by Ted Mark
"Not recently. That's true. But," Singh explained, "you have crossed swords with the N.K.V.D. in the past, haven't you?"
"Yes," I admitted.
"Then I'm afraid you and your government have underrated them. They had you under surveillance all the time you were in London. And they followed you to New York."
"But why would the Russians tell S.M.U.T. about me?"
"They didn't. But the Russian agent tailing you was in turn under surveillance by S.M.U.T. They just put two and two together, that's all."
"But why were they keeping tabs on the Russian?"
"Because he too is looking for Dr. Nyet."
"But if that's true," I said, puzzled, "then why did Crampdick take me to the brothel, Wasn't that leading me right to Dr. Nyet if she was there?"
"Because Crampdick is only a dupe. He knows nothing about you. Indeed, he knows nothing about the real objectives of S.M.U.T. He is perfectly sincere in fighting vice, and so he is useful to them. But both he and O'Steele were only foils in S.M.U.T.'s real game. Crampdick's leading you to the brothel was strictly his own idea. Once he'd done it, though, it provided the opportunity to have you eliminated."
"You mean the two hoods? Are they working for S.M.U.T. too? I thought they were on the other side."
"I'm only guessing," Singh admitted, "but I wouldn't be surprised if that vice ring is only another branch of S.M.U.T. Most of the gangsters involved in it probably don't even know that themselves. Probably the killers were perfectly sincere in believing you had to be murdered because of S.M.U.T.'s interference with their operation. And yet S.M.U.T. itself may have pulled the strings."
"But then why kill the others? Crampdick, O'Steele, yourself, even the girls?"
"We were all expendable if the menace you constitute could have been removed."
"What about Dr. Nyet? You say she was one of the girls. She wasn't expendable."
"No. That's true. But then you don't know for sure that they would have killed any of the girls. Maybe their orders were to simply abduct them and not to harm them. That would be my guess, anyway," Singh said.
"Which one of the three girls was Dr. Nyet?"
"I was unable to find out," Singh admitted.
"And did you find out who's really the top man in S.M.U.T. in New York?"
"No. All I'm sure of is that it's nobody obvious. It's none of the people who run the operation. They're all dupes dedicated to anti-vice. But their orders come from someone higher. He's probably the only one who's in on S.M.U.T.'s real purpose."
I couldn't think of anything else to say to Singh. My head was spinning with everything he'd told me. I told him good night, and just before I left we arranged to meet at the S.M.U.T. offices the next afternoon. It seemed the only place to renew both our quests.
I slept right through until an hour before the time we'd set to meet. Then I had a quick shower, got dressed, gulped down some coffee, and grabbed a cab to the midtown S.M.U.T. offices. Singh was already there, and Crampdick saw us together immediately.
"Do you know that Jock O'Steele was murdered last night?" Crampdick said agitatedly as soon as we entered his office.
We told him we knew about it.
"Every one of us who was in that dreadful place is in danger of our lives!" Crampdick continued. "That vice ring will stop at nothing to revenge itself on us. New York isn't safe. For that reason S.M.U.T. has made arrangements for all of us to leave the city."
Singh and I raised our eyebrows at each other. "Where are we to go?" Singh asked.
"Different places. I am going to Toronto myself. You are to return to New Delhi. The three young ladies will be dispersed elsewhere. Mr. Victor is to accompany you."
"Suppose I don't want to go to New Delhi?" I asked mildly.
"But you must. It's for your own safety. And it's an order. If you wish to remain in S.M.U.T., you must learn not to question orders, Mr. Victor."
"New Delhi it is, then," I agreed because at the moment I didn't have any other idea of how to pursue my search for Dr. Nyet and there seemed no point to severing the tenuous connection I'd made with S.M.U.T.
They worked fast. All the arrangements were made for us, and that very evening Singh and I were at Kennedy Airport, all set to leave for New Delhi. But while we were waiting I saw something that made me abruptly decide to change my plans.
I spotted one of the S.M.U.T. girls I'd helped escape the brothel. It was the Slavic-looking brunette who'd gone through the window with Crampdick the night before. She was standing in a line-up of people waiting at one of the gates for their plane to begin loading.
I checked the flight schedules. The plane she was waiting for was bound for Johannesburg, South Africa. I had to work fast.
I told Singh I wouldn't be going to New Delhi with him after all and waved away his questions. Fortunately, thanks to Putnam's foresight, my passport was validated for any destination I chose. Now I chose Johannesburg, bought a ticket for the same plane as the brunette, and made haste to board it.
Once in my seat, for a moment I thought I might have goofed. She wasn't aboard. I peered out the window and finally I spotted her. She was talking to a man at the gate. Her figure blocked the man's face. Then, as she turned away, I saw him. It was Peter Highman!
A moment later she boarded the plane. Shortly after that, another man came racing up just as they were removing the stairway. They held it for him, and he boarded the aircraft, much out of breath. He seemed to be looking for someone as he came down the aisle. He made such a point of not staring that I guessed that I was the man he was seeking. But when he chose the seat behind the girl, it inspired me to twist my conclusion for my own ends.
The opportunity came about an hour after we were in the air. He got up and went to the men's room. I quickly moved to take the seat beside the girl.
"Do you recognize me?" I asked in a low tone.
"Why, yes," she said, sounding surprised. "I think I do. Aren't you the one who helped me last night? Mr. Crampdick's friend?"
"That's right. I'm Steve Victor. What's your name?"
"Ilona Tabori."
"Well, listen, Ilona. Listen carefully. We don't have much time to talk. That man in the seat behind you is following you. Don't ask me how I know. Just take my word for it."
"Why are you telling me this?"
"We're on the same side, aren't we? We both work for S.M.U.T. And we're in the same fix. We're both on the lam from New York because of what happened last night. Only I think that guy following you may be one of the bunch we're on the lam from."
"Is S.M.U.T. sending you to Salisbury, too?" she asked innocently.
Salisbury! So that was it. She wasn't going to Johannesburg to hide out there. She was going to change planes for Salisbury, the capital city of Rhodesia! "Yes," I lied. "They're sending me to Salisbury, too." Just then I spotted the door to the men's room opening. "He's coming back," I told Ilona. "I don't want him to see me with you. We'll have to talk later." I scurried back to my seat.
Once there, a swarm of questions buzzed through my mind. Who was the man following me? Which side did he represent? Why had S.M.U.T. sent Ilona to Rhodesia? How come she was talking to Peter Highman at the airport? What was Peter Highman's part in all this? Why had he murdered his wife and tried to murder me? Was it more than mere jealousy? And then there was the most important question of all:
Was Ilona Tabori really Dr. Nyet?
CHAPTER FIVE
At Johannesburg I arranged to continue on to Salisbury. Ilona Tabori was already booked through. It was no surprise to either of us to see the man who'd been following me board the plane at the last minute.
Fortunately, his kidneys were as weak as ever, and so I had a chance to exchange a few words with Ilona while he was in the john. It seemed wise not to let him see us together. If he hadn't connected us up together already, why make the connection for him?
During our short talk, Ilona gave me the name of the hotel she'd be staying at in Salisbury. I assured
her that I'd contact her there. I suppose she took it for granted that the contact had to do with S.M.U.T. I would have liked to ask her some questions then about Peter Highman, but there was no time. I barely made it back to my seat before my urinary tail was back on the job. Not long after that we set down in Salisbury.
We landed in the middle of quiet chaos. It was late in the evening of November 11, 1965 – the day Rhodesian Prime Minister Ian D. Smith declared the country's independence from Great Britain and subjected four million Africans to rule by a small voting minority of the country's 172,000 white Europeans. In the wake of this announcement, as I left the airport by cab with the man who'd been following me in another cab close behind, the Salisbury I found was a city of silence broken by the sound of sudden gunfire, a city under surveillance by patroling white soldiers trying to ferret out the secret meetings of liberty-minded black men risking their lives to plan for freedom in cellars and attics, a time-bomb of a city whose fuse was the policy of apartheid.
But there was another aspect to Salisbury which struck me as my cab crawled down the quiet streets, halted frequently by one of the patrols, then waved onward when it was determined that the driver and passenger were both white. This other aspect was of an extremely modern metropolis with a popultion of over 314,000 people, a population which had multiplied almost tenfold in less than thirty years. Yet the part of the city through which I was traveling showed no hint of the overcrowding which might have been expected to result from such a population increase. It was clean, with tall, white apartment buildings spaced well apart. Later I would learn that this view was typical only of the major portion of the city in which the white population lives. Like most modern African cities, Salisbuy has its slums. And like Johannesburg, the slums of Salisbury are set off by the invisible line of apartheid and house only non-whites.
But the section through which I was traveling said something important about both the city and the country. It said that where there is gold, people live well. It said that the living standard is the gold standard in Rhodesia.
Gold!
Even today it is still the chief resource of Rhodesia. Before the country had a recorded history, it contained what was probably the greatest gold field of the ancient world. The ancient shafts used to mine this gold back then are still to be seen today in the are of the gold fields, an area which measures rougly 400 miles by 500 miles. Estimates by archeologists are that some four hundred million dollars in gold was taken from these mines in ancient times.
Yet these ancient miners barely scratched the surface. For some reason, they stopped digging up the gold long before the white man came to Rhodesia. Perhaps it was so abundant that it no longer had any great value in their economy. Or perhaps they had arrived at a philosophical stage beyond that of civilized man today, a philosophy that turned its back on slaving and killing for precious metal and took refuge in a more naturalistic tribal culture, a culture based on survival rather than competition.
In any case, such was the culture that the white man found when he came to Rhodesia. And so he plundered the land of its gold and used as his justifiction the fact that the natives hadn't developed their natural resources. And by "natural resources," he meant gold.
With his arrival, the natives developed their natural resources, all right. Actual slavery and semi-slavery forced them back down into the ancient mine shafts to bring up still more of the inexhaustible supply of gold. At gunpoint they flushed the gold from the bowels of the earth for their white masters. And the masters grew fat on the gold, and built houses and then cities, the greatest of which is Salisbury. And now Salisbury ruled the golden land and defied the British Empire to give the native Rhodesians any share of the city of Gold.
My hotel was smack in the middle of this city. Two white Rhodesian soldiers guarded the entrance. They checked my passport and other credentials and then waved me on through. I had wired ahead from Johannesburg for reservations, and the desk clerk had a room waiting for me. It was a large room, well-furnished and luxurious, and the bed looked soft and comfortable. As soon as the bellhop left, I locked the door behind him and started undressing. Right now, all I wanted was to get into that bed and get some much-needed sleep.
I took off my pants and suit-jacket and arranged them on a hanger I took from my suitcase. Then I crossed over to the closet to hang them up. Yawning, I opened the closet door and reached inside with the hanger.
"Mr. Victor, you are stepping on my foot!"
I jumped back and opened my eyes very wide. At first they saw nothing. Then they dropped and my jaw dropped with them as I saw the speaker.
Standing against the rear wall of the closet was an African pigmy. He was dressed in a neat blue suit with a maroon tie and a stiffly starched white shirt. The neatly shaped beard he sported left no doubt that he was a man and not a child. Nor was it only his ebony complexion that led me immediately to think of him as a pigmy, rather than an ordinary midget. It was also the blowpipe he held in one hand grazing the clean-shaven cheek above his beard. I'd seen such weapons before. The darts they discharge are usually tipped with a deadly poison which kills on contact.
"What do you want?" After my initial jump, I wasn't about to make any more sudden moves. He looked as if he knew how to use that blowpipe.
"I wish to speak with you, Mr. Victor. Do not be afraid. I mean you no harm." His English was Oxford-perfect.
"Oh, no?" I eyed the blowpipe with obvious suspicion.
"I am holding this at the ready to protect us both from the threat of intruders. It is not meant to threaten you. It is meant to protect you. There are dangers here of which you are not yet aware. Indeed, tonight Salisbury is a city fraught with danger for all. But the danger to you, Mr. Victor, is more specific and greater than to most."
"How so?"
"Hang up your clothes, Mr. Victor, and sit down, and I will explain."
I did as he said and then perched on the edge of the bed. He came out of the closet and took a chair opposite me. I noticed that he picked a chair against the wall which enabled him to keep an eye on both the window and the door. He continued to hold the blowpipe like a cigarette from which he was about to take a puff.
"Now, who are you and what do you want?" I asked.
"Call me Lagula. I'm an agent of British Intelligence."
"Let me see your credentials."
"Don't be foolish, Mr. Victor. I don't walk around carrying identification. Even before today, a British agent who did that would simply be asking to be shot."
"Granted. But how can I be sure you are what you say you are?"
"Does the name Charles Putnam mean anything to you?"
"Yes, it does."
"I was told to say that Charles Putnam said you should trust me. And I was told to identify myself further by delivering a rather peculiar message to you from Mr. Putnam."
"What message?"
"I am to tell you that Gladys is on ice and the Beatle fans are waiting."
I grinned. Occasional humor from the usually dour Putnam never failed to surprise me. And the message certainly seemed to vouch for the fact that Lagula was legit. I said as much by the way I untensed and relaxed against the pillows on the bed.
"What does the message mean?" Lagula asked.
"Nothing really. It's a private joke. But it says I should trust you. So go ahead and fill me in on the situation."
"Very well, Mr. Victor. First of all, you were followed from the airport."
"I know that," I interrupted.
"Yes. But do you know who followed you?"
"Not really. I'd guess he's an agent of S.M.U.T. Or possibly of a New York vice ring out to get me because they think I'm an agent of S.M.U.T." I decided against going into the tie-in between the vice ring and S.M.U.T. It was too complex, and I wasn't sure I understood it myself.
"Wrong on both guesses, Mr. Victor. The man following you is a Russian agent. His name is Vlankov. British Intelligence has a long dossier on him. But what we don't know is wh
y he is following you. Have you any idea?"
"No," I said noncommittally.
"Mr. Victor, you must confide in me. Has it to do with S.M.U.T.?"
"Then he must be following you because he thinks you have discovered a lead to the whereabouts of Dr. Nyet."
"You know about Dr. Nyet?"
"I know that you are searching for her, and I know that she is important. I was told no more than that. Nor are you obliged to tell me any more than that. But if I am to help you, I should know why your quest has brought you to Salisbury."
I opened up a little then. I told Lagula that I had narrowed the identification of Dr. Nyet down to three girls and that one of the girls was now in Salisbury. I told him that I planned to shake Vlankov the next day and arrange a private meeting with Ilona Tabori.
"A good plan – if you live until tomorrow," he told me calmly.
What a happy little man! "I'll do my best," I told him. "And if that's all for now, I'd like to get some sleep."
"It is not all, but the rest can wait until morning. You go on and sleep. I shall remain here and do my best to see that you remain alive."
"Suit yourself." I pulled of my shoes, socks and shirt, doused the light, and crawled under the covers. In the moonlight I could barely make out the pigmy still sitting in the chair and fondling his blowpipe. I thought drowsily that his silhouette looked somehow lewd, and then I drifted into a deep sleep.
I was awakened by a body falling across me. An instant later the overhead light went on. A machete was buried in the pillow an inch from my skull.
"What the hell!" I pushed out from under the body, turning it over as I did so. There was a dart neatly embedded in the exact center of the throat. I watched, dazed, as Lagula crossed the room to retrieve it.
When he'd done so without comment, I gathered my wits together and took a good look at the dead man. He was a large Caucasian in his late twenties or early thirties. He had the leather-skinned look of an outdoorsman. His clothing was the rough corduroy favored by white men who work in the Rhodesian bush country. I'd never seen him before in my life.