“Hold on,” he said. “Full? Just like this, but full?”
“Yes, that’s what I’m saying.”
“Where?”
My Kirill was cured. Bright-eyed and bushy-tailed.
“Let’s go have a smoke.”
He stuffed the empty into the safe, slammed the door, and locked it with three and a half turns, and we went back into the lab. Ernest pays 400 in cash for an empty empty, and I could have bled him dry, the son of a bitch, for a full one, but believe it or not, I didn’t even think about it, because Kirill came back to life before my eyes and bounded down the steps four at a time, not even letting me finish my smoke. In short, I told him everything: what it was like, and where it was, and the best way to get at it. He pulled out a map, found the garage, put his finger on it, and stared at me. Of course, he immediately figured it out about me—what was there not to understand?
“You dog, you,” he said and smiled. “Well, let’s go for it. First thing in the morning. I’ll order the passes and the boot for nine and we’ll set off at ten and hope for the best. All right?”
“All right,” I said. “Who’ll be the third?”
“What do we need a third for?”
“Oh no,” I said. “This is no picnic with ladies. What if something happens to you? It’s in the Zone,” I said. “We have to follow regulations.”
He gave a short laugh and shrugged.
“As you wish. You know better.”
You bet I did! Of course, he was just trying to humor me. The third would be in the way as far as he was concerned. We would run down, just the two of us, and everything would be hunky-dory, no one would suspect anything about me. Except for the fact that I knew that people from the institute didn’t enter the Zone in two’s. The rule is: two do the work and the third watches, and when they ask him about it later, he tells.
“Personally, I would take Austin,” Kirill said. “But you probably don’t want him. Or is it all right?”
“Nope,” I said. “Anybody but Austin. You can take Austin another time.”
Austin isn’t a bad guy, he’s got the right mix of courage and cowardice, but I feel he’s doomed. You can’t explain it to Kirill, but I can see it. The man thinks he knows and understands the Zone completely. That means he’s going to kick off soon. He can go right ahead, but without me, thanks.
“All right, then,” Kirill said. “How about Tender?” Tender was his second lab assistant. An all-right kind of guy, on the quiet side.
“He’s a little old,” I said. “And he has kids.
“That’s all right. He’s been in the Zone before.”
“Fine,” I said. “Let’s take Tender.
He stayed to pore over the map and I made a beeline for the Borscht, because I was starving and my throat was parched.
I got back to the lab in the morning as usual, around nine, and showed my pass. The guard on duty was the lanky bean pole of a sergeant that I beat the hell out of last year when he made a drunken pass at Guta.
“Fine thing,” he said to me. “They’re looking for you all over the institute, Red.” I interrupted him right there, polite-like.
“I’m not Red to you,” I said. “Don’t try that palsy-walsy stuff on me, you Swedish dolt.”
“God, Red! Everybody calls you that.
I was all wound up before going into the Zone and cold sober to boot. I hauled him up by his shoulder belt and told him in precise detail just what he was and what maternal line he was descended from. He spat on the floor, returned my pass, and said without any of the niceties:
“Redrick Schuhart, your orders are to appear immediately before Chief of Security Captain Herzog.
“That’s better,” I said. “That’s the ticket. Keep plugging away, sergeant, you’ll make lieutenant yet.
Meanwhile I was thinking, what was this curve coming my way? What did Captain Herzog need me for during working hours? All right, I went off to make my appearance. His office was on the third floor, a nice office, with bars on the windows just like a police station. Willy was sitting at his desk, puffing on his pipe, and typing some kind of gibberish. Some little sergeant was digging through the metal file cabinet in the corner. A new guy I’d never seen. We have more sergeants at the institute than at division headquarters. They’re all well-built healthy fellows. They don’t have to go into the Zone and they don’t give a damn about world issues.
“Hello,” I said. “You called for me?” Willy looked right through me, moved away from the typewriter, laid a hefty file on the desk, and started leafing through it.
“Redrick Schuhart?”
“The same, I answered, feeling a nervous laugh welling up. I couldn’t help it, it was funny.
“How long have you been with the institute?”
“Two years, starting my third.”
“Family?”
“I’m alone,” I said. “An orphan.”
Then he turned to his little sergeant and gave him an order in a stern tone.
“Sergeant Lummer, go to the files and bring back case number one-fifty.
The sergeant saluted and disappeared, and Willy slammed the file shut and asked gloomily:
“Up to your old tricks again?”
“What old tricks?”
“You know what tricks. There’s new material on you here.”
So, I thought.
“Where from?”
He frowned and banged his pipe against the ashtray in irritation.
“That doesn’t concern you,” he said. “As an old friend, I’m warning you. Knock it off, knock it off for good. If they get you a second time, you won’t get off with six months. And they’ll kick you out of the institute once and for all, understand?”
“I understand,” I said. “That I can understand. I just don’t under stand what bastard could have squealed.
But he was looking through me again, puffing on his empty pipe and flipping through the file. That meant that Sergeant Lummer had returned with case #150.
“Thank you, Schuhart, said Capt. Willy Herzog, also known as the Hog. “That’s all I wanted cleared up. You’re Free to go.
So I went to the locker room, pulled on my lab clothes and lit up. All along I kept thinking where the rumor could have come from. It had to be all lies if it came from within the institute, because nobody there knew anything about me and there was no way that anyone could. If it had been a report From the police—again, what could they know there except for my old sins? Maybe they had gotten Buzzard? That bastard, he’d drown his own grandmother to save his skin. But even Buzzard didn’t know anything about me now. I thought and thought and didn’t come up with anything very pleasant. So I decided the hell with it. The last time I had gone into the Zone at night was three months ago, and I had gotten rid of most of the stuff and had spent almost all of the money. They hadn’t caught me with the goods, and I was too slippery for them to catch me now.
But then, just as I was heading up the stairs, I suddenly saw the light, and saw it so well that I had to go back to the locker room, sit down, and have another cigarette. It meant that I couldn’t go into the Zone today. Nor tomorrow, nor the day after. It meant that those toads had their eye on me again, that they hadn’t forgotten me, or if they had forgotten, then somebody had reminded them. And now it no longer mattered who had done the reminding. No stalker, unless he was completely off his rocker, would go near the Zone even at gunpoint, not if he knew that he was being watched. I should have been burrowing into the deepest, darkest corner at that very moment. Zone? What Zone? I hadn’t been in any Zone, even with a pass, for months! What are you harassing an honest lab worker for?
I thought the whole thing through and even felt a sense of relief that I wouldn’t be going into the Zone that day. But what would be the nicest way of informing Kirill of the fact?
I told him straight out.
“I’m not going into the Zone. What instructions do you have?”
At first, of course, he just stared at me bug-eyed. Then he seemed to understand. He led me by the elbow into his little office, sat me down at his desk, and sat on the windowsill facing me. We lit up. Silence. Then he asked me, careful-like:
“Has something happened, Red?”
What could I tell him?
“No,” I said. “Nothing happened. Yesterday I blew twenty bills at poker—that Noonan is a great player, the louse.”