The bald man's face was impassive, but his eyes seemed larger than before, swollen by a controlled but seething anger. He wore a light blue gabardine suit that shimmered almost hypnotically in the morning light that filtered in through the window.
Lippitt approached the bed, shoved his hands into the pockets of his suit jacket, and stared down at me. "How are you?" he asked after a long pause. The anger was in his voice as well as his eyes, but he seemed oddly distracted, as though his mind-and possibly his anger-were directed elsewhere.
"How'd you know where I was?" He didn't seem inclined to answer my question, so I answered it myself. "You've been following Tal."
"Perhaps I should have been following you," he said with a trace of irony. "It looks like you've had an accident."
"It wasn't an accident: It was an on-purpose. You lied to me about killing Rafferty, didn't you?"
Lippitt's eyes went distant and cold. "Is that what you've concluded from your investigation so far?"
"Oh, I've got lots of company. The field's crowded, and it's a fast track."
"I warned you this would happen."
"Somehow I just knew you were going to say that, Lippitt. The same thing happened five years ago, didn't it? You were one of the hunters. Maybe you found Rafferty, but you didn't kill him." I watched his face carefully. "What the hell is so special about Victor Rafferty?"
Inexplicably, my voice broke at the end and I began to sob uncontrollably. There had been no warning; it was as if my emotions were being controlled by someone else, a mad dwarf who looked like me but loved to cry. Mortified by the behavior of this stranger, I turned my face to the wall and wiped away the tears. Finally I turned back to Lippitt and stared at him defiantly.
Lippitt casually lighted a cigarette and dropped the match onto my breakfast tray. "Whoever got hold of you hurt you very badly, didn't he?" he said evenly. There was neither sympathy nor lack of it in his voice; it was merely a statement of fact.
"A few screws are loose, but I know how to tighten them up. Why won't you tell me now about Rafferty?"
Lippitt blew smoke into the air over my head. "I didn't come here to trade information. I came to present a bill."
"What bill?"
"It's for the suffering you've caused. The Russians have the Fosters inside their consulate. You and I are going to get them out. We're going to see just how good a tumbler and acrobat you are; that's the price I want you to pay for the harm you've brought these people."
"What the hell are you talking about, Lippitt?"
"I thought I was making myself perfectly clear. I consider you responsible for placing the Fosters in jeopardy, so you're going to help me rescue them."
"You're putting together a D.I.A. operation?"
"That's not what I said, Frederickson. It's just you and me. I have a plan."
"I can't wait to hear it. Isn't it pretty risky for you? I'm betting your superiors won't be too happy about it if you get caught inside the Russian consulate."
"That's my concern. Will you agree to come with me? I do need you."
"What do you have in mind? I have an interest in the Fosters too."
"Frankly, I haven't figured out all the details. But I'll need a small man with exceptional athletic ability… and courage. From your press clippings, you seem to fit that description."
The fact of the matter was that I found the prospect of going anywhere Kaznakov might be terrifying. But I said, "I'll need some time to get back into shape; I'm a little stiff right now." I was gratified to find that my voice was reasonably steady.
Lippitt's eyes narrowed. "What happened to you?"
"I fell off a mountain called Kaznakov."
Lippitt stiffened. His right hand came halfway out of his pocket, then went back in again. "A madman." He spat the words out. "It's remarkable that you're here. You're the first person I know of who's suffered that particular fate and lived to tell about it."
"He thinks I'm dead."
"Good. It's best that he continue to think so. How did you get away?"
I managed a smile. "Sheer dwarf cunning."
"What did he do to you, Frederickson?"
"If you don't mind, I'd rather not talk about it. As I said, I'll need some time to get myself together."
"Of course. And I'll need time to formalize a plan. You still have my number?"
"I do. When I'm ready I'll order some flowers."
Lippitt ground out his cigarette in my oatmeal bowl. "You must pull yourself together, Frederickson," he said quietly. "I can only guess how badly Kaznakov hurt you, but I suspect the real hurt is now in your mind. You can't forget, but you must learn to control your fear."
There was something oddly authoritarian about his voice, as if he were experienced in such matters and knew what he was talking about.
"It shows, huh?" The words blurred together into a whimper.
"I hope you're feeling better," he said formally, then turned on his heel and started toward the door.
"I'll be all right!" I heard myself shouting. "I'm going with you!"
Lippitt stopped, turned. "We'll see," he said simply, and walked out of the room.
Over the objections of my brother and a battery of doctors, I checked myself out of the hospital on Monday. It had reached the point where the hospital's knockout pills weren't working. I didn't want to sleep, because sleep was infinitely worse than staying awake; Kaznakov always visited me in my sleep. If I was going to stay awake, I reasoned it was better to be getting some things done.
The first thing I did was book a seat on a flight to North Carolina for the next morning. I still couldn't bring myself to pick up a telephone, so I decided I'd simply drop in at the Institute and hope to get lucky. I hung around the apartment the rest of the day and drank myself to sleep that night.
The only effect the booze had was to make it impossible for me to wake up when I wanted to. Kaznakov, his face dripping blood, continued to chase me; the difference was that I was drunk in my dreams, easier to catch.
I struggled awake at dawn and promptly threw up. I stood naked in a dry shower, leaning against the tiled wall and shaking. I wanted to cancel my flight, but the travel agency where I'd made my reservation wasn't open until nine, and my flight was at eight. I could, of course, simply not show up, but something told me that much more than the answers to a few questions could be riding on my ability to make myself get out of the apartment and onto that plane. I finally forced myself to shower, shave, and dress. Too sick to eat, I stumbled out into the street to flag down a cab.
Despite a hangover, or because of it, I wanted another drink on the plane. I decided I wouldn't help my cause by becoming an alcoholic, so I settled for two Alka-Seltzers and a lot of tomato juice.
Late morning found me in Durham, strong enough to walk a reasonably straight line. I celebrated my newfound resolve by forcing myself to use a pay phone. Then I rented a car and drove out to the Duke University campus.
It was a lovely campus, with acres of rolling green, a mixture of old and new buildings, and an overall Gothic atmosphere. The summer session had begun and the landscape was decorated with students, most of them wrapped around each other in various phases of lovemaking. Cicadas droned a steady accompaniment to the strains of guitar music and folk songs that floated on the dry, hot air. The liquor from the night before must have lubricated my joints; I walked without a limp.
The Institute for Parapsychology, not actually a part of Duke, was housed in a converted mansion just off the university campus. I asked for Dr. Fritz James, the man I'd spoken to on the phone, and was ushered into his office.
James was a young man with lean features and long hair tied back with a leather thong. He wore a gossamer Indian chambray shirt, tie-dyed jeans, and worn cowboy boots. He was obviously a man who cared little about his surroundings: there was barely enough room in the office for his desk amidst a litter of magazines, books, and abstract sculpture.
James skipped around from behind his desk and shook my hand enthusiastically. "Dr. Frederickson, it's a real pleasure to meet you."
"I appreciate your agreeing to see me on such short notice."
"I need distractions," he said with a deprecating gesture.
"It allows the subconscious to surface and do its work. What's a Yankee like you doing down here in the cotton patches?"
I laughed. "Do I detect a Bronx accent?"
James smiled and nodded. "Fordham Road; born and raised." There was a spontaneous warmth about the man that I liked.
"One of my graduate students wants to do a doctoral dissertation on possible uses of parapsychology in forensic medicine," I lied. "Since I'm his adviser, I thought I'd better find out what he's talking about. I just happened to be in the neighborhood and I thought I'd take a chance that somebody might be willing to talk to me."
"I'm glad you did," James said sincerely. "Are you interested in any particular area of parapsychology?"
I finessed the question by taking out my note pad and drawing a replica of the paper I'd found inside the book on parapsychology. When I finished, I handed it to him and asked, "Have you ever seen a sheet of paper like this?"
"Sure," James said, leaning across his desk and opening a drawer. He withdrew a thick blue pad, which he handed to me. The sheets in the pad were the same: circles, squares, triangles, and parallelograms. "Is this what you mean?"
"It sure is. What are they used for?"
"They're score sheets. We use them to test for telepathy. Would you like to take a stab at it?"
I nodded.
James went back into his desk and came up with a deck of what looked like oversized playing cards. He spread them face up on the desk. Each card had a symbol-a circle, square, triangle, or parallelogram-corresponding to one of the columns on the score sheet.
He put the cards back together, tore a score sheet from the blue pad, and sat down behind his desk. He picked up a couple of large books off the floor and set them on edge between us so that I couldn't see his hands. "We usually use a more sophisticated procedure," he said, shuffling the cards, "but I think this will serve our purpose.
"I'm going to turn over these cards one by one and concentrate on whichever one I'm looking at," he continued. "You try to open your mind to mine, try to get a picture in your mind of which symbol is on the card in front of me. When I rap on the desk, you call out what symbol you think it is. Got it?"
"Got it."
James finished shuffling the cards, then abruptly snapped one face up and rapped on the desk.
The only thing I could think of was Kaznakov.
"Quickly," James said with a note of authority. "Don't try to think about it. Just give me your first impression; let your subconscious do the work."
"Parallelogram."
He checked one of the boxes on the sheet, flipped another card, knocked.
"Triangle."
Knock.
"Triangle."
Knock.
"Square."
It took him twenty minutes to go through the deck. Then he pushed the books aside and spent another minute or so tallying the check marks in the boxes on the sheet. He finished and tapped the paper with the eraser end of his pencil.
"How'd I do?"
"About twenty-five percent. That's average for a random selection. Chance. With four symbols to choose from, the average person would get one out of four right."
"You mean I'm not a telepath?"
He smiled. "I'm afraid not. Welcome to the club."
"Are there people who score better than chance?"
"Oh, God, yes. Since we began testing for it in the past few years, people with latent telepathic skills have been crawling out of the woodwork. It really is amazing. We've got three students here who can consistently score between thirty and forty-five percent. That's pretty damn good."
"On symbols," I said. "What about reading other people's thoughts?"
He shrugged. "There are twins in Minneapolis who are apparently able to communicate with each other through dreams. But picking up thought transference-and proving that it's taking place-is pretty esoteric. We use this test because it lends itself to hard statistical analysis."
"What about a hundred percent on the cards? Is there anyone around who can manage that?"
He looked pained as he reached back and tugged at the thong on his hair. "Nobody scores a hundred percent. Maybe men did ten thousand years ago-there's reason to suspect that early man may have been telepathic. Or maybe someone will a few thousand years from now. But not today. A score of thirty percent is considered statistically significant. About a year ago we had a young girl who scored fifty-five-but she never got above thirty after that. Fifty- five percent is the record. We're trying to develop training programs."
"How does it work?" I asked.
"The training programs?"
"Telepathy."
He chuckled amiably. "If we knew that, we'd be home free. Actually, it's all quite a mystery. You see the effects, but not the cause. We've found that most people tested do best on their first try, assuming they have the ability to begin with. They don't know how they do it. A thought- a picture of one of those symbols-comes into their minds and they report it. A great deal seems to depend on their mood."
"You mean that on a given day one of these people might be able to read my mind?"
"Well, yes and no. 'Reading your mind' is putting it a bit too melodramatically. They might pick up a mood-or sometimes a word, or a strand of thought-better than other people."
"It all sounds pretty imprecise."
"Oh, it is," James said. "Strictly hit-and-miss when you get beyond the technique we use here."
"But you must have some theory about the mental processes involved."
"You see," James said carefully, staring at the wall behind me, "the 'mind,' as we call it, is much more than just a mere biochemical function of the brain. The brain gives off electrical impulses-much like a radio or television transmitter, to use an overworked analogy. There is energy emanated, and we can measure that energy with an electroencephalograph. Now, as far as telepathy is concerned, it seems that some people have a 'talent,' if you will, for picking up and decoding this energy. The astonishing thing is that a few of these people can pick up these 'signals' from great distances, almost instantaneously. So thoughts are not completely analogous to radio waves."
I decided it was time to break into his lengthy explanation and threw a curve. "Dr. James, have you ever heard of Victor Rafferty?"
He tugged at his hair band again. "Rafferty… Rafferty … Architect?" "Right."
"Died a few years back in an automobile accident. No, he survived that. He finally died in a laboratory accident, something like that. Why do you ask?"
"Was Rafferty ever tested here?"
"No. Not that I know of-and I'd know. Why?"
"Can you think of any reason why somebody might be killed because he was connected with E.S.P.?"
James's face broke into a broad grin. "Sure. I'm threatened all the time-mostly by clergymen and physicists."
I thought of Abu and couldn't even work up a smile. "I'm talking about power. Could a man do something with E.S.P. that could cause others to want to kill him?"
"That's a heavy question. Are you putting me on?"
"No, Dr. James. I'm serious."
"I can see that," he said soberly. "No, I can't think of anything like that. In fact, I almost wish the people in this country would take it that seriously. The Russians are far ahead of us in the field."
I leaned forward. "They are?"
"Yes. Of course, their government puts tremendous amounts of money into research. They're reported to have a woman with telekinetic ability."
The second subject that Arthur Morton had apparently been interested in. "What can you tell me about that?"
"Telekinesis is the ability to move objects through the power of thought." I must have looked skeptical. James cleared his throat and rapped his knuckles on the desk. "I've seen films of a Russian woman who seems able to move objects by willing it. Of course, films can be faked, but I don't think these were. First, the Russians don't really have a motive. Second, if they were going to fake something like that, they might as well have her move a suitcase or something big, not pins and matchsticks. She moves the objects by concentrating and passing her hands over them."
"To what purpose?"
He shrugged. "No purpose; except that if it's true, I think it's pretty fantastic. Don't you? Mind over matter. Imagine man's potential if it can be shown that he can move objects simply by focusing mental energy."
"I think we have more pressing problems."
"No argument there. Would you like to see our facilities?"
"Yes, I'd like that very much."
James came around from behind his desk and held the door open for me; he was a proud father about to show off his baby. I followed him around the complex and tried to look interested and nod at the right times. But my mind wandered as I tried to connect what I'd seen and heard to my knowledge of Victor Rafferty and the dead men around him.
I was going to need a break; there weren't many more places to visit or people to talk to.
It was a few minutes after five when I landed at LaGuardia, just in time for the evening rush-hour traffic. I sat in the back seat of a cab and stewed. I was tired; ready for a stiff drink or three, dinner, and bed.
It was six fifteen by the time I arrived in Manhattan. My mood had abruptly changed: I was suddenly cold and panicky, pent in by the traffic, the noise, and the realization that there was a maniac in the city who would kill me if he found out I was alive. The apartment now seemed too much like a prison or a trap, and I no longer wanted to go home.
I instructed the cab driver to take me downtown to the medical building where Arthur Morton had had offices. I didn't have hopes of finding anyone still there, but checking the building directory for Mary Llewellyn's name would give me something to do. Hers was the last name I had: the last link in a chain that seemed to be made out of air.
The medical building looked deserted, except for a single guard at the doors who was absorbed in the Final Edition of the New York Post. He looked up as I entered, then stuck his nose back into his paper. I walked to the directory at the opposite end of the lobby.
Dr. Mary Llewellyn, Clinical Psychologist, was listed. Fifth floor. I decided to see if she was working late. I took the self-service elevator to the fifth floor, made my way around a cleaning lady, and found Mary Llewellyn's office at the end of the corridor. The light was on inside the office. I knocked, then pushed on the translucent glass door.
A woman in her late thirties looked up from a paper- strewn desk. Mary Llewellyn was attractive in a prissy way. Her blond hair was drawn back in a severe bun. Her eyes were a cold sea-green and seemed to form a barrier between herself and the rest of the world. She looked like a career woman who had lost herself in her work and had no desire to find her way back again.
"Dr. Llewellyn?"
"Yes?" Her tone was frosty.
"Bob Frederickson."
She ignored the hand I offered. "I believe I've heard of you. What can I do for you, Mr. Frederickson?"
"I'm a private investigator. I've been hired by a private party to investigate the murder of one of your colleagues."
A tapered, well-manicured hand shot to her mouth. "Someone I know has been murdered?"
"This murder took place five years ago."
The hand slowly dropped into her lap. "You're talking about Arthur," she whispered.
"That's right, ma'am. I'd like to ask you a few questions."
"I'm glad someone's finally getting around to looking into it," she said in a voice that seemed burdened with a weight from the past. "It's disgraceful the way nothing was ever done."
"It's hard to catch a murderer when you can't find the motive," I said, watching her hands as they reached out and seized the edge of the desk. "Maybe he surprised a couple of burglars."
"These were no ordinary burglars," she said with feeling.
"Why do you say that?"
I watched a veil drop over her eyes as she suddenly became very wary. "Whom did you say you were working for?"
"I didn't say, Dr. Llewellyn. My client prefers to remain anonymous. What do you suppose the burglars wanted in Dr. Morton's office?"
"I don't think I can be of any help to you, Mr. Frederickson," she said in a formal tone. She jammed her papers into a slim briefcase and shut it, then rose and glared at me. "I can't remember any of the details. How in the world should I know what the burglars were after?"
"They were after the records of a very famous patient. Now, you and Dr. Morton collaborated on at least one occasion concerning Victor Rafferty. I thought you might know what Dr. Morton was doing in his office at that hour of the morning."
"I said I can't remember any of the details," she said curtly. "And whoever told you that we collaborated on the case of Victor Rafferty is either mistaken or a liar."
She came around from behind her desk and held out her free arm as if to sweep me out of the office with her.
"You forgot to turn off the lights," I said.
She quickly turned off the desk lamp. "I really must be going," she said icily.
"You did collaborate on Victor Rafferty's case, didn't you?" Even in the dim light from the hallway I could see her jaws clench.
"What do you really want, Mr. Frederickson?"
"To learn all I can about Victor Rafferty."
"I don't know anything about Victor Rafferty," she said in a voice barely above a whisper.
"I think you're one of the very few people who do, Dr. Llewellyn. It's a secret that could cost you your life. There are some very nasty people asking questions now about Victor Rafferty. You're lucky they didn't get to you before me. They're not very polite. If you'll tell me what I want to know, it could save lives."
"I can't talk to you," she said in a strangled whisper. "Please!"
"Why not?"
"I just can't talk about it!"
"Was Rafferty a telepath?"
That stopped her. Her green eyes caught the light from the hallway and glinted like those of a hunted animal. "Whom have you been talking to? Who told you that?" "Was he a telepath?"
"Victor Rafferty is dead! Let him stay dead!"
"Were you and Arthur Morton conducting experiments in parapsychology?" My own voice rose, trembled as if in sympathy with her emotion, her fear.
"Victor Rafferty was a monster! A monster and a traitor!"
The vehemence of her statement was totally unexpected, and it brought me down. "Why was he a monster, Dr. Llewellyn? What did he do?"
She looked at me a long time in silence. When she spoke again, her voice had regained its icy reserve. "Get out of here or I'll call the police," she said evenly.
Something was happening inside my head. The phone had begun to ring. Mary Llewellyn cursed softly and pushed past me. It took her a moment to find the light button; then she picked up the phone.
There was a fire raging inside my brain and it felt as though every muscle in my body were cramping. Once again I was hanging on the bar, electricity coursing through my body, my brain melting under the onslaught of pain. I heard Mary Llewellyn calling me from what seemed a long distance.
"Mr. Frederickson…? Mr. Frederickson, are you all right?"
Reeling, my hands pressed to my ears, I tried to say something, but the words wouldn't leave my throat. I wheeled and stumbled out of her office.
There was no longer any doubt in my mind. I was finished.