The Death’s Head Conspiracy

Five

Malibu. Playground of the movie stars, weekend homes for the wealthy, and location of AXE Emergency Quarters Number 12. There were a number of these spotted around the country for use of AXE agents in special circumstances. I felt that Rona and I met the requirements.

The same key, carried by every AXE agent, opened the door to any of them. They were located in all sorts of neighborhoods and all kinds of buildings. The one in Malibu wasn’t adequately described by the term Emergency Quarters. A modern glass and redwood structure, it was sheltered from the access road off Pacific Coast Highway by a seven-foot fence. Downstairs was a huge, high-ceilinged livingroom with comfortable furniture arranged around a hanging fireplace. A ten-foot ebony bar separated the livingroom from the small, functional kitchen. A spiraling wrought-iron staircase led up to a three-sided landing, where the bedrooms were.

Rona spotted the bathroom with its sunken Roman tub. “I’d sure like a bath,” she said. “Do you suppose there’s anything around here I could slip into afterward?”

“Take a look through the bedrooms,” I said. “These places are pretty well stocked.”

She went upstairs and prowled through closets and drawers while I checked out the bar. In a little while she came tripping back down with a velour robe draped over one arm and her hands full of bottles and Jars.

“AXE certainly equips their hideouts for all occasions, don’t they?”

“They’re not all this plush,” I told her. “I’ve been in a couple where I had to battle the rats for sleeping space.”

Rona gave me a long look from the foot of the stairs. “That’s one problem we won’t have here.”

“At least one,” I agreed. “What do you like to drink? HI have a couple ready when you come out.”

“Whatever you’re having,” she said, stepping into the bathroom.

The wall section by the sunken tub was of pebbled glass, and faced the bar outside. When the bathroom light was on, the glass was quite translucent, and whatever was going on inside was very visible, at least in suggestion, to anybody watching from the bar area. I couldn’t be sure whether Rona was aware of this voyeur effect or not, but from the studied grace of her movements, I suspected that she was.

She set the bottles and jars down on a shelf, then peeled off her blouse. Even through the distortion of the pebbled glass the pink of her nipples was distinguishable from the whiter flesh of her breasts. She stepped out of her loose blue pants and slid a strip of black bikini panties down her long, slim legs. She tested the water with one foot, took a last look at herself in the full-length mirror, then stepped down into the tub.

I walked to the telephone at the far end of the bar to call Hawk. The private number got me through at once. There was a possibility, of course, that the Malibu phone was tapped, but at the rate things were moving, I couldn’t stop to worry about it.

Before I could report what I’d learned from Rona, Hawk opened the conversation.

“I’ve just been on the wire with a very excited JIC rep out there who says you left some rather messy cleanup work for him to dispose of and explain to the local police.”

I admitted the accuracy of the report

“Nick, I understand,” Hawk went on, “that in our line of work a few bodies are bound to be left behind. Would it be asking too much that in the future you make the necessary disposals in a tidier manner… say shooting them through the heart?”

“I’ll try to be neater,” I promised, “circumstances permitting.”

“Good. Now tell me, does Miss Volstedt have anything valuable for us?”

I suppressed a smile as I saw Rona stand up in the tub and reach a naked arm out for the towel. “Yes,” I said, “I think she has.”

I told Hawk about Rona’s investigation of Knox Warnow five years ago, and his scheme for blackmailing a nation by threatening to blow up its cities one by one. Hawk was especially interested when I told him Wamow’s idea for making a plastic nuclear explosive.

He said, “That fits in very nicely with a new development on this end. I don’t want to discuss it over the phone, but I’d like for you to fly back to Washington in the morning.”

“Right. I’ll be there tomorrow.”

Rona was out of the tub now, toweling herself off. With casual sensuality she moved the fluffy towel up and down the smooth expense of her inner thigh. When I answered Hawk, a little of my disappointment at ending such a promising acquaintance so soon must have come through in my voice. Hawk cleared his throat in that disapproving way of his. “You might bring Miss Volstedt along. The project I have in mind will include a job for the two of you.”

“We’ll be there,” I said, with more enthusiasm.

I hung up the phone and built a couple of martinis from the well-stocked liquor supply beneath the bar. As I dropped a twist of lemon into each glass, Rona emerged from the bathroom. She wore the short velour robe belted at her waist. It was just long enough to reach the crease where thigh met buttock.

“I’m afraid this robe wasn’t made for a tall girl,” she said.

“I wouldn’t say that,” I told her. Rona’s legs, exposed as they were now, didn’t look even a little bit thin. Instead, they looked rounded and smooth and pliable. I handed her the martini.

“Thank you,” she said. “Did you call Washington?”

“Yes. Hawk wants us to fly back there tomorrow. Says he has a job for both of us. Is that all right with you?”

“Why not? It’s got to be better than hanging around here with motorcycle creeps and God knows who else shooting at me.”

Rona took a sip of her drink, then set the glass down on the bar and began to shudder violently, as though fanned by a blast of chill air.

I took a step toward her. “Rona, what’s wrong?”

She drew a deep breath. “A delayed reaction, to all the excitement this afternoon, I guess. It seems I’m not as cool and collected as I thought I was.”

I moved in and put my arms around her. Her body, which looked so lean and capable in clothes, melted against me with a warm suppleness that was surprising. Her breasts, pressing against my chest, moved softly with her breathing.

“I’m so damned scared, Nick,” she said, “for you and for me and for everybody else in the world. How will it end?”

“Badly,” I said. “But not for us. Now relax and let me worry.”

I massaged the smooth muscles of her back through the velour robe.

She tilted her head to look up into my eyes. “I hope you’re right, Nick,” she said.

I bent and kissed her on the mouth. She smelled of soap from her bath, with a touch of some floral scent in her hair. Her lips were cool and yielding, and sort of minty to the taste.

My hands slid up and found the open edge of the robe, then moved down to the warm, rising hills of her breasts. With a small cry of desire, she pulled away from me Just long enough to loosen the belt and slide the robe back over her shoulders, letting it fall to the floor.

Slowly, deliberately, she drew my hands down over her nakedness, pressing her breasts for a moment, then letting the nipples bob up again as she wound my hands down her body and across the flat stomach with its softer-than-chamois skin.

Her eyes were entranced as she bent her head to watch, she guided my fingers over her silky cushion to her warm center, and her hungry eyes rose to meet mine.

As I stepped back and hurried out of my clothes, she studied me with frank interest and admiration, never turning coyly away, even when I was completely naked. Then she simply opened her arms to welcome me.

I glanced upward to the bedroom landing, but she shook her head — as if to say that her need was too urgent for delay — that the place was here, the time was now. So we stretched out on the thick blue carpet and I stroked her body. Her moans came softly at first, like the sighing of wind, but soon rose to feverish cries of demand, as she rolled and pulled me down on top of her.

She arched her lean blonde body up to meet me as I entered her. Then there was the writhing, twisting rhythm of her tortured desire, the mounting together on a cresting wave of climax, followed by the long, surging descent to the empty shore of sweet exhaustion.