“Kaplan, too?” Anderton asked numbly, still dazed by the appearance of the man.
“Kaplan is working directly with Witwer. That’s why his name showed on line five of the card. Which one of them is the actual boss, we can’t tell. Possibly neither.” Fleming tossed the tiny pistol away and got out his own heavy-duty military weapon. “You pulled a real flub in taking off with this woman. I told you she was back of the whole thing.”
“I can’t believe that,” Anderton protested. “If she – ”
“You’ve got no sense. This ship was warmed up by Witwer’s order. They wanted to fly you out of the building so that we couldn’t get to you. With you on your own, separated from us, you didn’t stand a chance.”
A strange look passed over Lisa’s stricken features. “It’s not true,” she whispered. “Witwer never saw this ship. I was going to supervise – ”
“You almost got away with it,” Fleming interrupted inexorably. “We’ll be lucky if a police patrol ship isn’t hanging on us. There wasn’t time to check.” He squatted down as he spoke, directly behind the woman’s chair. “The first thing is to get this woman out of the way. We’ll have to drag you completely out of this area. Page tipped off Witwer on your new disguise, and you can be sure it has been widely broadcast.”
Still crouching, Fleming seized hold of Lisa. Tossing his heavy gun to Anderton, he expertly tilted her chin up until her temple was shoved back against the seat. Lisa clawed frantically at him; a thin, terrified wail rose in her throat. Ignoring her, Fleming closed his great hands around her neck and began relentlessly to squeeze.
“No bullet wound,” he explained, gasping. “She’s going to fall out – natural accident. It happens all the time. But in this case, her neck will be broken first.”
It seemed strange that Anderton waited so long. As it was, Fleming’s thick ringers were cruelly embedded in the woman’s pale flesh before he lifted the butt of the heavyduty pistol and brought it down on the back of Fleming’s skull. The monstrous hands relaxed. Staggered, Fleming’s head fell forward and he sagged against the wall of the ship. Trying feebly to collect himself, he began dragging his body upward. Anderton hit him again, this time above the left eye. He fell back, and lay still.
Struggling to breathe, Lisa remained for a moment huddled over, her body swaying back and forth. Then, gradually, the color crept back into her face.
“Can you take the controls?” Anderton asked, shaking her, his voice urgent.
“Yes, I think so.” Almost mechanically she reached for the wheel. “I’ll be all right. Don’t worry about me.”
“This pistol,” Anderton said, “is Army ordnance issue. But it’s not from the war. It’s one of the useful new ones they’ve developed. I could be a long way off but there’s just a chance – ”
He climbed back to where Fleming lay spread out on the deck. Trying not to touch the man’s head, he tore open his coat and rummaged in his pockets. A moment later Fleming’s sweat-sodden wallet rested in his hands.
Tod Fleming, according to his identification, was an Army Major attached to the Internal Intelligence Department of Military Information. Among the various papers was a document signed by General Leopold Kaplan, stating that Fleming was under the special protection of his own group – the International Veterans’ League.
Fleming and his men were operating under Kaplan’s orders. The bread truck, the accident, had been deliberately rigged.
It meant that Kaplan had deliberately kept him out of police hands. The plan went back to the original contact in his home, when Kaplan’s men had picked him up as he was packing. Incredulous, he realized what had really happened. Even then, they were making sure they got him before the police. From the start, it had been an elaborate strategy to make certain that Witwer would fail to arrest him.
“You were telling the truth,” Anderton said to his wife, as he climbed back in the seat. “Can we get hold of Witwer?”
Mutely, she nodded. Indicating the communications circuit of the dashboard, she asked: “What – did you find?”
“Get Witwer for me. I want to talk to him as soon as I can. It’s very urgent.”
Jerkily, she dialed, got the closed-channel mechanical circuit, and raised police headquarters in New York. A visual panorama of petty police officials flashed by before a tiny replica of Ed Witwer’s features appeared on the screen.
“Remember me?” Anderton asked him.
Witwer blanched. “Good God. What happened? Lisa, are you bringing him in?” Abruptly his eyes fastened on the gun in Anderton’s hands. “Look,” he said savagely, “don’t do anything to her. Whatever you may think, she’s not responsible.”
“I’ve already found that out,” Anderton answered. “Can you get a fix on us? We may need protection getting back.”
“Back!” Witwer gazed at him unbelievingly. “You’re coming in? You’re giving yourself up?”
“I am, yes.” Speaking rapidly, urgently, Anderton added, “There’s something you must do immediately. Close off the monkey block. Make certain nobody gets it – Page or anyone else. Especially Army people.”
“Kaplan,” the miniature image said.
“What about him?”
“He was here. He – he just left.”
Anderton’s heart stopped beating. “What was he doing?”
“Picking up data. Transcribing duplicates of our precog reports on you. He insisted he wanted them solely for his protection.”
“Then he’s already got it,” Anderton said. “It’s too late.”
Alarmed, Witwer almost shouted: “Just what do you mean? What’s happening?”
“I’ll tell you,” Anderton said heavily, “when I get back to my office.”
VIII
Witwer met him on the roof on the police building. As the small ship came to rest, a cloud of escort ships dipped their fins and sped off. Anderton immediately approached the blond-haired young man.
“You’ve got what you wanted,” he told him. “You can lock me up, and send me to the detention camp. But that won’t be enough.”
Witwer’s blue eyes were pale with uncertainty. “I’m afraid I don’t understand – ”
“It’s not my fault. I should never have left the police building. Where’s Wally Page?”
“We’ve already clamped down on him,” Witwer replied. “He won’t give us any trouble.”
Anderton’s face was grim.
“You’re holding him for the wrong reason,” he said. “Letting me into the monkey block was no crime. But passing information to Army is. You’ve had an Army plant working here.” He corrected himself, a little lamely, “I mean, I have.”
“I’ve called back the order on you. Now the teams are looking for Kaplan.”
“Any luck?”
“He left here in an Army truck. We followed him, but the truck got into a militarized Barracks. Now they’ve got a big wartime R-3 tank blocking the street. It would be civil war to move it aside.”
Slowly, hesitantly, Lisa made her way from the ship. She was still pale and shaken and on her throat an ugly bruise was forming.
“What happened to you?” Witwer demanded. Then he caught sight of Fleming’s inert form lying spread out inside. Facing Anderton squarely, he said: “Then you’ve finally stopped pretending this is some conspiracy of mine.”
“I have.”
“You don’t think I’m – ” He made a disgusted face. “Plotting to get your job.”
“Sure you are. Everybody is guilty of that sort of thing. And I’m plotting to keep it. But this is something else – and you’re not responsible.”
“Why do you assert,” Witwer inquired, “that it’s too late to turn yourself in? My God, we’ll put you in the camp. The week will pass and Kaplan will still be alive.”
“He’ll be alive, yes,” Anderton conceded. “But he can prove he’d be just as alive if I were walking the streets. He has the information that proves the majority report obsolete. He can break the Precrime system.” He finished, “Heads or tails, he wins – and we lose. The Army discredits us; their strategy paid off.”
“But why are they risking so much? What exactly do they want?”
“After the Anglo-Chinese War, the Army lost out. It isn’t what it was in the good old AFWA days. They ran the complete show, both military and domestic. And they did their own police work.”
“Like Fleming,” Lisa said faintly.
“After the war, the Westbloc was demilitarized. Officers like Kaplan were retired and discarded. Nobody likes that.” Anderton grimaced. “I can sympathize with him. He’s not the only one. But we couldn’t keep on running things that way. We had to divide up the authority.”
“You say Kaplan has won,” Witwer said. “Isn’t there anything we can do?”
“I’m not going to kill him. We know it and he knows it. Probably he’ll come around and offer us some kind of deal. We’ll continue to function, but the Senate will abolish our real pull. You wouldn’t like that, would you?”
“I should say not,” Witwer answered emphatically. “One of these days I’m going to be running this agency.” He flushed. “Not immediately, of course.”