear nothing but the rustling of his own movements: in fact, he thought he could hear his heartbeat. Tired from his trip, and feeling somewhat impatient, he plopped into one of the chairs.

  The far door opened after a few minutes and Stephen Wade stepped into the room, sat down in the chair opposite his, and took out a cigar. With a gesture he offered Savage one, but the big ex-soldier shook his head. Wade lit his and leaned back, a smile playing on his lips as he studied his newest employee.

  "Glad to see you, Savage," he began pleasantly. "While we've talked, we haven't actually met."

  Savage sat straight up in his chair. There was no doubt about it--this was the same man he had talked to on the telephone... and someplace else.

  "Yes, I'm Hunter," Wade confirmed. He took the cigar out of his mouth and studied it. "You really ought to try one of these," he said. "Real Havana. You must have my money and connections to get them."

  Savage folded his arms and studied the man. In his appearance, nothing whatsoever suggested that Wade was anything other than what he appeared to be.

  "I suppose you have a lot of questions," Wade prompted.

  "Well," Savage replied, "almost everything I can think of is a question. You, for instance."

  Wade's eyebrows shot up. "Me? I've told you all that before, if you remember."

  "But where's the real Stephen Wade?"

  Wade took a drag on the cigar. "Gone. Dead. He died the moment I took his body, of course." He said this so conversationally, so matter-of-factly, that a chill went through Savage.

  "Why so shocked?" Wade asked. "You just killed a man for no purpose at all except petty revenge. I kill someone every sixty years or so--for survival."

  "Santori was different--" Savage started to protest, but Wade cut him off.

  "How? He was no threat to you. He could do nothing to you, whereas you were a constant threat to him. On the other hand, I have to make a serious decision on who to kill--or nature would make the choice random. You see, I'm a parasite. Unpleasant word, that, but correct. When you died, your body stayed behind--but the sentience, the animator part of you, did not. This 'self'--the soul, if you will, although robbed of its religious connotations--is basically electrical. You, me, everyone and everything animate anywhere in the universe, are all creatures of pure energy. We incubate, grow, and learn in these shells of ours, t
hen are freed from them to join that great synthesis we talked about. It's not too surprising: nature is a story of processes of evolution. This is just a part of it."

  "But not you," Savage said flatly.

  Wade sighed. "No, not me--not anymore, anyway. The process, you see, continues on beyond the synthesis. My people, well, continued--I have no idea where or how or to what. I hope to find out someday by eventually joining with the next race to reach that point. In the meantime, natural laws bind me, the same as you. Lacking the awesome power of my people, I cannot long sustain my true form and nature. I need a physical shell--a wall plug to keep me charged up. Sorry, best explanation I can give."

  "So what's this place?" asked Savage, changing the subject.

  "My Washington headquarters, of course. A handy place--world capitals are where the decisions are made. I have to know those decisions. Particularly here. I have to know, ahead of time, if my organization has been compromised in any way, or if the government's into anything of mine I don't want them to be. You see, my headquarters are close to the United States."

  "Your corporate headquarters?"

  "Hell, no! Not the petty empire of Stephen Wade! My headquarters! Remember, I said I was fighting a war?"

  "Yeah, I remember--but it wasn't too clear. Something about your fighting your brother for control of the universe or something like that. I assumed--"

  "You assumed wrongly!" Wade cut in sharply. "It's a real war, Savage--a shooting war. Just like the one you've been in, only on a much larger scale. Look, come with me."

  With that, Wade got up and walked over to the door from which he had entered the room. Savage hesitated a moment, then he got up and followed him.

  The door led not to an office but to a small alcove with an elevator door. Wade took a key from his pocket and turned the lock that served as the call button. The door slid open almost immediately and he and Savage entered.

  Instead of the usual panel of floor buttons, the elevator had a keyboard that looked very much like that on a touch-tone phone or a calculator. Wade pointed to it.

  "About four years ago we finished this project. We moved part of the house away and excavated here--had a hell of a time explaining it to the D.C. zoning board. We finally convinced everyone it was a secret government agency operation. There are so many that nobody knows what's going on, anyway. It was even easier in Moscow.