The Kremlin File

Two

My boss, David Hawk, has a way with him. When he calls me N3, my official code name as a senior Killmaster, I know he is going to ram a really tough job down my throat.

Ordinarily, when we are alone, he calls me Nick. But when he coughs and says “N3” I want to double my life insurance, though I haven’t any since no company is idiot enough to issue me a policy.

I had come to his office to make my report. AXE has the lousiest headquarters of any of the government investigating agencies. The CIA and FBI boys wouldn’t be caught dead in a place like this, and the Secret Service people are even harder to please. Because they guard the President, they consider themselves a cut above the rest of us.

I had just gotten back from Greenland, where the Russian fishing fleet had been quietly building a submarine base in territory where they had no business to be. The base had mysteriously blown up, a nice accomplishment on my part, considering that none of the Ruskies had dreamed I was within five thousand miles.

I was tired. I was looking forward to a couple of weeks of innocent ice fishing in northern Michigan while my blood was still conditioned to cold weather. Instead Hawk shoved a newspaper across his desk, caughed, and said, “N3, what does that mean to you?”

I could have answered before I read the headline — trouble. The screamer didn’t disappoint me.

I don’t suppose one out of a hundred thousand Americans could identify Hammond. You had to have taken a Caribbean cruise that put in at Grand LaClare Island. The general had been dictator there.

The island had a long and troubled history. First settled by the Spanish, it had fallen into French hands and then been taken over by the British. The population was 90 percent black, descendants of the slaves brought from Africa to work the sugar plantations and the rich forests. In an election ten years ago, the islanders had voted to break with the British Empire and establish their own republic, with Dr. Randolph Fleming as the first president.

Fleming was the most competent and by far the most popular man on Grand LaClare. He reformed the government and became a true father of his country. Then he was overthrown. He hadn’t kowtowed to the military, and they had rebelled. General Hammond had led the coup, and Fleming had run for his life, seeking asylum in the States. Hammond took over. As the military always does he rode roughshod over the people and bled the country dry. Now Hammond was dead, whether by design or accident did not matter. He left a vacuum. Anybody who had shown traces of leadership had been jailed or had disappeared, and I was afraid I knew who our diplomats had in mind to lend a helping hand over there.

Hawk growled out a warning. “We have information that the Russians are preparing to move in missles. Everything is being done very quietly, you understand, and that’s why we have to move undercover too.

“To divert us, Cuba’s been making noises about ‘helping out’ its needy neighbor on Grand LaClare. But we know the Soviets are pulling the strings and the purpose of the ‘aid’ is to install Red missiles. So this operation is going into the Kremlin file.”

David Hawk drummed on the edge of his desk with blunt fingertips and told me serenely, “It’s a one-man operation, N3. Our government doesn’t want another Cuban-invasion deal. It’s your job to get Randolph Fleming back to Grand LaClare as quickly as possible.”

I didn’t think their army would sit still for that and said so.

“It’s up to you, N3, to see they do. You’ll have to anchor Fleming solidly in the presidential palace. And you’ll have to do it without letting anyone know this country had a hand in the matter.”

I let my sarcasm show. “I’m used to being shot at, knifed, poisoned, threatened in every way you can name, but I never discovered a way to make myself invisible. Will you please tell me how?”

There are a lot of things I am good at, but ruffling David Hawk is not one of them. He is unflappable. He didn’t even smile.

“It’s been taken care of already. Fortunately, Fleming and Tom Sawyer are old, close friends.”

“I like Huck Finn better, but how does Mark Twain’s book help me?”

Hawk doesn’t appreciate flippancy and he told me sourly, “Thomas Sawyer. You may have heard he is president of the Sawyer hotel chain, now the largest such organization in the world.

“Three years ago Sawyer made a deal with General Hammond. He was given a two-square-mile plot of land along the beach on which he built a luxury hotel featuring a casino to cater to the free-spending tourists. It’s been a bonanza for both Sawyer and the General.

“Obviously, the Sawyer interests are very much opposed to a communist government coming into power. They would nationalize Sawyer’s holdings as one of their acts. So you can see why Tom Sawyer is willing, I’d say anxious, to foot the bill for our operation in return for Fleming’s promise that Sawyer’s business will be safe. Fleming has already given his word.”

I nodded. To use a hackneyed phrase, politics makes strange bedfellows. Fleming, the patriot, with Sawyer, the ruthless wheeler-dealer. And I was going to have to make the best and most of it. I left the dingy office thinking ill of the world.

The Sawyer New Yorker was typical of chain-operated hotels: a small lobby surrounded by expensive shops. There was one difference in this place, a private elevator that serviced the penthouse only.

The car fired up thirty stories to a richly carpeted hall where an elegant blonde waited for me. The corridor was a gallery of high-priced art but I hardly noticed the pictures. The blonde was better to look at than any of them. She smiled and offered a slim hand that collapsed at the knuckles, an erotic surprise that got to me.

“Mr. Carter?”

“That’s me.”

“I am Tara Sawyer,” she said. “Father is on the telephone, as usual, and I’m to take you in.”

She tucked my hand under her arm, matching me stride for stride down the hall and through a door at the end. The room beyond could have held a convention with ease. At the far end a plate glass wall revealed a terrace forested with tubbed evergreens. There was no desk in sight, no files, only luxurious carpeting with islands of chairs and lounges. And a bar. The other half lived well. The girl homed in on the bar and let go of me finally.

“What would you like to wait with, Mr. Carter?”

“Brandy, please.”

She sloshed an inch into a snifter for me and built herself a scotch and soda while I warmed the glass in both hands. Then we carried the drinks to the glass wall and looked across the terrace, down on the snow in the park far below.

“It’s a shame,” she said in irritation. “All that open space and no one dares use it after dark. A disgrace.”

I thought of but did not mention a lot of places, open and closed, that were not safe for some people even in daylight. This room might have been one of them for Tara Sawyer if the parental presence was not so imminent. She was very tempting, a lot of woman under the slim, tailored pantsuit that clung to her firm thighs and hung softly over her breasts. I raised my snifter in a silent toast, letting her see my admiration. Then the door behind us opened and closed and that was that.

Thomas Sawyer in the flesh was a letdown. I had assumed the tycoon would reflect his overwhelming success, and expected to see an outsized man charged full of electric energy. Instead, he was about five foot four, half a head shorter than his daughter, birdlike in his quick movements, robust only in the surprisingly deep voice. He stopped a few feet from us, looked me up and down, appraising, the way he would when buying a car, or a man.

“Mr. Carter?” He wasn’t sure.

I dipped my head.

“You are not at all what I expected.”

He wasn’t complaining and I knew what he meant. Most people picture an agent as a cross between Bogart and Sir John Ogilvie Rennie, the poor joker the British M.I.6 Department called “C,” the man whose cover was blown by the German magazine Stern. He was retired on a pension but he was a natural for Central Casting as a spy. I just don’t look the part.

“I’d really enjoy sitting down with you and having a long talk,” the hotel magnate went on. “But that will have to wait. You and Tara have a plane to catch and time is getting short. You are to leave Kennedy at twelve thirty-five.”

David Hawk throws me a lot of curves but hardly ever any like this. The curves on the blonde girl were just dandy and she was coming along. Just for the ride? Things were looking better by the minute.

I touched her elbow. “If you’re packed, we’d better shove. My bags are downstairs but I have to see a man at the airport before we take off.”

She walked into another room and Sawyer took me to the corridor door. She was back in a moment in a mink hat, mink coat open over a soft blue dress. She brought only one small suitcase, a restraint I approved, and tossed it to me from three feet away. Maybe to see if I could catch it without a warning. I did. She bent to kiss her father, patted him on the head and we left.

In the limousine, a lovely thing long enough to make a Mafia cruiser look like a Toyota, she closed the glass between us and the chauffeur and turned unexpectedly businesslike, saying earnestly, “Now we have time for me to cue you in on some items. Dr. Fleming must not know who you really are or why you’re going to the island. He is to think you are only in Dad’s employ as a security officer for the hotel. He has a strange pride, an innocence if you will, and if he learned anyone other than his own people were putting him back in the palace, he would refuse to take the presidency.”

“Oh?” I watched her face. “Isn’t he aware your father bought the army?”

The corner of her mouth tucked in at the word but she didn’t evade the issue. “He has no idea and he must not find out. He thinks the army feels there is no one else capable of managing the country now. But my father doesn’t trust the military to keep its word and you’ll have to stay awake.”

I got the idea then. Papa was sending Baby along to watch me and to see the assignment through. It wasn’t just the LaClare army he didn’t trust. He didn’t trust AXE or me and he was willing to put his luscious daughter out as bait to make sure all went A-O.K. Well, that was one bribe I’d be happy to accept.

I said, “In that case, the three of us shouldn’t appear to be together. Thomas Sawyer’s daughter would not travel with a flunky as a companion and neither would Dr. Fleming. I’ll leave it to you to handle the matter.”

I had her drop me off and caught a cab so we could arrive at Kennedy separately. Also, I had good reason for not wanting her along on my next errand. I hunted up the airline office in Manhattan, showed my ID to the president, and had him check by phone with AXE’s Washington headquarters. I had to board the plane with my weapons and I didn’t want any disturbance at the gate to call attention to me.

The man was impressed with Hawk’s answer and called his manager at the airport so that when I arrived, I was personally escorted onto the plane.

Tara Sawyer was already there, talking with a scholarly, handsome blue-black man in the window seat of a three place row. I assumed that was Dr. Randolph Fleming, Thomas Sawyer’s expensive new president of Grand LaClare Island. I glanced at him as I sat down beside the girl and saw compelling level brown eyes and an aura of leadership and integrity. He gave me one brief look then dismissed me as a simple necessity. I read his mind. Once he reached the island, he would feel secure; but until he was in the presidential palace, he was an easy target.

I wondered why a dollop of Sawyer s millions had not been used to get us a private plane and decided on the pride Tara had talked about — probably, Fleming wouldn’t accept that precaution; it smacked of a coward’s return.

Fleming’s voice was soft, his words measured and he talked to Tara Sawyer with a restrained solemnity. They could pass for strangers making casual conversation. We got into the air and the stewardesses brought blankets and pillows. Soon most of the lights winked out and the ship settled down to sleep.

Except for Tara and me. Being so close together for a long night created one hell of a temptation to both of us, but there wasn’t a thing we could do about it except sit and sweat it out. Fortunately it kept us awake.

I didn’t get an introduction to Fleming until after the skyjacking incident was under control. Then he grudgingly admitted it was a fortunate coincidence that the Sawyer Grand LaClare’s new security officer happened to be taking this flight. He hoped I would like his island and his people.

Then, as an example to the still jittery passengers, he tipped his seat back and went peacefully to sleep.