One-Shot Page 3

messenger had been fast, and thegambler hadn't bothered to read what a college student had thought ofhim fifteen years ago. He came forward and held out his hand, while theothers looked him over frankly.

  He was impressive, all right. It would have been hard for a stranger tobelieve that he was aiming at respectability; to the eye, he was alreadythere. He was tall and spare, and walked perfectly erect, not withoutspring despite his age. His clothing was as far from that of a gambleras you could have taken it by design: a black double-breasted suit witha thin vertical stripe, a gray silk tie with a pearl stickpin justbarely large enough to be visible at all, a black Homburg; all perfectlyfitted, all worn with proper casualness--one might almost say a formalcasualness. It was only when he opened his mouth that One-Shot Braun wasin the suit with him.

  "I come over as soon as your runner got to me," he said. "What's thepitch, Andy?"

  "Mr. Braun, this is Joan Hadamard, Clark Cheyney, Colonel Anderton. I'llbe quick because we need speed now. A Polish ship has dropped somethingout in the harbor. We don't know what it is. It may be a hell-bomb, orit may be just somebody's old laundry. Obviously we've got to find outwhich--and we want you to tell us."

  Braun's aristocratic eyebrows went up. "Me? Hell, Andy, I don't knownothing about things like that. I'm surprised with you. I thought CIAhad all the brains it needed--ain't you got machines to tell you answerslike that?"

  I pointed silently to Joan, who had gone back to work the moment theintroductions were over. She was still on the mike to the divers. Shewas saying: "What does it look like?"

  "It's just a lump of something, Dr. Hadamard. Can't even tell itsshape--it's buried too deeply in the mud." _Cloonk_ ... _Oing_, _oing_...

  "Try the Geiger."

  "We did. Nothing but background."

  "Scintillation counter?"

  "Nothing, Dr. Hadamard. Could be it's shielded."

  "Let us do the guessing, Monig. All right, maybe it's got a clockworkfuse that didn't break with the impact. Or a gyroscopic fuse. Stick astethoscope on it and see if you pick up a ticking or anything thatsounds like a motor running."

  * * * * *

  There was a lag and I turned back to Braun. "As you can see, we'restymied. This is a long shot, Mr. Braun. One throw of the dice--oneshow-down hand. We've got to have an expert call it for us--somebodywith a record of hits on long shots. That's why I called you."

  "It's no good," he said. He took off the Homburg, took his handkerchieffrom his breast pocket, and wiped the hatband. "I can't do it."

  "Why not?"

  "It ain't my _kind_ of thing," he said. "Look, I never in my life runodds on anything that made any difference. But this makes a difference.If I guess wrong--"

  "Then we're all dead ducks. But why should you guess wrong? Your huncheshave been working for sixty years now."

  Braun wiped his face. "No. You don't get it. I wish you'd listen to me.Look, my wife and my kids are in the city. It ain't only my life, it'stheirs, too. That's what I care about. That's why it's no good. Onthings that matter to me, _my hunches don't work_."

  I was stunned, and so, I could see, were Joan and Cheyney. I suppose Ishould have guessed it, but it had never occurred to me.

  "Ten minutes," Cheyney said.

  I looked up at Braun. He was frightened, and again I was surprisedwithout having any right to be. I tried to keep at least my voice calm.

  "Please try it anyhow, Mr. Braun--as a favor. It's already too late todo it any other way. And if you guess wrong, the outcome won't be anyworse than if you don't try at all."

  "My kids," he whispered. I don't think he knew that he was speakingaloud. I waited.

  Then his eyes seemed to come back to the present. "All right," he said."I told you the truth, Andy. Remember that. So--is it a bomb or ain'tit? That's what's up for grabs, right?"

  I nodded. He closed his eyes. An unexpected stab of pure fright wentdown my back. Without the eyes, Braun's face was a death mask.

  The water sounds and the irregular ticking of a Geiger counter seemed tospring out from the audio speaker, four times as loud as before. I couldeven hear the pen of the seismograph scribbling away, until I looked atthe instrument and saw that Clark had stopped it, probably long ago.

  Droplets of sweat began to form along Braun's forehead and his upperlip. The handkerchief remained crushed in his hand.

  Anderton said, "Of all the fool--"

  "Hush!" Joan said quietly.

  * * * * *

  Slowly, Braun opened his eyes. "All right," he said. "You guys wanted itthis way. _I say it's a bomb._" He stared at us for a moment more--andthen, all at once, the Timkin bearing burst. Words poured out of it."Now you guys do something, do your job like I did mine--get my wife andkids out of there--empty the city--do something, _do something_!"

  Anderton was already grabbing for the phone. "You're right, Mr. Braun.If it isn't already too late--"

  Cheyney shot out a hand and caught Anderton's telephone arm by thewrist. "Wait a minute," he said.

  "What d'you mean, 'wait a minute'? Haven't you already shot enoughtime?"

  Cheyney did not let go; instead, he looked inquiringly at Joan and said,"One minute, Joan. You might as well go ahead."

  She nodded and spoke into the mike. "Monig, unscrew the cap."

  "Unscrew the cap?" the audio squawked. "But Dr. Hadamard, if that setsit off--"

  "It won't go off. That's the one thing you can be sure it won't do."

  "What is this?" Anderton demanded. "And what's this deadline stuff,anyhow?"

  "The cap's off," Monig reported. "We're getting plenty of radiation now.Just a minute-- Yeah. Dr. Hadamard, it's a bomb, all right. But ithasn't got a fuse. Now how could they have made a fool mistake likethat?"

  "In other words, it's a dud," Joan said.

  "That's right, a dud."

  Now, at last, Braun wiped his face, which was quite gray. "I told youthe truth," he said grimly. "My hunches don't work on stuff like this."

  "But they do," I said. "I'm sorry we put you through the wringer--andyou too, colonel--but we couldn't let an opportunity like this slip. Itwas too good a chance for us to test how our facilities would stand upin a real bomb-drop."

  "A real drop?" Anderton said. "Are you trying to say that CIA stagedthis? You ought to be shot, the whole pack of you!"

  "No, not exactly," I said. "The enemy's responsible for the drop, allright. We got word last month from our man in Gdynia that they weregoing to do it, and that the bomb would be on board the _Ludmilla_. As Isay, it was too good an opportunity to miss. We wanted to find out justhow long it would take us to figure out the nature of the bomb--which wedidn't know in detail--after it was dropped here. So we had our peoplein Gdynia defuse the thing after it was put on board the ship, butotherwise leave it entirely alone.

  "Actually, you see, your hunch was right on the button as far as itwent. We didn't ask you whether or not that object was a live bomb. Weasked whether it was a bomb or not. You said it was, and you wereright."

  The expression on Braun's face was exactly like the one he had wornwhile he had been searching for his decision--except that, since hiseyes were open, I could see that it was directed at me. "If this was theold days," he said in an ice-cold voice, "I might of made the colonel'sidea come true. I don't go for tricks like this, Andy."

  "It was more than a trick," Clark put in. "You'll remember we had adeadline on the test, Mr. Braun. Obviously, in a real drop we wouldn'thave all the time in the world to figure out what kind of a thing hadbeen dropped. If we had still failed to establish that when the deadlineran out, we would have had to allow evacuation of the city, with all theattendant risk that that was exactly what the enemy wanted us to do."

  "So?"

  "So we failed the test," I said. "At one minute short of the deadline,Joan had the divers unscrew the cap. In a real drop that would haveresulted in a detonation, if the bomb was real; we'd never risk it. Thatwe did do it in the te
st was a concession of failure--an admission thatour usual methods didn't come through for us in time.

  "And that means that you were the only person who did come through, Mr.Braun. If a real bomb-drop ever comes, we're going to have to have youhere, as an active part of our investigation. Your intuition for theone-shot gamble was the one thing