"Punch their tickets?"
"For Jesus' sake, are you stupid or what? Kill them, dummy."
Hunt smiled. So that's what a button man was. As he watched, the score on the untended machine mounted to 3-0, 4-0, 5-0.
"What kind of hit man are you anyway," Dor asked. "How many notches on your piece?"
"By that, I assume you mean how many men have I killed?"
"Righto, Ferdy. How many?"
"None."
Dor looked at him with annoyance creasing his smooth, unlined face. "Wait a minute," he said. "What is this crap?"
Hunt shrugged.
"Goddamit, I asked for a hit man and I get a southern gentleman who sits there like a bump on a log and smirks. What the hell is going on here?"
"I can kill them," Hunt said, and was surprised to hear his voice say that.
"Sure, pal. Sure. I had ninety-eight bodyguards at Patna, a bigger goddam internal security force than old Crossback in Rome, and you know where they are? All ninety-eight? They're back in the hills pissing in their pants, all because of these two creeps. And now you're going to get them? Hah."
Ping, ping, ping. The score was 11-0, and the vertical lines disappeared. The game was over, and the white dot began to move randomly back and forth with none of the intensity of a ball in play.
"I can kill them," Hunt said again, calmly, and this time it sounded more natural to him, as if it were something he should have been saying all his life.
Dor turned back to the machine, waving a hand at Hunt in disgust, in a gesture of go on, get out of here, you bum.
Hunt sat and watched as Dor played the game with grim intensity, playing both sides with both knobs. The score seesawed back and forth, 1-0, 1-1, 2-1, 3-1. Each point took a long time to play and gave Hunt time to think. Why not? His family had done it for centuries. The two stockbrokers, Dalton and Harrow, had talked about Hunt's becoming very wealthy. And why not? Why not? Why not? At that moment, Ferdinand De Chef Hunt returned to the ancestral bosom of his family and decided to become a hit man. And now, goddamit, he was not going to be dissuaded from it by this porky little pig.
"What is that game?" he asked aloud.
"Electronic Ping-Pong," Dor said. "Ever play it?"
"No. But I can beat you."
Dor laughed derisively.
"You couldn't beat me if I wore a blindfold," he said.
"I could beat you if I wore a blindfold," said Hunt.
"Get out of here, will you?" said Dor.
"I will play you," said Hunt.
"Go away."
"My life against the job. The game decides."
Dor turned and looked at Hunt's face. The American rose and walked to the machine.
"You're serious, aren't you?" said Dor.
"It's my life," said Hunt. "I don't fool with it."
Dor clapped his hands. The dot went from side to side on the machine. Unhindered, it kept scoring points for the server.
The door opened, and in it stood the four men who had escorted Hunt into the house.
"We're going to play Ping-Pong," said Dor. "If he loses, waste him." He turned to Hunt. "That all right with you?"
"Of course. But what if I win?"
"Then you and I will talk."
"We will talk in the six-figure kind of talk?" Hunt said.
"Right, but don't worry about it. In three minutes, you'll be among the dear departed." He reached for the red button to cancel out the game and start a new one.
"Don't do that," said Hunt.
"What?"
"This game is fine," said Hunt.
"I knew it. I knew it. I knew there was a hitch. You want a spot. Well, I'm not spotting anybody no seven points. It's eight to one, make it nine to one, already."
"I'll take the one point. Play," said Hunt, putting his hand on the knob that controlled the left vertical line. The ball pinged gently from the right lower side of the machine toward him.
"It's your funeral," said the maharaji. "And I mean that."
Hunt slowly turned the knob. The vertical line moved up. He reversed the motion of the knob, and the line moved down. He ignored the dot, which moved uninterrupted off his side of the screen.
"Ten to one," said Dor. "One more point."
"You'll never score it," said Hunt. He had the feel now of the knob. He touched the hard black plastic gently with his hand, his fingers gripping easily into the ridges around the knob, molding into them as if the knob had been designed for his hand alone. He could sense the speed of the vertical line, its motion, the turn necessary to move it top, to move it bottom. Without thought, with his brain divorced from what he did, Hunt knew these things. The next serve came from Dor's side of the screen, aimed at the bottom. Dor smiled. Hunt moved his vertical paddle slowly downward, and as the dot rebounded upward, his paddle intercepted it, and the white dot went straight back across the bottom of the screen. Dor moved his line downward directly in front of the dot and let it rebound straight back, along its approach line, back toward Hunt.
Hunt's vertical line had not moved since he had returned the serve. Now it was in the same position to return the ball straight back across the screen, but as the dot approached the electronic paddle, Hunt moved the vertical line and the movement hit the dot, as if off a curved paddle, sending it up toward the top of the screen. Dor moved his paddle up to intercept it right at the top, forming an upside down L between paddle and top of screen, but the dot slid over the top of his paddle and the machine pinged.
"Ten to two," said Hunt with a smile. He realized there was a dead spot at the top of the machine from which a paddle could not return a ball. Now to see if there was one at the bottom of the screen.
The serve switched to Dor now. The game went on. There was a blind spot in the bottom of the screen too. Ten-three, ten-four, ten-five.
Dor played in growing frustration, shouting at the moving dot. Hunt stood silently alongside the machine, moving his control knob slowly, almost casually.