The Israel Bond Omnibus (55 page)
Read The Israel Bond Omnibus Online
Authors: Sol Weinstein
He knew they’d be waiting for Brown; so they were, their gimlet eyes at the sights of Manicottis trained on the gate. There would be time for one drive only against the “pinner” or point of a porch step. Now! He charged down the steps and stooped into position. “Der Jude! Take him!” The iron voice... he tore his grey eyes away from the horrid yellow ones and swung his usable left arm on a downward slant, felt a grand old-time tingle as the ball kissed the point and took off like an angelic thing, up, up, up, a black dot tickling the underbelly of a cloud, then over the hundred-foot wall around the casino with plenty to spare, the tape measure blast of all tape measure Ballantine Beer blasts, a Yankee Stadium roof-clearing thing of beauty, and he could see in the center of the explosions in his head the faces of DiMag and Mantle smiling a “well done, fella” and hear his own stammered reply: “That one was for you, Clipper, and you, too, Mighty Mick,” before the half-dozen rifle stocks clubbed him into limbo.
22 Good Old Sol
[52]
To his amazement the voice was not iron, the eyes were not yellow, but brown, intelligent, almost sympathetic.
“Let us talk quickly, Oy Oy Seven. There is little time. Even now Gerda is dressing for the extraordinary occasion of inflicting—ah, let us say testing, some unusual devices upon the catch of her lifetime, Secret Agent Israel Bond. Undoubtedly she is putting on her finest housedress and practicing upon Locksley, her dwarf, with a whip she has sworn will be used only upon you, a cat o’ twenty-seven tails presented to her by Der Führer (The speaker’s hand shot up in a heil) himself. Cooperate with me, Bond, and I will save you from unimaginable suffering. I want to know how much M 33 and 1/3 knows about ‘Operation Alienation,’ how deeply the CIA is involved, what plans both have for counterattacking, how the new king can best be gotten to and eliminated, as well as a few items to sate my personal curiosity.”
Bond, his hands chained to the wall, saw a bland face and the high forehead of the scholar. His questioner was a man of medium height with a military crewcut who wore a white labcoat. Of course—Dr. Ernst Holzknicht, whose mild appearance belied his status as the evil genius behind all of Eretz Israel’s woes.
“Where am I, Holzknicht?” He would not give the kraut the courtesy of “Herr Doktor,” no matter what the cost. “And remember, under the terms of the Geneva Convention I can only give you my name, rank and Diners Club number.”
Dr. Holzknicht blew a mouthful of Muriel smoke into his face. “You are in the cellar of Shivs, the very room where Oy Oy Five met his end at Gerda’s claws, so you see there is no regard for Geneva’s niceties here.”
Bond inhaled the foul air. “And if I cooperate, then what? Autographed pictures of David McCallum and Robert Vaughn?”
“I will reward you with a quick, painless death, an injection of
diathorenzymesheckeygreen
, and say that you died of your many wounds, which, if you’ll notice, I have treated. I have no personal interest in torturing you. It would serve no scientific purpose.”
“You’re not like the others, Holzknicht. You’re a genius of medicine and psychiatry, you don’t enjoy sadism, and I see you’re wearing a pair of fifty-colodny Dr. Joyce Brothers bedsocks, which means you have a fully developed artistic sensitivity; yet you align yourself with these ghouls. Why?”
“That is a long story, Bond. Ja, I agree; the Sem-Heidts are quite mad. Heinz is a fat-swollen sybarite who lives only for calories and the cheap thrills of the
la guerre
table. Gerda is a monster who must cause some kind of misery every day of her life or she finds life meaningless. I regret that a man of my intellect and taste has been forced to seek alliance with them, but TUSH has power and the finances to underwrite my researches.”
“Can’t those researches be conducted for some democratic country? I’m sure your past indiscretions would be forgiven.”
“You do not fully understand, Bond. The main reason I am with TUSH is because I concur with its ultimate goal. Even as a young scientist I was far ahead of my older, allegedly wiser colleagues in understanding the monumental problems facing mankind. Long ago I foresaw the great upheavals arising from awakened nationalism in the former colonial territories, the impact of the population explosion, the terrible food shortages, automation, water pollution, the threat of attack by aliens from other planets and the ever-growing possibility that the sun may die in five billion years, leaving earth a cold, shriveled, dead mass of rock. With my logical, dispassionate scientist’s mind, I arrived at one incontestable solution to all these problems.”
“And that is?”
“We have got to destroy all the Jews.”
“Well,” Bond said uncertainly, “if you put it
that
way”—then he was furious at himself for a momentary weakness—”no, damn it, no! I won’t play ball, kraut. Do your worst.”
“So? A pity.” The doctor sighed. “In that case I shall leave you in the capable claws of Auntie Sem-Heidt. First, however, we shall soften you up.” He walked to a corner of the cell and slid open the lid of a screened cage. “Good day, Bond, and goodbye.” He was gone.
From the cage came a soft scratching sound... then, one by one, out came an abhorrent line of crawling brown things, each about six inches long, with countless little feet and curved claws at each end. Israel Bond felt the hair on the back of his neck—rising!
He was about to be attacked by a miggle of millipedes from the Lesser Antilles.
They moved inexorably toward him. He could pick out the pinpoints of red that were their eyes. Their bites might not mean death, at least the instantaneous kind, just simple agony that would turn his fine black hair white and the dark, cruelly handsome face into a Dorian Gray After within seconds.
In his terror he twisted at his manacles, rubbing huge patches of skin from his wrists; they held. Something clanged against the floor and he realized that in his straining desperation he had snapped the Tuck Tape that bound the Instant Processed Cold Rolled Extra Strength Steel tool to his body. Alas, it was six inches (the exact length of the filthy stalkers) from his feet. Might as well be six miles, he lamented, as the line of millipedes moved on, now less than a foot away, their claws held high to lance into flesh. He closed his eyes, whispering, “Hear O Israel, the Lord Our God, The Lord is One.” He waited for the first prickle of millipede feet on his legs, the first claw squirting venom.
What was taking them so long?
He opened his eyes.
They had stopped in their tracks, deploying in battle formation toward the steel-barred opening that served as the cell’s only window.
Crawling through the bars, caught by a shaft of fading sunlight, was the enormous, hairy arachnid of the desert, a solpugid, searching for food.
“Solpugid. Sol. Sollie baby.” Thrice he entreated the new arrival in a voice cracking with emotion. “Help me, Sol. Help one of your own who’s up against it now. Don’t stop to polemicize about Orthodox, Conservative and Reform differences.
Ich bin a Yid,
Sollie.
Du bist aichit. Helf mir!”
(I am a Jew… you too… help me!)
The arachnid seemed to comprehend. It quickened its pace, furry legs impelling it into the midst of the enemy, the terrible jaws scoring direct hits time and again. Three of them were cut in twain, the severed halves thrashing in death throes. But Solpugid had been slashed damagingly by two of them hitting it from both sides in a prearranged pincer plan; its vital juices ebbed from the bites. It drove back at the two attackers, pulling them within the area of the jaws. Bond heard the crunch of the jaws into their carapaces. One left!
“Sol! Behind you!” It spun to meet the sneak attack—too late—and the claw laden with excruciating poison struck home. Solpugid shook the millipede off its back with a mighty heave, which sent it banging into a wall, then chomped it into jagged bits.
Gottenu!
Bond thought. It’s saved me. Then he felt a new thrill of horror as he heard the elevator whine, bearing, he knew, the Bitch of Schweinbaden.
That damned tool! So near, yet so far.
He looked at the barely alive Solpugid.
“Sol, that hunk of metal. If you’ve got anything left—push it over to me.”
A few of the eyes blinked dully. It’s so damn shot through with poison it can’t hear me anymore, Bond thought.
Solpugid got up.
With its last atom of power, it staggered up on three of its eight legs (the rest, no doubt, were numbed by the circulating venom), geared itself for a final rush and smashed into the chunk of metal, which, Bond deduced, must have outweighed it 150 times. The tool skipped over the stone, coming to rest against his ankle just as the elevator hit bottom. Bond was in action, kicking off an Andalusian bedsock, pinching the device between his toes, kicking up and catching it with his even, white teeth. He ignored the claret oozing from the corner of his cut sensual mouth, bit harder into the tool and with a series of nods worked it against his chains. He smelled the burning metal shavings as the
ipcress
file ate its effortless way through the links, and suddenly he was falling on his face as they gave way. No time to crow (he was a poor birdcall imitator anyway)—the squeak of the wheelchair down a cellar corridor and the harridan’s cackle were broadcasting a message: Run! Run! Live to fight another day when the odds are better.
“Olav Ha Sholom,”
[53]
he whispered to the dead Solpugid, then scraped the
ipcress
file against the bars which crumbled before its ridges. He was halfway through the window when the cell door swung open. “Stop him, Locksley! Stop him!” Her new whip laced Bond’s back but he was beyond feeling. With a vicious backward kick he hurled the dwarf, who was attempting to bite his leg, into the wall. Outside, he looked down and balled up his right fist and shook it at the yellow eyes, which gave way for the first time to his grey ones. “You gutter bitch! You’ll have a real heartburn before Eretz Israel is through with you!” He fled into the sultry night.
23 First Things Second
On the sound theory that TUSH would expect him to hightail it as far from Shivs as his battered frame could take him, Bond walked coolly up the porch, through the lobby now bustling with guests about to start their night’s run at the tables, and, shunning the elevator, went up via the service stairs. His object: the fourth floor and the documents that would incriminate the heinous junta before the whole world.
As he reached the second floor landing he saw a shadow and cocked his left fist for a killing blow. There was a sob and warm arms fell upon him. “Tracy!”
She was naked, atremble; demented eyes rolled in the oval face. “I’ve been waiting, waiting, waiting! Oh, Iz, Iz, Iz! Hurry, hurry, hurry!”
Well, they say all good things come in threes, he thought, and let her drag him down the hallway into Room 25. It was apparent she had been champing at (and for) the bit quite awhile. A pile of Viceroy stubs spilled out of an ashtray onto the Du Pont 105 throw rug, the blankets on the Mr. Greenjeans hide-a-bed were tossed to one side, the phonograph was playing DePussey’s “Afternoon of a Nymph.”
It was matchless ecstasy for Tracy, so much so that on her roller coaster ride to fulfillment she bit through and tore off from her arm her black mourning band; not for Bond, whose wounds prevented him from reaching that exalted realm, though he did settle for a fuzzy area’s fuzzy area between sublime rapture and divine consummation.
“Iz.” She was sleepy-happy, her oval face glistening with the contentment of a baby who has just guzzled Gerber’s Strained Scotch. “Don’t leave me ever.”
“I must—for now, darling. I’ve got a big job ahead of me. Sleep and dream of that summer in Portofino. Incidentally, sweet, I’ve films of that interlude. Would you mind terribly if I had them exhibited at some of the better men’s clubs? Gladly share the net receipts with you after the distributor’s take.”
“Do anything you....” She was asleep.
Sweet kid, Tracy. A
shikseh
, but that could be altered. Man could do worse than end up with her, especially since she was now the sole heir to the count’s squeegee empire. Stop the dawdling, Oy Oy Seven, and get up to the fourth floor!
It was deserted, the directors and Heinz Sem-Heidt downstairs running the games. At the conference room door sat a dozing Spigar with a Wickersham-Freehan antelope gun on his lap. From the smell it was obvious the man had been at the
zuki
keg and it was an easy matter for Bond to take the weapon from his hands and bash his head in.
The room held nothing of interest for him except for a few Muriel cigars in a bowl, which he took. He ransacked eight of the directors’ suites, again finding nothing rewarding, eschewed a ninth, obviously the doctor’s, when he heard the bubbling of some chemical or other. But he received a jolt when he eased open the door to the tenth suite.
She was in the wheelchair, the yellow eyes masked by chalk-white lids on whose surface were branching green and red veins; snores gurgled from the thin nose and blue lips. Her hands rested on the jester’s cap of Locksley, who slept in a barbed-wire crib next to the wheelchair, his thumb in his mouth.
Bond tiptoed across the threadbare rug, kicking aside strewn-about housedresses, his grey eyes darting into nook and cranny for the documents. On the walls he saw shelves lined with her personal library—
A Child’s Garden of Perversion
,
Jayne’s Fighting Whips of the World 1965-66
,
Flay Your Way To Contentment
,
De Sade—He Really Knew How to Hurt a Guy
—and a pennant,
SCHWEINBADEN, CAMP OF THE MONTH FOR THREE STRAIGHT YEARS
.
And then he found it—behind her ermine-trimmed iron Maiden Lady—the safe. He prayed the tom-tom that was his heart would not rouse the hag as he pulled the sandpaper from his hip pocket and sensitized the tips of his long tapering fingers. Click! The first tumbler —five minutes passed—click!—the second—good-o! He glanced at the radioactive dial on his shockproof Kissling. Nine-twenty. In another ten minutes the safe would yield its treasure. By nine-thirty the proof of the existence of Operation Alienation would be in his hand.
Nine-thirty!
Gottenu!
She
would be at the oasis at nine-thirty, his own and only true love, Sarah Lawrence of Arabia!