The Water-Method Man

In the morning, the stranger crossed the border of Schwud and reeled into the town of Lesk in the kingdom of Thak. He stood gasping in the town square, his head bowed and his back to what he was sure would be thumping up behind him at any minute. He stood there for hours before the kind people of Lesk took him in and gave him breakfast and then told the stranger that this was why none of the young men of Lesk ever went swimming off the shore of Schwud any more.

'Da Sprog,' said a young widow, making the sign of the toad on her breast.

'Da kvinna des Sprog' (The woman of Sprog'), said a young man with only one arm who had escaped. He rolled his eyes.

That was what had happened to Sprog.

And Bogus Trumper? What had happened to him? He had fallen asleep sitting up, his chin resting on the shelf by the turtle aquarium, his brain at last lulled by the gurgle of the air hose.

Tulpen had curled up beside him on the bed for an hour, waiting for him to wake up and make love to her. He didn't wake up, though, and she had stopped waiting. She'd waited quite long enough for him, she thought, so she lay back in the bed and watched him sleep. She smoked a cigarette, though she never smoked. Then she went into the bathroom and threw up. Then she ate yogurt. She was pretty upset.

When she returned to bed, Trumper was still there, sleeping next to the turtles. Before she went to sleep herself, she got the idea that if only she could find two of those big air-horns that diesel trucks have, she could blow one in each of his ears and scramble his brains so completely that it might wipe his memory clean. She thought that would help.

She probably wasn't far wrong. It would be hard for most people to sleep with their chins on a shelf, but Bogus was dreaming about Merrill Overturf.

30

What Happened to Merrill Overturf?

ONCE TRUMPER HAD read a magazine article on espionage. He remembered that the US Treasury Department controls the Federal Narcotics Bureau and the Secret Service, and that the CIA co-ordinates all government intelligence activities. This seemed plausible; at least, he wasn't worried any more.

He was in a rear office of the American Consulate in Vienna, so he supposed he wasn't going to be murdered and dumped in the Danube - not yet, anyway. If he still had any doubts about where he was, they vanished when the vice-consul intruded on them nervously.

'I'm the vice-consul,' he apologized to Arnold Mulcahy, who was apparently more important than a vice-consul. 'I wish to inform you about your man out there, please ...' Arnold Mulcahy went to see what the trouble was.

According to the vice-consul, one of Mulcahy's thugs, a big man with a livid burn scar, was frightening away people who were coming to take the US immigration exam. In two minutes Mulcahy returned; the man with the burn scar had come to take the immigration exam, he told the vice-consul with some asperity. 'Let him in,' he advised. 'Any man that mean-looking is good for something.' Then he settled down to work on Bogus Trumper.

They had the goods on Trumper, and the bads too. Did he know he was a 'missing person' back in America? Did he know that his wife was wondering where he'd gone?

'I haven't been gone so long,' Trumper said.

Mulcahy suggested that his wife thought he'd been gone long enough. Trumper told him who Merrill Overturf was. He said that he had no plans to do anything with the hashish, though he probably would have sold it if someone had come along wanting to buy. He told him that a whore had taken all his money and that he was a little uncertain about things in general.

Mulcahy nodded; he knew all this already.

Then Bogus asked him to help him find Merrill Overturf, and it was then that Mulcahy made his deal. He would find Merrill Overturf, but first Bogus would have to do something for Arnold Mulcahy, for the US government and for the innocent people of the world.

'I guess I don't mind,' Bogus said. He really wanted to find Merrill.

'You shouldn't mind,' said Mulcahy. 'Also, you need the plane fare home.'

'I don't know if I'm going home.'

'Well, I know,' Mulcahy said.

'Merrill Overturf is in Vienna, I think,' Trumper said. 'I'm not going anywhere until I find him.'

Mulcahy called in the vice-consul. 'Locate this Overturf character,' he ordered. 'Then we can get on with it.'

'It' was then explained to Bogus Trumper. It was pretty simple. Trumper would be given a few thousand dollars in US hundred-dollar bills. Trumper was to hang around the Kaffeehaus Leopold Hawelka, wait for the man who said 'Gra! Gra!' all the time and who'd given Trumper the parcel of hashish, and to give the man the money when he showed up. Then Trumper was to be taken to Schwecat Airport and be put on a plane to New York. He would take the hashish brick with him; his luggage would be searched at Kennedy Airport customs; the hashish brick would be discovered; he would be seized on the spot and driven away in a limousine. The limousine would take him anywhere he wanted to go in New York City, and then he would be free.

It all seemed pretty straightforward. The reasons for all this escaped Trumper, but it was obvious that no one was going to do any explaining.

Then he was introduced to a Herr Doktor Inspektor Wolfgang Denzel, who was apparently an agent at the Austrian end. Inspektor Denzel wanted as much of a description of the man who had said 'Gra! Gra!' as Trumper could give. Trumper had seen Herr Doktor Inspektor Denzel before; he was the natty, agile waiter whose tray of coffee and beers Trumper had spilled.

The only part of the deal that Bogus didn't like was getting on a New York plane as soon as he had handed over the money. 'Don't forget about Merrill Overturf,' he reminded Mulcahy.

'My good boy,' said Arnold Mulcahy, 'I'll go with you in the cab to the airport, and this Overturf character will be sitting right there with us.'