I knew when the phone rang in the gray, pre-dawn hours that it could only be one person on the other end of the line — Hawk, my boss at AXE.
The phone was on a night table on the opposite side of the bed, so I had to crawl over Maria Von Alder, asleep beside me, to reach it. Maria stirred in her sleep, drawing up one leg slightly so that her sheer pink nightie rode up above her hips, as I scooped up the receiver.
“You’re needed back here immediately,” Hawk said as soon as he had identified my voice. His words were clipped and urgent. “There’s been a new development in that deal we’re working on. Be ready to leave in thirty minutes.”
“In thirty minutes?” I asked. “How? You seem to have forgotten where I am.”
I was on Whiskey Cay, a tiny island off the Bahamas, where Hawk himself had sent me on assignment. I would have to arrange for a boat to pick me up and take me to one of the larger islands so I could catch a plane back to the States.
Hawk was impatient with my answer. “Be ready to leave in thirty minutes,” he repeated, his voice icy. “Mr. James is providing your transportation.”
I nodded without speaking. “Mr. James” was the AXE code-name for the President of the United States.
“Good,” Hawk said, as if he had seen me nod. “A boat will pick you up at the main dock of Whiskey Cay in precisely twenty-seven minutes.” He hung up. As I put down the receiver, I saw that Maria had opened her eyes and was watching me.
“That was my office in New York,” I told her. “I’m afraid I have to go back. The company’s sending a boat.”
Maria thought I was a millionaire named Tony Dawes, the cover I was using on my present AXE assignment. Even if she had heard my conversation with Hawk, she still wouldn’t have any reason to doubt my cover.
But she made a face, her ripe, red lips pouting. “Do you have to go back today?”
“Yes, I’m afraid so,” I said cheerfully as I started to swing out of bed. “And not just today, but right now. I’ve just about got time to dress before the boat gets here.”
But before I could get out of bed, Maria reached up and playfully tugged at my arm, pulling me toward her.
“You don’t have to be in that much of a hurry,” she said huskily.
There was no doubt about it Maria Von Alder was a beautiful creature, a long-legged, shapely blonde with a superbly molded, golden body and full, smooth breasts, their pink tips thrust hard against the bodice of her transparent gown. She was looking at my body, and she could see what the sight of her was doing to me. She slithered down the bed on her back, her hips slightly upraised, offering her silken body to me, like a loving cup waiting to be filled.
With all the willpower I could muster, I whispered, “There’ll be other times.” I brushed her cheek with my lips and took off for the shower.
I couldn’t complain that the past five days on Whiskey Cay hadn’t been enjoyable. The island was a pleasure playground for the very rich. There were luxuries everywhere you looked — the sea-going yachts, scrubbed clean, riding at anchor on the sparkling blue waters; the acres of expensive, landscaped lawns, blazing with flame-bright flowers, stretching away to the sea; the clusters of palatial villas, vividly colored, as if they had been drawn with a child’s crayons, cresting high above the Atlantic Ocean. I had been enjoying everything, including Maria Von Alder, for the past five days.
But my visit to Whiskey Cay had still been frustrating; I was there on business, and I was no closer to a solution of my current assignment than I had been the day Hawk first briefed me at AXE headquarters in Washington.
Hawk had opened the conversation with an un-characteristic monologue about the dangers of this particular mission, the impossible odds, the vital importance of success.
I had shot him a look out of the corner of my eye, thinking, so what else is new? I’d half-expected to see those wrinkle lines around his thin lips break into a smile. It wasn’t often that Hawk, a reserved New Englander, tried to be humorous. But I saw that these lines around his mouth and piercing eyes only deepened, and I knew he meant it.
He shuffled some papers on his desk and frowned. “We were just informed — it’s top secret, of course — that six hours ago the Prime Minister of England was threatened with assassination by his life-long friend, a fellow member of Parliament. The two men were at the Prime Minister’s country house when the friend suddenly produced a rifle, aimed it at the Prime Minister, and then, quite inexplicably, turned the rifle on himself and blew his own brains out. There was no one else present at the time, so we can give out a fake story to the public. But the real implications of the incident are frightful.”
I nodded. This was more bizarre than I’d expected, even after Hawk’s lead-in speech.
“The official British version is going to describe it as an accident,” Hawk continued. “A misfire while the friend was examining the rifle. Of course, it will not be mentioned that the weapon was first turned on the Prime Minister.”
“Are you planning to lend me to the English to help with the investigation?”
Hawk shook his head. “The problem is closer to home. There have been reports of similar occurrences in China, France, Japan, and Germany. In each instance the would-be assassin had the power to kill his victim but instead killed himself.
“You can imagine what effect these reports have had on the President. He could easily be the next target. And he’s not about to wait until a member of this assassination squad reaches the White House, even if the killer eventually murders only himself. Our job this time is to search out and destroy — preventive action.”
“Do we have any leads?”
“Not much,” Hawk admitted. He lit one of his cheap cigars and puffed in silence for a minute. “I have all the files of the investigations from the various intelligence agencies in each of the countries and those of Interpol as well. Want to know what they’ve found?”
He ticked the facts off on his fingers. “One, all the dead assassins were overweight. Two, all were obsessive about their excess poundage and spent considerable time trying to get rid of it. Three-three of them were close to the Von Alder sisters.”
I raised an eyebrow. “Terrific. I’m looking for fat men on a diet who like pretty girls. You’re not exactly making this easy.”
“I know,” Hawk said. “I’m sorry.” From the way he said it, I almost believed him. But then he turned crisply businesslike again.
“We start with the Von Alder sisters — that is, you do. They’re the only real clue we’ve got.”
The Von Alder girls were a little bizarre themselves. Maria, Helga, and Elsa — identical blonde triplets, well known to any newspaper reader or television viewer. They were in their twenties and beautiful. They had come to the United States from Germany after World War II with their mother, Ursula. They specialized in millionaire husbands and lovers, who’d made them wealthy with gifts of homes scattered around the globe, yachts, jewels, even private jets.
Thinking it over, I decided that getting close to the Von Alders was probably one of the most pleasant ways I’d ever started on an assignment.
It had been simple enough for AXE to supply me with a cover — Tony Dawes, wealthy business-man who had inherited a prosperous export-import business with headquarters in New York. Soon, with Hawk pulling the right strings behind the scenes, I’d been invited to a number of the same parties as the Von Alder girls. Once I met the sisters, it was reasonably easy, with lavish displays of gifts and attention, to become a part of their social set.
Maria was the first Von Alder I “investigated.” I’d taken her to Whiskey Cay, where we spent five blissful days in luxury. But I had uncovered no further leads by the morning Hawk ordered me back to the United States.
Two
A little less than twenty minutes after Hawk’s call, I headed down to Whiskey Cay’s main dock. Maria Von Alder went with me, clinging to my arm. The boat was already waiting there — a forty-foot cruiser, most of its paint peeling and rusted, its twin diesel engines idling. There were four men on deck.
One of the men, who was wearing a faded baseball cap, called out, “We’re all set to shove off, Mr. Dawes.”
“Be right with you,” I answered. I turned to say goodbye to Maria, and she gave me a long, demanding kiss.
“Remember, Dumplink,” she said — all the Von Alder sisters called their men “Dumplink’’— “stay away from those sisters of mine or I scratch the eyes out.”
“Mine or theirs?” I asked.
“All the eyes,” she said.
She gave me another quick kiss, and I vaulted onto the deck of the cruiser. The man in the faded baseball cap immediately cast off. As the cruiser’s powerful twin diesels throbbed to life, I saw a second boat sweeping in toward the dock. It turned suddenly and headed toward my cruiser, which was making swiftly toward the open sea, its prow knifing through the water, its bow making a rooster-tail of spray. Soon Maria Von Alder, still standing at the end of the dock, had shrunk to the size of a doll and then disappeared completely. Within minutes the island itself had vanished from view.
Suddenly I realized that the other boat was pursuing us. The familiar chill ran down my spine. Somebody had made a bad mistake — could it have been me?
I tried to figure it out, and quickly. Either the other boat was an enemy craft, trying to get at me, or I had let myself be picked up by the wrong boat and the other vessel was the one Hawk had sent to Whiskey Cay. Before I had a chance to work on it some more, the man in the baseball cap told me what I wanted to know.
“You will please do nothing foolish, Mr. Dawes,” he said. He shoved back a length of tarpaulin on the deck and snatched up a sawed-off shotgun that had been lying beneath it. The barrel was leveled at my chest.
At least he didn’t know my real name. But I still couldn’t explain how he knew I’d be waiting at the dock on Whiskey Cay for a boat. Either someone had been listening in on Hawk’s call or Maria Von Alder had given me away.
There was a shout from the man at the wheel of the cruiser, and the boat veered to starboard with a sudden lurch that almost knocked us all off our feet. Then we saw what the trouble was— a sinister silver object streaking through the water almost directly across our bow. The boat pursuing us had fired a torpedo, but the missile just missed us and went hurtling out to sea.
But that brief moment, with all hands on board the cruiser thrown off balance, gave me the opportunity I needed to pull out Wilhelmina, my modified Luger with a three-inch barrel. While I was with Maria on Whiskey Cay, I had kept it hidden in a secret compartment in my luggage. But before I left our suite that morning, while Maria was in another room, I had prudently slipped it into my crotch holster, which I wore inside my trousers so that I could reach the gun by opening my fly.
While the man wielding the shotgun was still sprawled against the railing, I crouched, unzipped, and yanked out the Luger. I could see the bug-eyed amazement on his face when the Luger appeared out of my fly. He yelled and swung the shotguns muzzle up, his finger tightening on the trigger. We fired simultaneously. Wilhelmina’s 9mm slug closed the gap between us a scant half-second faster. The bullet blew the man’s face away and sent him crashing through the railing and into the sea, his shotgun pellet blasting into the bulk-head behind me.
I moved quickly, grabbing a life jacket with one hand and stuffing the Luger back into its holster with the other. Then I jumped the railing into the sea. I guessed that the men on the second boat had been signaling me to try to get out of the boat when they fired the torpedo and that they were watching me through binoculars.
Despite the heat of the day, the water was shockingly cold when I hit and went under. Still clutching the life jacket, I bobbed up almost at once and began paddling away from the cruiser toward the second boat, now speeding toward me. Over my shoulder I could see the cruiser start to swing around in pursuit.
The cruiser was still midway in its turn when the approaching boat fired another torpedo. The sea missile whizzed past me, only about five yards away, and this time struck the cruiser midship. There was one hell of an explosion, and I was buffeted by violent shock waves that radiated through the water like electric current skipping across an exposed live wire. The cruiser blew apart, sending up a giant geyser of water, debris, and bodies.
Seconds later, the pursuing boat had pulled alongside, and helping hands were lifting me aboard. Once on deck, I saw that this boat was an exact replica of the cruiser that had just been destroyed; even to the flaking and rusted paint and the number of men aboard. But this time one of the men flashed a card with a United States seal and the Presidents signature.
“Sorry about the inconvenience,” the man said shortly. “We were late getting to the dock at Whiskey Cay. Somebody had performed a little piece of sabotage on our generators to delay us. When we saw the other boat pull away with you, we guessed what had happened.”
“Thanks,” I smiled. “You did a nice job of recovery.”
A real professional, he didn’t bother to acknowledge. Instead, he said, “Perhaps you’d like to change into some dry clothes before we reach our destination. You’ll find an outfit below in the cabin.”
I went below and changed into fresh denims, sweat shirt, shoes, and socks. They weren’t exactly Saville Row attire, but they were clean and dry. My rescuers hadn’t asked me any questions or volunteered any information. They were probably CIA, but I still didn’t have any idea how they planned to get me back to the mainland with the speed that Hawk had in mind.
When I went above again, the same man who had spoken to me earlier told me that we should be reaching our transfer point in approximately six minutes.
I nodded, but I still didn’t know what he was talking about. We’d been out of sight of Whiskey Cay for awhile, and from what I knew about this area of the Atlantic, there was no land for miles to the west except the U.S. All I could see were mountainous swells of blue sea on every side.
Exactly five minutes and fifty seconds later we came within sight of a U.S. Navy aircraft carrier, and the man on deck with me said, “Here we are — right on the button.”
A score of jets, wings folded, were perched on the carrier like dark birds catching a brief rest before resuming flight. Some crewmen dropped a rope ladder as our boat pulled up alongside. I shook hands with my rescuers and then scrambled up the ladder. The cruiser had pulled away and was almost out of sight in the rolling sea before I had reached the deck.
The ship’s captain met me at the top of the ladder, snapped a salute, which I returned, and quickly hustled me to a jet that was waiting on the flight deck. The engines of the A-4 Skyhawk were already whining impatiently, anxious to be airborne. I shook hands with the pilot, a young redhead, put on flight clothes, and crawled into the rear cockpit. The pilot gave me a “thumbs up” signal, and we catapulted down the deck of the carrier and into the sky with breathtaking speed. When the President of the United States acted as your personal travel agent, the accommodations were strictly first class….
Three
The flight back to the States was swift and uneventful. Our destination was New York’s JFK airport, and we landed there on a Special runway that had been cleared for us. After the sun and clear skies of Whiskey Cay, I wasn’t prepared for the blustery, biting January cold of New York.
Hawk was waiting at the end of the landing strip in a long, dark limousine. As soon as I had transferred from the jet to the car, the redheaded pilot waved his hand, turned his aircraft around, and took off for the carrier. There were two men in the front of the limousine — the chauffeur and, I guessed, another AXE agent. I knew we must be facing a serious crisis, since Hawk almost never revealed the identity of one agent to another. Hawk tapped on the glass partition that separated us from the men in front, and the limousine rolled across the airport.
“Well, N3,” Hawk said, staring at the window, “I assume you have no new information to report.”
“I’m afraid not, sir,” I said, but I did tell him about the duplicate cruiser at Whiskey Cay and my rescue. I added, “Of course there’s no way to prove how they got the information. Maria Von Alder may not be involved at all.”
“H’mm,” was Hawk’s only response.
We rode in silence for several Seconds before Hawk turned and said glumly, “The chapman of the Russian Communist party is due to arrive here at JFK in approximately six minutes. He’ll be meeting with some of our people in a hush-hush session at the U.N. before he flies back tomorrow. We’ve been given responsibility for his safety while he’s here. That’s why I needed you back so urgent.
It was my turn to mutter, “H’mm.”
The limousine had slowed down, and now it stopped beside one of the airport runways, where a large crowd of people and cars were waiting. Hawk leaned forward and pointed to a giant Turbo-jet that was descending from the leaden skies. “Our visitor is right on time,” he remarked, glancing at the pocket watch he wore on a chain strung across his vest.
As soon as the Russian plane stopped on the runway, airport personnel quickly rolled steps up to the cabin door, and the Soviet party chairman emerged. He was followed from the huge plane by several other Russian officials, and at the front of the steps the whole group was immediately surrounded by police and security officers — both Russian and American — and escorted to a waiting line of cars. When the procession, led by a phalanx of New York motorcycle police, drove off, our limousine was directly behind the Soviet chairman’s car. Soon we were entering the gates of the United Nations, with its long stately row of flags flapping briskly in the chilling wind.
Once inside the building, the whole group was quickly whisked into one of the private security-council chambers. It was a spacious, windowless room with seats arranged in tiers, like an amphitheatre for spectators, with a podium in the center, where the Soviet chairman and his party and the United States security adviser and his assistants took their places. Hawk and the other AXE agent and I had seats in the first row of the tiers, next to the Russian security police, who had accompanied the Soviet leader from Moscow. Behind us were city, state, and federal law-enforcement agents. The meeting was, of course, closed to the public.
The two men communicated through an interpreter, who translated in whispers from one to the other so that nothing that was said could be heard where we sat. It was like watching a play in pantomime and trying to guess what the actors were saying from their gestures.
At first it appeared that both men were angry and suspicious. There was a lot of frowning, scowling, and fist-banging. Soon the anger gave way to puzzlement, and then I could see that the two men were becoming more friendly. Apparently they were beginning to realize that neither country was behind the bizarre incidents.
Soon after, the meeting began to draw to a close, and both the Soviet chairman and the U.S. security adviser were standing to shake hands.
Then one of the men in the Soviet chairman’s own party — later I learned that he was the Russian ambassador — took a step toward the Communist chairman. He was holding a grenade that he had pulled from his pocket. The man unpinned the grenade and dropped it on the plush carpet directly at the Russian leader’s feet.
In the split second of frozen horror that followed not a sound could be heard in the room. I could see the pure terror on the face of the Soviet chairman as he gazed down in helpless fascination at the lethal, activated grenade lying at the tips of his shoes. In an instinctive reaction I drew my Luger, Wilhelmina, from the holster, but Hawk grabbed my arm. Actually, as he had been quicker than I to see there was nothing I could do. A bullet would only explode the grenade faster. There wasn’t even time for the Russian leader to move from the spot.
At that moment, with every person in the room paralyzed, the Russian ambassador — the man who had dropped the unpinned grenade — flung himself on top of the explosive. There was a muffled blast; the grenade’s deadly power was smothered by the man’s body. His body was blown apart, his head torn from his torso.
The repercussions of the explosion staggered the Soviet chairman and the others on the podium, but otherwise they were unharmed. Hawk and I immediately hustled the Russian and American delegations from the room to the waiting limousine outside. Arrangements were hastily made for the U.S. security adviser and his staff to return to Washington and for the Russian party to go to the Soviet Embassy and remain there until they left for Moscow.
Meanwhile, emergency police ambulances and the N.Y.P.D. bomb squad began to arrive at the U.N. with a contingent of newspaper reporters and photographers. The private security council chamber had been blocked off by U.N. police, but Hawk and I were allowed back inside where the sheeted remains of the Russian ambassador were being loaded onto a stretcher. Already, members of the Russian security police and American agents were preparing to trace the recent movements of the ambassador.
A call was placed to the White House, and the President was informed of the affair. Before that conversation ended, Hawk was called to the phone to talk with the President. When he came back, the AXE chief’s face was gray.
“That was a near disaster,” he said, shaking his head. “The President has advised me that we will receive a full report on the Soviet ambassador’s movements as soon as the investigations turn anything up. But we already know one thing.”
“What’s that?”
“Just two nights ago,” Hawk said, “the Soviet ambassador was a guest at a party thrown by Helga Von Alder and her mother at Helga’s Park Avenue apartment.”
“Are you sure?” I asked, startled.
Hawk nodded toward the other AXE agent who had accompanied us in the limousine from Kennedy. “Agent Z1 was at the party. Since I knew it was impossible for you to keep an eye on all the Von Alder women at once, I’ve been using him on the case. I want you two to get together at once so he can give you the details about that evening. Afterward, I want you to work on Helga Von Alder. And…
“Yes sir?” I asked.
“I’m sure I don’t have to remind you about the urgency of your mission. There must be a link somewhere between this business and the Von Alders. Find it, no matter what it takes.”
Four
Hawk went on alone to the New York AXE office, leaving Z1 and me to talk together. After spending most of the day in the jet flying from Whiskey Cay and in the car driving from JFK, I felt I needed a workout at the gym. I suggested to Z1 that we go to the athletic club for a game of handball while we talked.
Neither of us, of course, knew the others real name. Z1 himself was about my age, a couple of inches shorter and several pounds heavier, with straw-colored hair and a fair complexion. As soon as we had changed into gym clothes and started our game, I saw that he was a worthy handball adversary. He had a clumsy, flat-footed lope on the court, but he hit the ball with murderous power so that it bounced around like a ricocheting bullet and kept me moving.
“That party the other night was quite a bash,” he began, and I detected a faint southern accent in his voice, a sort of middle-southern-states accent. “Those Von Alders sure know how to entertain. There were a couple of actors, the Russian ambassador, two British authors, that pop artist who paints nothing but pictures of jock straps, and a dozen other people I never did get to meet.”
“Did any of them seem particularly cozy with the ambassador?” I asked, taking a whack at the ball and, in a lucky shot, driving it hard into Z1’s midsection, making it impossible for him to return the shot.
“Whew!” he mumbled, straightening up with an effort, his face beaded with sweat. Then, in answer to my question, he said: “It appeared to me that all the guests there were pretty chummy with one another. Like they were all charter members of some exclusive club. You know what I mean?”
I nodded. “But was Helga or her mother, Ursula, ever alone with the ambassador for any length of time during the evening?” I asked, racing back and forth across the court. I didn’t know what kind of information I was expecting to get from him, but any kind of lead or link between the dead ambassador and one or another of the Von Alders would help.
“No,” Z1 answered, doing his own share of running. “Actually, the Russian spent most of the time talking with that artist and finally wound up the evening buying two paintings the fellow had brought along. It struck me as the worst kind of capitalistic decadence for the Communist to pay good money for paintings of jock straps.”
I had a sudden, wild idea. “What would you think if I asked AXE to arrange an autopsy on the dead Russian’s brain?”
“An autopsy?” Z1 exclaimed, swinging around and looking at me. “What could an examination of his brain prove?”
“It’s just a hunch,” I said. “I can’t get it out of my mind how weird the whole situation is. Not just what happened today, but all the previous killings — or I should say suicides. These men have formed the strangest assassination squad I’ve ever seen. Maybe they’d been drugged first, or hypnotized, or brainwashed. Somebody had to have gotten to them to make them behave in such an identically irrational way. There’s got to be an explanation. Maybe an autopsy would provide some answers, help us understand the reasons behind the case.”
“I suppose it’s worth trying.” Z1 shrugged.
“Hawk wants me to move in on Helga right away,” I told him. “As soon as we finish the game, I’ll call her and try to make a date for tonight. I guess you’d better report back to Hawk at headquarters. Be sure and tell him that I want to get an autopsy done on the Russian.”
“Sure thing,” he said, missing a shot and losing the game to me.
After we had showered and dressed, we went to a bar and had a couple of chilled martinis, and I called Helga Von Alder from a phone booth.
“Dumplink!” she squealed delightedly as soon as she heard my voice. “You’re back. That dumb sister of mine let you get away. Will I see you tonight?”
“Exactly what I had in mind,” I told her. “I’ll pick you up about eight.”
When I had completed the call, Agent Z1 and I parted company. I headed for the luxurious Sutton Place apartment AXE had leased for me — or rather for “Tony Dawes.”
One of the advantages of undercover work for AXE was that the organization spared no expense in creating a fool-proof disguise for its agents. The apartment of “Tony Dawes” was a good example. It was a smart, elegant bachelor pad, complete with all the accessories of seduction that such a man would provide for himself. Soundproofed from outside, high enough to give a view of the city — and privacy — and engineered with all the latest electronic equipment from intimate lighting to quadrophonic sound throughout. My only requests had been a small gym and a sauna. I spent the remaining hours of the day working out on the punching bag and parallel bars and finished with a sauna bath. It was seven thirty-five when I set out in my dinner jacket to call on Helga Von Alder.
Helga’s apartment was a penthouse on Park Avenue in the eighties, in a regal building that looked more like a private club than a residence. I had expected her to be alone, but when I arrived, I saw that Ursula was there with a gray-haired gentleman, whose face looked vaguely familiar although his name momentarily eluded me.
“But Dumplink,” Helga greeted me, planting the usual open-mouthed Von Alder kiss on my lips and pulling me inside, “say hello to Ursie”— the Von Alder daughters called their mother Ursie — “and her escort, Byron Timmons.” I recognized the man then as one of the country’s oil tycoons. Ursula Von Alder also gave me a kiss on the lips that was far from maternal, and Timmons shook my hand stiffly.
“Ursie and Byron were just leaving,” Helga added, smiling cherubically.
Byron Timmons muttered, “Ah, yes,” and began to help Ursula into her mink coat.
“We were talking about the terrible accident poor Vladimir Kolchak had,” Helga said. “You heard it on the news?”
“No,” I said. “I’m afraid not.”
“He was killed at the United Nations this afternoon,” Helga said sadly, “some kind of boiler explosion.”
“Terrible,” I said, wondering if Hawk had concocted the “boiler explosion” for the press all by himself.
“Poor Vladdy,” Helga said, “he was always so full of life. I’ll miss him.”
“You knew him?” I asked.
“Oh yes,” Helga answered. “He was an old friend of Ursie’s. He was here at the house, at a party, just two nights ago.”
“We’ll all miss him,” Ursula repeated, kissing Helga on the cheek, brushing my lips with hers, and heading for the door. Byron Timmons followed after giving me another stiff handshake.
As soon as Helga closed the door behind the departing couple, she collapsed into my arms with stifled giggles, whispering, “Oh, Dumplink, Byron Timmons is awful angry at me — and you. When I made the date with you this afternoon, I had completely forgotten I was supposed to go to the theater with him tonight. When I remembered, I had to do some frantic rearranging and call in Ursie for a substitute. I told Byron you were an old friend I hadn’t seen in years and you were in town only for the evening.”
“I knew he wasn’t exactly happy about something. Now I understand.”
Helga pulled away, shaking her head. “Sometimes I can be so naughty. But I wanted to be with you.”
“I’m pleased,” I told her, “and flattered. Now where would you like me to take you?”
“It’s such a nasty night out,” Helga said softly, “I thought maybe you’d just rather stay here and be cozy. If you don’t mind making do with something simple like champagne and cavier. I’m afraid that’s all we have in the house, and it’s the servants’ night off.”
“I can’t think of a nicer way to spend the evening.”
She had surprised me. She was dressed in a skin-tight, white evening gown, her blonde hair carefully coiffed, a diamond necklace around her throat with matching diamond pendants swinging from her earlobes. She was ready for a night on the town. But then I realized that the Von Alder women probably dressed like that just for an evening of lounging around the house.
Helga turned on some music and turned down the lights. Soon she brought out the champagne and caviar, and we sat side by side on a leopard-skin chaise in front of floor-to-ceiling windows where we watched the city lights and snowy darkness.
“You know, Tony,” Helga said softly, turning toward me as we both sipped the chilled champagne, “you’re not like the other men I’ve known in my life. I can usually figure them out pretty easily, figure out what they want from a woman. With you I’m not so sure, though I haven’t known you for very long. And that’s a challenge. I find it exciting, and I think all the other Von Alder women, including Ursie, do, too.” She sat up straight suddenly. “Did you enjoy yourself with Maria?”
I nodded truthfully. “She’s lovely. But then, you all are. After all, you’re identical triplets.”
“Not completely identical.” I could see her smile in the semidarkness. She put her champagne glass down and slid over on the chaise, nestling her body next to mine. I could feel the warmth of her flesh through her gown. The exotic scent of her perfume stirred my loins. I slipped a finger under the strap of her gown, then paused.
“Helga,” I said.
“H’mm?”
“This fellow, Kolchak or Vladdy, as you called him — did you see much of him recently?”
She misunderstood my question. “You don’t have to be jealous of him, Dumplink.” She wiggled her body closer to mine so our thighs touched.
“No, but I’m curious,” I persisted. “Did he visit you or your family often in the past few weeks?”
She shrugged, still pressed against me. “Vladdy was one of those people who was always around, or always seemed to be around, among my friends. You noticed him when he was there, you didn’t miss him when he was absent.” She stirred impatiently. “But that’s the past — this is the present The present is always more important.”
I knew that was all she was going to say. Perhaps she wanted to conceal something, or perhaps she truly had nothing more to say about Kolchak. At any rate, I felt I had fulfilled the responsibilities of my assignment for the moment.
Now I had a responsibility to myself not to let this opportunity slip between my fingers. I used those fingers to ease the strap of Helga’s dress. She slid both straps down her arms, and the soft, white cloth fell to her waist.
She wore no bra. As she leaned back, her full, shapely breasts tilted up, pink-tipped nipples erect She squirmed forward to meet my face so that my mouth was filled with one and then another of the melonlike mounds. Her body quivered violently as I caressed her nipples with the tip of my tongue until finally, with a shuddering gasp, she took my head between her two hands and lifted my lips to hers. As we kissed, she ran the fingers of one hand down the length of my thigh until they encountered the evidence of my arousal. Her hand lingered there momentarily.
“Lovely, Dumplink, lovely,” she whispered breathlessly, moving her lips to my ear.
I lifted her and carried her across the living-room, through the foyer, and into the bedroom. An enormous round bed stood in the center of the room. I lowered her onto it, and she peeled off her dress, hose, and lace bikini panties. Lying on the satin sheets, she reached impatient hands up to help me strip off my clothes.
I could feel my blood race as my eyes devoured her spectacular body. She was an exact duplicate of her sister Maria, from the perfectly-formed, thrusting breasts and gently curving hips to the small golden triangle at the center of her body. She pulled me to her, and when our bodies touched, she turned her head to one side and said softly, “Look, Dumplink, everywhere you turn you see us make love.”
Until then I hadn’t noticed that three walls of the room, at the head of the bed and on both sides, were completely mirrored. As Helga’s body coiled and uncoiled with mine, like some perfectly programmed yet delicate instrument of sensuality, the mirrors reflected the sensuous movements as if we were in the midst of a huge orgy where we were the entire group of participants.
And I found, as Helga had told me, that she and her sister Maria weren’t completely identical. There was a big difference in the way they made love. Both women made love with infinite imagination and tremendous, open pleasure. But there the similarity ended. While Maria had been silent and intense, her movements exquisitely subtle, Helga was wild and abandoned, her hands, hips, and mouth constantly exploring my body, exchanging pleasurable sensations for each one she received. Her whole being was continually writhing, quivering, and stimulating me to greater and greater heights of ecstasy. It was as if — and the mirrored walls heightened the effect — I was making love to a dozen different women, each with a different approach and reaction. Finally, she gave a high cry of pure pleasure and fell back on the bed.
After a moment she leaned over me. “I make you happy?” she asked, covering my face with kisses.
“Yes,” I said. “Yes, you make me happy.”
“I’m happy, too,” she said. “You are the man I thought you were.”
I pulled her gently toward me so she lay on top of me, our bodies pressed together from head to toe. We lay motionless, neither of us speaking. After a moment she gave me the small gasp of surprise I was expecting.
“Shh,” I whispered to her.
She was silent again, but not for long. “Oh!” she cried. “Oh! Oh, Dumplink! OH!” Her body shook convulsively again until, with a long, low moan of rapture, she rolled over on her back and shut her eyes.
My regular programs of body and mind exercises had come in handy once again, enabling me to give Helga a final gift of pleasure she hadn’t expected.
Five
Helga opened her eyes and smiled softly up at me as I bent my head over hers. “It was lovely, lovely, lovely,” she whispered. She rolled over and climbed out of bed. “You rest, Dumplink,” she said, kissing me and leaving the room.
In a moment she returned with a bottle of champagne and two glasses. She filled one of die glasses and handed it to me. “This,” she said, “will keep you occupied while I take a shower.” She kissed me again and went into the bathroom, humming happily. As I stretched out luxuriously on the bed, I could hear her running the shower.
I took a sip of the chilled Dom Perignon. Outside the wind had risen. The fourth wall of the room had drapes across it, and I knew that behind the drapes were doors to the penthouse’s garden that ran around all four sides of the apartment. Behind the door something was banging. I set my glass of champagne down next to the bed, pulled on my trousers, and went over to the door. When I pulled a section of the drapes aside, I saw that one of the doors was ajar and swinging in the wind. I pulled the door shut and latched it.
I was halfway back across the room when that infallible sixth sense, a subconscious warning of impending danger, sent me its message. Without knowing why, I instinctively flung both hands up in front of my throat I’d acted none too soon. At the same instant, a thin wire noose was being tossed over my head and settled around my shoulders. The wire, which would have been embedded in my throat, was, instead, cutting deep into the flesh of my out-flung hands.
There was a heavy grunt from my assailant and a savage jerk on the noose. I ducked and rammed backwards with my shoulder. I still couldn’t see who was behind me, but in that sudden lunge, I did catch a fleeting glimpse of two struggling images in Helga’s wall of mirrors. I looked again and saw myself and the man behind me reflected there. The man was Z1!
His face was contorted with the effort of his assault, but there could be no mistaking his identity. It was the same man I’d played handball with at the athletic club that afternoon.
It was impossible to try to figure out why he was trying to kill me now. All I could do was defend myself. And it was an eerie, unsettling sensation to be watching someone trying to murder me in the very same mirrors where only a short time before I had seen myself and Helga intensely enjoying sex.
He still hadn’t noticed the mirrored wall and didn’t know I was watching him in it. He started to raise his leg to jam his knee in my back. I kicked out savagely with my left foot and caught him in the kneecap, smashing it. He gasped in pain and started to fall, pulling me down with him. I tried to squirm out of the wire noose, twisting my head around as I fell. He held doggedly to the noose, still trying to strangle me. I could see his face clearly now. His eyes were glazed — as if he were hypnotized or drugged.
Up until now I had hoped to be able to defend myself without killing him. But I saw that was impossible. I drove the rigid edge of my right hand into the base of his throat with a lethal karate chop. The blow was hard and clean. His neck snapped, and he was dead, probably without ever knowing what killed him. His body sagged to the floor, the head twisted grotesquely to one side. I pulled myself up and stood there, straddling his body.
I could hear the shower going in the bathroom. The deep pile carpeting on the bedroom floor had muffled the sounds of our struggle. It seemed obvious to me then that Helga Von Alder had lured me to the bedroom, knowing that Agent Z1 was going to make an attempt on my life afterward. As good as she had been with me in bed, I could never forget that she and her sisters were all experienced actresses.
On the other hand, I reminded myself, there was still the possibility that she was innocent. Z1 had known I was seeing Helga this evening and could have tailed me to the apartment. If, as I now suspected, he had orders to kill me, he could have slipped into the room from the terrace while Helga and I had been making love, and she wouldn’t have known any more about it than I did.
If that was true, I couldn’t let Helga appear from her shower and find a man I had killed lying on her rug. There could be no explanation that would satisfy her without blowing my cover. If I did that, the only lead that AXE had on the case, the Von Alders, would be worthless. There was only one thing I could do — turn the body over to Hawk, who had all the facilities at his command for discreetly disposing of it.
I bent down, hoisted the corpse up by the arm-pits, dragged him across the room and through the terrace doors, and dumped him outside. Then I hurried to the bedside phone to call Hawk. We had to talk without a scrambler.
“This is serious business,” I said as soon as he answered. Speaking tersely, I filled him in on exactly what had happened, improvising a code as I went along. I concluded by saying, “My friend and I will be leaving here shortly. Can you handle the mopping up operation?”
Hawk understood. “Leave the arrangements to me,” he said, “But do drop in and see me later tonight.”
“I plan to,” I answered and cut the conversation short when I heard Helga turn off the shower in the bath.
A few minutes later Helga came into the room, wearing a sheer black negligee that revealed every superb detail of her body. I was again stretched out on the big bed, sipping champagne from my glass. Fortunately, the death of Agent Z1 had been bloodless, and there was nothing in the room to indicate the struggle that had occurred there only moments before. If Helga had been in on the plot and had returned expecting to find me a corpse, she gave no indication of it. Instead, she cuddled up on the bed beside me while I poured her a glass of champagne.
“A amore,” she said, touching my glass with hers.
“A amore,” I agreed.
After we had drunk, I swung my legs off the bed, and said, “Come on Dumpling, I’m going to take you out to dinner. Man does not live by amore alone. At least, not this man.”
The restaurant we chose was a small, dimly lit French place not far from Helga’s apartment. It was still snowing outside but the restaurant was warm and cheery, and the service and food were superb. But I really wasn’t hungry, since all through the meal, I kept visualizing the grisly scene that would be taking place at Helga’s apartment as Hawk had the body of the dead AXE agent removed.
Helga didn’t appear to notice my preoccupation, and she ate heartily, chattering vivaciously throughout the dinner. Once she made a mock pout, the same gesture Maria had made when I left her on Whiskey Cay, and said, “Dumplink, let’s take a weekend trip somewhere, so we can be alone. You went off with Maria. Now it’s my turn.”
The kind of joking competition that existed among the girls amused me. “What did you have in mind?” I asked.
She made a vague motion in the air with her hand. “Mexico. Spain, perhaps. The south of France. After all, the jet is just sitting idly in the hanger. We might as well make use of it.” She suggested this as casually as if she were talking about a taxi ride across town. And I could see that she was serious.
“Well see,” I said, keeping my options open since I didn’t yet know what kinds of complications there were going to be from the death of the AXE agent.
Helga nodded and then surprised me by suddenly turning serious. It was a mood I never expected from any of the giddy Von Alders.
“I’ll tell you something, Tony,” she whispered, her fingers intertwined with mine as we sipped our cognac. “I get vibrations from you, vibrations of great strength. It’s what I’ve spent all my life looking for in a man. The gentleness of a caring lover and the strength of a man of authority. Sometimes you find one thing or the other. But both— never! That’s very good.” She frowned and said slowly, “Once I tried to explain what I was looking for to a man I know. He was gentle but not strong, and he said I felt the way I did because I had never known my own father. He said I was looking for a lover and a father-figure all in one. Do you believe that?”
I shook my head. “I never speculate about things like that, reasons for feeling. The feelings themselves are what count.”
“I think so, too,” she agreed. “But I do think about my father sometimes, and I know Maria and Elsa do, too, although we never speak of him.”
“And you don’t remember him at all?” I asked.
“No. Only what Ursie has told us. He was killed in Berlin during one of the Allied bombing raids in World War II. My sisters and I were very small then, and it was only a miracle that Ursie got us out alive.”
She smiled and brightened up again. “But life has been good since then,” she said.
Later, when I took Helga back to her apartment, I stopped in long enough to make sure Hawk had removed die body from the terrace. Of course he had attended to the matter. As I left Helga, she reminded me again that she wanted us to take a weekend trip together. I promised to let her know. Then I went downstairs and took a taxi to AXE headquarters.
Six
AXE’s New York office was on the Lower West Side of the city in a warehouse in the dock area. The cab driver wasn’t too happy when he heard the address. I guess he thought I was going to mug him en route, because I heard him sigh with relief when we pulled up in front of die place. I over-tipped him and got out. As I.started across the sidewalk, he leaned out the window and asked, “You sure this is the place you want, buddy?”
I waved him away. His feelings were understandable. The whole waterfront area was dark and deserted. The building that housed AXE headquarters was blacked out except for one lighted room in the front of the building. What the cab driver couldn’t know was that all the other dark windows in the building were painted over to conceal the bustling activity that went on inside twenty-four hours a day and that men with powerful infrared telescopes observed the street outside constantly. Actually, the cabbie couldn’t have been safer anywhere in the city than right there, outside the most powerful counterintelligence agency in the world.
The night security man on duty in the lighted front office, which looked like an ordinary warehouse office, pressed a buzzer under his desk, and I passed through an iron door to a manned elevator. The sentries with their telescopes in the upstairs windows had already cleared me with both men while I was still approaching the building.
“Hawk left orders to take you to the basement as soon as you came in,” the elevator operator said. The car descended.
The basement — that meant Hawk was waiting for me in the agency’s morgue. Like most of the world’s supersecret intelligence organizations, AXE had to have its own morgue on the premises to handle those corpses that couldn’t be turned over to the police right away. Most of the bodies, however, were eventually placed in the hands of local law-enforcement officials after the way had been cleared so there would be no embarrassing questions asked.
I found Hawk standing beside the sheeted body of Z1. The AXE medical examiner, Dr. Christopher, was with him.
Hawk nodded to me and the medical examiner, whom we called Dr. Tom, said, “I ran a preliminary autopsy, Nick. It agrees with what you told us. His death was caused by a broken neck.”
“Did you find anything else?” I asked.
Dr. Tom shook his head. “Nothing so far. Why?”
Instead of answering him, I spoke to Hawk. “Did Agent Z1 report back to you today with my suggestion that we try to get an autopsy done on the brain of Ambassador Kolchak?”
“No, he didn’t,” Hawk said. “He Came back here to headquarters and told me that you had made contact with Helga Von Alder. I didn’t see him after that. There was no mention of an autopsy. Is that important?”
“It could be,” I said slowly. “It might supply us with a possible motive for his attack on me.”
Hawk frowned. “I don’t follow you.”
I knew it was safe to talk in front of Dr. Tom, who had top-level security clearance on all AXE activities. “Well, when he jumped me in Helga’s apartment, he appeared to be dazed — like someone who was not in control of himself — yet his physical actions were perfectly coordinated.”
“You mean,” Hawk interrupted, “you think he was one of the assassination brigade? Much as I dislike the thought that one of our own agents could be under the influence of this — this power or whatever it is, I agree.”
“But that wouldn’t necessarily explain why he would try to kill me,” I resumed, “unless I had said or done something that was threatening whatever it is we’re fighting. The only tiling I can think of was my suggestion for an autopsy. Since he didn’t pass the suggestion on to you but did try to kill me, it would seem that was the connection.”
“What exactly did you think an examination of the ambassador’s brain would show?” Dr. Tom asked.
“I don’t know,” I admitted. “But we have been speculating that the men involved in these incidents were brainwashed in some way. So the autopsy on the Russian was a stab at proving the brainwashing theory. Maybe we’ll find nothing, but then we’ve got nothing to lose by trying it.”
“Yes, I see,” Dr. Tom said. He looked down at the corpse lying on the AXE morgue slab. He glanced at Hawk. “How about it, Chief?”
Hawk hesitated for only a fraction of a second. “Go ahead,” he said, nodding.
Dr. Tom pulled the sheet up over the frozen features. “It’ll take me a couple of days to do the job,” he said thoughtfully, “I’ll send you a report as soon as I have the results.”
Hawk and I left the morgue in silence and rode the elevator up to the second floor of the building. That floor was the nerve center of the New York headquarters. A staff of more than fifty people worked there twenty-four hours a day at teletypes, radios, and closed circuit television sets that communicated with the offices of the world’s police forces. The corridor that led to Hawk’s office ran alongside the big room. There were one-way glass windows on the walls so that those in the corridor could see into the room but those in the room couldn’t see them. This arrangement prevented other AXE personnel from observing the secret agents who reported to Hawk’s office.
Once we were in Hawk’s office, the chief of AXE settled wearily into his desk chair, rummaged through his pockets until he found a chewed-up cigar, and stuck it, unlit, in his mouth.
“I must confess, Nick,” he said, “this case has me worried. What’s your opinion about die Von Alders?”
“It’s hard to say,” I replied, choosing my words carefully. “As far as I have been able to determine, they’re exactly what they appear to be on the surface. But it’s hard to discount the fact that every time there’s a new development in the case, they’re somehow connected.”
“Speaking of new developments,” Hawk cut in, “I haven’t had a chance to tell you about Monte Carlo. We just got the word tonight from Interpol.”
“Monte Carlo?” I asked.
“Yes. There’s a run on the casino there. A man named Tregor, a Belgian, is breaking die bank. Tregor’s brother-in-law had tried to stab the Chancellor of Germany a few weeks ago, then plunged the knife into his own throat instead. We have nothing on Tregor, but you’d better go and check him out anyway.
“The casino management has temporarily stopped the play,” said Hawk. “But they’ve agreed to resume it in twenty-four hours. I’d like you to be there when the casino reopens, but I don’t want you to be out of touch with the Von Alders. Can you manage both?”
“It’s no problem,” I told him. “Earlier this evening Helga pleaded with me to take a trip with her to Mexico. She said we could use her private jet.”
“And you think she’d settle for Monte Carlo?” Hawk laughed. “You must put a lot into your work.”
“It does have its rewards.” “I can well imagine,” he answered, waving me out of his office in dismissal
Seven
It was early, a little before 8 A.M., the next morning, when I phoned Helga’s apartment. I knew that she wouldn’t be up that early, but I couldn’t put off calling her any longer if we were going to fly to Monte Carlo that day.
The voice that answered was drowsy with sleep. “Hello. Hello?”
“Helga,” I said, “this is Tony Dawes.”
“Who?” she asked, still half asleep. “Hello?”
“My God,” I said, laughing, “don’t tell me you’ve forgotten me so soon after last night. It’s Tony.”
“Ah — Tony, Dumplink,” the answer was now full of life.
“The reason I called you so early was that I’d like to take you up on that invitation for a little trip — just the two of us. But instead of Spain or France or Mexico, let’s make it Monte Carlo. How does that sound?”
“Divine,” she said. “When do you want to go?”
“Right now,” I told her, “this morning, as soon as possible. You did say the jet was ready.”
“Of course,” she said. “But why Monte Carlo?”
I’d already decided to give her the real reason for choosing Monte Carlo. Television, radio, and newspapers were running the story that morning about the run on the casino.
“You probably haven’t heard the news,” I said. “There’s a big run on the bank at the casino. Last night the management suspended play for twenty-four hours. I’d like to be there when it starts again.”
I had figured it was just the kind of thing that would appeal to a Von Alder. I knew I’d guessed right when I heard her delighted squeal.
“Let’s go,” she exclaimed without hesitation. “How soon can you be ready to take off? Do you want me to pick you up for the drive to Long Island?”
The Von Alders kept their jet at their Long Island estate on the North Shore. I’d visited the estate a couple of times since I’d met the family. So, since I knew where it was, I told her I’d meet her there in two hours.
I reported to Hawk and then worked out briefly in the small gym at my apartment before dressing and packing my bag. Hawk sent a car and driver to take me out to Long Island, and when we got there, I found Helga waiting and die plane ready on the Von Alder’s private landing strip.
Less than two hours after I’d phoned Helga, we were airborne on the Lear jet and flying over the Atlantic. Helga and I sat in seats in the rear of the spacious cabin, which had all the comforts — lounge chairs, sofa, bar, even a crystal chandelier — of a comfortable living room.
It was a perfect day for flying; the sky was blue and cloudless from horizon to horizon, a welcome change from the overcast weather of the previous night. The sea beneath us was like an unruffled blue carpet.
Helga took me forward to the cockpit to meet the pilot, Captain Dirk Aubrey, and the copilot, Douglas Roberts. Aubrey was a tall, heavyset fellow with a pencil-slim black moustache. Roberts was a slim younger man — probably in his early twenties — with light-colored hair and a freckled moon face.
“She’s right on course,” Aubrey said, nodding toward the instrument panel, “and the weathers clear straight into Orly, where we’ll refuel.”
For the next several hours, Helga and I amused ourselves with a movie that she showed by simply pressing a couple of buttons and later, with a game of backgammon. Helga seemed much more subdued than she’d been the evening before, but she was still good company, and the time passed swiftly.
We must have been less than fifty miles off the coast of France when, without warning, the plane abruptly plunged with its nose down toward the sea. Helga screamed. Everything in the cabin that wasn’t nailed down — including Helga and me— skidded over the canted floor of the cabin and slammed hard against the closed door of the cockpit.
Helga was still screaming while I tried to twist around on my side to push the door of the cockpit open. It was locked. I yanked out Wilhelmina, my Luger, from my shoulder holster and blasted the lock off. The door swung open, exposing the cockpit that was now below me.
As I looked into the cockpit, I could see that Captain Aubrey was still at the controls, but his posture appeared to be frozen. Copilot Roberts was sprawled on the floor, either dead or unconscious. The plane was still plummeting toward the ocean.
I yelled at Aubrey, who turned his head briefly to look up at me. Then he turned back to the controls, both hands clenching the wheel. Looking at his face, I recognized the same blank expression I had observed on the face of the AXE agent when he had tried to kill me in Helga’s apartment. His eyes were glazed as if he were hypnotized or drugged.
Until that moment, I had been hanging onto the side of the cockpit door with my fingers. Now I released my grip and came hurtling forward into the cockpit. I reached for the pilot at the controls. Somehow I managed to hook one arm around his neck and pry him partially loose from the wheel, but he still clung stubbornly to the controls until I yanked at him with all of my strength and threw him backward into the rear cabin.
The plane continued its drop toward the sea.
I fell into the pilots seat and pulled back hard on the wheel. A great shudder ran through the jet from nose to tail, but then slowly the nose began to come up. I continued pulling back on die wheel, straining every muscle in my body in my effort to defeat the pull of gravity. Finally, the plane leveled off — only a few feet from the Atlantic. It was lucky I’d put in enough flying time in jets to be able to. handle that plane, but it had still been a near catastrophe.
During the next few minutes I was busy checking the instruments while the jet skimmed evenly along the surface of the ocean. Everything seemed to be working, so I shoved the wheel forward, and we began to climb again. Then Helga screamed my name from the rear cabin.