The Hydra Conspiracy

by Len Levinson

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Butler rode the subway to work the next morning. He wore a pinstripe suit, with his Walther in a leather holster on the back of his belt. Taking the elevator in the Noble Oil Building, he got off at the top floor, and there was Ann Rhinestein behind her desk already.

  “Good morning, Ms. Rhinestein,” Butler said, walking toward her desk.

  “Good morning, Mr. Butler.”

  “Sleep well?”

  “Yes, and you?”

  “I probably would have slept better if I could have cuddled up to you all night.”

  She blushed. “Why Mr. Butler, what a thing to say!”

  He walked past her and into the corridor that led to Noble’s office. He came to the area where the typists and bodyguards were stationed. The attractive blonde woman who was in charge of the typists looked up at Butler and smiled.

  “Good morning, Mr. Butler.”

  “Good morning, Ms.—urn, I don’t believe I got your name yesterday.”

  “I’m Ms. Umansky.”

  “I trust you slept well, Ms. Umansky.”

  She frowned. “As a matter of fact I didn’t. I had a bout of insomnia, I’m afraid.”

  He placed his fists on her desk and leaned toward her. “I’m very sorry to hear that; but if it happens again, you might want to give me a call. I have a very effective insomnia cure.”

  “You do?”

  “Uh huh.’

  “What is it?”

  “Well, you take off all your clothes and lie on your back, and then I’ll take off all my clothes and lie on top of—”

  Her eyes goggled. “Mr. Butler!” she exclaimed.

  He smiled. “It works every time, it really does. And you don’t even have to go out to the drugstore.”

  “Mr. Butler, how you do carry on!”

  “Is Mr. Noble in yet?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Then I’ll go in his office and wait for him.”

  “Mr. Noble doesn’t like anybody in his office when he’s not there.”

  “I understand that, but I’m his special security advisor and that doesn’t apply to me.”

  “I suppose it doesn’t, Mr. Butler.”

  Butler opened the big wooden doors and entered Phillip Noble’s office. A life-sized doll was on the rug with its legs spread and there were stains all around it. Butler smiled as he began to check out the room. So the great Phillip Noble liked to screw dummies. Butler examined the electrical fixtures and paintings, trying to determine the best way to bug the room. He’d have to use miniaturized equipment, because he’d have to carry it in and install it himself. Maybe the electric sockets were the best, but he’d better pray that nobody found the bugs.

  He came to a door, turned the knob. The door was locked and he wondered what was on the other side. A closet or a toilet, maybe? He decided to ask Ms. Umansky. Going to the office door, he opened it and called out: “Ms. Umansky, would you come here a moment, please?”

  She arose from her desk and rushed toward him. “Yes, Mr. Butler?”

  He led her into the office and pointed at the door. “What’s in there?”

  “Oh, that’s where Mr. Noble’s files are.”

  “Why’s the door locked?”

  “He doesn’t like people looking at his files, sir.”

  “Do you have a key?”

  “Oh yes. I’m the only one permitted in there to do his filing.”

  “Do you have the key with you?”

  “It’s in the top drawer of my desk.”

  “Please get it and bring it here.”

  “But Mr. Butler!”

  Butler looked at her sternly. “Now Ms. Umansky, you and I must have an understanding. I’m in charge of Mr. Noble’s personal security and it’s essential, if I’m to do a good job, that I conduct a thorough inspection of Mr. Noble’s office. Is that clear?”

  “Yes sir.”

  “Get the key.”

  “Yes sir.”

  She scurried out of the office and in seconds was back with a ring of keys. As she searched for the right one, Butler looked her over. She didn’t look bad for thirty-five—in fact she looked rather comfortable, as older women generally do. She had gigantic breasts and an ass to go with them: her face was plain but could be pretty if she cared to employ the cosmetic arts. In the right setting Ms. Umansky could easily be a two-hundred-dollar trick.

  “It’s this one right here,” she said, holding up the key.

  “Unlock the door, please.”

  She inserted the key in the lock and twisted. The door opened, revealing a large dark closet filled with filing cabinets. She flicked a light switch near the door and the closet became bright. Butler followed her in and closed the door behind her.

  “What’s in the file cabinets?”

  “Correspondence of various types, memoranda and the like.”

  “I suppose it’s all very confidential.”

  “Oh yes indeed.”

  “Then perhaps we should put a better lock on the door, to make this room more secure.” Slowly, as he spoke, he moved away from her and came to rest with his back against the light switch.

  “I don’t know. You’ll have to speak with Mr. Noble about that.”

  “I’ll talk to him about it first thing this morning.”

  Butler pressed against the light switch and pushed down. The switch clicked off and the room became dark.

  “Oh!” exclaimed Ms. Umansky.

  ‘The lights seem to have gone out,” Butler said.

  “Turn on the switch!”

  “Where is it?”

  “Behind you.”

  “Behind me where?”

  “Here.”

  Ms. Umansky groped toward Butler in the dark, put her arms around him, and reached for the switch. He moved forward so she couldn’t reach it, and hugged her torpedo tits against his chest.

  “Why Ms. Umansky, this is so sudden,” he said, nuzzling her ear.

  “Mr. Butler! What on earth are you doing?”

  “I’m afraid of the dark. Please help me.”

  She tried weakly to get away, but she didn’t have a boyfriend and her cause of insomnia was exactly what Butler had diagnosed. “Oh Mr. Butler,” she sighed, feeling his strong body against her.

  He kissed her cheek. “I’m so happy that we’ll be working together,” he said.

  “But Mr. Butler....”

  He cupped one of her huge breasts in his hand. “How soft and wonderful you are, Ms. Umansky.”

  “Oh Mr. Butler, you shouldn’t—”

  “I know I shouldn’t but I can’t help myself.” He put one hand up her dress and felt her nylon-clad thigh.

  She was breathing heavily, and Butler knew he had her crazy now. She was sexually deprived; she’d do anything, once she got going. He glided his fingers up and down her magic valley. She touched his throbbing screwdriver. Their lips met and exchanged ambrosia. He unzipped his fly and took it out.

  “It’s like a piece of steel,” Ms. Umansky said. “You’re making me so bad.”

  “Don’t blame it all on me.”

  “But I’ve never done this before with a man.”

  “Sure you haven’t.”

  She raised her head and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. “You’re making me have the most disgusting thoughts,” she said with a silly grin.

  “Describe them to me.”

  Demurely she lifted her skirt.

  “Turn around and lean against that file cabinet,” he whispered into her ear.

  She shivered as she did his bidding.

  “Bend over more,” he uttered.

  “Oh Mr. Butler—.”

  He pulled down her underpants. She covered her pretty face with both her hands. “But I really shouldn’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “You’ll think I’m awful.”

  “I think you’re awful already.”

  “Then I guess it won’t matter.” She grabbed his pole with one dainty
hand, touched its head to her quivering muff, and slowly inserted it into her most tender delicate place. “Oh my goodness, Butler,” she said when it was all in.

  “Are you all right?”

  “I think so.”

  She touched the space between her bobbing breasts. “It feels like it’s in all the way to here.”

  He reached up and cupped a soft breast in each of his hands. “You mean all the way up to these?”

  “Oh Butler, that feels so good. You know just what to do.”

  She wiggled for joy and pushed back against him. He long-stroked her, holding onto her huge breasts.

  “Oh, this is just what I needed,” she whimpered.

  “I guarantee that you’ll sleep better tonight,” he replied.

  “Oh Mr. Butler, I’d love to do this with you in a bed with all our clothes off—maybe in dim candlelight.”

  “We’ll surely do that sometime, Ms. Umansky.”

  “Why don’t you call me Madeleine,” she cooed.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  During his lunch break that day, Butler took a cab uptown to the Museum of Natural History. He paid his admission, got the little metal button to pin on his collar, and made his way to the huge gloomy basement, filled with skeletons of dinosaurs and pterodactyls. It smelled of decay and the prehistoric past of the world, and Butler found an old guard staring with fascination at the skeleton in a glass case of a giant turtle from the Jurassic Period.

  The guard turned to Butler as he approached.

  “Can you tell me where Doctor Lesley Clarke’s office is?”

  “Doctor Clarke? He’s along the wall there just behind the fossils of the marine echinoderms.”

  Butler didn’t remember what marine echinoderms were, but he knew what fossils looked like. When he came to a display of them encased under glass he looked up and saw a door behind them. The door had a sign on it that said PALEONTOLOGY OFFICE. He opened the door and entered an old-fashioned office where a stout woman sat behind an old wooden desk. The lighting was so poor Butler felt as though he’d stepped into the nineteen-twenties.

  “May I help you?” asked the woman.

  “I’d like to see Doctor Clarke, please.”

  “Are you Mr. Butler?”

  “Yes, I am.”

  “He’s expecting you. He’s in that office over there.”

  Butler looked in the direction of the pointing finger and saw three office doors. The one in the middle said DR. LESLEY CLARKE. He walked to it, knocked. A voice said, “Come in.”

  He entered a small office where a slender man of forty-odd years sat in front of a roll top desk that was against the wall. He had thick salt-and-pepper hair parted in the middle, wore eyeglasses and a tweedy suit, and was eating a hot pastrami sandwich on rye.

  “Butler?”

  “Yes.”

  “Have a seat, old man.”

  Butler sat on the wooden chair beside the desk. The old furniture reminded him of grammar school. “Sorry to be interrupting your lunch,” he said.

  “Well, it’s not much of a lunch. You pay three dollars and fifty cents for a pastrami sandwich and all they give you is fat.” He pushed the sandwich away. “To what do I owe the pleasure of this visit?”

  “I need some listening devices that will fit in standard wall sockets, and a small camera to photograph some documents.”

  Clarke made notes on a pad. “I’ll have them for you tomorrow.”

  “And you’ll have to rent an office somewhere near Noble’s office so we can pick up the radio transmissions from the listening devices.”

  “We already have one. Do you know when you’re leaving for South America?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Don’t suppose you know the country yet?”

  “No.”

  “If he’s going in person, that means Hydra is up to no good. As soon as you know what their plans are, be sure to contact the local office of the Institute.”

  “Will do.”

  “Anything else?”

  “No. How about you?”

  “You can have this sandwich if you want it.”

  “No thanks. Has anything interesting happened in your field lately, by the way?”

  “As a matter of fact it has. It’s just been determined that within one billion years after the formation of the earth, one-celled organisms had evolved out of organic molecules produced non-biologically in an atmosphere containing no free oxygen.”

  “No kidding.”

  “And it took three billion years for those one-celled organisms to evolve into multi-cellular organisms. Those figures are rather astounding when you realize that man evolved from the primates during a period of only about four million years.”

  “We’re relative newcomers to the scene, aren’t we?”

  Doctor Clarke chucked darkly. “Yes, and if we’re not careful we’re liable to put an end to everything within the space of a few hours.”

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Butler returned to the Noble Oil Building and walked into the office of Phillip Noble, who was behind his desk putting papers into an attaché case.

  “Where’ve you been?” Noble asked.

  “Out to lunch.”

  “The executive dining room isn’t good enough for you?”

  “I had a date.”

  “Bring her here.”

  “I think she would’ve made the other executives a little nervous, sir.”

  “What the hell was wrong with her?”

  “Nothing, but she’s a chorus girl and she’s sort of spectacular, sir, if you know what I mean.”

  “Oh, I see. A ladies’ man, eh?”

  “Everybody needs his nooky, sir.”

  “That’s true, but hereafter I don’t want you leaving the building for lunch. I want you where I can get you fast if I need you. Got it?”

  “Yes sir.”

  “Good. And by the way, we’re leaving for South America right now.”

  “Right now?”

  “That’s right.”

  “But I haven’t packed anything.”

  “You don’t have to pack anything. We buy what we need along the way. A special purchasing agent comes along with us for that purpose. I don’t believe in wasting time, Butler. When it’s time to go, it’s time to go. Follow me.”

  “Yes sir.”

  Noble walked out of his office, with Butler close at his heels. In the corridor waited secretaries, administrative assistants and various other flunkies who followed Noble down the corridor to the elevators that were waiting with their doors open. They boarded the elevators and rode down to the basement of the building, where a caravan of five black Cadillac limousines were standing with engines running and chauffeurs holding the rear doors open. Noble and Butler got in the rear seat of one of the limousines; another bodyguard sat in front with the driver.

  The caravan rolled out of the subterranean garage onto the streets of New York. Noble and Butler were in the third car, Butler thinking that to pedestrians they must look like a funeral procession. The caravan went over the Williamsburg Bridge and then careened onto the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway. Looking west, Butler could see the Manhattan skyline in the gray smog of morning.

  He turned to Noble. “Can you tell me where we’re going?”

  Noble smiled as he held a black cigar in his jeweled hand. “If I can’t tell my personal security officer, who can I tell? We’re going to Halvados. We’re scheduled to land in the Air Force terminal outside Halvados City at five in the afternoon, our time.”

  Butler consulted his mental map. Halvados was a country about the size of Texas, located on the Pacific Ocean side of South America. It had mineral-rich mountains within its borders, as well as fertile coastal plains, not to mention huge oil reserves near the Gulf of Villa Puntas. Butler remembered reading somewhere that the Noble Oil Company owned most of the oil wells, most of the mineral-rich mountains and much of the fertile coastal plain. The rest of the country was owned by about two hundred
local families, for whom the rest of the population worked.

  The black caravan made its way to Kennedy Airport, where it stopped beside a huge hangar on its side was painted NOBLE AIR TRANSPORT. Butler knew that the Agency often used this airline company for its dirty work in South America.

  Everyone got out of the limousines and walked to the front of the hangar, where a sleek Boeing 707 was waiting, with steps leading to a door in its belly. At the foot of the steps were four airline stewardesses and the captain to welcome Phillip Noble aboard personally. Surrounding the aircraft were technicians and a group of men in business suits, one of whom was Kurt Leiberfarb.

  Butler walked up to Leiberfarb, who was standing by the tail of the plane, sniffing the air. “What’s doing?” Butler asked.

  “We’re guarding the aircraft to make sure no one will sabotage it. We’ve already searched it and there were no bombs. You should have a safe trip.” Leiberfarb spoke mechanically, as if making an official announcement.

  “I’m surprised that you’re out here,” Butler said. “I’d imagine this would be a job for assistants.”

  “One of Mr. Noble’s planes blew up once, only minutes before he stepped on board. Since then I’ve personally supervised the examinations of his planes prior to his leaving the states.”

  “Are you coming with us to Halvados?”

  “No. The responsibility for Mr. Noble’s security will be up to you. And please don’t stand so close to me. The germs, you know.”

  “Ah yes.”

  “The others have just about finished boarding the plane. You’d better get going.”

  Butler looked toward the boarding steps; indeed, the last administrative assistant was passing through the doors. Butler trotted toward the steps, beside which two airline stewardesses were standing with their sweet welcoming smiles.

  “Hiya, girls,” Butler said, pausing at the foot of the steps.

  “Good afternoon, sir,” they replied in unison.