Fortune of Fear Read online

  “Captain Stabb!” I barked. “Come out in the hall. A matter of gravest urgency has reared its head.”

  Grumbling, he followed me out.

  In a highly conspiratorial tone, I said, “Stabb, things are about to move. We are going to execute the greatest robbery this planet has ever heard of!”

  Oh, man, did his pointed ears pick up! The triangular head moved close to me. The beady, close-set eyes came flaming alive. “Is this some trick?”

  “Gods, no,” I lied. “I cannot tell you any details now but it is a haul that will make pirate history!”

  “It’s about time,” he said.

  “Oh, but you’re going to see a big change now,” I said. “Move fast. We have to undertake a preparatory action. There’s an epidemic raging in the area where we are going to make the first move. Get your whole crew over to the hospital at once to be inoculated. The taxi is waiting outside!”

  “What is this plan?” he said.

  “I will give you the details when you come back,” I said. “Get going now.”

  He got them up and got them dressed. I got them out to the taxi and, in the cold dawn, packed them in.

  “Deliver them to Doktor Muhammed only,” I ordered him. “And then come back and see me.”

  Away they went.

  I rushed back to the crew’s berthing. I found the room and bed of the base construction superintendent.

  Cost was no object now. I woke him by waving three one-hundred-dollar bills under his snoring nose. He swatted at them. He clutched them. He looked at them and sat up quite alert.

  “There are two more of those,” I said, “if you will do exactly what I want you to do.”

  “If it’s murder, ask the guards. If it’s another redesign of the base you’ve done, let me go back to sleep.”

  Oh, there were going to be some changes made! “Neither,” I snapped. “It’s a simple construction job.”

  He got interested. We turned up the glowplates and in a rapid, if somewhat imperfect scrawl, I showed him what I wanted.

  “Huh,” he said. “That’s easy. There’ll be two more of these?”

  “Only if you finish by midafternoon,” I said.

  “That’s easy, too. I’ll rouse out the workers.”

  Hah! How easy that had been!

  I raced out. I flashed into the Blixo. I pounded on the cabin door of the mate who had been left in charge.

  I told his tousled head what I wanted.

  “Why wake me now?” he said.

  “Because I wanted to give you this,” I said. I pushed a hundred-dollar bill into his hand. “And if you do a smart job when you get the signal this afternoon, there’s another one.”

  His hand closed over it like a sun grabbing a spaceship at magna-speed.

  It was all in train now. It must not fail!

  I went down and opened the storeroom door and crooned for three hours over that precious gold! I would not have it long. I would have to make this joy of communion last. It saddened me that after today I would never see it again.

  But if all went well today, I would have the MONEY!

  TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTY-FIVE MILLION DOLLARS!

  Money is POWER!

  Given that much, I could ruin whomever I chose. At will! Including Heller and Krak!

  PART THIRTY-SEVEN

  Chapter 4

  The urgency of undone things at last wrenched me away. I must not leave the slightest detail to chance. I knew I was engaged in one of the most desperate ventures of my whole life. I was going to get five murderous pirates to move 12½ tons of pure gold. Rogues who would kill for ounces of it, let alone tons!

  I scrambled down out of the Blixo.

  The flash of electronic fire was filling the whole hangar with fitful light. The construction crew was working like mad. I surveyed it with interest. They were making good progress.

  I ticked off on my quivering fingers the vital items that were left.

  Guns. Clothes. Passport. Anything else?

  Yes. The locket. I had to get the locket back.

  I checked to make sure. Yes, I still had it in my pocket. I couldn’t quite figure out how to give it back, unsuspected. If I died in this desperate venture, I still wanted a few tears on my grave.

  I went up the tunnel. I entered my secret room.

  Guns. I opened my gun case. I looked them over. I liked the looks of one. It was an FIE double-barreled 12-gauge called “The Brute.” It looked it. I had had the barrel sawed off to twenty-two inches. It had no hammer to catch on anything. I had had it fitted with a sling. One glance down those twin tunnels would scare a man to death. I was going to ride shotgun on a gold shipment, and I had better do it in style. So “The Brute” was the baby. No Wells Fargo guard had ever had a more impressive weapon. Nor bandits like I had, for that matter.

  I got out two shoulder bandoliers and filled the loops with assorted types of shotgun shells.

  I then laid out six blasticks. To them I added a Ruger Blackhawk single-action revolver with .30-caliber carbine chambers. I had .30-caliber armor-piercing bullets for it and, using what were actually rifle cartridges, it could outrange and outhit any other handgun I had. And this revolver wouldn’t jam in the extreme cold I was about to court. I got out a tan hand-tooled holster and cartridge belt and filled the loops with the .30-caliber carbine shells.

  Thoughtfully, I added half a dozen maximum-damage Fleet Marine grenades. Then I loaded an ankle gun—an Undercover Colt .38 Special—using explosive bullets and laid out its ankle holster.

  A very flat Voltar police slash blastgun—that could cut a man in half at a thousand yards if you waved it right—would serve as a pocket weapon, and I added it to the pile.

  So far so good.

  Now for clothes. I went through the secret door into my bedroom. I started going through the boxes of new clothes. An electrically heated ski suit! Hey! It was a beautiful black silk. It also had fur-lined, electrically heated boots. I was so glad to have it. A space pressure suit gives me absolute fits! You can’t draw fast enough in them and they always smell. So I filled up the battery chambers and made a test. Great. I put the outfit on. It looked deadly! And it would look more deadly still with two shotgun bandoliers crossing the front of it and a handgun holster’s leather and sinister brass around the waist. Formidable!

  Passports next. Risky as it was to use my own valid Earth identity of Sultan Bey, I was going to do just that. Pretty bold and adventurous when you consider the state of police on this planet, and all the more so in the light that every credit card company checked not just every movement but every slightest twitch of a cardholder, a fact I had just learned to my dismay. Battle the police? Yes. Even casually contact a credit card’s computer? No! Emphatically, NO!

  But there had to be no question as to who owned this gold. I was doing all this in such a way that nobody would be able to touch the resultant mountain of money—not even come near it.

  My passport was in order; its health card was up to date right down to the smallpox vaccination and bubonic plague shot.

  I still had not yet worked out how to return the locket: it left a loose end dangling.

  I remembered, then, I had not eaten. I buzzed for breakfast: as it was midmorning by now they couldn’t complain I was disturbing their sleep. But Karagoz and the waiter were very, very slow. When the food arrived in the dining room, the kahve was cool, the eggs nicely chilled and the melon warm. They explained it was a raw and windy day.

  I vowed, oh, there’re going to be some changes around here shortly! You just wait!

  My meal was disturbed by noise. Above the howl of the winter wind, the small voices of boys made the day hideous. I looked out the window. There they were, laughing and shouting, the two of them making enough noise to disturb the Devils themselves.

  The idiots were trying to fly a kite! It was some kind of a Japanese kite, a fancy-looking bat, obviously a present Utanc had bought for them in the most expensive available toy store and, of
course, with a credit card. The thought of it enraged me.

  Then inspiration struck again! A brilliant idea flashed down from the blue, just like that!

  I buckled on the Ruger Blackhawk—you don’t go around little boys unarmed. I made sure I had the locket in my pocket.

  I stalked outside.

  The idiots were trying to keep the kite from diving into the trees and, by luck, of course, were succeeding.

  They had their backs to me and were too engrossed. I was able to creep up on them, by stealth, undetected.

  Suddenly I stretched out a hand hardened with karate practice. I struck! Right, left!

  As my stance and balance were absolutely textbook, I could not fail to hit.

  WHAP! One little boy flying to the right.

  WHAP! One little boy flying to the left.

  RIP! One kite straight down into the tree.

  With calculated cunning, I had not knocked either boy out. I wanted the resultant screams.

  They screamed exactly according to plan.

  One was pitched on his head on a gravel walk. The other was tangled up with a leafless shrub.

  The result was as planned.

  Utanc came out of her room like a shot!

  Both boys were pointing at their kite, now a shattered, flapping ruin. They were screaming to high heavens.

  The blood in Utanc’s eye, however, would shortly turn to beams of pleasure.

  I produced the locket and held it up. I said to her in tones of outrage, “Look what I found these two little devils playing with!”

  Righteously scowling, I handed her the locket.

  She took it. She looked at it very closely. Then she looked at me.

  “The boys?” she said, and I did not like her tone. “They can’t get in my jewel case. It’s locked! And that only means one thing! You took it, you (bleepard)!”

  She whirled to the two little boys. “Did this brute slap you?”

  “He wrecked our kite!” they both howled together.

  Utanc went straight to the path. She stooped. I cleverly divined her intention and was halfway to the first corner of the house before she threw the first deadly handful of gravel.

  Fast, I was almost into cover before the two little boys began to add their gravel to the barrage.

  The volume was high but their aim was bad. I had adequate cover to peek back around. I was out of range. The shells were falling short.

  After a few more handfuls of gravel, thrown just for spite, the three of them desisted.

  “He wrecked our kite,” “James Cagney” was blubbering.

  “It was a beautiful kite,” “Rudolph Valentino” was sobbing.

  Both of them were lying. You can’t fly a frail kite in a high-velocity winter wind. It was their fault. Kites are only for spring.

  Utanc didn’t seem to be paying too much attention to them. She was studying the locket now. Then she did the most amazing thing.

  She knelt down and pulled them over to her. “Here, you can have this. Do what you want with it, darlings.”

  “Really?” they chorused together, blinking at it.

  “Of course,” said Utanc. “It’s only the paste replica of the real one in my safe. One has these copies to wear as a substitute when one is liable to be mugged. Put it on the dog or something. It’s a fake and a rather bad one at that.”

  Watching her indulgent pats on their heads, I snarled to myself, oh, but there’re going to be some changes made. You just wait until I am wallowing in all that MONEY!

  PART THIRTY-SEVEN

  Chapter 5

  Aside from such minor hitches as the locket, my plan was going smoothly enough.

  I went back down to check on the construction workers. All was going right along.

  Faht Bey came up. “What are you up to? These are Apparatus materials and men you are using. It had better not be for some private project.”

  “Company business,” I said righteously.

  “Very suspicious business,” he said. “I’ve never seen these people work at your orders this hard before. Or at all, for that matter.”

  “Lombar Hisst’s orders,” I said. “This project is vital.”

  “I hope so,” he said doubtfully. “You know anything about these heroin thefts from our warehouse?”

  “Are they still continuing?” I said and when he nodded, with a peculiar look at me, I continued, “You’d better get to the bottom of it before I have to report it to the Inspector General Overlord.”

  “That,” he said, “is the last thing I’m worried about.” He walked off.

  It peeved me. It was obvious that he thought I was stealing the very heroin that we were to ship to Lombar Hisst.

  His attitude was insufferable. Oh, but there were going to be some changes now. Just wait until I had all that money!

  I knew I had a long and dangerous run ahead of me. I thought I had better get some rest while I could. I lay down on my bunk. But I was so keyed up that I couldn’t sleep. Dollar marks kept spinning around in my head.

  Midafternoon arrived. On my dozenth visit to the hangar, I found everything still. No annealing torches were flashing.

  The work was lying there, absorbo-coat paint dry. I inspected it. It was beautiful.

  To the eye, it was a flat, thick platform of heavy steel, a thing of massive girders and great ringbolts. But it had two differences from what it seemed to be. It was built of aluminum girders. The top plates folded back: it was hollow!

  To show you how important I considered the project, I actually paid the construction superintendent the other two hundred dollars! No sacrifice would be spared to make this a success!

  I entered the Blixo and got hold of the mate. He assembled what crew were still in the ship. I unlocked the storeroom. And in no time at all, the cases of gold were being carried to the platform.

  The top was open. One by one, the cases of gold bars were put into the hollow place. They were securely lashed down. Three hundred boxes containing six hundred fifty-pound bars occupied quite a bit of space. But gold is deceptive. One would think 12½ tons of it would be a mountain. It isn’t. But even so, we were a bit hard pressed to get the last case snugly in.

  The top plates of the platform were then fixed in place. And now, to all appearances, it was just a solid, thick platform of girders.

  I had to do the next step myself. It was very tiring. I got a handcart and, with several trips, I moved the fake gold out of my secret room and down the tunnel and piled it on the platform top. I had destroyed all Voltarian labels.

  The Blixo mate accommodatingly lashed down the visible nine cases with their eighteen fifty-pound bars of gold-painted lead.

  I verified that all was now secure. And to again show how important I considered this project, I gave him the additional hundred dollars. He was pleased. He and his crew would also be dead drunk very shortly, for the first place he went was to the phone. This meant he wouldn’t be talking to the Antimancos when they came.

  I looked up through the electronic illusion of the mountaintop. The day was fading out. The sun is early gone in a Turkish January. We were above 38° north latitude.

  I went up the tunnel and got into my house. I bolted down a fast supper. I put on my ankle holster and shoved the Undercover Colt into it. I filled my pockets with the other concealed weapons. I strapped on the Ruger gunbelt and checked the cylinder of the Blackhawk and thrust it in place. I put the thong over the hammer and tied the holster to my leg. I draped the two shotgun bandoliers left and right across my chest and fastened their lower edges to the cartridge belt of the handgun.

  I picked up the phone and called Prahd. Yes, the Antimancos were ready to be sent—had been for hours. I phoned the taxi driver and had him pick them up.

  Nervous now from the very prospect of having to be convincingly calm with the Antimancos, I threw my bearskin coat over my shoulders, picked up the FIE shotgun and went down into the hangar.

  The Antimancos came down the barracks tunnel,
restive and annoyed. I wished I had thought to tell Prahd to blow some calming gas on them. Or on me, for that matter.

  I met them at the platform edge.

  “Of all the condemned nonsense!” said Captain Stabb. “I’m a blasted pincushion. That (bleepard) stuck us full of holes!”

  “Did he give you the epidemic certificates?” I said tensely.

  “He gave us some (bleeped) piece of paper,” snarled Stabb. He had it out.

  I took it, scanned it and put it in my pocket. “It would not do,” I said, “for you to be caught robbing a bank and be put in jail for not having the right health certificate.”

  It had the desired effect. Captain Stabb’s beady eyes gleamed with greed.

  They crowded close. I knew they would. This was going well.

  “Tonight,” I said in a very low voice, “we are going to make the preliminary run. I have a wonderful plan. In order to seize the gold reserves of Switzerland . . .”

  “The gold reserves of Switzerland?” they breathed in awe and greed.

  “Just that,” I said. I spoke to Captain Stabb but let the others hear. “In order to steal something, it is necessary to know where it is.”

  They nodded.

  “So at great risk to myself, I am going to do just that.”

  “How?” whispered Stabb.

  “Look at that platform,” I said.

  They did. What they really saw was what they supposed was a steel platform with nine bullion cases lashed to the top.

  “The gold in those boxes,” I said, “isn’t gold at all. It is just lead bars painted with gold paint. Check them and see for yourself.”

  They undid a lashing. With a careful dagger, they verified it. I took a small hammer and repaired the damage.

  “But how does this rob Switzerland?” said Stabb.

  “Very simple,” I said. “You are going to land me and this at Kloten Airport in Zurich. They will take it to their vaults and I will follow them. I will pinpoint exactly where the vaults are and when we have planned the raid all out we’ll go back and lift the whole thing away with the line-jumper!”

  “Oh,” said Stabb, his eyes glowing as I knew they would. “There’s only one trouble with the plan. The line-jumper will only lift about two hundred tons.”