The Death’s Head Conspiracy

Three

It was one of those rare days In Los Angeles when the wind swept the basin clear of smog. The city was spread out below the jet like a living organism of concrete and asphalt with the great freeway arteries laid open as though by a great dissecting knife.

The taxi ride from L.A. International to Rona Volstedt’s address at the foot of one of the canyons in the Santa Monica Mountains was a long one. I relaxed with a cigarette while the driver told me in detail how he would do things if he were managing the Dodgers.

He dropped me off in front of a comfortable-looking cottage, tucked back off the road among the pines. The canyon stillness was broken by the noise of about a dozen motorcycles a short distance down the road. It seemed like an odd place for a bike club to be gathering, but there’s no accounting for the preferences of motorcycle types.

I climbed the short flight of stone steps and padded across a carpet of pine needles to the front door. There was no bell, so I knocked.

The girl who opened the door was, if anything, an improvement over the photograph I’d seen in Hawk’s office. Her skin was clear and white, with a touch of color at the cheekbones. Her eyes, I could now see, were the deep blue of Nordic seas and the soft blonde hair seemed touched with moonlight.

“I’m Nick Carter,” I said, “from AXE.”

Her eyes gazed for a minute at my face, then took in my shoulders and ran over the rest of my body. “Come in,” she said. “I’m Rona Volstedt.”

Her livingroom looked like an explosion in a music store. Bits and pieces of guitars were scattered about without apparent method, bottles of glue and shellac sat on the carpet, and a few intact instruments leaned against the walls.

Bona saw me take it all in. She said, “My hobby is building and repairing guitars. I find it very relaxing.”

“You must spend a lot of time alone working on them,” I said.

“I hadn’t realized how much till just now.”

“Maybe we can make some adjustments in the way you spend your leisure time,” I said. “But first, you were going to give us some information about the Mumura explosion.”

“I’m not sure I know what you mean,” she said doubtfully.

It was the right response. I had deliberately not given her the recognition sign. I knew Hawk would have briefed her, and I wanted to be sure I was talking to the right woman.

“Can you spare a match?” I said.

“Sorry, I don’t keep them since I quit smoking.”

“I tried to quit last year myself, but I only lasted two weeks.” I always felt just a little silly going through one of these routines, but it’s little safeguards like this that can make the difference between a live espionage agent and a dead spy.

Rona Volstedt relaxed and sat down on the small couch. She wore a pair of blue pants that kept her legs a secret, but her loose fitting blouse gaped enough to reveal firm, uptilted breasts that didn’t need any support from the lingerie industry. She was a lean girl but by no means emaciated. I sat down next to her, inhaling a light floral scent, and she began to talk.

“As you were probably told, I’m with the AEC. Most of our undercover work and investigations are handled by the FBI, but we do a few of the jobs ourselves. It was on one of those that I met Knox Warnow.

“Five years ago he had a very minor post at one of our power projects. He began to talk at cocktail parties and apparently expressed some strange political opinions. I was assigned to get as close as I could to him to sound him out. It wasn’t difficult. He was starved for someone to listen to his ideas. He had in his mind a process for making a nuclear explosive in plastic that could be molded into almost any shape. I asked him what the object of that would be, and his eyes really lit up. This stuff, he said, could be shaped into innocent looking objects, smuggled easily into any country in the world and planted in their cities. A demand could be made that the country surrender or the cities would be destroyed one by one.”

“Sure sounds like our Mumura people.”

“That’s what I thought He needed money to perfect his process, a lot of it He took his scheme to AEC officials and they practically threw him out of the office. Our emphasis is mostly on peaceful uses of atomic energy, and nobody even wants to talk about weapons.

“Naturally, Warnow was eased out of his Job with the commission. He was pretty bitter about it. Swore he’d get even with the whole rotten country for not supporting him. Soon after that he dropped out of sight, and we didn’t try too hard to locate him, since, frankly, we considered him a crackpot.”

“You did a good job on Warnow,” I said, Then to tease her a little, I added, “How close did you manage to get to him?”

She lowered her lids and peered at me with her deep blue gaze. “As a matter of fact, I never got that close. Warnow was so completely involved in his plastic process that he couldn’t get interested in… other things. I was a little relieved. He had an electronic pacemaker to regulate his heartbeat, and it would have been pretty embarassing to have it short circuit at an intimate moment. Tell me, Nick, you don’t use any artificial aids like that, do you?”

“Nope,” I grinned. “I’m still using all the original parts.”

“I’m glad to hear it. Would you like a cocktail?”

“That’s an excellent idea,” I said. “Then I’ll call Hawk in Washington and pass on what you’ve told me. If we’re lucky, we might have the evening to ourselves.”

We walked together to the bright, compact kitchen at the rear of the cottage. I said, “This is quite an isolated place you have here.”

“Yes, I know. I like it this way. Crowds have never appealed to me much. That road outside dead-ends a couple of miles up the hill at a private estate, so there’s not much traffic past here.”

“If it weren’t for those motorcycles growling outside, you might be miles out in the country. Do they come around here much?” “No, this is the first time I’ve ever seen them. They seem to be waiting for something to happen. It’s a little creepy, but they haven’t approached the house.”

Alarm bells went off in my head loud and clear.

“Rona, that call you made to Hawk this morning — did you use the phone here?”

“Yes, I did. Why—?” She gasped as understanding came. “Do you think my line is bugged?”

“It’s safest to assume all lines are bugged until you prove otherwise. I don’t like that cycle gang out front Do you have a car?”

“Yes, it’s parked on the street pointing up the hill.”

“Throw a couple of things together and let’s get out of here.”

“But where will we go?”

“AXE keeps a beach house out at Malibu for agents to use when necessary. You’ll be much safer there.” I didn’t add, “If we get past the motorcycle crowd,” but that’s what I was thinking.