The Death’s Head Conspiracy

Six

Early the next morning Rona went to work and turned out a huge breakfast. The night’s exercise had given us both big appetites, and we put the food away with enthusiasm. As the coffee cooled in our cups, other things began to warm up. However, this was a working day and, from what I’d learned of Rona the night before, a spot of after-breakfast recreation might just keep us occupied until late afternoon.

So instead, I stood in the sunken tub and took a cold shower.

We got away from LA. International on a nine o’clock flight, and at Dulles another of Hawk’s silent, efficient chauffeurs met us with an AXE limousine.

We went through the security rigamarole and soon were seated across the desk from David Hawk. The head AXE man ran his eyes over Rona Volstedt and turned back to me with an unspoken question in his gaze. I shrugged and grinned back at him as innocently as I could.

Hawk cleared his throat explosively and got down to business. “At the time you called me yesterday, Nick, we were holding a seaman named Juan Escobar off the Caribbean cruise ship Gaviota. He was picked up in Fort Lauderdale when he was acting suspiciously going through customs. No contraband was found on his person or in his suitcase, but with all our people on double alert these days, the Florida authorities called our office. We had Escobar brought up here for questioning, but we couldn’t get anything out of him. Then, when you passed on Miss Volstedt’s information about Knox Warnow and his nuclear plastic explosive, we had a closer look at the suitcase he brought in. Sure enough, our labs showed it to be fissionable material. In the latch we found a microelec-tronic detonator that could be activated by a long-distance radio signal. And, funny thing, there was a small skull embossed on the handle — a tiny death’s-head.”

“Have you learned anything more from the seaman?” I asked.

“Not much. I’ll let the man tell you himself.”

Hawk tapped a button on his intercom and said, “Send in Escobar.” A minute later a pair of grim looking government men entered with a sullen, pockmarked man between them. The government men left and Hawk motioned Escobar into a chair.

I walked over and stood in front of the man. “Let’s hear your story,” I said.

Escobar shifted uncomfortably. “I already told it twenty times.”

“Tell it again,” I said. “To me.”

He took a look at my face and started to talk without further hesitation. “The big man, he give me the suitcase and five hundred dollars. He say take a couple weeks off. Then when I catch up with ship, he give me another five. All I do is stick the suitcase in a locker in Cleveland and leave it there. That is all I know. I swear.”

“Who is the big man?” I asked.

“I do not know his name. He comes on board sometimes at one port, sometimes at another. All I know, he is with new owners, and when he gives an order, everybody jump.”

“New owners, did you say?”

“Si. Five, six months ago, they buy the Gaviota. Most of the old crew they fire, a few of us they keep. Me, I work for anybody. It’s a job, you know. The new guys they put on the crew, they are not South American like the rest of us. They talk funny, and they keep away from us.”

“Tell me more about the big man.”

“He is the boss, that is all I know. He looks rough and he talks in deep voice. Big shoulders, like a bull.”

I glanced at Hawk.

“The description fits Fyodor Gorodin,” he said.

To Escobar I said, “Anybody else giving orders?”

“One man I only see twice. Skinny, mean looking, white hair. He’s the only one I ever see give orders to the big man.”

Again I turned to Hawk. “Zhizov?”

He nodded.

I stuck my hands in my pockets and walked slowly to the far wall. Then I came back and planted myself in front of the sailor again. I stared into his eyes till he looked away.

“Juan,” I told him, “you have probably heard that the United States deals fairly with criminals and that you don’t have to be afraid of mistreatment. But this situation is quite different, Juan. There is no time for patience. If you are lying to us, I will personally see to it that even if you live, you will be useless to the senoritas. Do you understand me, Juan?”

“Si, senor!” he snapped. The bulge of his eyes told me that he knew I wasn’t kidding. “On my mother’s name, I tell the truth! There were six others who they give also the suitcases. Where they take them, I do not hear. My case was for Cleveland. That is all I know, senor, believe me.”

I did. I nodded to Hawk and he had Escobar taken away.

“I presume you checked out the ship and these new owners,” I said when the three of us were alone again.

“Yes. The Gaviota is Venezuelan registry. The former owners were paid a huge sum in cash by a man who said he represented an outfit called Halcyon Cruises. It’s phony, of course.”

Rona spoke up. “Couldn’t you seize the ship and question the crew? Find out where the bombs are coming from?”

“We could,” Hawk admitted. “But we couldn’t be sure that Gorodin would be aboard, and it seems that Zhizov almost never appears. Even if we did learn where the bombs are being made and where the triggering device is kept, word of the seizure of the ship would reach them before we could. And then they might set off the bombs already planted in God knows what cities. No, this exercise has to be low-profile, that’s why I wanted you and Nick here.”

“I’ve been wondering when you’d get around to that,” I said. “No offense, Rona, but I’m accustomed to working alone.”

“Not this time,” Hawk said. “Our first move is to get somebody aboard that cruise ship. And a single man would attract too much attention.”

“Why?” I asked.

“It so happens that the Gaviota specializes in…” here the old man found it necessary to clear his throat again, “… honeymoon cruises.”

Rona Volstedt started to smile, then quickly sobered as Hawk gave her one of those severe New England looks.

He said, “I have arranged with the Atomic Energy Commission to have Miss Volstedt assigned to AXE for the duration of this emergency. I don’t suppose it would be stretching your acting talents too far if I asked you to play the part of a honeymoon couple.”

“I think we can manage it,” I said with a straight face.

“As long as it’s in the line of duty,” Rona added, giving me a wink when Hawk wasn’t looking.

“I knew I could count on your cooperation,” Hawk said drily. “You will join the cruise tomorrow at Antigua. The Gaviota will make several ports of call in the Caribbean, sail through the Panama Canal and up the west coast of Mexico, terminating at Los Angeles. But if you haven’t uncovered the base of operations and disabled it by the time the ship gets to Panama in eight days, it will be too late. Because eight days from now, the New York bomb is scheduled to go off.”

“Short honeymoon,” I commented.

Hawk continued as if I hadn’t spoken. Tour mission is to find out where the suitcase-bombs are being put aboard the ship and backtrack to the source. There you should find Anton Zhizov, and very likely Knox Warnow. You are then on your own. I will give you whatever support I can from this end, but any large-scale operation is impossible.”

Rona and I left the old man’s office and went down one flight to Document Control. There we were provided with all the papers and photos we would need to pass as Mr. and Mrs. Nicholas Hunter.

As we left AXE headquarters, Rona played it kittenish, acting for all the world like a bride-to-be.

“Don’t you think,” she said coyly, “that since our ‘marriage’ doesn’t officially begin until tomorrow, we ought to stay in two separate rooms tonight?”

“Good idea,” I said as I hailed a cab. “I’ll have to be out rather late tonight, and I wouldn’t want to wake you coming in.”

“Oh, really?” she asked with heavy sarcasm. “What’s her name?”

“Come on, darling, surely you wouldn’t begrudge me enjoying my last night as a bachelor.”

We climbed into a taxi and Rona edged as far away from me as the seat would permit. With arms folded and knees pressed tightly together, she sat frowning out the window.

I let her sulk for half a dozen blocks, then relented. “If it will make you feel any better, I’ll be at AXE headquarters tonight doing my homework.”

She turned, and fastened those Nordic blue eyes upon me. “Really?” she asked in a little-girl voice.

“Really,” I said. “I don’t mind mixing business and pleasure when one doesn’t get in the way of the other. But tonight it’s got to be all business. I want to go over everything we have on Anton Zhizov, Fyodor Gorodin, and Knox Warnow.”

Rona reached over and laid her hand lightly on my knee. “I’m sorry, Nick. I didn’t mean to be childish.”

I grinned at her. “Wouldn’t have you any other way.”

She slid next to me then, and I bent to kiss her affectionately.