Bond came up behind her and put a protective arm across her shoulders. He said softly: “Take it easy, Judy. It’s all over now. How bad’s the arm?”
She said in a muffled voice: “It’s nothing. Something hit me. But that was awful. I didn’t—I didn’t know it would be like that.”
Bond pressed her arm reassuringly. “It had to be done. They’d have got you otherwise. Those were pro killers—the worst. But I told you this sort of thing was man’s work. Now then, let’s have a look at your arm. We’ve got to get going—over the border. The troopers’ll be here before long.”
She turned. The beautiful wild face was streaked with sweat and tears. Now the grey eyes were soft and obedient. She said: “It’s nice of you to be like that. After the way I was. I was sort of—sort of wound up.”
She held out her arm. Bond reached for the hunting-knife at her belt and cut off her shirtsleeve at the shoulder. There was the bruised, bleeding gash of a bullet wound across the muscle. Bond took out his own khaki handkerchief, cut it into three lengths and joined them together. He washed the wound clean with the coffee and whisky, and then took a thick slice of bread from his haversack and bound it over the wound. He cut her shirtsleeve into a sling and reached behind her neck to tie the knot. Her mouth was inches from his. The scent of her body had a warm animal tang. Bond kissed her once softly on the lips and once again, hard. He tied the knot. He looked into the grey eyes close to his. They looked surprised and happy. He kissed her again at each corner of the mouth and the mouth slowly smiled. Bond stood away from her and smiled back. He softly picked up her right hand and slipped the wrist into the sling. She said docilely: “Where are you taking me?”
Bond said: “I’m taking you to London. There’s this old man who will want to see you. But first we’ve got to get over into Canada, and I’ll talk to a friend in Ottawa and get your passport straightened out. You’ll have to get some clothes and things. It’ll take a few days. We’ll be staying in a place called the KO-ZEE Motel.”
She looked at him. She was a different girl. She said softly: “That’ll be nice. I’ve never stayed in a motel.”
Bond bent down and picked up his rifle and knapsack and slung them over one shoulder. Then he hung her bow and quiver over the other, and turned and started up through the meadow.
She fell in behind and followed him, and as she walked she pulled the tired bits of golden-rod out of her hair and undid a ribbon and let the pale gold hair fall down to her shoulders.
THE RED, RED FLOWERS
M. E. CHABER
LIKE SO MANY OTHER pulp writers, Kendell Foster Crossen (1910–1981) was hugely prolific, with about two hundred fifty short stories to his credit along with more than forty novels. But it was the number of radio and television scripts—more than four hundred—that is truly impressive, with scriptwriting credits on such popular shows as The Saint, 77 Sunset Strip, and Perry Mason.
Born in Ohio, he played football at Rio Grande College, was an amateur boxer, and worked a variety of colorful jobs, including carnival barker and insurance investigator—the career of his best-known detective character, Milo March, who appeared in more than twenty novels written under one of his numerous pseudonyms, M. E. Chaber. The martini-loving March also worked as a private investigator and frequently became involved in government matters, including espionage cases for the CIA. He is a tough guy, though he dislikes violence, and is a hedonist who likes good restaurants, an extravagant expense account, and at least one beautiful woman per book.
In addition to writing for the pulps, Crossen also worked as the editor of Detective Fiction Weekly, one of the top pulp magazines of the day.
Crossen’s most successful protagonist was Jethro Dumont, who spent ten years in Tibet learning the secrets of Eastern meditation. He then returned to New York to fight crime using the superpowers that he could bring forth with a magical chant that turned him into the Green Lama. His adventures ran in Double Detective in the 1940s under his Richard Foster byline, which spawned a comic book superhero series in 1940 in Prize Comics. The crime fighter became so popular that he got his own comic book, The Green Lama, which inspired a 1949 radio program that lasted only eleven episodes.
“The Red, Red Flowers” was originally published in the February 1961 issue of Blue Book.
THE RED, RED FLOWERS
M. E. CHABER
IT WAS ONE of those mornings when nothing was going right. I reached the office early because I was expecting a phone call. It still hadn’t come. The mail hadn’t been delivered, so I was reading the morning paper. The Giants had lost the day before. The Yankees had won a doubleheader from Boston. When it’s that kind of day, everything goes wrong. In disgust, I turned to the front pages. Things weren’t any better there. The Russians had caught a second U-2 pilot and his plane, and were promising a quick trial for the pilot. I put the paper down and stared malignantly at the phone that didn’t ring.
The name is March. Milo March. I’m an insurance investigator. At least that’s what it says on my license and on the door of my Madison Avenue office. Which means that if you kill your wife, hoping to collect her insurance to spend on that blonde you met the other night, I’ll probably be around looking for you. That’s the general idea anyway. But everyone must have been on a temporary goodness jag. I hadn’t had a job in two weeks.
The mail arrived. All bills. So it was still the same kind of day. Then the door opened and there was another mailman, this one with a registered letter. I signed for it and he went away. I opened the letter and the day was complete. It said that Major March, US Army Reserve, was recalled to active duty. I was to report to an address in Washington. It was that same day. The time was sixteen hundred, or four o’clock. Which meant that I had about six in which to make it.
I thought of ignoring the whole thing, pretending I had never gotten the letter. But it had been registered, and when the Army wants you, they only give you two choices. You can walk in or be dragged in. So I made arrangements with another investigator to handle anything that came in for me, and notified my answering service to route the calls to him. Then I went downtown to my apartment in Greenwich Village. I dug out my uniform and discovered it didn’t need anything but a pressing. I took it into the tailor, and went to the Blue Mill for a couple of martinis while being pressed.
At two o’clock that afternoon, looking every inch the well-dressed Army officer, I was at LaGuardia Field boarding a plane for Washington. An hour later I was telling a Washington cab driver where to take me, but I didn’t give him the address in the orders, but a street corner nearby. When I got out of the cab I still had about a half hour to spare. I spent it in the nearest gin mill over another martini. I believe that Regulations state that an officer shouldn’t drink while on duty, but then I wouldn’t really be on duty until after I reported. Finally I walked down the street, looking for the address. There were three vacant lots in the middle of the block where builders had just begun to excavate. Beyond them were several old brownstone houses of the type which in recent years have been taken over by government bureaus. I walked past the vacant lots and reached the first building. I looked at the number. It was too high. I turned and retraced my steps. But after a few steps I realized that the number in my orders, if it had ever existed, had been where one of the vacant lots was now. I cursed to myself. If I’d had any doubts before about who was responsible for my return to active duty, they were gone.
I heard steps on the sidewalk while I was still standing there with the orders in my hand. I looked around. A pleasant-faced young man was strolling toward me. I almost ignored him, but then I took another look. There was something a little too studied about his casualness, and I knew I was right. I turned back to the vacant lot and stared at it innocently.
“Pardon me, Major,” the young man said as he reached me, “is there anything wrong?”
I turned my innocence on him. “Why,” I said, �
��I seem to have been given the wrong address.”
“Perhaps I can help you,” he said. “I know the neighborhood rather well. What address are you looking for?” He moved in slightly behind me as though to look over my shoulder. Out of the corner of my eye, I caught a slight movement of his right arm and I heard the scrape of something against cloth.
“This one,” I said, holding up the paper.
I knew that the movement would catch his eyes for at least a couple of seconds. I lifted my left foot and brought it down hard on his right instep. There was a gasp of pain from him. I dropped the paper and pivoted, sending a right to his stomach just hard enough to bend him over. I chopped across his neck with the edge of my left hand and he dropped. He was unconscious—which was the way I wanted him. A slender blackjack was lying on the sidewalk next to him. I left him and the blackjack where they had fallen. I picked up my orders, folded the paper, and put it back in my pocket. Fortunately the street was still empty, so there was no one to raise a cry about the man on the street. I walked back to the first house beyond the lots. It seemed like the logical place.
This time I looked in. There was a tiny vestibule with an inner door, but there were no mailboxes, nameplates, or bells in it. Beyond the second door, I could see a long corridor with doors on either side. About halfway down the corridor there was a soldier, obviously standing guard. I could have just gone in and presented my orders and he probably would have escorted me into the office. But I was sore and I didn’t want it that way.
I stepped back out on the street. The young man was still lying on the sidewalk. I skirted around the side of the brownstone and went to the back. There was a parking area there with four cars in it. One was an Army car with three stars on it. That proved I was right.
I hunted around the back until I found a greasy cloth that had been used on one of the cars. I slipped up to the rear door and tried it. It was locked, but it took me only a moment to pick it. I opened the door just enough to slip the rag, bunched up, in between it and the sill at the bottom. I struck a match and held it to the cloth. As soon as it began to smolder, I hurried back to the front of the house. I slipped into the vestibule, against the wall, and watched the soldier on guard. After a few seconds he began to sniff and look around. He caught a glimpse of smoke trickling in through the back door and hurried toward it.
The minute he moved, I had the second door open and was going quietly down the hall behind him. He was bending over the burning rag as I reached the door he’d been guarding. I opened the door silently and stepped inside. I was in a small, empty office. There was an open door leading into another, larger office. There were voices coming from that other office.
“I don’t see why you had to do it this way,” a man was saying. “We know March’s work well enough. Why didn’t you just have him come straight here and get it over with?”
“I like to test men before I give them assignments,” said another voice. It was one I knew all too well. He chuckled. “O’Connor should be here with him any minute. It’ll be worth a lot to see March’s face when he comes here in the office.”
I lit a cigarette and went to stand in the doorway. “You don’t have to wait that long,” I said. “Take a good look now.”
The three men in the room whirled to look at me. I knew all three of them. One of them was George Hillyer, the civilian head of the Central Intelligence Agency. The other civilian was Philip Emerson, his assistant. And the third man was a big, red-faced Army officer with three bright shining stars on his collar. Lieutenant General Sam Roberts. The two civilians were quickly over their surprise, and I noticed they were both grinning but being careful to hide the fact from the General. He was still staring at me with his mouth open, but his face was beginning to get redder.
“Old Tricky Roberts,” I said. “You haven’t changed since the days when you couldn’t steal a chicken without being caught.” During the fracas that was known as World War II, General Roberts and I had been in OSS together, working behind the German lines. But he’d been a colonel then.
“You’re talking to a superior officer, Major March,” the General said. His voice was as stiff as an over-starched collar. “I could break you for that.”
“Anyone who’ll talk to a superior officer ought to be broken,” I retorted. “Don’t give me that malarkey, General. I know you since you were a chicken colonel, polishing those eagles until they screamed. You’re in trouble, or I wouldn’t have been recalled to active duty. You break me and who’ll pull your chestnuts from the fire?”
His face was a deep purple. “Silence,” he roared. “How the hell did you get in here? O’Connor—” He broke off. “Anyway, Sanders was just outside the door with orders not to let anyone in,” he finished.
There was an interruption. The outer door opened and two men came into the office. The first one was the soldier who had been on guard. He was followed by the young man I’d met in the street. He was limping and rubbing his neck.
“I beg your pardon, General,” the soldier said, “but the back door was unlocked and somebody had stuffed an oily rag in it and set it on fire. But I didn’t see anybody around.”
The General glared at me and I gave him a sweet smile. He swung back to the two men. “What kind of an outfit is this?” he said angrily. “Can’t anyone carry out a simple order without fouling it up?”
“The only one who’s goofed around here,” I said, “is a certain three-star general. First you send me orders with a phony address on them. Then you send a pet bird dog out to point me into a trap. Just so you can get a belly laugh when I’m dragged in by the heels.”
“Well,” the General said lamely, “I just wanted to see if civilian life had softened you up.” He glanced at the two men in the doorway. “How about it, O’Connor?”
It was the young man who answered. “I’d say it hadn’t, sir. I was in back of him, but I never had a chance.”
“All right, go home, O’Connor. Take a couple of days off. Sanders, go back and wait in the car for me.” The General swung his gaze back to me. “So right away you come in and beat up one of my best men, then you pick the lock on the back door, shove in a burning rag—which could have burned down the building—to draw away the guard just so you can make a grandstand play by breaking in here?”
“You want to play games,” I said, “that’s what you’ll get. You never saw the day you could outsmart me. You tried it plenty of times when we were behind the lines together.”
Any mention of the war always relaxed him. He leaned back in his chair and beamed at me. “It was a great war, wasn’t it, Milo?”
“Save it for your memoirs,” I said. “What kind of trouble are you in that you have to drag me back into this monkey suit?”
“You’re right about its being trouble, Major,” George Hillyer said. “The three of us discussed it and decided you were the best man for the job….Yesterday the Russians got another of our U-2 planes.”
“I read about it in the paper this morning,” I said. “I thought those were the planes that flew so high no one could shoot them down. Do the Russians have a new type of gun?”
“No,” the General growled. “The first plane had a jet flame-out and went down to thirty thousand feet. They couldn’t have touched him at seventy thousand. The second plane had gone down to twenty thousand feet, under orders, when the Russians hit his plane.”
“Why so low?”
“To make a drop,” Hillyer said. “The pilot was supposed to drop ammunition, money, and information to a resistance group inside Russia. They got him before he succeeded in making the drop.”
“What does this have to do with me?” I asked.
It was Hillyer who answered. “You’ve heard of Narodno Trudovoi Soyuz, Major?”
I nodded. “The National Alliance of Russian Solidarists. It’s a group of anti-Communist Russians.”
“Right. Th
eir headquarters are in West Germany, but they have thousands of agents inside Russia. No one but Russians are permitted in the group. They have been very successful, mostly because of what they call the molecule system. It’s something like the old Communist cell. Each group of agents in Russia consists of three persons, and those three do not know any other group. If one is captured and tortured, he can only inform on two other members. These NTS people have been very valuable to us in providing information. In return we have supplied them with money and materials. Our pilot was making a drop to an American agent in Russia who was then to contact a number of these underground molecules.”
“Wasn’t it dangerous having a man there who knew the different groups?”
“He didn’t know them. The drop included a coded message to him giving him the location of the groups. The message was concealed behind a map of Russia, which would be part of a regular U-pilot’s equipment. If anything had happened to the plane and pilot, we wanted the Russians to think it was a regular flight.”
“Did they?”
“So far they have. But the map is one of the things they have on display in the Hall of Columns in Moscow. And the pilot knows there’s a message on the back of the map. We don’t believe he’s being brainwashed or anything like that, but there’s always a chance that he may try to use the information during his trial or later in prison to make a trade. If the Russians get the message, hundreds of agents will die, and we will lose a valuable source of information.”
I was beginning to get the idea and I didn’t like it. “You mean you want the pilot and the message snatched out of the Russians’ hands?”
“Exactly.”
“I could smell that one coming,” I said. “I don’t like it. You know, I’ve been in East Germany twice and Russia once. They have my fingerprints and considerable information about me. It won’t be easy even to get into the country.”
The Big Book of Espionage Page 139