by Marc Olden
“What else could it be?” said Talon. “Somebody inside, and Reiss on the outside. He sure did know enough, and according to his bank statements, he’s gotten paid enough, too, a lot of it mailed from abroad. I don’t think we should set any more Chinese hits until we know who else is out for the gold.”
“You’re right about the hits. Call everything off until we know more.”
“How soon can you check into this cable?”
“Give me the cable-office address. I’ll have somebody down there as soon as I hang up and can dial again. No matter what it costs—blood or money—I’ll find out who sent this.”
“Good. About the fat man—”
“That’s your department.” The line went dead.
Talon raised his eyebrows, then hung up. His department. Fine. That’s the way he liked it. Looking down at the bleeding and unconscious fat man, Talon whispered, “Just one or two more questions, Reiss, then you won’t have to answer any more. Not ever again.”
Sand leaned back against the phone-booth wall, his eyes on Taper, now buying cigarettes from a newsstand in the hotel lobby. There had been a message waiting for the Black Samurai, a message from “Mr. Gray” in America, along with a phone number. “Mr. Gray.” Code name for the gray-haired William Baron Clarke.
The Baron wasted no time. “Some news for you,” he said. “Canning.”
“What about him?”
“Put a gun in his mouth and pulled the trigger once. Got in a car, drove along the Potomac, and found a quiet cozy spot near some trees. They found him an hour ago with his brains leaking out on the seat covers. The pressure was getting him. No note, thank God. Reiss ain’t with us no more either.”
Sand listened silently.
“Nothing I got on him says he smoked in bed,” drawled Clarke, “but it seems he did. His house caught fire, and so did he. Accident, they say. My men spotted Talon and some of his apes leavin’ the place twenty minutes before the fireworks.”
“That settles that,” said Sand. “It means they’ve fallen for it so far. The phony cables and bank statements. And what about the man I asked for?”
“Foster,” said Clarke. “Dressed him in black leather and had him drive by, just like you said. He made the phone call, too. Knew there was a reason for keeping two black. Secret Service agents around. I’m letting him keep those black leather clothes.”
Sand smiled. “Why not? On his salary, he couldn’t afford it otherwise. By now Drewcolt’s tracking down that cable. With his power, it shouldn’t take him long to find out who sent it. Talon—is he still in Washington?”
“Yes. He’s guarding that tin can like it was Fort Knox. We’re eyeballin’ him as best we can. You really put the fear of God in that boy. He’s got a lot of people around him, and none of them look like choirboys. Seems he’s expectin’ you to jump out of the woodwork.”
“Woodpile,” said Sand, laughing lightly.
“Son, you said it, not I. How you and Taper getting along?”
“It’s an education for him, but I think he’ll do. We’re going over the castle layout tonight.”
“You ain’t got time for much more.”
“Sleep,” said Sand. “I’ve got time for that. I’ll need it. Tomorrow’s a big day. Lisa Warren. We’ll need her.”
“I heard from her. Says Barnes is dead.”
Sand nodded once. “CCE plays hard.”
“Reiss and Canning would agree.”
Sand kept quiet for a few seconds. Then he said softly, “So would Andrea. Call me if anything else breaks.”
“Believe it. Hang tough, son, hang tough.”
“You look marvelous, Lisa, truly, truly marvelous.”
“And you, dear Colin, you haven’t aged a day.”
The old man placed thin hands, brown-spotted with age, on her shoulders. His white hair puffed out over his ears. Rimless glasses clung to the end of his small nose, and his thin lips stretched in a wide grin. All of his life, he had worn dark-blue pinstriped suits, gray vests, white shirts and school ties.
He wore them now. “Your father, his father, and you,” he said. “I’ve served you all, but none have I loved as much as I love you, dear child.”
She smiled at him warmly, feeling younger than she had in years. Seeing him again after three years brought back memories. Her father, and her husband, Alan. Both dead. One of a heart attack, the other in a plane crash. And the one delicate thread linking her to them was this gentle, dignified old man. Colin Gordon. Small, gray-haired, and gentle. Yet strong when he had to be. Print Drewcolt didn’t like him, and in time had succeeded in discouraging their relationship. Print was good at that. He ruled his world, and he did it any way he had to.
“I so wanted to see you,” said Colin Gordon. “I’m delighted you’re here this morning. Forgive the early hour. For a while I thought perhaps …”
He stopped.
She looked down at the floor, her eyes sad; then, forcing a smile, she looked up at him. “At the moment, Print’s too busy to notice me. I showed him your letter, even asked his advice on the back-tax claim. He glanced at it, told me to take care of it myself. Two years, and now her Majesty’s government wants taxes from my husband’s estate. I never knew Alan owned property in Sussex.”
The old man smiled and said, “He didn’t.”
Lisa frowned.
“A ruse, my dear child, to get you out of Mr. Drewcolt’s clutches and into London without arousing suspicion.”
“I don’t understand.”
Standing back from her, the old man puffed out his chest and said, “That man has to be dealt with, Lisa, and it’s about time somebody did something about it.”
Sadly the beautiful young woman shook her head from side to side. “Colin, dear, dear Colin. Thank you more than I can ever say. You are so wonderful.” She began to cry, her hands covered by tan suede gloves going to her eyes. “Thank you for your courage, dear friend, but I’m afraid there’s nothing to be done. No one can stand against Drewcolt, no one. I’ve tried, but it’s so hard. I’ve seen men killed, and I know what he’s like. Yes, I sometimes dream of being away from him, but there’s nowhere I can go in this world that his money and power won’t reach out for me.”
She took a perfumed lace handkerchief from her thin brown purse and dabbed at her eyes.
In a firm voice the old man said, “Lisa, he must be destroyed, he must be stopped, and we need you to help us.”
Something in his voice made her look at him. Puzzled, she said, “Colin? We?”
The old man grinned like a schoolboy. “Lisa, we know Print is busy. He’s making phone calls like a madman, and he will probably come to London himself sometime today in a crazed quest for information. We also know that his private ape, Talon, is away in America, and probably won’t be back until tonight or even tomorrow night. We—”
“Colin!” Her voice was high-pitched with excitement. “How do you know all these things?” She swallowed hard, her head dizzy, her heart pounding.
Turning his back to her, the small old man walked across his tiny cluttered office to a door, opened it, then stepped back. Turning back to her, he said, “Lady Lisa Warren, may I present a most unusual young man.”
A handsome black man walked through the door and smiled gently at her. His clothes were new and cut to fit perfectly. He wore a gray suit, a light-blue shirt and dark-blue tie, with a blue silk handkerchief in his jacket pocket. Walking over to her, he said, “Please forgive me for telling you only my first name. It’s Robert. Yours is Lisa. A pretty name.”
Something about him instantly impressed her, and she had no idea in the world what it was. A black man. Handsome, soft-spoken, well-dressed.
Smiling nervously, she said, “I know I must look a wreck, I—I, oh, Colin, please tell me what this is all about.”
The black man smiled at her. The old man clapped his hands together and said, “Well, darlin’, to begin with, this gentleman you see before you is the reason Mr. Drewcolt doesn’t
have time to notice your comings and goings of late. He’s also the reason why our friend Talon is in America and ever on guard against a sudden attack. He is also the reason why Mr. Drewcolt has—shall we say?—lost a few employees of late. And he is also the reason why Consolidated Communications and Electronics has run into obstacles regarding their rather brutal ambition.”
A black man. Wait! Her mind raced.
A few days ago Print and Talon had talked about a black man who had attacked their men in New York. There was even talk two days ago about a black man in Washington, D.C., who had … Yes! That’s why Talon had to go personally to Washington to get the virus. They had talked of him with hate and scorn, but lately she had noticed Print speaking of him with anxiety and—could it be?—fear.
Could this be the same man? Wasn’t he supposed to be in America? Weren’t Talon and his killers waiting to slaughter him? Weren’t they searching for him in America, paying a lot of money for anything that would lead them to him and whoever was in back of him?
In a small voice she asked, “Are you the same one who, I mean, New York and the airport two days ago, and …”
He smiled and nodded his head.
“But I thought you were in America.”
“That’s what I want people to think. It means Drewcolt has to commit men, money, and time, and at the moment, he’s running out of all three.”
The small lawyer interrupted. “Lisa, Lisa, he is a marvelous man, this one. At my age you can judge people pretty well, and this chap is a fine fellow, a very fine fellow. Now, let us all have some tea—you do drink tea, Mr. Robert, I assume? You are in England, remember? Anyway, let’s have our tea, and we shall talk.”
Suddenly she covered her face with her hands and wept. Both men watched her in silence. After a while she stopped, her eyes swollen and red. Patting her face with the damp lace handkerchief, she smiled weakly, saying, “Please forgive me. I just … Oh, I don’t know. For a moment, listening to you both gave me such hope, I guess I wept from relief.”
Stepping close to her, the Black Samurai said, “That moment of hope can last much longer than you think.”
“Print Drewcolt,” she said. “You don’t know what he’s like.”
The Black Samurai smiled. “The problems he has at the moment are because he doesn’t know what I’m like.”
Colin Gordon clapped his hands in glee. “Yes!” he shouted. “Yes!”
Chapter XVI
THE FOUR MEN STARED down at the gray carpet, as Print Drewcolt cursed them, his lips flecked with saliva, his face red and unshaven, his uncombed white hair wild around his head. His voice filled the conference room in CCE’s London building. The four men listened in silence to the brutal abuse.
“Names! Give me goddamn names! Don’t tell me the cable office is across the street from Whitehall. I know where the goddamn British government is located. Names! Who sent the cables? Who?”
One of the men, a stocky Englishman with watery green eyes and a drooping orange moustache, spoke in a low voice. “Pardon, Mr. Drewcolt, but we’re close on it, sir. One of my men is out talking to the man who works for the cable office. He should be callin’ in soon, Mr. Drewcolt, and I—”
He looked up to see Drewcolt’s face in front of him, the tall white-haired man’s bloodshot eyes burning into him. “Fool! Before I’m finished, you’ll be finished. Do you understand? If that paper is signed three days from now, my company goes down within weeks. Do you think for one minute—”
An intercom buzzer sounded throughout the room. Drewcolt stared at the stocky Englishman, then turned and walked to the desk, his face tight and grim. Leaning over, he pressed a button. “Who?”
“On five, Mr. Drewcolt, someone for Mr. Crafton.”
Drewcolt turned to look at the stocky Englishman; then, pressing two buttons, he said into the intercom, “This is Drewcolt. I’m putting you on speaker. Let’s have your report.”
Silence. Then a cockney voice said, “I’m supposed to report directly to Mr. Crafton.”
Drewcolt’s face turned bright red, and he rubbed a hand wildly through his uncombed white hair. Before he could say a word, the stocky Englishman ran to the desk, leaned over the intercom, yelling, “Roy, Roy. Crafton here. That was Mr. Drewcolt. It’s all right, Roy, it’s all right. Give him your report.”
Sneaking a quick look at Drewcolt from the corner of his eyes, Crafton stood up, backing away from the desk.
“Don’t know what we’ve got, mate, but here it is. Second man at the cable office gave the same description, more or less, as the first, concernin’ the gent what popped in and sent the cables to America. Tall one he was, hooked nose, briefcase, quite proper. Handed over a brown envelope with the American’s address written on it. Envelope had ‘Her Majesty’s Mining and Mineral Development—’”
“Say that again!” Drewcolt’s shout filled the room.
“Brown envelope with the American’s address on it—”
“No, the part about Her Majesty’s—”
“Her Majesty’s Mining and Mineral Development. That’s what the address was written on. Seems the cable man couldn’t understand the American’s last name, and our proper gent wrote it out for him, and—”
Drewcolt’s thumb viciously snapped the intercom off. His eyes were on the small black machine and his voice seemed far away as he said to the four men behind him, “Get out of here. Get out of here and find me a name. You know where to look. Now move!”
Two of the men flinched. All moved backward, then turned and quickly left the room.
His eyes wide, his white hair down around his face, Drewcolt stared silently at the small black intercom machine. He never heard the door close quietly across the huge gray-carpeted room.
Robert Sand ran through the cold and darkness, his powerful legs moving swiftly and easily across the wet grass. He ran smoothly, arms and legs coordinated, breaking his rhythm only to change his small sword from one hand to other.
His black leather pants were wet and shiny with dew, and he had begun to perspire lightly under his black wool turtleneck sweater. Slung across his chest and bouncing from his left hip was a black canvas bag, two feet long. It hung from a thin black leather strap. His arsenal.
He glanced at the luminous dial of his watch. Two-fifteen A.M., three hours before dawn. Instinct told him he had run at least one mile. That left five more miles to Crafford Castle, and the timing had to be perfect. He was going over the castle wall, and there would be no room for the slightest mistake.
Dark trees loomed up in front of him like ancient monsters in English folklore. He drew near them, then passed them in a burst of speed, his mouth closed, his movements in tune with each other. He enjoyed the run. It took him back to his training in Japan with his Samurai brothers, and for brief seconds their faces flashed before him.
He ran. Across the fields, through wet grass, past startled small animals that scurried away from him in fear and surprise, past trees with black empty branches, through patches of moonlight, the chill night air rushing to meet him.
He ran.
And his mind raced backward to a few hours ago.
Taper.
Taper’s job had been to find a man who worked for money, who could be trusted, who asked no questions. The man had to do two things: he had to drive a tow truck across Crafford Castle’s drawbridge, and he had to smoke cigars. Taper had found him, a man named Harry, a round-faced man with thinning red hair, false teeth, and small pig eyes. For one thousand pounds, Harry agreed. “No questions, and I’m your man.”
Sand felt a bush tear at his pants. Leaping high, he cleared two fallen logs.
Taper. He had played the newspaperman to the hilt, phoning Drewcolt for an interview, getting turned down, but confirming that the CCE head was running scared. “By the way,” he had said to Sand, “how are you getting into the castle? You do plan to do that, I assume?”
Sand had looked at him, his brown eyes on the Englishman’s face. Finally Taper und
erstood, saying, “Sorry. Just asking.”
“Print Drewcolt would kill you for that information,” said the black man, and turned away. But it was Taper who had confirmed that The Baron’s money was well spent. Three British officials of Her Majesty’s Mining and Mineral Development had flown to Japan this morning, an expensive Far East vacation, but far out of Drewcolt’s reach. Let Drewcolt draw his own conclusions.
Lisa Warren.
Minutes ago she had stood in the darkness, her arms across her chest, hands rubbing herself against the cold. Together she and Robert Sand had watched Harry smash the axle on her car, then hook it to his tow truck.
“I’m frightened,” she said, trembling with cold and thoughts of what was to come.
Calmly, as if death were not six miles away from him, he had said to her, “Check your watch. Mine says five minutes to two. Change yours if it’s not the same.”
Her numbed fingers nervously fumbled with the watch, finally changing it to read exactly as his.
“Remember,” he said. “Natural, calm. Just go through the gate as if nothing has happened. You’ve phoned them, they know you’re being towed in, so there’ll be no problem.”
“Your Mr. Clarke—he has such faith in you. Today was only the second time I’ve spoken to him.” Clarke had phoned, saying Talon would be back in England in less than twenty-four hours. With the virus.
Sand smiled. “He’s a man of his word. So far, we’ve worked well together.”
Suddenly she had shaken uncontrollably, her hands rushing to her beautiful face and pressing hard against her jaws to keep her teeth from chattering. Tears had filled her eyes, then rolled down her cheeks, lying against her pale skin in the moonlight like thin crystal ribbons.
Without a word she rushed to him, threw herself against the warmth of his chest. They stood that way, neither speaking. When her body had begun to shake as she sobbed, she had pressed her lips together to keep from crying aloud.
“Hang on,” he said. “Just a little longer. Do it. You’ll be free.”
“You don’t know Print. He’ll come for me, he won’t let me go.”