by Peter Heath
He was referring to the other night’s activities. Jason smiled. Nothing had been proved, so the old man was taking the easy way out.
“Good enough,” he said. “And I was just wondering what you people would do if there was proof that the Chinese had a working model of the mind-control machine?”
“We would decide that when the evidence was available,” said Hamilton. “Now, Mr. Starr, if you don’t mind, I am a very busy man . . .”
Jason stared into the bleak old eyes. “You have to give me a chance—it’s too damned important!” he blazed out.
“Sorry, my hands are tied,” the old man said grimly.
“Mine aren’t. You can do me one last favor. Give me the name of your man in India. If I should find out anything, I think you might want to know.”
The old man winced as if the request was an extremely unpleasant one. Another long moment passed, and then he nodded. “As a private citizen you are subject to the laws of the countries through which you travel. The Central Intelligence Agency will offer you no protection . . . and that goes for your rather strange friend here.” Hamilton indicated Cyber, who looked the slightest bit injured by the remark but maintained his customary silence.
“Agreed,” said Jason.
“Very well. I am convinced that your efforts will only succeed in the further destruction of your scientific reputation, but at least your government will not be liable for any of your mistakes,” said Hamilton, scribbling the information on a memo pad. He shoved it across the desk to Jason.
“I will instruct my people to stay out of your way and to offer you no assistance. Gentlemen, it is late and I have work to do,” Hamilton rose. He left the room hurriedly and without a handshake.
“Grouchy old character, isn’t he?” Jason said. “Come on, Adam, let’s get out of here. The place is beginning to give me the bureaucratic jitters.”
* * *
Chapter †
EIGHT
BLACKIE’S HOUSE OF BEEF squats on the periphery of Georgetown in a neighborhood that combines old wealth and new influence in equal proportions. It is one of Washington’s new cocktail shelters and it serves only U.S.D.A. Choice along with its triple martinis and flambeaux desserts. Blackie’s is also convenient to the official offices of a number of government departments and, on any given night, the owners of the low-numbered license plates on all the big black cars lined up in front will read right out of Who’s Who.
Inside, the atmosphere is as jovial and informal as the blue-suited V.I.P.’s and their underlings can allow it to be. The long bar and the dining rooms twinkle with lively conversation. Well-dressed, handsome men look boldly at beautiful women . . . who look right back, which is very much part of the great game of government life in our nation’s capital.
There are other, dimmer, quieter rooms in Blackie’s. Rooms where meetings take place that gossip columns never mention. Where deals are made, propositions offered and where a man and a woman can sit with their knees touching . . . or where two men can sit watching.
“He will return with her to his hotel,” said the well-dressed man whose face was lost in the semi-darkness of the corner table. He spoke in an argot composed of Chinese and twisted French—a means of communication seldom heard outside of certain south Chinese ports—and his friend nodded. Both of them looked across the room at the lean, handsome young man and the striking young girl who was his dinner companion.
“It is unfortunate that he wishes to make love to such a beautiful woman,” said the other man. “The profoundity of desire should not be violated.” He quoted The Golden Lotus with a sigh.
“In this case you will follow your instructions,” the well-dressed man hissed. “Leave me now and prepare.”
With a slight inclination of his head, the other man rose and left the room.
Jason let his hand linger on the back of her wrist. It was a milky-white wrist and it contrasted wonderfully with her raven-black hair and her lovely blue eyes.
“You know, Maria, you’re quite a dish for a lady who works for the CIA,” he said. Not bad for anywhere, he thought. She was a combination of beauty and brains that you seldom ran across. She had worked hard with him during the past three nights in Hamilton’s office. Work that had left him no time to be more than coldly courteous, until tonight. Tonight was different. Tomorrow he would leave for India to investigate the New Delhi conference of brain researchers and, tonight, he wanted to forget the whole business.
“Yes, that’s me,” she said. “Holly Golightly the Government Girl. Maria d’Allesandro Corday. Italian papa, French maman, and Charlotte Corday, the heroine of the French Revolution for a great-great-great-aunt.”
“So you’ve worked for old Hamilton since you left the State Department?” he said, looking into her deep blue eyes.
“Yes. Why the sad eyes, Jason?” Maria smiled across the table.
“Purely my own feelings. You hardly know me, and I might be what the CIA seems to believe I am—a phony ex-scientist who’s flipped his lid.” Jason scowled.
A velvet smooth thigh pressed against his own under the table. Maria laughed. “A man like you, Jason? Nonsense. And you weren’t thinking about that, anyway. You were thinking of making love to me.” Her eyes challenged him.
“It’s an unfair proposition,” said Jason. “I’m hardly the type you should be seen with.”
“Let me be the judge of that,” the sophisticated, warm girl said as she smiled a secret smile. “Take me out of here. I want to be alone with you,” she whispered.
The man at the corner table watched the young couple leave. Noting that they were pressing very close against each other, he smiled. Then he sighed and got up to make a telephone call.
In the car there was a lingering kiss which both Jason and Maria knew was the prelude to the naked touch of their deeper desire. As they left the car and entered the old-fashioned lobby of Jason’s hotel, the desk clerk caught his attention.
“A Mr. Cyber called for you,” he said.
That was strange, thought Jason. He had left Adam in his room, reading the entire Congressional Record for 1965. Deciding to check on him on the way up, he took Maria’s arm and they went up in the elevator. While he excused himself to visit Cyber, the girl went on to his room. Once there she slipped out of her evening gown in front of the mirror, looking at her high-tilted breasts, the flat satin-smooth stomach and the long dancer’s legs. She smiled the secret smile of a woman waiting for a man. Then she slipped between the sheets of the double bed to wait for Jason.
After verifying that his friend had not left his suite at all during the evening, Jason walked back to his room. Someone had obviously been using Cyber’s name. For what purpose, he didn’t know. It was late. The corridor was dimmed down for the night. He paused in front of his door. Then he tapped gently. There was no reply. He knocked loudly.
Then he smelled it. The bitter-sweet vapor he knew so well. The vapor that all chemists could identify. It coiled up from underneath the locked door. Holding his breath, he charged. The door held. It was solid mahogany and only 100 years old. But the lock was new and cheap. It shattered in the face of his second assault and he plunged into the gas-filled room.
Without a glance at the small, still form on his bed, he ran for the window. He opened it wide and took a quick breath of fresh night air. Then he turned, ran to the bedside, scooped the naked girl’s limp form up in his arms and made it into the corridor, kicking the door shut with his foot as he went.
Cyber, a man with ten senses, was waiting for him.
“Cyanide,” he gasped, cradling Maria’s body in his arms. He fought the spasms of dizziness and nausea off long enough for Cyber to take her. Then he fell to his knees. Sparks of light—a typical toxic reaction—corrupted his vision, and the whole world went around in a wide circle. Finally, after a fit of deep coughing, it was over and he managed to stand up.
Cyber’s door was half-open. Jason made it there on rubber legs. Cyber was working over
her with the quick, deft movements of a surgeon, his green eyes probing the soft, sun-browned flesh, his fingers playing lightly across certain pressure points.
“She is nearly dead,” he said without raising his head.
“There was enough gas in that room to kill twenty people. It’s probably too late, but I’ll call the emergency hospital right away,” he muttered hopelessly.
“On the contrary, my friend, but it seems unwise to create a—confusion—when—” Cyber’s hands worked rapidly in back of the girl’s head, “—when there is no need to do so,” he said, stepping back.
Jason watched in amazement as her eyelids fluttered and her respiration returned to normal. Maria moaned pitifully and her arms thrashed against the side of the bed. In a few more minutes the girl was sitting up, her eyes open with the two men leaning over her.
“Welcome back,” said Jason. “I’ll get you something to cover yourself with.”
“I expect it’s too late for that,” she said dryly.
Nevertheless, Jason brought her a robe. She slipped into it without false modesty and they sat looking at each other.
“What happened?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” Maria said, her dark eyes glistening with emotion. “I was waiting for you. I must have fallen asleep. That’s all I remember until—I—woke up in here.”
“Wait a minute.” Jason crossed the room to where Cyber was sitting, preoccupied with his Congressional Record again.
“A gas device is probably concealed in my room. Small enough to hide easily,” he said. Cyber nodded, rose, and left the room. Certain suspicions were beginning to form in Jason’s mind. Suspicions that made the hair on his spine come to attention.
“How do you feel now, Maria?” he said.
“Don’t be silly, I feel fine. What happened, anyway?” Her voice had taken on its old charm and huskiness.
Yes, what had happened? Jason asked himself. It would have looked like a suicide, the suicide of a disgraced scientist. How convenient for whoever wanted him out of the way. He could almost see the headlines: Bad boy scientist dies in arms of woman. Or, more than likely, the CIA would have buried the story and both of them under an old oak tree somewhere to rest in peace and anonymity.
Cyber returned. He was carrying a metal tube three inches long. It had a nozzle at one end.
“Under the mattress,” he announced. “The pressure switch releases the gas when the weight against it reaches one hundred pounds. I estimate its capacity at five hundred cubic feet.”
The girl looked at Jason.
Gently, he explained to her what had happened.
“It wasn’t me they wanted to kill,” she clutched his arm. “But why you, Jason?”
“For a very logical reason,” he said. “They didn’t succeed the first time.”
Jason took the girl home.
He drove slowly along the deserted parkway, through the high canopy of night-flowering trees, holding her close and thinking. He told her as much as he dared to tell anyone. He told her about his old and happy life in Los Angeles and about the Project. Then he told her what had happened in Viet Nam, leaving out some of it because nobody could understand that part unless they had lived through it themselves. Then he told her that tonight was his last night because he had to leave in the morning.
She was a smart girl. She didn’t ask the questions she knew he wouldn’t answer. The questions about Cyber and about the “accident” in Viet Nam. She was frightened for him because someone was trying to kill him and she knew they would try again and that he was playing a dangerous game.
He parked in front of the old Georgetown duplex. He opened the door with the key she handed him and took her upstairs. As soon as he shut the door they were in each other’s arms, moving quickly because it was already 3:30 in the morning and time had run away with their lives.
They made love as only lovers do: giving, taking, rising, fusing. With low sounds and whispered endearments until they fell together into a whirlpool which spun faster and faster driving them to the final explosion of their passion.
Then they lay together in the first light of morning, smoking cigarettes and, then, it was time for Jason to go.
“Jason, be careful, darling,” she whispered in his ear with perfumed, full lips.
“I’ll try.” Jason turned to look into the lovely and tender face of the girl who should have died three hours ago in his own bed. It had been his stupidity that had exposed her and, now, he was leaving her.
“Listen, Maria,” he said. “Be careful, baby. Something awfully funny is going on. It may have nothing to do with you, but keep your eyes open.” Their lips sealed the meaning of Jason’s words.
He blew her a last kiss from the door. She smiled bravely and then he was gone.
* * *
Chapter †
NINE
TEA WAS SERVED at high noon, out of an eighteenth century antique teapot, off an aluminum cart, into plastic cups with a fake floral design by a marvelously tanned young lady in a hip-clinging skirt. All this took place while the BOAC jet sat on a scarred patch of boiling concrete in front of the flea-bitten two-story building that served the British Protectorate of Aden for an air terminal. It was waiting for its wing tanks to be topped off for the final 1,600 miles that would bring it across the blue Indian Ocean into Bombay.
The plane was on London time; the passengers were on London temperature; and no one was really interested in the fact that just outside the window the thermometer was hovering at 122 degrees, or that refueling was a slow and difficult process due to the tendency of kerosene to become extremely volatile at such a relatively low temperature.
In fact, only one passenger out of the eighty bothered to follow the frantic activities of the burnoosed ground crew. And again, he was the only one who observed the little, swarthy man in blue coveralls who came out of the terminal building to join his fellow workers five minutes late. A straggler and a gold-brick. But who could blame him? The heat—after all, it was impossible—even for the Arabs. And the poor fellow was carrying a small heavy blue bag. Tools, no doubt. Probably to check things out underneath. Yes, that was it. That was where he had disappeared so suddenly.
If the passenger in question had been less alert to the proceedings, he would have sunk back down into his first-class seat, swallowed the last bit of muffin, and promptly forgotten the whole episode.
But the passenger was not only alert; he had also been waiting for something just a little out of the ordinary to occur. His name was Jason Starr and he was waiting for the next move to be made in the little game being played underneath his seat.
He heard it.
The gentle sound of the forward baggage-compartment hatch being opened. Then, for a short while, nothing. Then the soft thump as the hatch was closed and locked. He waited.
The little man reappeared. He joined his companions, who were dragging their hoses off the big jet’s wing and stuffing them back into the Shell Oil truck parked nearby. They all worked swiftly (the heat, of course), and by the time the first engine started up with a whine of compressed air, they had disappeared into the coolness of the building. The little man had been with them, his hands as empty as a bad gambler’s pocket.
Jason decided to gamble too, because he had to get to Bombay as soon as possible. Since Cyber was, by prearranged decision, aboard a later flight, it was his option to take a risk.
He waited until the big overseas jet had thundered off the single runway and was climbing out over the rocky barren wasteland. Then he waited another hour before he went forward and asked the flight steward for permission to speak to the captain.
“About what, may I ask, sir?” the steward asked politely.
“Oh, nothing really.” The damned English forced you to use good manners under the strangest circumstances, thought Jason. “There’s a splendid chance that this airliner will be blown to bits by a bomb that was placed aboard it at Aden . . . so be a good fellow and mention it to the cap
tain, will you?”
The steward’s face changed color twice, and he disappeared into the pilot’s compartment. Seconds later, Jason was explaining the situation to the middle-aged man who was responsible for the safety of eighty-nine people and seven million dollars worth of aircraft.
“Why didn’t you say something before we took off?” the captain said. “We’re already an hour out with nothing but water to land on.”
“I can’t be sure,” said Jason. “I had to think about it before I decided to tell you. You know—crackpots and all that . . .” He was twisting the argument a little bit for his own purposes, but it seemed to calm the captain down.
“Well, we’ll just have to radio Aden that we’re turning back,” he said. “At least they’ll know what happened if we disappear off the radar screen.”
“Wait,” Jason shot back. “I’m a bit of an expert in these matters . . . demolition school during the war and all that. Also, if it is a bomb, it won’t be fused to explode until we’re well out and far enough away from immediate rescue operations for all of the bits and pieces to sink. These people are obviously professionals and they don’t want an investigation.”
“Right you are, but nevertheless I’m turning around,” the captain said. He started forward.
“Captain, if they really are as good as they seem to be, we’ll never make it,” Jason said calmly.
“What’s that?”
“Divide your distance traveled by your cruising speed. The thing should be due to go off in less than a half-hour from now, which would put you over the deepest part of the Arabian Gulf.”
The captain’s face lost more than a little of its normal ruddiness. “There are three baggage compartments in this aircraft. If you’re right, we’ll have time to get inside one,” he said.
“No sweat,” said Jason. “The little prankster put it right under my seat.”