Through the still parted French windows, the lovely tapestry of a Hawaiian sky after the rain glowed faintly and unforgettably. The magical myriads of rainbows had evaporated in the clearing breezes sweeping over the islands.
“So.” Rogers Endore sipped his drink and uttered a sigh of relief. “End game. Thank heaven, now I can be on my way.”
“I can’t say I’m sorry to see you go, Mr. Endore. You understand.”
“Quite. Infernal nuisance all around. I’ve kept your people hopping haven’t I? I suppose some sort of explanation is due you. Apart from the strictly restricted data which I can’t give you in any case because I don’t understand it myself!” He cast a rueful glance toward the door of the bedroom “I’ll wager McGarrett would never let up on you if you allowed me to kite off without some sort of sensible story.”
“You know McGarrett,” the Governor said a trifle proudly “You’ve seen him at his best.”
“Don’t I know it.” Endore chuckled. “Twice in two days he’s dropped out of the blue—literally out of thin air—to save my skin. How the devil does he do it? It’s more than timely—it’s downright black magic.”
“He almost didn’t make it this time.”
“Oh?” Endore’s hawk nose came up.
“Yes. This man you call Sidney Morley was down here with accomplices, obviously. No telling exactly how many. About an hour before we both got here today—”
Slowly, with care and choice of words which would impute no reproach to Rogers Endore, the Governor elaborated.
He told how the police call had come over his car radio. The emergency summons about a burning sedan at the highway intersection. It was on the Governor’s route to the Kahala Hilton so he had instructed his driver to go to the scene. There to find a McGarrett, shaken up, almost snarling with anger. It seemed the head of Five-O had just had a wheel shot out from under him and only a quick leap from the vehicle had saved his neck once the machine left the road. McGarrett was convinced a rifle or something had given him the blowout. The odds were against another accident. Not after what had happened to Williams, Kelly, Kono, his secretary. And himself. Spurred by some inner demon that wouldn’t let him relax he had insisted on accompanying the Governor to the hotel. Coming up in the elevator, McGarrett’s ESP seemed to work overtime. It was as if he was racing the clock against some unknown deadline which spelled doom. For Endore, the Governor, everybody. The Governor had been unable to check his forcefulness. So McGarrett, finding Carraway and company locked out in the hallway, had wasted no time. He’d raced like a madman, getting Myra Endore to ring her father’s room while he went upstairs. He flashed his badge on the startled occupants of the room that held the portico two floors above Endore’s suite. The clothesline had been a lucky length of lifesaver available in the suite. The occupants of the room, a married couple in from Milwaukee, were surfing fiends, equipped with all the appurtenances of the sport. Thus, McGarrett and his hunches. He hadn’t wasted a moment trying to batter Endore’s door in or attempting to allow a killer time to do his job and depart. He had remembered all too well the fantastic disappearing act of the night before.
He had seemed to know the timetable all the way. As if he sensed that the killer/killers were working against time. He had acted accordingly. The McGarrett way. Move first and ask questions later. If you made a fool of yourself, so what? Better safe than sorry. If there had been no rope, he would have used sheets.
“Amazing fellow,” Endore breathed when the Governor was done. “Expect he gets a lot of results with that sort of headlong action. Wouldn’t suit the diplomatic corps at all but then again—” He permitted himself a hopeless shrug.
The Governor coughed politely. “And now—your part of all this would be very much appreciated, Mr. Endore.”
The Briton nodded hastily, his face almost sheepish. For a moment his wiry, springy body tautened. Like a short rope drawn shorter.
“Governor, it’s brief and to the point. I am carrying a set of papers—so infinitesimal and innocuous—they would perhaps make you laugh. I picked them up in Berlin and I am to deliver them to your fellow countrymen in Washington. Something connected with the CIA, I imagine, since they are providing my escort back. Still, I can’t be sure. I can’t show you the papers. Nor can I tell you what is in this curious parcel that looks rather like a loaf of bread. I was instructed to remain here until it came. Now that it has, I’ll be off.”
“I know. I’m also in contact with Washington. I knew about your delay here until this—parcel—arrived. And that’s all? You can tell me nothing else?”
“Nothing else,” Endore said sadly but firmly. “Reduced to errand boy like this, I’m rather ashamed to say. And yet I suppose it’s the usual, all-important documents and codes. Devil of a mess, isn’t it? I don’t wonder you might think me a fool.”
The Governor shook his head.
“We’re public servants. We are asked to do many things we don’t understand or do not condone deep down. What can I tell you? I’m only glad you’ve succeeded—”
“So far,” Endore said meaningfully. He sipped his drink. His eyes shone like persimmons in his tanned face.
“And Sidney Morley?”
“He I can tell you about.” Endore shuddered. “A bad lot. The very worst. Thief, murderer for hire. India in forty-nine. I was the Provost there during another of those damned bloody uprisings. A local Ghandi-type, one Rama Puta, was on the verge of making peace with us. He was kidnapped by Morley, who demanded a heavy ransom. We paid but not before Morley killed the poor fellow. Made quite a splash at the time. I saw Sidney Morley once. Standing outside a hut in the moonlight. I never forgot his face. So like a skull—the face of Death looking at you. I thought the world had swallowed him up. That sort of man is bound to meet his bullet sooner or later.”
“He met it today. Then you think—”
“Yes—he was given this—assignment—because he knew me. Knew my habits. Old scores to settle and all. I suspect the Red Chinese are behind all this. Possibly, the Commies. Hard to say. Hiring assassins to follow one’s politically dirty programs is all the rage these days. Who knows?” Endore passed a weary hand across his brow. “I’ll be happy to be on that plane. Hot potatoes annoy me. Especially when they are slips of paper and parcels I do not know the nature of.”
The Governor looked at his wrist watch.
“Three hours. More or less. May I suggest you stay in this room until departure time? No sense in pressing our luck. Morley’s friends may still be around. Though I’ll secure the hotel completely. Every door and floor.”
“Thank you. Very good of you, Governor. I shall always remember your kindness to me here in Honolulu.”
“Remember McGarrett,” the Governor said. “Without him, I don’t think I’d be talking to you now.”
“How right you are,” Rogers Overton Endore said with deep gratification. He tried not to shudder again.
But he did.
Later that same day, three badly disappointed men piled into a car and headed down to the docks to see about booking an immediate passage on one of the hundreds of tramp steamers and similar cargo vessels ready to sail from Oahu to all points of the compass. Angelo Bellini, Mark Tillingham and Von Litz—dreams of golden keys that led to a fortune in assassination fees gone up the flue—were eager to put Honolulu behind them. They had watched Benjamin Bygraves’ sheet-covered corpse leave the Kahala Hilton on a stretcher and they didn’t need a scorecard. There was no mistaking the length of the corpse being shoved like a pile of refrigerated meat into the rear of the waiting white ambulance with the red-cross markings on both sides. Bygraves was out of the picture, the hard way, and with him gone, none of the three men had an inkling of where to turn. Or what to do. It was useless to pursue the plan. Why kill for nothing? When there was no chance of compensation? Also, it would be going too far to expect to fly from Hawaii—
They wanted out.
Nothing was left for them to do in Honolulu.
It was on one of the piers at Oahu that McGarrett and a flying squad of five hand-picked policemen caught up with them. McGarrett looked as fresh as a daisy again and all the officers were ominous in their blue uniforms and blue badges. But the three assassins in their Aloha shirts did not go down without a fight.
McGarrett had stepped forward, blocking their retreat from the pier. The officers were behind him, fanned out in a wide line of blue. Nobody said anything for a full minute. It was a moment.
“You’re under arrest,” McGarrett said quietly. “Tillingham, Von Litz—Angelo Bellini? You look exactly as advertised. Raise your hands and don’t make trouble.”
The sensible thing to do was what McGarrett had asked for. But for three men who had never known the inside of a jail or prison walls, the sound of iron gates clanging shut was in McGarrett’s voice. They panicked. Like any amateurs on their very first job.
Mark Tilligham dove to his right, trying to make the alley between an administration shack and four crates of damaged bananas. Von Litz turned and bolted. Angelo Bellini barreled forward, meaning to bowl his way through the arresting force and gain the stone ramp leading up to the car and freedom. An almost suicidal gambit.
It was a hopeless, useless play all around.
McGarrett took the oncoming Bellini’s right arm, snapped it like a whip from a half-crouch and the angelic-faced man dropped like a sack of potatoes into the waiting arms of the pleased policemen. Tillingham had gotten his silencer pistol out but had over-gauged his distance to the crates and the alley. Trying to look forward and to his rear at the same time, he ploughed into one jutting corner of a crate. The bone in his right knee snapped like a dry twig. He cursed, howled in agony, forgot about his pistol and twitched to the hard earth, his eyes filling with tears. He was the easiest one to capture.
Von Litz, running like an infuriated, frightened duck, dove off the end of the pier into the waters of the bay. He hadn’t gone five strokes before he realized that the mammoth outline of a freighter blocked his passage. His sputtering face would have been funny if one didn’t know the nature and the record of the man. A tossed rope collected him.
So McGarrett collected a silencer pistol, a thin garrote wire and a handful of lethal gumlike pellets to add to his museum of criminal curios down at the Five-O office. Of which he had many.
In the end, three handcuffed assassins took the long ride back to durance vile. McGarrett was grimly satisfied and supremely happy. For the time being anyway, things were back to normal. Danny Williams and Chin Ho Kelly could sleep off their injuries in the hospital without being annoyed, Kono’s arm would heal and May’s stiff neck would get better. And Rogers Endore could take his damn plane and be off the island in less than an hour.
Hawaii Five-O had earned its freedom from immediate threats and harm. He could close the books on the VIP bodyguard routine and maybe the Governor would think twice before setting him and the organization up as clay pigeons again.
Angelo Bellini was dumfounded at being apprehended. Mark Tillingham was whimpering like a baby and Von Litz was stony and quiet as death in the back of the police squad car.
“How did you know?” Bellini rasped, his soft voice for once harsh. All the humor had fled from his face.
McGarrett took out his cigarettes.
“Does it make a difference, friend?”
Bellini nursed his right elbow with his left hand. His manacles clattered.
“Listen, cop. I lost a fortune. Money you couldn’t make in twenty, thirty years at your job. Sure it makes a difference. I’d like to know where we went wrong. So next time I’ll know what not to do.”
“There won’t be any next times for you, Bellini. Or your two friends. But if it’s any consolation to you—” He lit his cigarette and exhaled. Blue smoke eddied.
“Well?” Bellini challenged.
“The Frenchman talked,” McGarrett said.
Presented with the Undertaker’s corpse, Tornier crumbled.
Rogers Endore, attaché case and parcel safely stored in his luggage, boarded the waiting jet plane on runway five of Honolulu Airport at precisely five minutes after six. Carraway, the two English agents and the three CIA men followed behind him. Eyes alert, hands close to their guns. The typical Hawaiian sunset flooded the field in rays of gold and orange tinged with cobalt and magenta. There was a fine crisp feel to the air. As if fine weather was an eternal thing never at the vicissitudes and whims of nature.
From beyond the chicken-wire fence bordering the runway, the Governor of Hawaii waved an immaculate arm. Endore had waved back, using Winston Churchill’s time-honored salute of V for Victory. Two fingers raised in the air.
ROE was on his way.
The jet engines pulsed, shot thunder and cyclonic, thrusting propulsion. The plane rumbled forward smoothly, then its tail lifted and the concerted symphony of its roar and motion blended into that still incredible thing known as man-taking-wing.
The Governor watched as the jet climbed upward. A gleaming, flashing arrow of streamlined magnitude. In seconds, the plane bearing a very important person indeed had gained the altitude it needed, banked on a rising climb to the East and hurried away from the sun. A few seconds more and it was lost from view. The Honolulu sky no less magnificent for its absence.
Turning up his collar against a sudden chill, the Governor returned to his waiting limousine.
“Take me home,” he told the driver.
He was tired.
There had been enough excitement for two days to accommodate a hundred luaus and fifty wild pig hunts.
And a month of Hawaiian sunsets.
12. IS McGARRETT BURNING?
“There goes Father,” Myra Endore laughed softly, watching from the terrace as the tiny dot of plane vanished into the clouds. At her side, McGarrett, hand nestled around her trim and fine waist, nodded mutely. Tornier, with a promise of clemency, had solved it all.
Silently, mutually, the moment self-explanatory, he guided her back into the room. They kissed, Myra’s cool hands locked behind his neck. McGarrett nibbled with slow and great tenderness at her mouth. Again, her superbly sweet aroma had invaded his nostrils. As redheaded English ladies went, Myra Endore was in a class by herself.
“Wasn’t it nice of Father to let me stay?” she crooned softly in his ear.
“I might have shot him myself if he hadn’t.”
“And it’s all over, McGarrett? All of it? No more assassins, no more busy lizzies jumping out of the woodwork?”
Not until the next time, he thought bitterly.
“For now, yes. But only that. No guarantees, lady. Hawaii is and always will be a hot spot. Too much goes on down here.”
“I should say so—” She had drawn him willfully, carefully to the rumpled bed. She was wearing one of her slacks and shirtwaist combinations. All silk and smoothness. “McGarrett, I’m positively shameless when it comes to you.”
He laughed. “Myra, nobody’s twisting my arm, either.”
She did then, trying a halfhearted motion which McGarrett easily foiled and then followed through by falling with her down to the bed, his weight crushing her. The way any woman wants to be crushed when it is by the man she has picked for the crushing.
Their eyes were intimately close.
“Listen, Red,” he said lightly. “How would you like to take a plane down to Hilo tonight? A cruise chopper. There’s some fine friends of mine over there I know you’ll like. The Von Elsners. It’s open house and I know Don won’t mind my taking you along. He claims redheads with long legs can rule the world if they know how to play bridge and can play all the rest of their cards right—”
“Hilo? What’s that?”
“On Hawaii Island. The Big Island. Second largest city out here. Tomorrow I could show you all the volcanoes you’ll ever want to see. Game?”
Her eyes glittered.
“Will we be camping out tonight, dear McGarrett?”
He nodded, brushing his lips against
the tip of her elegant nose. “The Governor gave me two whole days off. I’m as free as a bird. How about that?”
She took his two strong hands in her own and placed her mouth on their tips. Her hazel eyes watched his face.
“Feel freer,” she said. The Hepburn resemblance was staggering.
McGarrett laughed deep in his chest and overwhelmed her.
It was like love, love, love.
With no waiting. And no assassins, at all.
In Washington, D.C., Rogers Overton Endore turned over his valuable items of “espionage” to the proper officials. That done, he washed his hands of the whole affair. The President of the United States invited him to the White House and to all intents and purposes that terminated Mr. Endore’s association with the CIA and various American undercover agencies. Endore would return with his slips to England.
Not once, during a fine talk, interview, dinner and a tour of the White House grounds did Mr. President refer to his guest’s sudden presence in the states. Obeying the strictures of international protocol, Mr. Endore didn’t either. In the end, he returned to London and his true role in life without so much as a murmur of discontent.
To this day, Mr. Endore has no idea what his five slips of paper and curious, tubular bundle meant in terms of the Big Picture of international peace and harmony between the United States and Great Britain.
Just as well, probably.
If he might not have been astounded, he certainly would have been incapable of comprehending exactly what he had accomplished.
And pulled off truly under the noses of the unfriendly, hostile nations and governments of the political spectrum.
At a confidential laboratory in the nation’s capital—
The five slips of paper were fed into a large complex computer programmed to accept “answers”—in this case the set of unrelated, diverse replies printed on Western Electric stationery. The “question” machine in turn then spewed forth a set of number and letter combinations which in turn were applied to the long tubular parcel.
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