An electric sign blinking on and off drew Bi’ll’s attention, KWIK-FREEZ KOSHER HAMS LTD. it read-and he gasped as memory returned. By Ahriman, he had forgotten that he was a spy for the G.B.I. and had been about to join the raid on the power stationt Was there still time to get out before the counter-blow fell! Sweating more than a little, he began working his way through the mob toward the sign-then he was at the fringes and running toward safety. It wasn’t too late. He grabbed the front door handle and pulled, but it would not open. In panic he twisted and shook it until the entire front of the building began to shake, rocking back and forth and creaking. He gaped at it in paralyzed horror until a loud hissing drew his attention.
“Get over here, you stupid bowb,” a voice crackled, and he looked up to see the G.B.I. agent Pinkerton standing at the comer of the building and beckoning to him angrily. Bill followed the agent around the comer and found quite a crowd standing there, and there was plenty of room for all of them because the building was not there. Bill could see now that the building was just a front made out of cardboard with a door handle on it and was secured by wooden supports to the front of an atomic tank. Grouped around the armorplated side and treads of the tank were a number of heavily armed soldiers and G.B.I. agents as well as an even larger number of revolutionaries, their clothes singed and pitted by sparks from the torches. Standing next to Bill was the android, Ghoulem.
“You!” Bill gasped, and the android curled its lips in a carefully practiced sneer.
“That’s right-and keeping. an eye on you for the G.B.I. Nothing is left to chance in this organization.”
Pinkerton was peeking out through a hole in the false store front. “I think the agents are clear now,” he said, `but maybe we better wait a little longer. At last count there were agents of sixty-five spy, intelligence, and counter-intelligence outfits involved in investigating this operation. These revolutionaries don’t stand a chance …”
A siren blasted from the power plant, apparently a prearranged signal, because the soldiers battered at the cardboard store front until it came loose and fell flat into the square.
Chauvinistisk Square was empty.
Well, not really empty. Bill looked again and saw that one man was left in the square; he hadn’t noticed him at first. He was running their way but stopped with a pitiful screech when he saw what was hidden behind the store.
“I surrender!” he shouted, and Bill saw that he was the man called X. The power plant gates opened, and a squadron of flamethrower tanks rumbled out.
“Coward!” Pinkerton sneered, and pulled back the slide on his gun. “Don’t try to back out now, X, at least die like a man.”
“I’m not X-that. is just a nom-de-espionage.” He tore off his false beard and mustache, disclosing a twitching and uninteresting face with pronounced underbite. “I am Gill O’Teen, M.A. and LL.D. from the Imperial School of Counter-Spying and Double-Agentry. I was hired by this operation, I can prove it, I have documents, Prince Microcephil payed me to overthrow his uncle so he could become Emperor … “
“You think I’m stupid,” Pinkerton snapped, aiming his gun “The Old Emperor, may he rest in eternal peace, died a year ago, and Prince Microcephil is the Emperor now. You can’t revolt against the man who hired you!”
“I never read the newspapers,” O’Teen alias X moaned.
“Fire!” Pinkerton said sternly, and from all sides washed a wave of atomic shells, gouts of flame, bullets, and grenades. Bill hit the dirt, and when he raised his head the square was empty except for a greasy patch and a shallow hole in the pavement. Even while he watched, a street-cleaning robot buzzed by and swabbed up the grease. It hummed-briefly, backed up, then filled in the shallow hole with a squirt of repair plastic from a concealed tank. When it rolled on again there was no trace of anything whatsoever.
“Hello Bill … ” said a voice so paralyzingly familiar that Bill’s hair prickled and stood up from his head like a toothbrush. He spun and looked at the squad of MPs standing there, and especially he stared at the large, loathsome form of the MP who led them.