“You’re British?” he asked, changing the subject.
“Half, on my father’s side. The other side—well, a mixture of things. The dark ways of the Orient. I’ve never been to England. Is it damp and dreary?”
“Not really. Though there’s usually a time every winter when all your friends have colds. I’m used to it, I suppose. I like it.”
“What are you doing on a flight to Moscow?”
“Asking questions of ladies with coffins.”
“A journalist?”
“Of sorts.” He motioned toward the back of Shoju’s head. “My friend over there is a real one. I’ll bet he could find out what’s in your coffin.”
She smiled again. “You can see for yourself at Customs. We’ll have to open it then.”
“The great unveiling.”
“Yes.” She glanced at her watch, an expensive timepiece with a jeweled face. “This is a very long flight.”
“Exactly four thousand six hundred and sixty-three airline miles.” Rand liked to impress smiling ladies with his knowledge. “Even nonstop like this it takes over ten hours. It’ll be one o’clock this afternoon when we land in Moscow, counting the six hours we gain.”
“A walking timetable!”
“A sitting one right now, but I do have to get back to my own seat. I’ll talk to you later. Nice to have met you, and Dr. Hardan.” The frowning man nodded slightly.
Rand resumed his seat next to Mrs. Belgrave. Lanning and Shoju were in the seats behind them. “Did you have an interesting chat, Mr. Rand?” asked Mrs. Belgrave.
“Didn’t learn a thing,” he reported. “She says there’s a monster in the coffin, and that she’s a witch.”
“She said that?”
“More or less. Why?”
Mrs. Belgrave pursed her lips. “I was watching that coffin when we took off. I could have sworn it moved.”
“Vibrations.”
“No. More than that. And six men to carry it on! It must weigh three hundred pounds!”
“Maybe it’s a body after all.”
“A live body, Mr. Rand. Do you suppose they’re Russian agents, kidnaping someone and taking him back to Moscow against his will?”
“I doubt that.”
“I would have doubted that Gordon could be arrested as a spy.”
“That’s a bit different.”
“Do we really know these Russians, Mr. Rand? Do we know what they want, what they’re up to?”
“Perhaps they’re only afraid,” he said. “Like us.”
It was a long trip, without even the time-killing relaxation of the in-flight movies provided on trans-Atlantic flights. By the time nine hours had passed, Rand and the others had pulled down the window shades against the noonday sun and were dozing fitfully. Rand was aware of Mrs. Belgrave leaving her seat at one point, making her way toward the rest rooms at the rear of the aircraft.
It was a sound like a cough that awakened him finally, and even then he did not know what had caused it. He glanced around, saw Mrs. Belgrave making her way back down the aisle, saw Shoju and Lanning both dozing in the seats behind him. He got up to stretch his legs and speak to Yota Twain again, but she was not in her seat. Dr. Hardan was alone, his face buried in a Russian-language newspaper.
He found Yota in the rear of the plane, bent over the coffin like some daytime vampire, and once more he felt the chill on his spine. “Checking body temperature?” he asked.
“It would be quite low,” she replied, smiling. Then, standing up, she added, “Our journey is almost over.”
“None too soon.”
“Have you looked out the window? At the snow? It’s quite a sight with the sun on it.”
“Even in the summer Siberia holds little interest for me.”
“This is the Urals. We’re passing over them now.”
“I’ll look,” he promised.
“Rand!” He turned and saw that Lanning was motioning to him. Something was wrong—Lanning had lost his coolness.
“What is it?” Rand asked, hurrying up the aisle.
Lanning turned open the jacket of Shoju’s suit, showing the widening circle of blood. “Rand—he’s been wounded somehow! I think—”
Rand bent to feel Shoju’s pulse, then lifted one eyelid. “He’s dead,” he said simply. “He’s been murdered.”
Lanning stared hard at the body in the seat next to him, as if unable to comprehend Rand’s words. “But—I was right here all the time! How could he have been murdered?”
Rand avoided the most obvious answer and examined the wound more closely. “It looks like a bullet,” he said. “Did you hear a shot?”
“Nothing! I was dozing, but a shot would certainly have awakened me.”
“Maybe not,” Rand said, remembering now the quiet cough which had awakened him. A silenced pistol, perhaps further muffled by a pillow. With the passengers dozing and the stewardesses busy, no one had noticed. “Have a stewardess report it to the pilot. He should radio ahead and have police waiting at Moscow airport. The gun must still be on the plane.”
“What is it?” Mrs. Belgrave wanted to know. She had returned to her seat without realizing anything was amiss.
“There’s been some trouble. Shoju is dead.”
“No!” Her hand flew to her mouth. “What will happen to Gordon now?”
“I don’t think it will make his situation worse,” Rand told her.
“But why kill Shoju just because he heard Gordon’s confession?”
“I don’t know. But somebody was certainly intent on getting Shoju out of the way. When the killer failed at the office, he followed Shoju aboard the plane.”
Lanning glanced up and down the rows of seats at their fellow passengers. “The Turkish assassin—Sivas?”
“Maybe,” Rand agreed. “Mrs. Belgrave, did you notice anyone else in the aisle when you went to the rest room?”
“Only that woman, back there with her coffin.”
Some of the other passengers were beginning to group around them now, and a stewardess had arrived. Dr. Hardan came across the aisle to look, and Rand asked him, “Are you a medical doctor?”
“I—no. What has happened?”
“A man’s been killed.” He saw Yota hurrying up to join them, and he moved down the aisle past her. While they were busy looking at the body he’d have a few minutes alone with the mysterious coffin.
Rand dropped to his knees beside the polished wooden box and pressed his ear against it. There might have been a sound from inside, but he couldn’t be sure. He took a deep breath and began to unscrew the bolts that held the lid in place.
“No! Keep away from there!” Yota Twain flew down the aisle at him, her little fists clenched. “Don’t open that!”
“I’m sorry,” Rand said, trying to fight her off. “I have to open it. A man’s been murdered. The weapon may have been hidden in here.”
“There’s no weapon! Don’t open it!”
“Lanning! Keep her off me, will you?”
The CIA man had appeared behind Yota, and now he grabbed her arms, pinning them to her side. “Calm down, Miss.”
“You don’t understand! If you lift that lid—”
Rand twirled the last bolt free and began to raise the lid, slowly, mindful of a bomb or booby trap.
But the thing that faced him as he lifted the lid was much older than a bomb, and perhaps more dangerous. Their eyes met for just an instant, and then the ancient scaly jaws began to open slowly.
The thing in the coffin was a crocodile.
“I wish you’d listened to me,” Yota told him when the lid had been screwed down again. “It upsets him to have it opened like that.”
“It upset me a bit too,” Rand agreed. “Suppose you explain.”
“It’s not at all that unusual, Mr. Rand. Crocodiles are sometimes shipped between zoos in coffins, simply because it’s such a perfect container for them. This particular specimen is a Philippine crocodile, almost fully grown. We’re transfer
ring him from the Tokyo zoo to the Moscow zoo, for mating with a female they have there.”
“You couldn’t tell us this before, Miss Twain?”
She smiled. “My real name is Dr. Yota Nobea, professor of zoology at Tokyo University. I have close ties with the zoo. And no, we couldn’t tell you this, Mr. Rand. Passengers would have been just as disturbed flying with a live crocodile as with a dead body, I’m afraid.”
Rand glanced back at Shoju’s seat. “Now they have both, I’m afraid. I suppose Dr. Hardan is a zoologist too.”
“That’s correct. He’s worked closely with me on the crocodile-mating project.”
“Why would anyone want to mate crocodiles?”
She shrugged. “It is an occupation much preferred to the killing of people, Mr. Rand.”
Lanning came up from the front of the plane, carrying a Llama automatic wrapped in a handkerchief. “We found the murder weapon, Rand. It was stuffed into an empty seat. Anyone could have put it there during the excitement just now. Here’s the silencer, too.”
“Could this be the gun that killed the man in Shoju’s office?”
“Same caliber. Yes, it could be.”
“Then Sivas is on this plane?”
“Sivas or someone else.” Lanning tried to grin. “I don’t go much for mysterious Turkish assassins myself. Sometimes life is a lot simpler.”
Rand stepped away so that Yota could not hear his answer. “Someone doesn’t want Belgrave freed. Could it be his wife?”
“I’ll buy anything at this point, Rand, if you can come up with a motive and evidence.”
The plane was beginning its descent. A voice on the intercom instructed the passengers to fasten their seat-belts. In a few moments they would be on the ground at Moscow airport.
Rand had been waiting for the better part of two hours in the high-ceilinged Kremlin office before Taz made his appearance. He was as Rand remembered him from Paris—middle-aged, with a thin face, pointed jaw, and deep blue eyes. His graying hair swept back from his forehead, and his thin fingers played nervously with the metal buttons of his jacket.
“Ah, my friend Rand!” He extended his hand in greeting, speaking the same accented English that Rand remembered from their previous meetings. “I am so sorry to keep you waiting like this, but your flight from Tokyo has complicated our lives. The murder of a news reporter is not to be taken lightly.”
“I’m glad to hear that.” Rand wished he had a cigarette.
“But the killing is out of my hands. You come to discuss the arrest of the spy Belgrave, no?”
“No. Belgrave’s no spy and you know it, Taz.”
“I do not know it, my friend. He has confessed, and we have the evidence.”
“I’d like to see that evidence.”
Taz smiled slightly and untied a folder he’d been carrying. “I like to anticipate you. I especially like it when we are deciphering your messages.”
Rand frowned. This was, in some ways, a new Taz—a man supremely confident. “We’re pretty good at anticipating too,” he countered lamely. “Now, let’s see this evidence.”
Taz spread the telegraph forms on the desk between them. There were six in all, made up of familiar five-character cipher groups. Rand scanned one at random: 3H9J4 WBRD1 SQ25F MILT7 6G8RP. “You’ve deciphered it?” he asked Taz.
“In essence. After he confessed, Belgrave read the rest for us. A SYKO cipher, of course. I suspected as much when I saw the mixture of numerals and letters.”
“Were these actually sent?”
“Of course not!” Taz chuckled at the very thought of it. “Russian telegraph offices could hardly be expected to transmit enciphered messages.”
“Exactly!” Rand pointed out. “So what did Belgrave hope to gain by trying to send them? If he’d discovered any secrets it would have been much safer to carry them back to America inside his head.”
“The fact remains that he confessed. And without torture.”
“The only witness to that is dead now.”
“The Japanese?” Taz dismissed him with a wave of the hand. “I was a witness to it. Do you not accept my word?”
Rand looked into the deep blue eyes. “I do,” he said at last.
“Then what else is there to discuss? The man was caught trying to send enciphered messages, and he confessed to being an American spy.”
“Spying on what? On your new SUM missile?”
“The particular nature of his espionage is not important.”
“I think it’s damned important,” Rand barked, leaning forward until his face was only inches from Taz’s. “There’s nothing in these messages about the SUM and you know it!”
“Do I?”
“Because if there was you wouldn’t be so free in showing them to me. I could have them memorized already, for all you know. It’s not too difficult a feat.”
“All right.” Taz leaned back, breaking the contact of their eyes. “The messages did not mention SUM. They seemed to be about aircraft reconnaissance. They did not, admittedly, make a great deal of sense.”
“I wouldn’t think so.”
Taz frowned at him now. “Why not?”
“Because the SYKO cipher was a widely used Allied air-ground system during World War II. It hasn’t been used since then. Gordon Belgrave was an Air Corps Intelligence officer during the war. He was confessing to acts of espionage committed twenty-five years ago.”
Taz turned from the desk and walked over to the high broad window that reached almost to the ceiling. He stood for a moment gazing out at the lights of the Moscow evening; then at last he turned to face Rand.
“You can prove what you say?”
“Belgrave had a nervous breakdown last year. He received shock treatments. Your medical men will tell you that such shock treatments sometimes cause age regression. Belgrave came here to meet with Russian publishers, but suddenly imagined himself in the world of twenty-five years ago. He tried to send messages in the old SYKO cipher, and when you arrested him he confessed to espionage.”
“It’s possible,” Taz admitted somewhat reluctantly. “It would explain the oddness of the message.”
“It’s more than possible—it happened. I want the man released at once, Taz.”
“That is beyond my authority.”
“Like hell it is! What do you hope to gain by holding him?”
Taz motioned him to the window. “Forget about the American for a moment and look down on all this. We are in one of Moscow’s tallest buildings—not tall by American standards, but it compares favorably with London, no?”
“Get to the point, Taz. The American is innocent. What do you want in exchange for him?”
The blue eyes blinked. “What do I want? Why, I want you, my friend. And it appears that I have you.”
“What new game is this?” Rand felt his blood run cold. Had he been outwitted somehow?
“I could press that button on the desk and have you arrested for murder, Mr. Rand.”
“Murder!”
“The murder of one Shoju Etan on a Japanese airliner over Russian territory.”
“You’re crazy, my friend.”
“I could produce three witnesses who would swear they saw you shoot him.”
“You had Shoju killed just to frame me for his murder?”
“Hardly. But it is convenient, is it not? I could keep you here, remove you forever from the Department of Concealed Communications.”
“If that’s what you want you could have me killed back in London any day of the week. I’m really quite vulnerable, as I told you once before.”
Taz shook his head. “I do not want you dead, my friend. I want only to make you an offer.”
“In return for my freedom?”
“In return for the freedom of Gordon Belgrave.”
“He means nothing to me.”
Taz shrugged. “Very well, then. Who else must I seize? The American CIA man—Lanning?”
“Leave him out of it.” Rand realized
that his palms were sweating. He’d come here as the cat and now suddenly he felt like the mouse. “What is your offer?”
Taz smiled, motioning toward the walls with their proletarian adornment. “I can assure you there are no listening devices in this room.”
“I accept your assurance.”
“Very well. Let us get to business. My offer is simply this—that we, you and I, join forces for our own betterment. That we, shall I say, exchange certain key pieces of information regarding our codes and ciphers.”
Rand leaned forward, not certain that he’d heard correctly. “You can’t be serious!”
“I’m deadly serious, my friend. Neither of us grows younger. The espionage business is a dying one, replaced by satellites in the sky and old men around a conference table. Would it not be to our advantage to work together, to try and gather a—what is it called?—yes, a nest egg for the days of our enforced retirement. What I am suggesting, after all, is no more than Major Batjuschin suggested to Captain Redl in 1902.”
This brought a smile from Rand. “You mean Captain Redl, the archtraitor?”
“Yes or no, my friend?”
“I suppose, Taz, that what you’re suggesting is the only sensible course for practical men to follow. And I suppose I’m both foolish and old-fashioned in turning you down.”
“What is it—patriotism?”
“Nothing so nebulous as that. I suppose, quite simply, it’s just that I don’t quite trust you, my friend.”
The Russian’s face froze. “Very well. Then Gordon Belgrave remains with us.”
Rand held up a hand. “Not so fast. Now it’s my turn to propose a deal. Do I have your word that the Russians are not responsible for Shoju Etan’s murder?”
“You have it.”
“What about a man named Sivas?”
“A hired killer, employed by the Albanians, and sometimes by their friends the Chinese.”
“I suspected as much.”
“Is Sivas here, in Moscow?” asked Taz curiously.
“If you’ll release Belgrave, I’ll deliver Sivas—and more besides.”
“More?”
“Now it’s your turn to trust me.”
Taz nodded slowly. “Show me Sivas. Where is he?”
“Let’s look for him together. At the Moscow zoo.”
Dr. Yota Nobea glanced up as they entered, neglecting for a moment the languid crocodile in its shallow pool of water. “The zoo is closed till morning,” she said automatically. “It’s almost eleven o’clock.”
Spy Who Read Latin: And Other Stories Page 5