Karagoz came. “You said I had until dawn to finish the accounts.”

“You’ve stolen and sold all the rugs,” I said.

“Yes, Sultan Bey.” He knew (bleeped) well I had sold them but he sure knew better than to say so.

I had a mouthful of wonderful baklava. I washed it down with the chilled sira. “Add a special requisition to buy rugs for the whole house. The most expensive kind. Even Persian.” Who knew when I might hit another snag on money and would have to sell them again. Recent experience on Voltar had made me prudent.

“Yes, Sultan Bey.”

“And turn in any commission you get to me,” I said.

“Yes, Sultan Bey.”

“And reduce the amount of money you’re spending on staff food. By half. They’re too fat!”

“Yes, Sultan Bey.”

“That is all,” I said, dismissing him with a wave of the sira glass.

He backed out the door.

I sat there grinning. I really knew how to handle people. Psychology is a wonderful thing. A true tool in my line of business.

I could get away with anything on this planet!

And that made me think of Heller.

I bolted the door to my room. I went into the right-hand closet. I pushed the back panel and it slid open. I stepped through into what was really my room.

It was bigger than the one I had just left. It was unknown to the staff. It didn’t show from the outside as it was dug back into the mountain. A secret door at the end of it led right down into the base. Another secret door led to a passage that ended in the archaeological barracks.

I opened a closet. The laugh was on the staff. Here were my real clothes, various costumes of different nationalities. They were all here.

A cupboard disclosed that my makeup kits were intact.

I opened a panel and revealed my guns. They were protected by a device which took moisture and oxygen out of their hiding place. I removed the chambered cartridge and clip from the Colt .45 and put it away. I got out a Beretta which is more my style, really, being easier to hide — and I even have a license for it.

That done, I opened a safe and reviewed my passports. Some were expired in the last year and I made a note to get them renewed. I looked over other identification documents: they were fine.

With a quick inspection, I verified that all my assorted luggage, like suitcases and attache cases, were there.

Great. I was in business.

I went back into the advertised bedroom and changed my clothes, noting I should be more careful and not go around in space insulator boots in public.

I put on a sport shirt with flaming poinsettias, a pair of black pants and some loafers. I looked in the mirror: no movie gangster ever looked more at home.

Now for Heller. I picked up the box and went back into my real room. I unloaded the gear and set it up on a table. Nothing wrong with it from the trip.

I set it all up and then, as an afterthought, brought in the pitcher of sira and a glass.

What was Heller up to?

I turned on the activator-receiver and viewscreen.

I didn’t think I’d need the 831 Relayer as he wasn’t in the ship and must be within ten miles.

And there he was!

Chapter 10

Heller was walking along a dark street.

I wondered what had taken him so long to get into Afyon and then realized that, after the rumor I’d spread, probably nobody at the hangar would give him a ride and he’d had to walk. It was only a few miles, they had probably said in a nasty tone of voice.

I adjusted the viewscreen controls. I found out that by flaring the screen a little bit, I could possibly pick things up as well as Heller could.

The picture was really great quality. Because I could look directly at the peripheral vision area, even though it was a trifle blurry, I could probably see what was going on around him even better than Heller: a matter of my concentrating on it while he was looking at something else. Great.

He wasn’t doing anything. He was just walking along the street. Up ahead of him were a few lights from shop windows. But Afyon is really dead at night and it was at least ten by now.

It gave me time to study the instruction book. I found to my delight that, by pushing a button, the screen split into two screens. You could go on watching the continuing action while you replayed, at any speed you wished, fast or slow or still-framed, on the second screen. And all without interrupting recording. Great. What a brilliant fellow that Spurk had been. Good thing he was dead.

It was too bad, though, that I had missed Heller’s transportation refusal. It would have been delightful to watch. I fed in a pack of strips and vowed never to turn this thing off. Then I could speed review for juicy bits and save myself lots of time.

The action of doing a recording loading almost made me miss something.

Way up the street, somebody had moved across a light path from a store window. Aha! There was somebody up the street, standing in a dark place. Somebody waiting for Heller?

If Heller had registered it, he gave no evidence of it. He just kept strolling forward. I thought to myself, the dumb boob. In Afyon, you don’t keep right on walking toward a possible ambush. Not if you want to go on living! Heller was too green at this business. He would not last long. The green die young, one of my Apparatus professors used to say — Tailing 104 and 105, Apparatus school.

Yes! The figure was waiting for Heller. Whoever it was had chosen a patch of street darker than the rest.

Heller drew nearer and nearer. And then almost walked right on by.

The stranger halted him. The fellow was shorter than Heller. I stilled the frame of the second screen to study the face. More of a hatchet than a face. Hard to tell in this light.

“You from the DEA?” the stranger whispered.

“The what?” said Heller, not whispering.

“Shhh! The Yew S Drug Enforcement. The narcs!”

“Who are you?”

“I’m Jimmy ‘The Gutter’ Tavilnasty. Come on, you narcs and us have always been friendly.” I thought, indeed they have. The DEA narcotics agents would be paupers if it weren’t for the bribes of the Mafia.

Heller said, “What makes you think I’m DEA?”

“Oh, hell. That didn’t take any figuring. I seen you wading around in the poppy fields and I suspected it. And then when I saw you climb that skyscraper of a rock over there, I knew it. Anybody else would have gone up the regular way, but you went up the front, hoping nobody would see you. And then when this,” and here he lifted a night-rifle sight, “showed you surveying the whole valley with a glass, I stopped guessing.”

“I was measuring distances,” said Heller.

The Mafia hood laughed. “Trying to estimate the crop in advance, are you? Pretty smart. The Turks lie like hell about their morf.”

“What did you want from me?” said Heller.

“Good. I like that. Get down to business. Listen, I been hanging around here for weeks and you’re the first promisin’ new face to show up. Now, being you’re from the DEA, there’s a C-note in it for you if you can help.”

“A C-note?” said Heller. “A credit?”

“No, no, no. You guys can’t have the credit. That’s mine! Look, I got a contract on Gunsalmo Silva.”

Heller must have made a movement. Jimmy “The Gutter” darted a hand into his jacket, about to pull a rod. But Heller had merely whipped out a notebook and pen. “Geez, pal,” said Jimmy “The Gutter,” “don’t DO that!”

“Now,” said Heller, pen poised. “What did you say his name was? Spell it.”

“G-U-N-S-A-L-M-O S-I-L-V-A, as in dead man. You see, he was a bodyguard to Don ‘Holy Joe’ Corleone and we got an idea that he put the finger on his own boss and maybe even pulled the trigger a few times himself. The Family is very upset.”

“Family upset,” muttered Heller, writing.