Hawaii Five-O - 2 - Terror in the Sun

by Michael Avallone

  His angel’s face was smiling and content.

  In his mind’s eye, he could already see the towering peaks and snowy grandeur of Switzerland.

  And the cold, hard cash of the payoff.

  10. MIDWAY, PARCEL POST

  At exactly eleven thirty, a half hour earlier than the scheduled time, the Governor’s important parcel arrived. His secretary signed for it and carried it into the inner office. The parcel was a good foot long and about three inches thick. When his secretary had gone back to her desk, the Governor examined the delivery. The tubelike object bore the markings of the post office at Midway Island in the Pacific. It was addressed to the Governor’s office, bearing his official title and name. The return address was the proper one. What the Governor had been watching and waiting for Box 7715, Midway, U.S.A.

  The Governor did not open the package or disturb the outer wrapping in any way. He flicked on his intercom, asked his secretary to call for his limousine. He was going out—to see Rogers Endore immediately.

  Fifteen minutes later, he was racing toward the Kahala Hilton Hotel, the limousine making all possible speed at his specific request. He had instructed his chauffeur to leave the car radio turned on to police and news channels. Rain, huge drops of it, pelted the State car.

  It was in this manner that he first learned of the burning sedan on the highway going north. Not more than two miles away.

  The parcel was at his side.

  Long, tubular and mysterious.

  He felt like he was carrying a dynamite stick that would explode any second. But his instructions were unbreakable, very definite and not to be questioned.

  He was not to open the parcel.

  So he didn’t.

  Von Litz, Mark Tillingham and Angelo Bellini loitered in the vicinity of the Kahala’s enormous, decorative swimming pool. Safe from the rain, sipping papayas, watching the last of the swimmers reluctantly quit the water. Bellini admired the full hips of a fleshy, long-haired blonde, popping out of a Bikini as her male escort laughingly dragged her from the gleaming tiled parapet. The woman shrieked coyly.

  Bellini flicked his sun glasses down over his eyes and settled back in his cane chair. The ameba-shaped pool was a regular sideshow.

  “Mamma mia,” he breathed gently. “Like Vesuvius. Big and full and still active.”

  Baldish Mark Tillingham dug out a filtered cigarette.

  “Bad business wandering in here. After all, we checked out this morning.”

  “Forget it,” Bellini said. “The help doesn’t remember us. Especially in these awful shirts. Tourists.” Blazing Alohas and sandals and slacks were their costumes. “Besides, how else can we keep in touch with Bygraves?”

  Von Litz squinted up at the sun still shining through the downpour. He shook his gray, close-cropped head.

  “Damnedest country. I hope our friend is concluding his business. The Endores are on their way up to their room now. Quite a liebchen, his daughter.”

  “You noticed?” Bellini chuckled. “Take your mind off those damn pellets?”

  Von Litz pinned him with a stony glare.

  “Nothing does that for very long. I will give Bygraves one more hour. Then I will demand he deliver what he promised.”

  Mark Tillingham mopped some perspiration from his sandy brow. “Catch me talking back to the Undertaker. I should like to see that.”

  “Yeah,” Bellini said drily. “You and me both, Limey.”

  Von Litz glowered but fell silent.

  Around the huge and lovely pool, the motley array of hotel guests and their visitors pointed admiringly at the huge rainbow suddenly visible in the sky. A great, multicolored phenomenon which seemed to bridge the world. It arced awesomely across the heavens.

  It was a beautiful sight to see.

  Even the three assassins temporarily forgot their bickering to watch.

  “See, Baron?” Bellini offered. “Rainbows. Pots of gold. This must be the place.”

  “Ja,” Von Litz mumbled.

  The liquid sunshine, misting down from the mountain and volcano peaks where the clouds hovered like a massed flock of dismal looking sheep, began to make double rainbows and still more rainbows. The crowd around the Kahala pool oohed and aahed their appreciation.

  Five minutes later, the rain stopped.

  In the corridor outside his room, Rogers Endore had one last word for Myra Endore. His tall, lovely daughter was miffed by two vital considerations. Father was adamant. He was literally booting her out of Honolulu, and McGarrett had not called her all morning, despite that lovely forget-me-not on the pillow where his head had rested.

  “That’s it, my girl. No more arguments. It’s protocol, my political pull—call it what you will. But out you go. Carraway will give you all the help you need. No more talk, now I’ll be in to see you off when you’re ready.”

  Myra Endore tilted a proud face at him. Unusual tears lurked in her eyes. Also, she looked utterly radiant in blue blouse and slacks.

  “I really do want to stay—”

  “You really have to go. God’s sake, girl, do you think this is easy for me?”

  “Oh, damn your bowler hat and umbrella—” Myra ran crying down the hall. Carraway who was lingering a few yards away, looked helplessly at Rogers Endore.

  “Myra!”

  But she didn’t stop. Within moments, she disappeared around the bend in the corridor and he could hear the violent slamming of her room door. Carraway hesitated, not knowing what to do.

  Rogers Endore felt the blood rising in his face. The argument had come to a boil and now this—his own daughter racing off like a spoiled brat. Well, she was all of that, wasn’t she? His own fault too, truth to tell. Ever since Margaret had died, a long, long time ago, he had been far too busy to be a proper father. Money did not solve everything.

  Such a waste of time, such a harvest of hurt.

  It had all started so nicely today, too. Myra quiet, fetching in her sports outfit of Capri slacks, blue silken blouse, her long red hair done up in a bun the way he liked it. A meal in the Kahala Hilton’s splendid Maile Restaurant, with its marble bridge entrance spanning a cascading water garden. The food itself at one of the widely spaced tables overlooking the Kahala garden lagoon was one of the finest sights he had seen in Honolulu. Endore had enjoyed it thoroughly, feeling a very pleasant hiatus from his far more important tasks of statesmanship and spy-without-portfolio. He had reasoned, after presenting all the arguments, that Myra had understood his demand for her to leave. Obviously, she had not. And now this positively childish pique, running off down a corridor like a heroine in the films.

  He sighed and flung a look at Carraway.

  “You see she packs and leaves first thing. I can’t have her here and that’s an end to it.”

  “Begging your pardon, sir, but—”

  “Go on, man. See that she obeys my order—” Endore inserted the door key in the lock to his suite. “I’ll manage.”

  “Righto, sir.” Carraway lumbered down the hall. Almost immediately, two men in simple dark suits popped into view. Two special agents of Carraway’s staff. Endore waved them off, almost peevishly, and walked into his room. He closed the door on the lock before the agents could offer a protest. Rogers Endore had reached the point of complete and entire rebellion at being guarded every second of the day. It was like living in a goldfish bowl. Foolishly, he chain-locked the door.

  It was also the wrong time to deprive himself of the care and protection of trained guns and minds. The wrongest time.

  He realized his mistake in a cold, startling wave of terror as he marched into his bedroom to see about changing his attire for the afternoon. He had company. Company he’d much rather not have had.

  Benjamin Bygraves was waiting for him, sitting in a comfortable tropical chair. With a long-nosed pistol in his right hand. A pistol which bore a conical attachment clearly identifiable as a silencer. The skull face of Bygraves held no smile. For a long second, Rogers Endore was incapable
of speech.

  “One word, one loud gasp and you are a dead man,” Bygraves said softly. “If you want your life,” he lied, “you will turn over to me those five slips of paper you brought from the Western Electric exhibit in Berlin. You have only seconds to comply.”

  Even a brave man like Rogers Endore can feel naked, absolute fear. He was staring at Death and he knew it. And help was beyond the locked door. A door he had locked himself. He seemed to realize all that in one heartbreaking loss of his composure. And cool logic.

  “Morley—” he stammered.

  “No more talk. Regrettably, Endore, we cannot discuss anything The papers, if you please. You have only three seconds left.”

  The silencer pistol made that audible cocking noise in the sudden stillness of the bedroom that is so like a cricket’s chirp.

  “In my attaché case—” Endore sounded stupified. He was. He knew he had locked the front door. “You’ll need my key—” The blood had drained from his tanned face.

  Benjamin Bygraves smiled. He had won the trick.

  For the next five minutes, Endore was like an automaton. Moving the case, unlocking it, groping. His movements were painfully slow.

  Suddenly the phone rang. Loudly, urgently, a fierce jangle of sound shattering the stillness of the suite.

  Benjamin Bygraves’ weird head spun like a swivel. Rogers Endore stopped, staring at the phone. It was by the bed, on a night stand. It kept on ringing.

  “Answer it.” Bygraves intoned. “Tell whoever it is you’ll be available in fifteen minutes. I warn you. One false word and—”

  Rogers Endore tottered to the phone.

  It was still ringing.

  He picked it up, trembling, wondering if he could keep the fear and the dryness of his tongue and lips from giving the game away. The silencer pistol followed him all the way across the room.

  Benjamin Bygraves watched him.

  Waiting.

  A thin erratic vein glowed on his forehead.

  Outside on the terrace, with the rain over and the bright sun now drying everything within sight, McGarrett could be clearly seen, behaving with all the purpose and intent of a man gone mad.

  He was suspended from the terrace railing some two floors above Rogers Endore’s portico. A long, thick clothesline of rope hung downward, ending just above the railing of the diplomat’s floor. McGarrett was going down hand over hand, quickly and with no regard for the dizzyingly hazardous space between himself and the stone plaza below. The killing fall to the street.

  Even as he lowered himself, he could hear the ringing of the phone. Myra was doing her bit. Keeping her father on the phone, keeping an assassin from going through with his weird plan, whatever it was. When the phone stopped, he knew it had been picked up.

  The floor of the terrace loomed below him. Safety for only a second. Then the dangers of the infernal unknown within the suite itself. He had to risk it. Time was all important now. Everybody’s time had run out. The Governor’s, Rogers Endore’s, his own.

  Grimly, he released his hand hold, clawing for his service revolver even as he landed lightly and athletically on his feet in full view of the swung-wide French doors. He bent his body, doubling like a paratrooper, and came up in a crouch, taking dead aim through the opening provided by the doors. A step to Infinity.

  He saw the tableau in a split-second photograph registering on his mind, and his trained reflexes obeyed.

  He saw Rogers Endore off to one side, clutching the receiver in his hand, dazed face unable to comprehend the incredible invasion from literally out of space.

  He saw the Undertaker, Benjamin Bygraves, rise from his chair.

  He saw the silencer pistol.

  He saw rather than heard the Undertaker’s pistol recoil with a rapid jerk against the man’s wrist, as if his hand had turned inward. He felt the slug come tearing at him, whining invisibly and quietly, as it plucked against the forearm sleeve of his own right arm. It might have been a nudge.

  There was no time to shout, no time to ask for reason or sanity. The skull-like travesty of Benjamin Bygraves’ head told him all he wanted to know of the man’s mental caliber or criminal instincts.

  McGarrett, without thinking about it, remembered in a vivid, purposeful flash what this incredible-looking zombie had cost him. Danny Williams, Chin Ho Kelley. And even Kono. And almost his own very private neck.

  He fired once and fast, straight out from the shoulder in the approved police academy style. His own body as small a target as possible, his own right arm only an extension of his figure. In a firm, thin line. Right on target. For the kill.

  One shot was enough.

  Benjamin Bygraves pitched forward on his face, the silencer pistol still clutched in his talonlike fist. There was a small round hole exactly where his breast pocket showed a gay kerchief.

  McGarrett straightened and moved into the room. He didn’t look at Benjamin Bygraves. He didn’t have to. The living were his business, now.

  Rogers Endore was limply holding himself against the night stand, the receiver dangling. A feminine voice was crying. Shouting. McGarrett took the receiver, reversed it and said softly into the transmitter: “All clear, Myra. He’s okay.” Without waiting for an answer he replaced the receiver on the cradle.

  Rogers Endore lurched to a wing chair, sat down and stared dumbly down at Benjamin Bygraves’ inert corpse. There was barely a stain on the smooth flooring. The Undertaker was dead.

  A loud pounding sounded at the door to the suite. Then a hoarse shout. Carraway’s roar of fear. McGarrett moved into the next room. But a key was scratching the lock and the door was swinging inward, only to be held half closed by the chain lock. McGarrett undid the chain—the one single item which had triggered his wild plan all the way. Endore had certainly loused things up.

  The Governor rushed into the suite, Carraway behind him, the two special agents, guns drawn, at his heels. Carraway’s big gun was out. When he saw McGarrett, his mouth once more drooped in amazement. But he sprang for the bedroom, barreling on through. His men followed him.

  “Steve—” The Governor’s voice was concerned.

  “Situation affirmative,” McGarrett said. “Strictly affirmative. Mr. Endore’s all right. Dead man on the floor. Maybe we can wrap this up now.”

  “Who is it? Do you know the man?”

  “No, but I’m sure Mr. Endore does—”

  Before the Governor could pursue the point, Myra Endore came spilling into the suite. An unleashed tidal wave of red hair, flying legs and bouncing breasts. She was tear-streaked, her ivory face all flushed and frightened. In her pique with her father, she had clawed the bun of hair apart, the style he had liked so much at breakfast.

  “McGarrett!”

  “You did fine, lady. Your father’s in there. As safe as the proverbial English pound. See for yourself.”

  She kissed him swiftly on the cheek and plunged on into the bedroom where now a considerable uproar of noise, confusion and voiced relief could be heard. McGarrett sagged against the open doorway and fished out his cigarettes. The Governor lighted it for him, respect and admiration showing in his face.

  “McGarrett—”

  “Yes.”

  “Good work.”

  “Sure,” McGarrett said, exhaling a cloud of smoke. “Now how about we give him that parcel, get an explanation for this three ring circus and get him the hell on the next plane? Another day of this and there won’t be an organization called Hawaii Five-O.”

  “It shall be,” the Governor declared firmly, “exactly as you wish. If anybody’s entitled to an explanation, you are. Perhaps even an apology. I’ll see that you get both.”

  McGarrett found a chair, sat down and stretched out his legs ready to enjoy a quiet smoke. All about him, the world revolved, rocked and tilted. His eyes fluttered shut. He was tired. Aching, bruised, sore and completely run out of gas.

  He fell asleep without knowing that he did.

  The Governor smiled. And walke
d into the next room to talk to Rogers Endore.

  Even supermen and cats with nine lives run out of gas sometimes.

  11. ENDORE AS A MAN

  While McGarrett slept, undisturbed and completely beyond even rudimentary attempts at awakening, the Governor of Hawaii and Rogers Endore of Great Britain had a high level, top-secret conference in the adjoining room of the suite.

  The temporary excitement of Benjamin Bygraves’ last attempt to murder anyone was now by the boards. Myra Endore was back in her own room again, glad her father was still among the living and—fixing her face. After all, McGarrett wouldn’t sleep forever and now there was no need to go dashing back to London. Father—whatever his nebulous, dangerous business in Honolulu had been—was leaving Hawaii first. That very evening, on the six fifteen special jet out of Honolulu Airport. With three phantom CIA agents ready to accompany him and his entourage on the nonstop flight to Washington. The secret mission was almost over.

  Carraway and his detail of agents had secured the plush outside hallway. There wasn’t a hope this time that the Governor and Mr. Endore would be interrupted. The quick sharp blast of McGarrett’s .38 had been lost in the muffled, comfortable environs of the Kahala Hilton. No one had come to investigate the sound. No one had complained. The Governor, heartened by that, had done no more than shroud the corpse of Benjamin Bygraves with the decorative counterpane from Rogers Endore’s bed. There was time enough to see to the niceties and necessary details of getting Bygraves née Sidney Morley (if that was his true name) sent down to the County Morgue as a proper DOA.

  So McGarrett slept in his chair, a few feet from a corpse with ten toes down, and neither of them would be disturbed The living and the dead have a lot in common when their eyes are closed.

  In the outer room, with its tropical fixtures and furnishings, modernistic hotel features and bright overall decor, Rogers Overton Endore found himself and the Governor of Hawaii a pair of cool, refreshing Scotch-and-sodas. A drink they both seemed to need.

  The long tubular parcel, still unopened, lay on the mosaic coffee table between the two dignitaries. It might just have come via parcel post. The British diplomat’s black attaché cast gleamed beside Endore’s neatly shod feet.