About payment they were more reluctant, not because they had any need to economize within their elastic budget, but a Protestant respect for lucre as a sign of God’s grace made them regret seeing it wasted. And wasted it would probably be, as the mathematical likelihood of Hel’s returning alive was slim. Another fiscal consideration was the expense they would be put to in transporting Hel to the United States for cosmetic surgery, as he had no chance of getting to Peking with a memorable face like that. Still, they decided at last, they really had no choice. Their key-way sort had delivered only one punch card for a man qualified to do the job.
Okay. Make it Costa Rican citizenship and 100 K.
Next problem…
But when they met the next morning in the visitor’s room, the American agent discovered that Hel had yet another request to make. He would take the assignment on only if CIA gave him the current addresses of the three men who had interrogated him: the “doctor,” the MP sergeant, and Major Diamond.
“Now, wait a minute, Mr. Hel. We can’t agree to that sort of thing. CIA takes care of its own. We can’t offer them to you on a platter like that. Be reasonable. Let bygones be bygones. What do you say?”
Hel rose and asked that the guard conduct him back to his cell.
The frank-faced young American sighed and shook his head. “All right. Let me call the office for an okay. Okay?”
Washington
“…and I assume Mr. Hel was successful in his enterprise,” Mr. Able said. “For, if he were not, we wouldn’t be sitting about here concerning ourselves with him.”
“That’s correct,” Diamond said. “We have no details, but about four months after he was introduced into China through Hong Kong, we got word that he had been picked up by a bush patrol of the Foreign Legion in French Indo-China. He was in pretty bad shape… spent a couple of months in a hospital in Saigon… then he disappeared from our observation for a period before emerging as a free-lance counterterrorist. We have him associated with a long list of hits against terrorist groups and individuals, usually in the pay of governments through their intelligence agencies.” He spoke to the First Assistant. “Let’s run through them at a high scan rate.”
Superficial details of one extermination action after another flashed up on the surface of the conference table as Nicholai Hel’s career from the early fifties to the mid-seventies was laid out by Fat Boy. Occasionally one or another of the men would ask for a freeze, as he questioned Diamond about some detail.
“Jesus H. Christ!” Darryl Starr said at one point. “This guy really works both sides of the street! In the States he’s hit both Weathermen and tri-K’s; in Belfast he’s moved against both parts of the Irish stew; he seems to have worked for just about everybody except the A-rabs, Junta Greeks, the Spanish, and the Argentines. And did you eyeball the weapons used in the hits? Along with the conventional stuff of handguns and nerve-gas pipes, there were such weirdo weapons as a pocket comb, a drinking straw, a folded sheet of paper, a door key, a light bulb… This guy’d strangle you with your own skivvies, if you wasn’t careful!”
“Yes,” Diamond said. “That has to do with his Naked/Kill training. It has been estimated that for Nicholai Hel, the average Western room contains just under two hundred lethal weapons.”
Starr shook his head and sucked his teeth aloud. “Gettin’ rid of a fella like that would be hardern’ snapping snot off a fingernail.”
Mr. Able paled at the earthy image.
The PLO goatherd shook his head and tished. “I cannot understand these sums so extravagant he receives for his servicing. In my country a man’s life can be purchased for what, in dollars, would be two bucks thirty-five cents.”
Diamond glanced at him tiredly. “That’s a fair price for one of your countrymen. The basic reason governments are willing to pay Hel so much for exterminating terrorists is that terrorism is the most economical means of warfare. Consider the cost of mounting a force capable of protecting every individual in a nation from attack in the street, in his home, in his car. It costs millions of dollars just to search for the victim of a terrorist kidnapping. It’s quite a bargain if the government can have the terrorist exterminated for a few hundred thousand, and avoid the antigovernment propaganda of a trial at the same time.” Diamond turned to the First Assistant. “What is the average fee Hel gets for a hit?”
The First Assistant posed the simple question to Fat Boy. “Just over quarter of a million, sir. That’s in dollars. But it seems he has refused to accept American dollars since 1963.”
Mr. Able chuckled. “An astute man. Even if one runs all the way to the bank to change dollars for real money, their plunging value will cost him some fiscal erosion.”
“Of course,” the First Assistant continued, “that average fee is skewed. You’d get a better idea of his pay if you used the mean.”
“Why is that?” the Deputy asked, pleased to have something to say.
“It seems that he occasionally takes on assignments without pay.”
“Oh?” Mr. Able said. “That’s surprising. Considering his experiences at the hands of the Occupation Forces and his desire to live in a style appropriate to his tastes and breeding, I would have assumed he worked for the highest bidder.”
“Not quite,” Diamond corrected. “Since 1967 he has taken on assignments for various Jewish militant groups without pay—some kind of twisted admiration for their struggle against larger forces.”
Mr. Able smiled thinly.
“Take another case,” Diamond continued. “He has done services without pay for ETA-6, the Basque Nationalist organization. In return, they protect him and his château in the mountains. That protection, by the way, is very effective. We have three known incidents of men going into the mountains to effect retribution for some action of Hel’s, and in each case the men have simply disappeared. And every once in a while Hel takes on a job for no other reason than his disgust at the actions of some terrorist group. He did one like that not too long ago for the West German government. Flash that one up, Llewellyn.”
The men around the conference table scanned the details of Hel’s penetration into a notorious group of German urban terrorists that led to the imprisonment of the man after whom the group was named and the death of the woman.
“He was involved in that?”, Mr. Able asked with a slight tone of awe.
“That was one heavy number,” Starr admitted. “I shit thee not!’”
“Yes, but his highest pay for a single action was in the United States,” Diamond said. “And interestingly enough, it was a private individual who footed the bill. Let’s have that one, Llewellyn.”
“Which one is that, sir?”
“Los Angeles—May of seventy-four.”
As the rear-projection came up, Diamond explained. “You’ll remember this. Five members of a gang of urban vandals and thieves calling themselves the Symbiotic Maoist Falange were put away in an hour-long firefight in which three hundred fifty police SWAT forces, FBI men, and CIA advisers poured thousands of rounds into the house in which they were holed up.”
“What did Hel have to do with that?” Starr asked.
“He had been hired by a certain person to locate the guerrillas and put them away. A plan was worked out in which the police and FBI were to be tipped off, the whole thing timed so they would arrive after the wet work was done, so they could collect the glory… and responsibility. Unfortunately for Hel, they arrived half an hour too early, and he was in the house when they surrounded it and opened fire, along with gas– and firebombing. He had to break through the floor and hide in the crawl space while the place burned down around him. In the confusion of the last minute, he was able to get out and join the mob of officers. Evidently he was dressed as a SWAT man—flack vest, baseball cap, and all.”