"Who?" - читать интересную книгу автора (Budrys Algis)

4

Rogers had been awake for thirty-six hours. It was a whole day, now, since the man had come back over the line. Rogers pawed angrily at his burning eyes as he let himself into his apartment. He left his clothes in a rumpled trail across the threadbare old carpet as he crossed the floor toward the bathroom. Fumbling in the medicine cabinet for an Alka-Seltzer, he envied the little wiry men like Finchley who could stay awake for days without their stomachs backing up on them.

The clanking pipes slowly filled the tub with hot brown water while he pulled at his beard with a razor. He clawed his fingers through the crisp, cropped red hair on his scalp, and scowled at the dandruff that came flaking out.

God, he thought wearily, I’m thirty-seven and I’m coming apart.

And as he slid into the tub, feeling the hot water working into the bad hip where he’d been hit by a cobblestone in a riot, looking down under his navel at the bulge that no exercise could quite flatten out any more, the thought drove home.

A few more years, and I’ll really have a pot. When the damp weather comes, that hip’s going to give me all kinds of hell. I used to be able to stay up two and three days at a clip — I’m never going to be able to do that again. Some day I’m going to try some stunt I could do the week before, and I won’t make it.

Some day, too, I’m going to make a decision of some kind — some complex, either-or thing that’s got to be right. I’ll know I’ve got it right — and it’ll be wrong. I’ll start screwing up, and every time after that I’ll get the inside sweats remembering how I was wrong. I’ll start pressing, and worrying, and living on Dexedrine, and if they spot it in time, upstairs, they’ll give me a nice harmless job in a corner somewhere. And if they don’t spot it, one of these days Azarin’s going to put a really good one over on me, and everybody’s kids’ll talk Chinese.

He shivered. The phone rang in the living room.

He climbed out of the tub, holding carefully onto the edge, and wrapped himself in one of the huge towels that was the size of a blanket, and which he was going to take back to the States with him if he was ever assigned there. He padded out to the phone stand and picked up the headpiece. “Yeah?”

“Mr. Rogers?” He recognized one of the War Ministry operators.

“That’s right.”

“Mr. Deptford is on the line. Hold on, please.”

“Thank you.” He waited, wishing the cigarette box wasn’t across the room beside his bed.

“Shawn? Your office said you’d be home.”

“Yes, sir. My shirt was trying to walk off me.”

“I’m here, at the Ministry. I’ve been talking to the Undersecretary for Security. How are you doing on this Martino business? Have you reached any definite conclusions as yet?”

Rogers thought over the terms of his answer. “No, sir, I’m sorry. We’ve only had one day, so far.”

“Yes, I know. Do you have any notion of how much more time you’ll need?”

Rogers frowned. He had to calculate how much time they could possibly spare. “I’d say it’ll take a week.” He hoped.

“That long?”

“I’m afraid so. The team’s set up and working smoothly now, but we’re having a very rough time. He’s like a big egg.”

“I see.” Deptford took a long breath that came clearly over the phone. “Shawn — Karl Schwenn asked me if you knew how important Martino is to us.”

Rogers said quietly: “You can tell Mr. Undersecretary I know my job.”

“All right, Shawn. He wasn’t trying to rag you. He just wanted to be certain.”

“What you mean is, he’s riding you.”

Deptford hesitated. “Someone’s riding him, too, you know.,’

“I could still stand a little less Teutonic discipline in this department.”

“Have you been to sleep lately, Shawn?”

“No, sir. I’ll be filing daily reports, and when we crack this, I’ll phone.”

“Very well, Shawn. I’ll tell him. Good night.”

“Good night, sir.”

He hung up and the red scrambler bulb on the phone went out. He went back into the bathtub and lay there with his eyes closed, letting Martino’s dossier drift up into the forepart of his brain.

There was still very little in it. The man was still five feet eleven inches tall. His weight was up to two hundred sixty-eight pounds. His arches had collapsed, but the thickness of his skull plating apparently made up the height differential.

Nothing else in the I.D. chart was applicable. There were no entries for eyes, hair, or complexion. There was no entry for Date of Birth, though a physiologist had given him an age, within the usual limits of error, that corresponded with 1948. Fingerprints? Distinguishing marks and scars?

Rogers’ bitter smile was pale at the corners. He dried himself, kicked his old clothes into a corner, and dressed. He went back into the bathroom, dropped his toothbrush into his pocket, thought for a moment and added the tube of Alka-Seltzer, and went back to his office.