Dedicated to The Men of the Secret Services of the United States of America
One
I licked my parched lips with a thick tongue and squinted up at the sun overhead. There was a taste of old paper in my mouth and a dull but insistent buzzing in my ears.
There was no way of knowing exactly how long I had lain unconscious at the side of the small, scraggly thornbush. When I first came around, I couldn't remember where I was or how I had gotten there. Then I saw the twisted, gleaming hulk of the wreckage, the small Mooney aircraft that had fallen like a wounded hawk from the cloudless sky. The half-crushed strips of metal — remains of the violent crash — rose just thirty yards away above the brown grass of the veldt, and thin wisps of smoke still wafted skyward from it. I recalled now how I had been hurled from the plane as it hit the ground and then crawled away from the raging flames. I figured from the position of the sun that several hours had passed since the mid-morning crash.
Stiffly, and with much pain, I propped myself into a sitting position feeling the hot, white clay against my thighs through my torn khaki trousers. The bush shirt I wore was stuck to my back, and the stink of my own body filled my nostrils. Holding a hand up to shade my eyes from the sun's glare, I looked out over the tall lion grass that seemed to extend endlessly in all directions, broken only by the occasional greenery of a lonely umbrella acacia. There was no sign of civilization, nothing but the vast sea of grass and trees.
A vulture moved silently overhead, wheeling and pirouetting. Casting its shadow on the ground before me, the bird hung there obtrusively, watching. The buzzing in my ears became more distinct now, and it occurred to me that it was not in my head after all. The sound came from the vicinity of the accident. It was the sound of flies.
I focused on the wreckage. Then the vulture and swarm of flies reminded me that Alexis Salomos had been with me on that plane — he had been piloting it when the trouble came. I squinted my eyes but couldn't see him anywhere near the wreck.
Rising weakly I found that my legs were rigid. My entire body ached, but there didn't seem to be any broken bones. A long cut on my left forearm was already healing, the blood caked dry. I regarded the smoldering wreckage darkly. I had to find Alexis to see if he had survived.
The buzzing of the flies became louder as I approached the plane's carcass. I leaned down and peered into the cockpit, but I couldn't spot my friend. My stomach felt queasy. Then as I was walking around the front of the wreck, past a charred propeller and a crumpled piece of fuselage, I suddenly stopped.
Alexis' body lay in a grotesque, bloody heap about ten yards away. He had been thrown clear, too, but not before the plane had mashed him. The front of his head and face were caved in from impact with the windshield of the plane, and it looked as though his neck had been broken. His clothing had been ripped to shreds, and he was covered with caked-dry blood. Large brown flies covered his body crawling into all the crimson crevices. I started to turn away, a little nauseated, when I saw movement in the long grass behind the corpse. A spotted hyena was inching up, aware of my presence but too hungry to care. While its appearance was still registering in my brain, the hyena closed the small distance between itself and the body and grabbed at the exposed flesh of Alexis Salomos' side, savaging a piece off.
"Get away, damn you!" I shouted at the beast. I picked up a stick of burnt wood and flung it at the hyena. The animal loped away through the grass carrying the chunk in its bloody jaws. In a moment it was gone.
I stared down again at the twisted body. I didn't even have a shovel to bury it with so I had to leave it to be destroyed by scavengers within twenty-four hours.
Well, there was nothing I could do. Alexis Salomos was just as dead with or without a burial. They had finally caught up with him and killed him, and they had almost gotten me, too. At least until this moment I had somehow survived. But the biggest test of my luck might just lie ahead, for I figured I was about halfway between Salisbury and Bulawayo, in the deepest part of the Rhodesian bush country.
I walked around the wreckage until it hid the corpse again. Just before the sabotaged Mooney had begun sputtering and coughing up there at five thousand feet, Salomos had mentioned that we would be passing over a tiny village soon. From what he had said, I calculated that the village was still fifty to seventy-five miles to the southwest. With no water or weapons my chances of getting there were very slim. The Luger and the sheath knife that I generally carried had been left at my hotel in Salisbury. Neither of them could be concealed beneath my bush shirt and, anyway, I had not foreseen the need for them on this particular plane ride to Bulawayo. I was on leave from my regular duties with AXE — America's super-secret intelligence agency — and had merely been accompanying an old friend from Athens whom I had met, quite by accident, in Salisbury. Now that friend was dead, and the wild story he had told me had become credible.
I walked to a nearby termite mound, a heap of hard white clay as high as my head with many chimneys that served as entrances. I leaned heavily against it, stared out toward a distant line of fever trees, and tried to ignore the buzzing of the flies on the other side of the wreck. It was just three days ago that I had met Alexis Salomos at a small restaurant near the Pioneer Memorial Park in Salisbury. I was sitting on the terrace looking down on the city when Salomos was suddenly standing beside my table.
"Nick? Nick Carter?" he said, a slow smile starting on his handsome, swarthy face. He was a square-jawed, curly-haired man in his forties whose eyes looked steadily at you with a bright intensity, as if he could see secrets inside your head. He was a newspaper editor in Athens.
"Alexis," I said, rising to extend my hand. He took it with both hands and shook it vigorously, the smile broadening to match my own. "What the hell are you doing in Africa?"
The smile faded, and I realized for the first time that he looked different from the way I had remembered him. He had helped me ferret out a KGB man who had stolen documents important to the West a few years ago in Athens. He seemed to have aged considerably since then. His face had lost its healthy look, particularly around the eyes.
"Do you mind if I join you?" he asked.
"I'll be offended if you don't," I answered. "Please sit down. Waiter!" A white-aproned young man came to the table, and we both ordered a British ale. We made small talk until the drinks came and the waiter left, then Salomos fell pensive.
"Are you all right, Alexis?" I finally asked.
He smiled at me, but the smile was thin and taut. "I have had trouble, Nick."
"Anything I can do?"
He shrugged his square shoulders. "I doubt if there is anything anybody can do." He spoke good English but with a marked accent. He took a long swig of the ale.
"You want to tell me about it?" I asked. "Or is it too personal?"
He gave a bitter laugh. "Oh, it is personal, my friend. You might say it is extremely personal." His eyes met mine. "Someone is trying to kill me."
I watched his face. "Are you sure?"
A wry smile. "How sure must I be? In Athens a rifle shot breaks a window and misses my head by inches. So I take the hint. I take a vacation to see my cousin here in Salisbury. He is an import merchant who emigrated here ten years ago. I thought I would be safe here for awhile. Then, two days ago a black Mercedes almost struck me on the main boulevard. The driver, who drove up onto the curb, looked exactly like a man I had seen before in Athens."
"Do you know who the man is?"
"No," Salomos said, shaking his head slowly. "I had seen him coming from the Apollo Building recently when I was doing a little snooping there." He paused and stared at his ale. "Have you ever heard of the Apollo Lines?"
"An oil tanker company, isn't it?"
"That is correct, my friend. The biggest tanker line in the world which is owned by my countryman, Nikkor Minourkos."
"Oh, yes. I know of Minourkos. A billionaire ex-sailor. A recluse; nobody ever sees him these days."
"Correct again," Salomos said. "Minourkos withdrew from public life almost ten years ago while still a relatively young man. He is believed to spend almost all his time in his penthouse in the Apollo Building near Constitution Plaza where he conducts his business. Personal contacts are made primarily by associates close to Minourkos. Almost no one ever obtains a personal audience with him."
"Very rich men seem to place a high value on their privacy," I said, sipping the ale. "But what does Minourkos have to do with the attempts on your life?"
Salomos took in a deep breath and let it out slowly. "About six months ago, Monourkos' behavior began to change. This was of particular interest to me, and other newspaper editors, of course, because any information about Minourkos is exciting and important to the readers of the Athens Olympiad. So I began taking notice when Minourkos, who has always stayed out of politics, began issuing public statements against the ruling junta in Athens. Suddenly he announced that the leaders among the colonels were weak and socialistic. He claimed they betrayed the 'revolution' of April 21, 1967, and implied that Greece would be better off with the restoration of Constantine II or some other monarchy. He referred to the danger of leftists like Papandreou and suggested that there needs to be another 'shake-up' in Greek government."
"Well," I said, "the man has a right to grow a sudden interest in politics after all these years. Maybe he's bored with trying to spend his money."
"It seems to be going farther than that. A man like Minourkos can buy a lot of friends. Generals and colonels are seen going to and from his penthouse, but they won't talk about the visits to the press. And there are rumors of a private army being financed by Minourkos at a specially built camp in northern Greece and at one on Mykonos, an Aegean island.
"Lastly, there is the recent disappearance of Colonel Demetrius Rasion. A Minourkos-dominated newspaper concludes he drowned while boating at Piraeus, but his body was never found. Nikkor Minourkos is now starting a big campaign to have Rasion replaced with a man of his own choosing, a fascist named Despo Adelfia. The junta does not want Adelfia, but its new and genteel leaders are afraid of Minourkos and his friends on the staff of generals."
"An interesting situation," I acknowledged, "But do you think Minourkos is embarking on a terror campaign with ideas of a bloody coup?"
"Perhaps. But there are other possibilities. There are new faces that none of us newsmen have seen before coming and going from the penthouse atop the Apollo Building; Minourkos himself still stays in hiding. I did notice, however, that one of the new faces belongs to a Greek-American named Adrian Stavros."
My eyes narrowed slightly on Salomos. "Stavros in Athens?" I murmured slowly. "Keeping company with Minourkos?"
"It appears so. Unless…"
"Unless what?"
"Well. Since Minourkos' recent utterances have been so out of character, perhaps he himself has not been the source of them."
"A Stavros takeover of the Minourkos empire?"
"Perhaps against Minourkos' will," Salomos suggested. "Perhaps there has already been a small coup, a hidden one. Since Minourkos is so secretive and always deals through subordinates, it would be possible to kill or capture him and operate under his name, and spend his vast sums of money without anyone taking notice for a time. It was just after I implied such a theory in my editorial that the first attempt was made on my life in Athens."
The haunted look had returned to his eyes. I remembered the AXE file on Adrian Stavros and realized that he was capable of just such a maneuver. Stavros had spent his college years demonstrating with placards at Yale. Then he had become involved in a radical bombing of a CIA office, and later he had made an attempt on a senator's life. He had escaped the clutches of the FBI and the CIA and had buried himself somewhere in Brazil where he had graduated to big-time crime like smuggling and assassination. Since the evidence against him in the States has been slim, the US had not tried to get him back. But they kept a watch over him in Brazil.
"And the man who tried to run you down here in Salisbury?" I asked. "You had seen him coming from the penthouse at the Apollo Building?"
"Yes, Nick," Salomos said. He swigged the rest of his ale and looked over the hibiscus-lined balustrade down the hill to the city. "I am getting desperate. A friend of my cousin who lives in the country outside Bulawayo has asked me to visit him for a short time until this blows over. I have accepted his invitation. A rented plane waits for me at the airport. I will fly it, since I am a licensed pilot, and will enjoy the trip. That is, if I can forget about…" There was a brief silence, then he looked over at me. "Nick, I would be very grateful if you could accompany me to Bulawayo."
I knew that Alexis Salomos would not ask if he were not desperate with fear. And I still had several days leave left before I received another assignment from David Hawk, the enigmatic director of AXE.
"I've always wanted to see Bulawayo," I said.
A look of relief came over Alexis' face. "Thanks, Nick."
Two mornings later we were airborne. Salomos was a competent pilot, and it appeared that the flight across the wild country of Rhodesia would be uneventful and pleasant. Salomos flew low so that we might spot occasional game animals and interesting topographical features of the bush. The flight seemed to raise Salomos' spirits, and he seemed very much like his old self. But at mid-morning, just about halfway to Bulawayo, the serenity of the morning was transformed into a nightmare.
The small Mooney aircraft, a two-seater, began coughing. Salomos was not concerned at first, but then it became worse. He throttled the small engine, but that only made matters more difficult. We lost altitude and started into a wide, banking spin.
Salomos swore in Greek, then his face went pale. He studied the panel and glanced over at me. "The fuel gauge reads full," he shouted over the sputtering engine. "It has not moved from its original position this morning." He banged on the glass that covered the gauge, but nothing happened. The needle stayed fixed on the letter F.
"We're out of gas," I said incredulously. That was bad news in any airplane, particularly in a small one.
"Not quite, but we're running out fast," Salomos said, pulling the Mooney into a temporary, steep glide and fighting the controls. "This plane was sabotaged, Nick. The gauge was frozen in position, but the tanks were almost empty when we started out. It had to have been on purpose."
"Jesus," I muttered. "Will you be able to land it?"
"There is no airfield anywhere near here," he said, straining to keep the plane from going into a tailspin. "But we will have to try a landing on the open veldt — if I can keep it in a glide pattern."
"Anything I can do?"
"Yes. Pray." Alexis glanced at me. "I am very sorry, Nick."
"Never mind that," I said. "Just get this thing down." I didn't even ask about chutes. There was no time. We were headed in a steep glide toward the grassy veldt.
The engine coughed and sputtered once more, then stalled for good as we saw the ground rush up at us. I figured it was over. There seemed to be no reasonable expectation of living through it.
Five hundred feet We swooped downward like a bird with a broken wing. Three hundred. The acacia trees slid past underneath. One hundred. Salomos' face was rigid with tension, and his arms were corded with his efforts at the controls. Then there was a rushing of grass and thornbush at a dizzying speed, a wing being rent by the limb of a twisted tree, and the plane nosing up slightly at the last moment, sliding around sideways. The impact threw us against the front of the plane. There was a grinding and screeching of metal and a loud shattering of glass, and our bodies were punched around in the small cabin. Then came the final crashing stop, with my door flying open and my body flying head over heels through the grass to a crunching impact with the hard ground.
I remember nothing beyond that, except for. crawling painfully through the grass, instinctively dragging myself away from the plane, and then the explosion with the sound of flames crackling somewhere behind me.
Two
I tried to push the memory of the crash out of my mind as I leaned heavily against the hard clay of the tall termite mound. But it was more difficult to eliminate the expression on the face of Alexis Salomos, the way it had looked in Salisbury, when I had said I would fly to Bulawayo with him.
There was still the insistent buzzing of flies beyond the glinting metallic hulk of the wrecked plane, but I tried not to listen. I focused again on the distant line of fever trees on the grassy horizon. Somewhere I had learned that fever trees sometimes announce the presence of water. But these trees were not in the direction that I had to walk to reach the village.
In a way I felt responsible for Salomos' tragic death. He had trusted me to help, and I had been incapable of doing so when he had needed me. He had expected counsel from me, and I had not foreseen the danger of the small plane. Also, I felt guilty because I had not totally believed his incredible story. However, his bloody corpse was blatant proof that at least part of his theory had been valid. Someone had wanted him dead. Whether that person was someone living in the penthouse above the Apollo offices in Athens was still open to question.
I caught a movement in the corner of my eye and turned toward one of the chimney entrances of the termite mound. A small, bright green snake glided out of the opening a short distance from my left arm and seemed to stare at me. I jumped away. I didn't know that snakes took up residence in termite mounds. This one was a green mamba, one of the world's three steps snakes. If bitten, the victim would be able to put about three steps between himself and the reptile before its venom would kill him. The mamba, out of striking distance for the moment, slithered into an adjacent chimney.
I stumbled over to the wreckage as my pulse subsided. I looked around for a moment and found a sharp sliver of metal about a foot long on the ground. One end of it was very sharp. Ripping off a piece of wooden molding, partly charred, from a section of fuselage, I broke it into two pieces of equal length and splinted the wide end of the shard, tying the sticks on with my handkerchief to make a handle for my makeshift knife. I stuck the crude weapon into my belt and, without looking back at the wreck, started off toward the trees.
It was difficult just to walk in the bush country. The tall grass and the thornbushes pulled at my clothing and raked my flesh, grabbing at me and holding me back. A hornbill shrieked at me from a nearby acacia. I found myself calculating the odds against survival. There are a hundred ways to die out there, and none of them are pleasant. In that grass, a man can walk right into a lion before he sees it. But it is the small creatures that generally cause the most trouble: snakes no bigger around than a man's finger and scorpions and ticks that burrow deep under the skin. If you find and drink the water, you may be plagued with liver flukes and other parasites that eat at a man from inside. And if you avoid these, you may still be attacked by the mosquitoes that carry yellow fever and malaria.
When I finally arrived at the trees, I found only the remains of a waterhole. The place had dried up. There was thick, black mud at the center and the hoofprints of many animals at the perimeter of the area.
I leaned against the green trunk of the nearest tree and rested in the shade. I had wasted my time and energy in coming here. The direction to the nearest village, the one that Salomos had mentioned in the plane, was at ninety degrees to the course that had brought me to this place. The walk in the boiling sun had weakened me even more. My mouth was like tanned leather. I remembered the thermos with its cold water that Salomos had brought aboard the plane. I had seen its crushed cylinder in the wreckage; its contents had boiled away in the fire. I tried not to think of the tropical sun overhead, or of the thirst in my throat, and began walking.
It must have been a couple of hours later when I came to the realization that I could go no farther without rest. My legs were trembling with weakness, and I was drawing air into my lungs in long rasping breaths. I saw the dead stump of a tree, part of it in the sparse shadow of an adjacent thornbush, just a few yards ahead. I slumped heavily to the ground and propped myself against the stump. Just the act of sitting down, the relief from the physical exertion of walking, was satisfying.
My eyelids closed, and I ignored the aching in my body. I tried to forget the small muscles twitching in my thighs and the insect bites on my face and arms. I needed rest and I was going to get it. To hell with anything else.
A sound came from the bush.
My eyelids fluttered open. Had I been mistaken? I peered into the tall grass, but I saw nothing. It must have been my imagination. I closed my eyes again, but the sound was repeated.
This time my eyes opened more quickly. There was no doubt of it; it had been the sound of a human voice. I strained my ears and heard a twig break.
"It was something!" I muttered.
Then the sound became more constant and more distinct. Two men were talking in what appeared to be some bush dialect that I had never heard.
"Hello!" I yelled with the last of my strength. "Over here!"
In another moment I saw their heads moving toward me above the grass. Black heads and khaki shirts. As they saw me, their voices increased in volume, and one of them pointed.
I relaxed a little. I had been closer to civilization than I had thought. There must be a village somewhere nearby, or at least a road. The men were emerging from the grass and staring at me. They were tall, slim, and grim-faced.
"Hello," I said. "Do you have water?"
The men looked at each other, then back at me. They came and stood over me. I didn't try to get up. "Water," I said.
They were both dressed very shabbily in western clothes and wore makeshift sandals. The taller of the two pointed at my feet, and in a moment he was bending down and untying my shoe. Before I could ask what he was doing, he had taken it off and was holding it up to his companion. The one holding my shoe up for inspection had a large, wide scar that ran diagonally across his face. The other wore a small mirror in the stretched lobe of his right ear. Both carried pangas, machete-type knives, in their belts.
The tall one spoke to the other, and I realized he was speaking Swahili. "Mzuri sana," he said, grinning, referring to my shoes. He continued in Swahili. "This is my lucky day."
"Listen to me," I began weakly.
They ignored me. The tall man bent and untied my other shoe. I tried to pull my foot back, but he gave me a vicious look and yanked the second shoe from it. He kicked off his own shabby sandals and jammed my shoes onto his feet, not bothering to tie the laces. "Sawasawa!" he said to his companion, ignoring me completely now.
I realized, quite abruptly, that these men were not going to be my saviors. And it occurred to me that I just might be worse off than before their arrival, if I was counting on survival.
"The shoes fit well." It was the tall one.
The other one was not enjoying the situation. "How is it that you assume the shoes are yours? Did we not come on him together?"
"It was I who saw him first," the tall one said. "You may have his trousers. If he has a pouch we will share its contents."
"It is not right that you take the shoes for yourself," the mirror-decorated one muttered.
The tall man turned to me. "Remove your pants," he commanded, still in Swahili. His eyes were yellow with red streaks shot through them and there were delicately etched scars on each cheek that were not noticeable at first because of the large scar.
My hand rested on the handle of my makeshift knife, hiding it from their view. It seemed that I would have to use it. The one with the stretched earlobe was taking the panga from his belt. There was little doubt of their intentions. They could not rob a white man of everything he had and then let him live.
"All right, I'll take my pants off," I said. I had regained some strength, but I did not want to show it. "But I must get to my feet." I extended my left hand to the tall one.
He looked contemptuously at it for a moment and then grabbed at my forearm roughly and jerked me to my feet. At the instant I came off the ground, I pulled my metal-shard knife from my waist and shoved it hard into the African's mid-section.
His eyes saucered in surprise as the razor-sharp metal slid through flesh and muscle. His right hand went automatically to the handle of his panga, but that was his last voluntary act. He grunted out an ugly noise and slid to the dust at my feet.
Mirror-ear stared wide-eyed at his fallen companion for a brief moment. Then he made a wild sound in his throat and swung the panga that he had just drawn.
I ducked backwards. The big blade sizzled past my face cutting the air audibly and just missing my head and shoulder. If I hadn't moved, it would have decapitated me. When I had avoided the panga, however, I had fatten to the ground. The African now moved over me and swung the knife again, and the glistening, curved blade whistled through the air toward my neck. I rolled quickly to my right, and the blade thudded the hard clay. While my attacker recovered his balance, I turned and kicked out savagely at his leg. I heard bone snap somewhere. He fell to the ground near me with a loud cry.
If I had been my usual self, that would have been the end of him. But I was slow to follow up the advantages that I had created. As I got to my knees, the African was already standing and a look of desperation came over his face. He swung at me again, and this time the arc was wide. The blade slit the sleeve of my shirt as it sliced downward. I jabbed out toward him with my shard and made a shallow laceration on his chest. He gave another grunt and swung the panga at my head as I fell back against the stump. The force of the swing caused Mirror-ear to lose his balance and fall across my right arm. I grabbed the back of his ragged collar with my left hand, pulled his head back, and drew the metal shard across his throat.
Blood spattered onto my face and chest as the African gasped loudly and reached convulsively for his severed throat. He fell face down onto the stump, still clutching at his throat, and then he rolled off onto the hard ground, motionless.
Breathing hard, I slumped back on one elbow. I was angry to have wasted important energy needed for survival on this fight, but I was grateful that I was still alive. When I had made a mental note of the dangers of the bush back at the wreck, I had forgotten one: man. Man, it seemed, was always at the top of the list. If you ignored that one factor, you might be dead before the bush could kill you.
At least I had one fact to go on in this situation. These men had come from a westerly direction, rather than the southwesterly one which I had taken. It just might be that they had come through a village or had left a road back there somewhere. The same could be said of the direction in which they were headed. I rose weakly and chose the westerly direction.
The hot African sun was slanting down in the sky when I gave out again. I collapsed in the tall grass, wondering whether there was still any real chance of making it. I needed water badly. There was no longer any feeling in my tongue and mouth. I lay there and watched a scorpion crawl slowly past me in the grass. I didn't know whether I could move if it attacked, but it did not seem to take notice of me. In a moment it was moving away. I grimaced and envied it, for it had no problem of survival, at least not at the moment. It seemed a bit ironic that its species had been crawling around on the planet's surface for over four hundred million years, long predating the dinosaurs, and that it would probably be on earth well after man was gone. It didn't seem fair somehow, but then I was prejudiced.
As I lay there, another sound assailed my ears. It was a distant humming, not unlike that of the flies earlier. But this sound quickly grew in volume and became recognizable as that of a car engine.
I propped myself up and cocked my head to hear. Yes, it was a vehicle of some kind. I rose unsteadily and headed toward the sound. I could see nothing but the grass and occasional trees. But the noise was getting closer with every second.
"Hey!" I yelled out over the grass. "Hey, over here!"
I stumbled and fell. Getting groggily to my feet once more, I staggered forward again. In a moment, I saw it — a Land Rover, dusty and scratched up, bumping along a secondary road that was nothing more than a track through the grass. The Rover, an open vehicle, was occupied by two men who had not seen me, for it approached the nearest point to me on the road and continued on.
"Hey!" I yelled.
I stumbled awkwardly through the grass and finally made it to the road. I yelled again when I got there. I started drunkenly after the vehicle, but fell on my face.
I lay there swearing aloud and feeling desperation rise in my chest. That car might be my last chance for survival.
Then I heard the Rover slow and brake to a stop. I tried to get up to see what had happened, but my strength was gone. I heard the engine idling a moment, then the Rover was in first gear again, swinging back around on the road and heading toward me. They had either heard me or seen me after all.
In just seconds the car stopped near me, the engine was cut, and I heard two men speaking in British accents.
"Good Lord, it's a European."
"What's he doing out here in the bush on foot?"
"Maybe we ought to ask him."
Soon there was cool water running into my mouth, spilling onto my dirty shirt front, and I could feel my tongue again.
"Good God, man, what happened?"
I focused on the two beefy faces leaning over me. They were middle-aged, white Rhodesians, probably gentlemen farmers out for a day in the bush.
"A plane crash," I answered. "I walked away from it."
As they hoisted me into the Rover, I knew I had made it. But I could not forget the body of Alexis Salomos being devoured by hyenas out there because of somebody in Athens. I hoped that David Hawk would let me dig into what was happening in the Apollo Building to find out whether Adrian Stavros was really in Brazil as everybody thought Because if any of Alexis Salomos' theory were true, there was trouble ahead of a kind that AXE had not seen in a good, long time.
Three
"You don't look too good, Nick."
David Hawk, director of America's super-secret AXE agency, was holding a stubby cigar between the fingers of his right hand and leaning forward on his wide mahogany desk. We were sitting in his office at AXE headquarters which was cleverly hidden in the rented space of the Amalgamated Press & Wire Services on DuPont Circle in Washington.
I regarded him with a wry grin. "They wanted me to stay a while longer in that Salisbury hospital. But you know how quickly I get bored. If I'm pale, it's because I need the sun and a good sirloin steak. What do you think of Salomos' story?"
Hawk puffed on the cigar and blew a smoke ring toward me. He looked small and thin sitting behind the big desk, with his rumpled, gray hair and his Connecticut farmer's face. But I knew that the frail look was deceiving. He was a dynamo.
"It frightens me a little," he said. "It also frightens me that you damn near got yourself killed between assignments. I never saw a man who found trouble so easily."
I shrugged my shoulders. "Salomos was a friend. Of mine and of AXE. He went out of his way to help us find Borisov that time, remember?"
"Yes, I remember," Hawk said soberly. "Well, your Rhodesian escapade is over, so we'll drop it. As for the possibility that Adrian Stavros might be planning a coup against the Greek government, I wouldn't put it past him."
"Does he still own the plantation in Brazil?"
"According to our sources, that's still his headquarters. We don't have a recent report." Hawk leaned back in his big leather chair. "If that was really Stavros that your friend saw coming from the Minourkos penthouse, we're definitely confronted with an interesting situation. Dreams of running a whole country fit in very nicely with what we've learned about him."
Hawk studied his bony knuckles. "Adrian Stavros was always a neurotic personality, perhaps psychopathic. Besides running a successful smuggling ring in Brazil that the government there has been unable to break, he has also made a business of political assassination, the most recent believed to be the killing of the Israeli official Moshe Ben Canaan."
"Then I take it AXE is interested in Alexis Salomos' story," I said.
"I'm afraid we have to be. And I suppose that because you considered Salomos a friend, you'd like to have the assignment."
"Yes sir, I would."
Hawk stubbed out the cigar in a nearby ashtray. "My first impulse is to say no and give the case to another man. You know how I try to avoid an agent's personal involvement in an assignment."
"It's important to me that Alexis' killer doesn't go free," I said quietly.
"All right. You can handle this one. But be especially careful, Nick. The way to start on this, I think, is to go to Rio and talk to the CIA man there. Find out if Stavros is outside the country and where he's been spending his time. Then if your leads take you to Athens, go there. Just keep me informed."
"Don't I always?" I grinned.
"Well, you sometimes tend to forget that there are people back here at their dull desk jobs whose responsibility it is to run the show." His voice had taken on that truculent tone that it sometimes did when he spoke of protocol and chain of command. "If you need help at any point along the way, ask for it. That's what we're here for."
"Of course."
He opened a desk drawer and pulled out an envelope. His eyes avoided mine. "Anticipating your request and my eventual concession to you, I had the foresight, if not the wisdom, to purchase your ticket."
I smiled. "Thanks." I reached across the desk and took the envelope.
"You'd better wait to see how this all comes out before you decide whether I've done you any favors," Hawk replied.
The next evening I boarded the Pan Am flight to Rio de Janeiro. I had rested all day and was feeling pretty much my old self again. The flight was uneventful, but I kept thinking of that other one in the small Mooney aircraft when Salomos showed me the veldt, of the trouble and the crash landing, and of the way Salomos' corpse had looked in the hot sun.
I arrived in Rio the next morning and checked into the Floriano Hotel near the Copacabana Palace. It was just a block from the beach, and it had the flavor of colonial Brazil. The room had a ceiling fan and louvered doors, and the narrow balcony gave a small view of the sea.
It was hot in Rio. All the Brazilians who could get there were at the beach, and most of them must have been at the Copacabana area near the hotel. Anticipating the heat, I had brought a tropical worsted suit along. I showered at noon, donned the lightweight suit over Wilhelmina, my Luger, and Hugo, the sheathed stiletto, on my right arm, and went for lunch at one of my favorite small restaurants, the Chale at Rua da Matriz 54. This restaurant had been a colonial home and was still furnished with valuable antiques and paintings. Negro servants waited tables and tended bar. I ordered a churrasco mixto, which consisted of chunks of beef and pork in vegetables, and passed up the usual chopp, an excellent local draft beer, for their very fine Grande Uniao Cabernet wine. But I had just started the meal when I saw the girl walk in and seat herself at a nearby table. She was tall and svelte, and her mane of flaming red hair made her milky white skin appear even paler. Her dazzling green mini-dress made a striking contrast with her hair and revealed a good portion of long, perfect thighs, and above the waist, a breathtaking cleavage. She wore green shoes that matched the dress and green bracelets on her left arm.
The red hair confused me for a moment, but then I realized that when I had last seen her, the hair had been short and brunette. That had been in Israel over a year ago. The girl's name was Erika Nystrom. She was a member of Israel's Shin Bet intelligence network. Her code name had been Flame when she and I had worked together to foil a Russian plot against the Israeli government, but that name was changed with each assignment.
I rose and went to her table. When she raised her long lashes to meet my eyes, a smile swept across her face. "Oh!" she exclaimed. "It's you. What a pleasant surprise." She spoke English with almost no trace of an accent.
Erika's parents had been Scandinavian Jews. Her family had lived first in Oslo and then in Copenhagen before they had emigrated to Israel when she was only eight years old.
"I was about to say the same thing," I said. Erika and I had spent an intimate evening in Tel Aviv while waiting for a courier to show up; it was an evening we had both enjoyed very much. Her eyes told me now that she remembered it with fondness. "Will you join me at my table?"
"Well, someone is joining me later, Nick. Would you mind?"
"Not as much as not talking to you," I said.
She joined me at my table and ordered a light lunch for herself and the third person, who she explained, was a fellow agent "You look very well, Nick."
"You should have seen me a week ago," I said. "I like the red hair, Erika."
She dazzled me with a smile. A long, aquiline nose set off a wide, sensuous mouth. Her eyes were a dark green, and the dress made them sparkle. "Thanks," she said. "It's mine, except for the color. It was short when we — worked together in Israel."
"I remember," I said. "Are you here on business?"
"Yes," she answered. "You?"
"Yes," I grinned. "It's always business, isn't it?"
"Almost always."
I recalled reading in the newspapers recently that Israel was outraged by the assassination of Moshe Ben Canaan and that their president had vowed to get to the bottom of it. It was this assassination in which American intelligence believed Adrian Stavros to be involved. I couldn't help wondering if Erika was in Rio to either abduct Adrian Stavros to Israel, which was the Israeli's style, or to kill him.
"Are you going to be in Rio long enough for us to have a drink and a talk together?" I asked.
"Possibly," she said. The cleavage was pushed together by her arms as she rested them on the table, and my blood pressure rose ten points. Her green eyes looked into mine and told me that she knew I was not talking about wine and conversation.
I picked up my glass. She had ordered and had been served the same Grande Uniao Cabernet. "To that possibility," I toasted.
She picked up her own glass and clinked it against mine. "To that possibility."
We had just finished the toast when the young man arrived. I didn't even see him until he was standing beside us. He was a blocky, muscular fellow with very short, blond hair and a hard, square face. Part of his left ear was missing, but that defect didn't harm his masculine good looks. He wore a beige summer-weight suit that didn't completely conceal the bulge under his left arm.
"I did not see you at first, Erika," he said rather stiffly, eyeing me. "I did not expect you to be with someone."
The words were intended as a mild reproach. They had been spoken with a marked accent. I recalled a photo of this man in AXE's Israeli intelligence file. He was Zachariah Ghareb, an executioner of Shin Bet. My theory about his and Erika's presence in Rio seemed strengthened.
"This is an old friend, Zach," Erika said. "He worked with me in Israel."
Ghareb seated himself at the third place setting. "I know," he said. "Carter, I believe."
"That's right."
"Your reputation precedes you."
His manner was brittle, almost hostile. I sensed his jealousy about my knowing Erika. Before I could answer him, he turned to her. "Did you order the vichyssoise as I suggested?"
"Yes, Zach," Erika said, a little embarrassed by his lack of friendliness. "It will be here shortly."
"The vichyssoise is the only thing worth eating at this restaurant," Zach complained a bit too loudly.
"I'm sorry you've had bad luck," I replied smoothly. "I find most of the dishes here well prepared. Perhaps they've changed chefs since your last visit."
Zach turned and gave me a taut smile. "Perhaps."
I decided that the conversation was going to be something less than pleasant from this point on. I was finished with my meal, so I called the waiter to bring my check. I offered to pay for the whole party, but Zach quickly declined.
"Where are you staying?" I asked Erika.
"At the Corumba on the Avenida Rio Branco," she said.
Zach stared at her.
"Under what name?"
She hesitated. "Vargas."
"May I call you there?"
"You will have little time for socializing,"
Zach said quickly to her.
She ignored him and gave me a nice smile.
"Yes, you may call me. I hope we can get together again, Nick."
I rose. "The feeling is mutual." I touched my hand to hers and our eyes locked together for a brief moment. I knew Zach was jealous, and since I didn't like him, I was playing it up for his benefit He sat there glaring at me. "You'll hear from me."
"Good," Erika said.
I turned from them and left the restaurant I could almost feel the heat from Zach's hostility on my back as I walked out.
That afternoon I took the cable car up to spectacular Corcovado Mountain, which was crested with the enormous statue of Christ the Redeemer. When I got there, I went to the observation parapet, stood in a designated spot, and waited. In about fifteen minutes, a man joined me at the railing. He was about my height, but slimmer. Although he was not yet in middle age, his long face was deeply lined. He was Carl Thompson, and he worked for the CIA.
"Fine view, isn't it?" he said by way of introduction, waving a hand toward the city below which glistened white in the sun and was flanked by green hills and cobalt sea.
"Breathtaking," I said. "How's it going, Thompson?"
"About the same," he said. "It's been fairly quiet down here since the last change of administration at Brasilia. How's everything at AXE these days? For a while there you guys were shooting up more ammunition than the army in Asia."
I grinned. "Sometimes it does seem that way. I've kept busy, as I'm sure you have."
"And now they've put you onto Adrian Stavros."
"That's right." I watched a cruise ship, plying the blue water with its sleek bow, move slowly into the harbor. It looked like a toy boat down there. "When is the last time you saw him?"
He thought a moment. "We have the plantation under surveillance on a spot basis. He was seen leaving the place five or six weeks ago. We think he got on a plane going to Madrid."
"That flight could have continued to Athens."
"It probably did. Has he been seen there?"
"We think so. What goes on at the plantation?"
"The plantation is his real headquarters. He has the Apex Imports outfit here in Rio, and we think the smuggling is conducted through that company. But he doesn't visit its offices very much, even though his name is openly associated with it. The president of the company makes regular trips to Paracatu."
"And that's where the plantation is located?"
Thompson nodded. "It's near the village, out in the middle of nowhere. It's guarded by Stavros' own small army of ex-cons, political fanatics, and ex-Nazis. There's just a skeleton force there now, though."
"You haven't noticed anything unusual out there, anything out of the ordinary?" I asked.
"Well, if you mean a build-up of people or arms, the answer is no. But there has been a visitor whom none of us had seen before. We've had almost constant surveillance since his appearance with Stavros ninety days ago, and nobody has seen him leave the place. That in itself isn't particularly unusual, except that one of my two men insists that the new fellow, a middle-aged man, is a prisoner there. He's been hustled from one building to another by an armed guard."
"What did this man look like?"
Thompson shrugged. "We have a photo of him, but it's from a distance. He's about fifty, I'd say, with short, dark hair that has become a little gray at the temples. He's a stocky man who always seems to wear silk shirts."
It sounded as if the man might be Minourkos, the Greek shipping magnate whose political pronouncements had recently shaken up Athens and at whose penthouse Adrian Stavros had been seen.
"Can I have a copy of the photograph?"
"That can be arranged," Thompson said. "Look, Carter, in the last week or so we've had to temporarily reduce our surveillance of the plantation to spot-checks again, and I may have to pull our people out of there completely in the next couple of days because there is another problem that has developed for us. Do you want me to get permission to put a man back on it with you?"
"No," I said. "Hawk has promised me help if I need it. When can I have the photograph?"
"How about tonight?"
"Fine."
"There's a drop site we use that's a bit different," Thompson said. "It's a city bus. You will get on at your hotel. My man will already have been on and off. You will go to the rear where nobody sits and take the last seat on your right. The photograph will be taped underneath that seat. The bus will be marked Estrada de Ferro and will take you downtown if you want to go that far."
"When does the bus go past the hotel?"
"At seven-fifteen. The bus will be marked number eleven."
"Okay," I said. "And thanks."
"Any time," Thompson said. A moment later he was gone.
In the late afternoon I made a brief visit to the offices of the Apex Import Company. It was located in one of the old renovated government buildings that had been left empty when the capital moved to Brasilia. The offices were three flights up, and the elevator wasn't working.
I entered a rather small reception office upstairs. There was perspiration on my brow from the climb, for the air-conditioning in the building seemed not to work much better than the elevator and it was a muggy day in Rio. A dark-haired girl sat at a metal desk and looked up at me suspiciously when I entered.
"May I help you?" she asked in Portuguese.
I responded in English. "I would like to see Mr. Stavros."
Her dark eyes narrowed even more. When she spoke again, it was in broken English. "I believe you come to wrong place, senhor."
"Oh?" I said. "But Mr. Stavros told me himself that I might contact him through the Apex Imports Company."
"Senhor, Mr. Stavros does not have an office…"
The door to a private office opened and a husky, dark-haired man appeared. "Is there some difficulty?" he demanded. His tone was not what could be called friendly.
"I was just looking for Mr. Stavros," I said.
"For what purpose?"
I ignored the rudeness. "Mr. Stavros advised me that I might purchase Japanese cameras in wholesale lots from him if I contacted him here." I acted perplexed. "Am I in the wrong office?"
"Mr. Stavros is the chairman of the board," the dark man said, "but he has no office here, and he does not do business for the company. I am its president; you may deal with me."
"This is Senhor Carlos Ubeda," the girl interposed, a bit haughtily.
"I'm glad to meet you, sir," I said, extending my hand. He took it stiffly. "My name is Johnson. I met Mr. Stavros quite casually in the Chale Restaurant several weeks ago. He said he would return from a trip to Europe about this time and that I might contact him here."
"He is still in Athens," the girl said.
Ubeda gave her a blistering look. "As I said, Mr. Stavros cannot be reached here. But I will be happy to forward your order."
"I see. Well, I did want to deal with him personally. Can you tell me when he might return from Athens?"
A muscle twitched in Ubeda's face near his mouth. "He is not expected back from Europe for several weeks, Mr. Johnson. If you want to do business, you will have to deal with me."
I smiled. "I'll give you a call, Mr. Ubeda. Thanks for your time."
I left them staring after me. Once again out on the street, I hailed a taxi and returned to my hotel. The girl's slip had given me the confirmation I had wanted, Adrian Stavros was indeed in Athens as Salomos had told me. And if that photograph turned out to be a picture of Nikkor Minourkos, things were getting interesting.
I showered and rested for a short time, then boarded bus number eleven according to Thompson's instructions. As he had predicted, the photograph was taped to the seat in a small, brown envelope. I recovered it and went to a little cafe downtown and ordered a good Portuguese wine. Only then did I take the photograph from the envelope and study it.
As Thompson had said, the picture was not a: good one, even though a telephoto lens had undoubtedly been used. It was a shot of three men, having just emerged from a rambling ranch house, walking toward the camera. The man in the middle was the one Thompson had described to me, and despite the small size of the face that I had to identify, there was little doubt in my mind, as I compared it to the face that I had been shown in AXE photographs, that this man was in fact Nikkor Minourkos. I had never seen the other men before.
Minourkos was walking sullenly between the other two figures. None of them were talking, but the man on Minourkos' left, a tall, Teutonic-like fellow, was looking toward Minourkos as if he had just spoken to him and expected an answer. Minourkos' face was somber and grave.
I slipped the photograph back into the envelope and stuck it into a pocket. If the CIA agent's observation had been correct, my friend Salomos' theory was indeed proven. Somehow Stavros had taken over the Minourkos operation in Athens and was plotting a coup in Minourkos' name.
After a light meal at the cafe, I called Erika Nystrom's room at the Corumba Hotel. Her voice was friendly and warm. She said she would have the rest of the evening to herself, alone, and that she would be delighted to have me visit her. She and Zach had had a small argument, and he had gone off to a nightclub in a huff.