The nine-month caper

THE BANG-BANG BEAUTIES

Jumping-off point was a super-stripper called Ophelia Tietz (“Pronounce it, you’ll like it”). Next came the girls in a guerilla band (“Make love and war!”). They were followed by a buxom black voodoo queen (“Rise my little snake, rise!”). But the greatest challenge for Steve Victor was a jungle tribe of man-eating Amazons who licked their lustful lips when he fell into their hands. The man from O.R.G.Y. was on another great trip into action and adventure – and at every stop he tried his best to get off…

THE NINE-MONTH CAPER

Ted Mark

1965

(Dell reprinting 1973)

PROLOGUE

EROTICISM VERSUS PORNOGRAPHY

And what about Ted Mark?

A discussion about the difference between eroticism and pornography is continually hampered by the fact that both art forms¹ are part of the same spectrum. A very simple though totally inadequate definition is that pornography is obscene while eroticism is not. This rejects the definition to that of “obscene”, which is just as challenging a problem.

A rather frequently found definition is this: Eroticism and pornography deal with the use of erotic stimuli to enhance sexual feelings and expression in the beholder. However, the deeper nuances of these two areas tend to be significantly different. Eroticism is seen as an artful expression of sexuality; it is considered “vanilla,” nonviolent, and sensual. Pornography, on the other hand, seems to correlate sexuality with some form of aggression and/or imbalance of male–female power relationships. The latter observation is frequently augmented by: pornography is excessive, emotion-less, without causality for the act, describing or showing genitalia very explicitly, often dealing in perversions.

This again bears the bears for defining such terms as “excessive”, “perversion”.

Possibly, the difference is one of degree. Thus Erotica is any depiction (visual, tactile, aural, olfactory, etc.) that elicits - or is intended to elicit - sexual response. Of course intention is in the mind of the perceiver; thus, what is banal to one person (eg a sculpture of a mermaid) may elicit sexual response in others. Generally, the more suggestive and explicit the stimulus the greater the possibility of the material being perceived either as erotic (stimulating and in good taste) or pornographic (crude, dirty, immoral, or obscene). In reality, this distinction is unhelpful and inaccurate, as extremely explicit descriptions and depictions can be at the same time both erotic and pornographic, or perhaps neither, despite the artist's intentions.

When scholars reflect on eroticism in the fine arts, they're frequently considering the human form as the artist has more or less idealized it, in other words they consider the intention of the artist. Whether the visual medium is drawing, engraving, lithography, painting, sculpture, photography, or film, they view the creator as striving to capture a certain almost inexpressible beauty about the human anatomy, or the act of love (as different from the act of sex). And since the very perception of beauty--or that which is aesthetic--is ultimately subjective, they're generally aware that one artist's sense of the beautiful might actually be another's plain or homely. Further, they can appreciate that an artist's perception of beauty might have as much to do with inner attractiveness, charm, or loveliness than with any outward glamour or seductiveness. What is laudable may not be "skin-deep" at all. The key element here isn't whether the composition of the face or figure is anatomically correct, or whether the art object's style is realistic, impressionistic, expressionistic, or anything else. If the work has been executed erotically, it's generally assumed that the creator viewed the subject matter as praiseworthy. Something to take pleasure in, celebrate, exalt, glorify. . . . And in this sense, the erotic and the aesthetic merge.

Not to say that the artist's work isn't also evocative. But, unlike pornography, it doesn't appeal exclusively to our senses or carnal appetites. It also engages our aesthetic sense, our judgment about how this or that figure illustrates an ideal of human beauty. The rendering may border on the abstract, or be as real as an untouched photograph. It may be black and white, or in color. Male or female. The humans portrayed may be contemporary and real, ancient or mythic. What finally determines the work's eroticism is how the artist (or, for that matter, author or composer) approaches their subject.

All art is interpretive, just as what's perceived as erotic is interpretive. And if eroticism represents a kind of beauty--though of a more alluring, provocative sort, and one that can engender a certain longing or desire--then erotic works actually can be seen as a "subset" of art in general. And if artists don't view their subjects as erotically beautiful--don't in some way betray their love (even lustful adoration) for them--it's unlikely that the beholder be so moved either.

Quite often pornography is defined as erotic art having a simple and unique purpose, depicted using extremely simplified formal structures, being one-dimensional in its effect on the audience and devoid of any complexity.

However, is this so?

(1) A simple purpose? It is tempting to think of pornography as having only one, very rudimentary purpose: sexual arousal of the audience. But a look at very early pornographic works, those that were produced in France and England between 1500 and 1800, shows how misleading that conception is. Almost all pornographic works of that era deliberately used the shock of sex to criticize religious and political authorities. With their truth-telling trope they were meant to function as a powerful antidote to the many forms of repression in society and often had the explicit aim to educate people about politics, religion, society, and of course, sex. It is not a coincidence that these books were known in 18th century France as “livres philosophiques” (they were considered just as dangerous to society as philosophical treatises) and that the rise in pornography around 1740 coincided with the hey-day of the Enlightenment. Quite a few of the pornographic novels of that time even carried the term “philosophy” in the title (think of Sade's La Philosophie dans le Boudoir, 1795) and some of them were actually written by prominent philosophers who were keen to use this extremely popular genre to divulge some of their ideas to the masses (think of Diderot's Les Bijoux Indiscrets, 1748).

In one of the most notorious examples of the genre, Thérèse Philosophe (1748), written by the philosopher Jean-Baptiste de Boyer, a great variety of copulations is used to communicate what is in essence a materialist and mechanistic metaphysics. In anonymous bedrooms, bodies brought together by individual need and interest collide and the bodies themselves are described as machines powered by the relentless motion inherent in matter, by passions they cannot control:

The arrangement of our organs, the disposition of our fibers, a certain movement of our fluids, all determine the type of passions which work upon us, directing our reason and our will in the smallest as well as the greatest actions we perform. (Thérèse Philosophe)

Or, as the main character herself observes:

Men and women couple like machines. Love for them is a tingling in the epidermis, a surge of liquids, a rush of particles through the fibers, and nothing more. (Thérèse Philosophe)

(2) Formal and structural simplicity? Pornography of the enlightenment era also serves to tackle another misconception. It has been argued that, because the main aim of pornographers is to sexually arouse the audience, they are forced to include as many sexually explicit scenes as possible, leaving precious little room for plot development or formal intricacies. The pornographer “concocts no better than a crude excuse for a beginning; and once having begun, it goes on and on and ends nowhere”. Pornography lacks the beginning-middle-end form characteristic of literature. Yet, again, this gives us far from a waterproof criterion for distinguishing erotic literature from pornography. For instance, the structural complexity of the pornographic novel, Histoire de Dom B… Portier des Chartreux (1741), with its embedded stories and variety of narrators, has often been noted by scholars . The careful composition of Thérèse, where the author has arranged the parts to maximize the refraction, so that wherever the reader turns he seems to see throbbing sexuality, provides another counterexample.

(3) One-dimensional in its effect on the audience? It could be thought that sexual arousal is such a powerful, bodily state that it must block out all other functions, most notably our cognitive faculties. The philosopher Levinson claims that this is precisely what distinguishes sexual arousal from sexual stimulation, which he thinks is not incompatible with the cognitive activity required for aesthetic appreciation. Other philosophers have challenged this controversial distinction. Moreover, even if one were to accept the animal-like nature of sexual arousal, that does not mean that it cannot be cognitively rewarding and artistically appropriate. As one commentator of Cleland's Fanny Hill notes:

The stimulus of reading a scene in Fanny Hill makes in the reader's own nature the point made in the text. The reader may be moved to reconsider the merits of stoicism, revaluate the powers of the mind to control the body, reread his Descartes and think again of the dividing line between mind and the bête-machine. (Braudy 1991: 85)

(4) Simple to interpret? While questions of interpretation arise frequently in relation to works of erotic art, people rarely seem to have interpretive qualms where pornography is concerned. Indeed, if an interpretation typically attempts to account for those elements in a work whose presence is not immediately obvious to the target audience (Carroll 2009), there may seem no need for an interpretation in the case of pornography since it is all too obvious why such films or novels include one sexually explicit scene after another. Still, here too it is important not to jump to conclusions. There are (at least) two different kinds of interpretative projects one could engage in, each with its own set of lead questions. “What is the work about?” is one question one could ask. Another question is “What does the work reveal about the author or the time, place, culture, society in which it was made?” While the former is central to the discipline of art criticism, the latter question will usually be the starting point of interpretations offered by cultural historians, sociologists, psychoanalysts. These latter interpretations, where pornography is concerned, will be everything but simple given the incredible complexity of the pornographic landscape with its huge catalogue of taboos, body types, sex acts, and other things that get people's blood flowing. The other question—What is the work about?—seems less pertinent, especially in relation to the formulaic and repetitive video clips one finds on porn websites. Nevertheless, there are other types of pornography where issues about meaning and “aboutness” do seem highly relevant, such as the philosophical pornography mentioned above and the feminist pornography (especially in recent decades).

All the above being accepted, it is still the inescapable case that PORNOGRAPHY is erotica which is not to the taste of the person perusing it. Pornography is "stronger" than that which the person considers erotic. That, obviously is based in the person’s personality, sexual orientation, education, culture, sociological stratum, age, etc. Think, for instance that it is quite probable that homophobes consider a man having sex with a woman merely erotic, while finding two gays kissing pornographic.

The question, then is this: are Ted Mark’s romps pornography?

When they were published (late sixties, early seventies), they most probably were considered such. Today (2018), most readers would probably consider them erotic and parodic in their depiction of sexual prowess.

Ted Mark is careful in avoiding the description of genitalia (both male and female) otherwise than by using metaphors (except for breasts and nipples, which had become more or less acceptable at the time of publication).

His depiction of sex acts and willing females follows clichés that pervade the espionage genre since the Bond novels. They use the trope of the willing and highly-performant (often multi-orgasmic) woman in situations of high action or high danger situations, thereby making the whole sex performance totally acceptable, even unavoidable. The male partner, therefore, is not to be seen as an abusing person, just as an opportunistic one.

Where Mark’s prose rejoins pornography is in the somewhat lengthy description of sexual congress scenes and some repetitive rather visual adjectives such as quivering, bobbing, jutting breasts and pulsating bellies. But this then is the cliché lingo that also fits parody.

In conclusion, Mark’s novels are erotic-parodic pastiches which surf on the sexual revolution of western society during the 60’s.

THE NINE-MONTH CAPER

CHAPTER ONE

THE CHARTERED plane set me down in Miami at 2:30 P.M. By 3:30 the taxi had taken me to my hotel on the beach and I was registered. At 4:30 I was lolling beside the pool when I spotted the bikinied redhead turning a somersault off the high board. By 5:30 we’d gotten to know each other, 6:30 I picked her up for cocktails, 7:30 we had dinner, 8:30 we had an after-dinner drink, 9:30 we hit the first night spot, 10:30 the second, 11:30, 12:30 and 1:30 dittos. At 2:30 I made love to her in her room—-3:30 likewise, after which I left her. At 4:30 I was surprised to see her wander into the sleazy after-hours joint where I’d stopped for a night- cap. At 5:30 I was trussed up and spreadeagled with her half-naked and kneeling on my chest, holding a needle-sharp knife-point against my throat. The question was, would I still be alive to watch that tropical sun come up over Miami Beach at 6: 30 A.M.?

A good question. But before it’s answered, before that knife turns me into a jugular bleeder, or, hopefully, fate ties a tourniquet, I guess I’d better sift the hourglass for the pertinent sands. Fill in the spaces, as it were.

When the plane landed, somebody forgot to notify my stomach. It stayed 50,000 feet up, filled with nose-bleeding butterflies. They finally swooped down to join the rest of me, though, weighted, undoubtedly, by a combination of too much saki and sukiyaki. I’d left Tokyo in a hurry, you see, and my last Japanese dinner was still very much with me.

The Japanese pilot of the private plane must have appreciated this. The farewell grin he shot me was a denial of Oriental inscrutability. But he wasn’t altogether unsympathetic. In flawless English his parting words to me were a recommendation that I stop off for a bromo² before I grabbed a cab to my hotel.

I followed his advice. It might have worked better if the damn cab hadn’t bounced around so much as it pogo-sticked down Collins Avenue that the bromo started effervescing all over again inside my stomach. It was a relief when I was finally ejected at the hotel.

It was a nice hotel. Nice? I guess that’s not the word. Picture the Taj Mahal with palm trees and inside plumbing and you’ve got it. The fancy, gold-embossed guest-register book put me on my best penmanship.

“Steve Victor.” I signed with a careful flourish that took me back to my days in the fourth grade. The next column was headed “Permanent Residence.” I didn’t have any. I thought a moment and wrote in “Tokyo.” I etched it in slowly, taking a lot of trouble with the Oriental curlicues decorating each letter. Last came “Business affiliation.” I printed “O.R.G.Y.” in bold block letters.

The desk clerk, a white-carnation type with Pepsodent teeth, a Chamber of Commerce suntan, and an air that can only be described as “snotty,” did a double-take. I’d expected he would. “Beg pardon, sir,” he asked with insulting politeness, “but just what company does O.R.—do these letters stand for?”

I drew myself up to my full six feet and looked down my nose at his five-seven. “Organization for the Rational Guidance of Youth,” I told him frostily. “You’ve heard of it, of course?”

“Oh, of course,” he said hastily. “They do such fine work.” The way he said it made it obvious he was guessing.

“Yes, we do,” I agreed, letting him swallow his own guess. But I grinned inside myself, wondering how he’d react if he knew that O.R.G.Y. was really a one-man operation for the purpose of Obtaining Research Grants for Yours truly, Steve Victor. Still, I couldn’t really blame him for being gullible. He was no more so than the various foundations which from time to time had given me funds for the purpose of conducting sex investigations.

An hour later, the sight of the redhead on the diving board had me chop-licking over the possibilities of such an investigation. It made me think to myself once again, as I had many times in the past, how lucky I am that my business is pleasure. And this redhead was strictly my business.

She didn’t know it—or did she?-— but she was the reason I’d come to Miami, the reason I’d registered at this particular San Simeon of a hotel. I’d come here expressly to meet her. All I’d had was a name: Ophelia Tietz. It was nice that the face that went with the name was even more intriguing. It was nicer that the goodies half in and half out of the bikini seemed an exclamation point turning “Ophelia Tietz” from a mere name into an idea a man could spend many a pleasant hour just mulling over.

But I didn’t have the time for mulling. I’d had a bellhop point out Ophelia to me when I came down to the pool. Now, as that lush body of hers knifed into the water, I went into action. I dived from the side of the pool, judging it so we’d be sure to collide beneath the surface.

I judged right. The top of my head slammed into her plump derriére, sinking in slightly with a little squish, and providing the momentum to send her shooting toward the surface. Not that she’d been in any danger of drowning. Not with those natural Mae Wests to make her float. I bobbed up alongside her, all apologies.

“Let me buy you a drink to make it up to you,” I insisted.

“Well, all right.” Her smile was teasing, her blue eyes amused, as if she guessed that I’d arranged our meeting on purpose. But she didn’t seem to mind. And the way she crinkled her straight little nose, so that the sprinkle of freckles over the bridge became more noticeable, was friendly.

I had the cabana boy bring us a couple of collinses. We sat at one of the patio tables, under a beach umbrella, and sipped at the long cool drinks. “I’m Steve Victor.” I introduced myself.

“I’m Ophelia Tietz.”

“I won’t make any puns,” I promised her. “I’m sure you’ve heard them all.”

“Thanks. I have. It’s not my real name. It’s my professional name. I’m in show business. But I’ve used it so long I can’t remember any more what my name used to be. Or maybe I don’t want to.”

“In show business, hey? Well, with your looks, that figures. What do you do?” I knew the answer. I had a complete dossier on Ophelia. I’d been handed it when I got on the plane in Tokyo. But she didn’t know that, and I was trying to keep my responses natural.

“I’m a stripper,” she told me frankly.

“That’s a good name for a stripper. Did you think it up yourself?”

“Yes. I thought it was pretty good, too. And the fans seem to dig it.”

“Do you work around here?”

“Yes. At the Naked Grotto. Have you ever been there?”

“No. I just got into Miami. This is my first time here.”

“Well, drop by and see the show. You’ll enjoy yourself. And there’s always a lot of pretty girls around to keep a man company.”

“I’ll drop by tonight. I’d like to see your act.”

“You won’t see it tonight. I’m not on. It’s my night off.”

“Really?” I made like an eager-beaver wolf on the scent. “Then if you’re free, how about having dinner with me? Maybe you can show me around the town afterwards. We could make a night of it. What do you say?”

“That sounds like fun.” Ophelia didn’t hesitate. “Shall I meet you in the hotel bar? In an hour, say?”

“I’ll be waiting.”

“Then I’d better go pretty up the torso.”, She drained her drink and stood up.

“That would be gilding the lily.” I rose with her, gentleman-like.

“Thanks.” The freckles peeped out again as she smiled. “I’ll see you later, then.”

“Right. See you later.”

And she was something to see. She’d looked pretty yummy in the bikini, but when she undulated into the bar to meet me, it was as if every male head in the place was operating oil the same central switch.

Ophelia was wearing one of these simple little cocktail dresses that raise some complex questions like what holds the strapless top up? Or how does she ever manage to walk with that skirt as tight around her hips and legs as a peel on a banana? Or, particularly, is there really any room under such a skin-tight garment for such items as slips, or bras, or panties? I put the last question to her, as delicately as I could phrase it, over the first drink.

“I never wear underwear,” she told me candidly. “The way I’m built, there’s no need to. I guess I’m lucky.”

“I’m the one who’s lucky.” I eyed the mounds of flesh pushing up so provocatively from the top of the yellow silk and thought up one more question: didn’t that long tendril of red hair nestling in the cleft of her bosom tickle? I decided not to ask it. After all, I had to come on with a certain amount of smoothness, even if I did feel like jumping all over her.

But Ophelia was the kind of aware girly-girl who really wasn’t too concerned about a man’s having a sophisticated facade. I dropped mine when I found this out during dinner. She’d suggested a steak house, expensive, but very quiet, very intimate, very dimly lit. We were chatting, and her hand had poised with the fork halfway to her lips when the piece of steak on it dropped from the prong. It fell straight into the deep cleft of her bosom and lodged around her midriff where it made a visible lump.

“Oh, dear!” She put down the fork and reached down the front of her dress, trying to pull it out. “Damn!” The angle was wrong and she couldn’t get her elbow up high enough so that her groping hand could grab it.

“Careful!” I cautioned her. “You’ll rip the dress.”

“I can’t get it.” She removed her hand. “Maybe you could—?”

“I’d love to,” I said, “if you’re sure the management won’t object.

“Why should they? It’s my body. And you paid for the steak. I certainly can’t walk around with it sticking out like this all night.”

“My pleasure.” I leaned around her so that anybody passing wouldn’t be able to see what we were doing. I reached down and my hand was enveloped in soft, fleshy warmth. “I think I’ve got it,” I murmured after a few seconds of investigation.

“You certainly have,” she squealed. “But that isn’t steak!”

“Sorry.” I realized that I’d gone way off course. The tips of my fingers were grazing the nipple of her left breast. It was quite hard, erect, a little moist, and straining against my fingertips.

“I should think you’d be able to tell the difference,” she said.

“Now I can.”

“Then would you mind—?”

“Oh, sorry.” I pulled myself out of my reverie and reached down farther until I managed to get hold of the piece of steak between two of my fingers. I extracted it very slowly, the palm of my hand moving over the firm surface of her large ripe breasts in a series of small, circular motions to insure my not dropping it again.

“Well,” she said breathlessly when I finally had it out. “That was fun. What’ll we do for an encore?”

“I think I can come up with a few suggestions.” My hand dropped under the table, making contact with her bare thigh where her tight skirt had ridden up over her knees. I squeezed her leg. The flesh was smooth and very warm. “As a matter of fact, I’m sure I can,” I added.

“Later, lover.” She removed my hand. “We’ll discuss it later. Let’s not rush things. You wanted to show me Miami. So let’s have one for the road, and we’ll hit some of the hotter spots.”

“Check.” I ordered coffee and brandy and then we moved on.

Our first stop was the Boom-Boom Room at the Hotel Fontainebleau. It was too early for the show, but the band was working up steam with a cha-cha arranged around a slow sex-beat. We danced. It was like having my arms around a live torch. Ophelia could really move, all right! And she hadn’t just been bragging. The way she was built, underwear would have been superfluous. It would have been a desecration, like wrapping rubies in brown paper. And the dance excited her too. I could tell from the way her twin breast-tips pushed out and throbbed against my shirt-front, and from the heat of her thighs against mine when I held her in a long, deep, insinuating dip.

We cooled off a little by walking over to the Eden Roc. We had a few drinks, a few more dances there, and then hopped a cab to the Americana where we caught the show. From there we moved on to the Peppermint Lounge. By this time we’d had enough drinks so that the chummy game of footsie we were playing under the table was getting higher and higher and becoming more and more intimate. We did some heavy petting in the cab that took us to the Castaways and in the Wreck Room of the hotel we started getting so uninhibited that the headwaiter began looking uneasy.

Ophelia might have been used to public performances, but I wasn’t. I took her back to her hotel and followed her into her room without waiting to be asked. I didn’t ask her if she wanted to be kissed, either. I didn’t have to. When she turned to me with her face raised and her eyes closed, there was no question about it.

The kiss started off slowly enough, but it soon became feverish. Her lips were soft, knowing, insistent, drawing my tongue to meet hers in a flame-flicking duel. Her small teeth were sharp, playful; they caught my lip for an instant and I tasted blood. I bit back and we broke the kiss.

“You play rough,” she whispered. She leaned back and looked at me from eyes that were eager. Her tongue darted out to lick a drop of bright scarlet from her lip.

“I’ll play any way you want. Just lay down the rules and fill me in on them.”

“I like it rough.” She nipped at my earlobe and laughed when I pulled away. “Is that too rough for you?”

“Not at all.” I looked straight into her eyes and closed one hand over her breast. I purposely squeezed it harder than was necessary. “How about you?”

“The rougher the better.” She closed her hand over mine so that the pressure increased. Then her nails raked the back of my hand and came away tipped with my blood.

That did it! I'm not really a sadist, but I had to play her game. With casual cruelty, I slapped her open-handed across the face. It left a red mark on her face. Her eyes glowed briefly and then closed. “Again!” she sighed. “Do it again!”

“Nope!” I was on to her. “You like it too much.” I judged that this was the point where denying her the violence she obviously craved was probably the cruelest thing I could do to her. I figured this cruelty would really turn her on.

I was right. “You bastard!” she said. Her arm swung out with the fist closed. I moved my head a half-inch and the fist just missed me. “You lousy—!” She swung again and again I ducked easily.

I grabbed her hand, held the wrists together in one of my hands. I raised my other hand threateningly. “If we’re going to play that way, baby, I’ll do the beating,” I told her.

“Then do it!” she said through clenched teeth. “Do it!”

“I’ll think about it.” I forced my lips down on hers again.

“Why are you holding out on me?” she asked, managing to pull away from the kiss.

“I want you ripe and ready,” I told her. “I want you sizzling mad.”

“I’m mad!” She drew back and deliberately spat in my face to prove it.

I slapped her again casually and then wiped the saliva from my cheek. “Not mad enough,” I told her. “I want you slave-mad, the way only a slave can get when she’s forced to do her master’s bidding.”

“I’m not your slave!”

“No? Well, you’re not the one who’s going to have the whiphand, that’s for sure! Now, you want to play this game, that’s fine. But if I play it with you, I give the orders and you take them. Is that clear?”

She didn’t answer.

“Is that clear?” I grabbed her by the tail and dug my fingers into her flesh.

“Yes! All right!” She was in the spirit of it now. She’d wanted a caveman and I’d made it clear to her that she really had one. “What do you want me to do?”

“You’re a stripper, aren’t you? Well then, strip!”

“You mean you want me to do my act?”

“Sure. Why not? I missed seeing it tonight. Put it on for me now. A private showing. If I like it, I’ll lay on a few licks. That’s what you want, isn’t it? And if I don’t like it--well, I just may not go to bed with you at all.”

I knew damn well that wasn’t likely. Not the way she looked. Not with her breasts all filled up with desire the way they were. Not with her hips already beginning to writhe in anticipation. No, it wasn’t likely I’d turn up my nose at a lush piece like Ophelia!

And she knew it. “Don’t worry, you’ll like it,” she assured me. “But I can’t really do my act here. I don’t have my costumes, or props, or anything.”

“Just do the best you can with what you’ve got,” I told her, thinking to myself that that was considerable.

“All right, master.” There was some sarcasm in the way she said it, but there was also acknowledgement of our roles. She backed off from me and I let her hands go. She crossed to the other side of the room and put a record on the stereo. It was an orchestral arrangement of a blues, very slow, very suggestive. Then she turned to face me and began.

Ophelia knew her onions, all right! She started off very slowly, her feet hardly moving, her hips swaying only slightly, her hands moving over the front of the yellow silk dress in a prolonged caress. Then the tempo became a little faster. Her hands slid down her thighs, to the hem of the dress, just above her knees. Still moving slowly, she raised it, revealing her long, slender legs inch by quivering inch. When the dress was at a point just below the juncture of her legs, she swayed her body around so that her back was to me. The skirt inched up higher and now I could see the firm, high globes of her nether cheeks. Her rhythm quickened. The muscles of her derriére rippled and the flesh began to jump with a sort of erotic frenzy. Then, quickly, she let the skirt fall and turned to face me again. Once more the pace slowed, though not as much as before. One of her shoulders began moving in slow, calculated circles. The bodice of the yellow silk dress began sliding down smoothly on one side. After a moment the large, pink roseate became visible. Then, a little bump, and her maroon nipple was fluttering in the air. Another quick motion and the entirety of one perfect breast was revealed. Still moving to the music, her fingers stroked it. To my surprise, the nipple grew even larger, the roseate spreading, the tip standing out a full half-inch, the ivory breast itself flushing with the palest pink of passion.

She kept smiling at me provocatively——it was half a sneer—as she first caressed herself, and then pinched her tender flesh with increasing self-cruelty. She repeated the maneuver with the other breast. Then the top of the skin-tight yellow dress was hanging around her waist and both her breasts were swinging wild and free. She moved them frenziedly, then slowed down again for an instant. One of her breasts began to rotate. The rest of her body was completely still now. Then the other breast began to spin in the opposite direction. Faster and faster they moved in an incredible display of muscular control.

Now her hands were at her waist, pushing down the skirt until her belly was revealed. It was softly curved and well under control. Her breasts became motionless and her navel started to move as if with a life of its own. The deep cleft of her belly began pulsating, opening and closing in an erotic invitation.

The music sped up. Ophelia moved in an uninhibited frenzy. She went into a series of bumps and grinds that hiked the skirt up just to the point where the dark red curl-covered fount of her womanhood was playing hide-and-seek with the hem. I caught a glimpse of the mouth of her sex opening and closing, seeking a prisoner. Its tongue quivered, bright red, stiff and moist. She moved closer and closer toward me . . .

I was too aroused now to be satisfied with only watching. I grabbed her and flung her down on the rug. I pulled up her skirt and turned her over on my lap. I began spanking her as hard as I was able. It drove her wild with lust, as I’d known it would. Her fingers scratched at my pants until she found the zipper. She yanked it open and freed my manhood. Then, still stretched out on my lap, she managed to raise herself up and capture her victim. Her bottom was bright red now. But I kept pummeling it rhythmically. She caught the rhythm immediately and began to rise and fall with it. “You lousy bastard!” she screamed, and I felt myself caught as in a vise. My hand cracked down on her again, hard, and I felt her womanhood erupt in a series of ecstatic explosions, one after the other. I scrambled over her then, still held tight by her erupting sex, and began a series of sadistic thrusting motions that drove her wild. She hit the real peak then, screaming and thrashing. I reached it with her, and as our passion exploded simultaneously, I slapped her face as hard as I could.

Masochistic bitch! I thought a moment later, drained.

“Wow!” she said. “That was really something. You’re damn good. You know?”

“I know.”

“How are you on seconds?”

“Ready, willing and able.”

“Okay. But first, how about a few items to really make it a wild scene?”

“Anything you say. Just as long as you remember who’s going to be beating who.”

“I know, master. I know.” There wasn’t any sarcasm in the way she said “master” now. She picked up the telephone. “Room Service,” she requested. “Hello, Room Service, let me have Juan.” There was a pause during which she smiled at me and licked her lips. Then “Hello, Juan? Ophelia. I have a special. You know what to send? Right.”

A few moments later there was a knock at the door. Ophelia threw on a robe and answered it. A waiter wheeled a cart into the room and departed. Ophelia removed the white tablecloth covering the cart to reveal a whip with a long, slender lash, a heavy leather belt at one end of which was a cruel metal buckle, a pair of high-heeled boots, a domino mask, a short leather loin-cloth and two pieces of prune danish.

“All this just to whip the prunes?” I quipped.

“No. It’s just that Juan’s such a doll. He remembered that it always makes me hungry. And I’m wild for prune danish. I hope you like it, lover, because we’re going to work up an appetite.”

She was right. By the time I got through catering to her whim, my arm wasn’t the only thing that was sore. And I did work up an appetite. The prune danish wasn’t bad at all.

“I guess I’d better be going,” I said as I licked the last of the prunes from my fingers. “I want to snatch a few hours’ sleep.”

“Will you come down to the Naked Grotto and catch the show tomorrow night?”

“I sure will. And maybe we can go out after you’re through.”

“Swell,” Ophelia agreed. “I’m going to go soak in a hot tub for a while and then get some sleep myself. I’ll look for you tomorrow night.”

“It’s a date.” I left. But I didn’t go to my room. I went downstairs and strode up to the head of the hackline outside the hotel. “Do you know a joint called the Naked Grotto?” I asked the driver.

“Sure.”

“How late does it stay open?”

“Right through until morning. It’s an after-hours joint. They got an arrangement with the bulls.”

“Take me out there.” I got into the cab. I’d decided to look this place over before I met Ophelia there. The sex games we were playing were all very well, but I had to keep sight of the real game I was playing and her part in it. And her part was more than a lover—even a sado-masochistic lover. Her part was dangerous—dangerous to me—-and I wanted to case this joint before she lured me there. It was just a hunch, but I had the feeling that she knew more about what I was really up to than she’d let on-—maybe even more than I knew yet myself.

“Watch yourself in there, buddy.” The driver braked the cab under a darkened marquee. The place looked closed.

“You sure it’s still swinging?” I asked as I paid him.

“I’m sure. But keep a tight hold on your wallet. This is a real clip joint. Them B-girls in there—-they thrive on guys with hot pants.”

“Thanks. I’ll keep that in mind.” The front door was open and I slipped inside. There was a small hallway with another set of swinging doors at the other end. I went through them.

It was almost pitch-black. Only a few candle-flames illuminating the gargoyles on the walls pointed the way to the bar. I fumbled my way to a stool and sat down. My eyes grew accustomed to the darkness. I could see now that the place was done up like the inside of a cave. There were lewd rock carvings of nudes ringing the walls. The Naked Grotto! Well—named, all right! The place looked like a sex-mad spelunker’s nightmare!

I ordered a Scotch. As the bartender set it down in front of me, there was the sound of a drumbeat tatoo from the bowels of the grotto. A moment later a spotlight shot out from somewhere in back of me. It pinpointed a frightened-looking young blonde up on the stage at the far end of the room. She was naked behind a motheaten pair of feather fans, one in each hand. Somebody dropped a record on a turntable and she began to move behind the fans. Pretty soon, there was more blonde visible than feathers.

The light-spill from the spot enabled me to get a better look around the place. Booths were set into the walls between the bar and the stage. Three or four of them were occupied by men sitting by themselves. They were staring at the blonde. Their hands were suspiciously busy in their laps. The regulars, I judged, the creeps who knew the score, who came for one thing, got it, and came back again. The broads who hustled the place had probably long since pegged them and wouldn’t waste time on them.

I swiveled around on my barstool. Behind me, there were more booths. There were curtains on these, gauze curtains. Behind some of them, I could make out couples dancing or something. More probably, “or something.” This would be the private area where the B-girls hustled the suckers. I guessed—-correctly as it turned out later—that there were probably doors leading to private rooms behind the booths.

Suddenly my view was cut off by a bra-less bosom shoved right under my nose. “Hello, honey, want some company?”

She was young, and not bad-looking if you like them on the tough side. Her hair was raven black, her eyes lost in pools of mascara, her body plump but fetching under a skirt slit up to her hip and a bodice with a V cut literally down to her navel. She wriggled her belly and the navel popped into sight as she gave me the come-on.

“And why not?” I looked her up and down the way I figured an on-the-make tourist sucker would. I wanted to pump some info on the Naked Grotto and Ophelia Tietz out of somebody, and I figured her for as likely a girl to start with as any of the others.

But I never got past the first sip of her champagne cocktail with her. The reason was just as she was taking it, who should materialize out of the darkness but Ophelia Tietz herself. “Hello, Steve,” she greeted me. “Small world, isn’t it?”

“I thought you were going to take a hot bath and go to bed,” I said with a grin.

“And I thought you wanted to get some shuteye yourself.” She smiled back.

“Say!” The B-girl at my side was indignant. “What gives here? Things is tough enough, Ophelia, without you coming by and stealing my tricks. Why don’t you leave the customers to us? After all, I don’t get up on the stage and strip!”

“If you did, sweetie,” Ophelia told her, “you’d empty the place faster than a four-alarm fire. Believe me, the world isn’t ready for your brand of saggy sex.”

“Well, of all the nerve-—!”

“Look, honey, buzz off, will you?” I handed her a ten-dollar bill. “The lady and I have things to discuss.”

“Well, all right,” she muttered as she backed off. “But I’ll get even with you, Ophelia. I’ll put cement inside your pasties or a burr on your G-string or some- thing.”

“Cute kid.” I laughed.

“Typical of the breed around here. But tell me, Steve, what did bring you here so late at night -- or, rather, early in the morning?”

“Curiosity,” I answered honestly enough. “After I left you, I found I was still so stimulated that I didn’t feel sleepy. So I went down and asked a hack driver if he knew an afterhours place where I could get a drink. He mentioned two or three, and this was one of them. It rang a bell since I’m meeting you here tomorrow night, and so I told him to bring me here. Now how about you? What brings you here?”

“Just business,” she answered evasively. “I just remembered something I forgot.”

Her evasiveness nudged another hunch to the outer edges of my mind. I had the feeling that Ophelia had come to the Naked Grotto to report to someone about the evening we’d spent together. Yes, I had the uneasy feeling that she and her people—-whoever they might be—-somehow knew about me and my mission. More. I suspected that she had come to consult with them about what they were going to do with me after she’d lured me to the Naked Grotto the following night. If that was so, then my being here now might throw them off, foul them up before they had a chance to make plans. On the other hand, it could decide them to merely act a day sooner. In any case, I’d soon find out.

Very soon, as events proved. “This is quite a place,” I remarked to Ophelia.

“Yes, isn’t it?” she agreed. “Carefully designed for the fleecing of sheep. Would you like to look around?”

“Sure.” I got off my barstool and followed her toward the rear.

She led me through the gauze curtains into one of the booths. There was a small table with a cozy little divan in front of it. There was also about two square feet of floor—no more. “That’s for dancing,” Ophelia explained. “It costs the suckers ten bucks to spend a half-hour here with one of the girls. Plus the fact that the waiters are trained to keep the champagne cocktails coming. The girls get forty percent of everything the sucker buys.”

“And what does the sucker get for his money?” I asked.

“This.” Ophelia took my hand and pressed it to her breast. “A little of this.” She bit my ear. “And a smidgeon of this.” She rubbed her belly against mine suggestively. “In other words, a lot more come-on and little else.”

“What’s the come-on for?”

“To get him to shell out another twenty-five smackers for a half-hour back here.” Ophelia took my hand and led me through a door at the back of the cubicle into another small room. A pair of candles flickered here, revealing a couch and nothing else.

“Do they take him on here?” I wanted to know.

“Not on your life. It’s all come-on. What they do here is heat him up. Maybe the top of the dress comes down.” Ophelia shrugged her shoulders and her breasts were bared to the shadows. “They let the fish play a little.” She took my hands and guided them over her breasts. “And while the fish’s mind is on such things — Voila!” She leaned away from me and held up my wallet.

“Suppose the sucker raises a beef.” I grabbed for my wallet, but Ophelia darted playfully out of reach.

“There’s always somebody standing by to take care of that. Watch. I’ll show you.” Still dancing out of reach, Ophelia sang out. “Reuben-Reuben-Reuben.” It was a yodel, like the way they call pigs.

A pair of hogs answered. Two-legged hogs, all beefed up with a little too much muscle for my taste. They shot through a door hidden in the shadows and grabbed me with practiced efficiency. Before I knew what hit me, I was flat on my back, looking up at the jut of Ophelia’s bosom—which even from that position was pretty scenic viewing.

“Very neat,” I said with equanimity. “But suppose after you rough him up the sucker goes to the cops?”

“They never do,” Ophelia told me. “They’re almost always married. They’d rather lose a few bucks and take a little beating than get involved in a scandal. They don’t want publicity. Just like you don’t want publicity, Mr. Victor.”

I let that pass. “Real efficient,” I said. “Now how about calling off the demonstration? This floor is hard.”

“Get with it, Mr. Victor.” Ophelia’s voice was suddenly cold and hard. “This is, no demonstration. You see, we know who you are. I hate to disillusion you, but it wasn’t your charm that swept me off my feet this afternoon. I was waiting for you, just as you were looking for me. And now you’re our prisoner and there are a few things we want to know.”

“Watcha want us to do wit’ him, Miss Tietz?” one of the plug-uglies asked. “Should we give him a goin’—over an’ dump him in da alley?”

“No. Bring him in back and tie him up.”

Five minutes later I was spreadeagled on a bed, my ankles and wrists tied securely to the four bedposts. Ophelia clambered over me and knelt on my chest. Her knees dug into my ribcage so hard that I could scarcely breathe. A cute little Cuban-style stiletto appeared in her hand and she pricked my throat with it. “All right, Mr. Victor,” she said sweetly, “talk! Who put you on my tail? Why the hurry—up hop from Tokyo? What are you after? Yes, that’s most important, what are you after?” Her bare breasts were swinging in my face, the erect nipples grazing my cheeks. She was getting a kick out of this, an erotic kick, but that didn’t make the knife at my throat any the less dangerous.

“I don’t know what I’m after,” I told her. It was the absolute truth.

“What did they tell you in Tokyo before they sent you here?”

“Practically nothing.” That was close to being true too.

“All right, Mr. Victor! I’ll help you overcome your stubbornness. Turn up the radio,” she instructed one of the plug-uglies. “We wouldn’t want Mr. Victor’s screams to attract attention.”

The hood did as he was told. “Talk, Mr. Victor!” Ophelia took the fingers of one of my trussed-up hands and inserted the knife-blade under one of the nails. “Why were you in such a hurry to leave Tokyo?”

“. . . jet to Miami,” the radio was blaring. “Come on down” The announcer’s voice was silky-smooth and filled with invitation. “Come on down to the land of sun and fun. Come on down.”

“Why the rush to leave Tokyo, Mr. Victor.” Blood spurted from under my fingernail.

“Come on down!”

“Why, Mr. Victor?”

It was a good question. Why the hell had I left Tokyo? Nice, safe Tokyo? I wished I knew the answer!

CHAPTER TWO

TOKYO!

Got a yen?

Spend it and satisfy it. Whatever you’re after, Tokyo’s the place to find it. Anything from hashish to hot love, doll-like girly-girls to nubile Nubian lads, the exotically sexy to the erotically sizzling.

Tokyo!

I had a yen. A pocketful. My under-the-table payoff from the most secret of U. S. agencies for a little spy chore I’d performed for them in the Middle East, a chore I’d completed in Tokyo. But that’s another story.

I had a yen. To wallow in wine and women, saki and sexpots, until I’d blotted Miss Victoria Winters from my mind. Vickie was the girl who got away. More. Let me be brutally truthful. She was the girl I’d lost to a fellow with a bed which was obviously more appealing to her than mine was. Since Vickie was a member of British Intelligence and Alan Foster, the man who’d beaten me out, was an American CIA agent, I guess you could say they had a lot in common, maybe even that they were made for each other. At any rate, they were made by each other.

And that left me out in the cold. I suppose it was mostly ego. I’d pegged Vickie as an ice-cube. I’d planned out a whole program to thaw her out. And while I was still planning, Foster was pinning her to the mattress.

C’est la vie. I wasn’t really what you could call heart-broken. But I was pretty damn sore. And so, like many a man before me, I chased down some whiskey and a woman to forget my troubles and restore my confidence.

The woman’s name was Nisah Leyah. She was pure Japanese. She looked like a woman and she acted like a woman, but in years she was only a girl, about nineteen, certainly no more, I’d judge.

I spent about a week shacked up with her. When it came to inducing the amnesia I sought, she proved to be just the thing. She seemed to lack nothing in experience, but if she did, she more than made up for it in enthusiasm. It was one helluva week!

I hadn’t expected it to be when it started. Nisah didn’t look like the erotic volcano she turned out to be. She was delicate looking, ladylike in appearance, almost prissy. I suppose that’s what drew me to her. In her Oriental fashion, she reminded me of Vickie.

But the resemblance was only in manner, not in looks. Where Vickie was a tall, willowy redhead, Nisah was petite, typically Japanese, curvier and with jet- black hair. Where Vickie had the pinkened complexion of the English countryside from which she’d come, Nisah had the ivoried, flower-petal skin of the Orient. Where Vickie’s green eyes gave away her every emotion, Nisah’s eyes were deep ebony and unfathomable. Where Vickie’s breasts were large and round, Nisah’s were small and high and sculpted in the shape of twin pears.

I was nibbling on one of those pears the night it all started. By then, after, a week with Nisah, I felt quite proprietary about the entire orchard of her body. I plucked at will, and so I was surprised when she drew away from me this night.

“I am sorry,” she said in her flawless English, “but we shall have to vary from our customary love-making procedure tonight.” That was the way she talked. Like an old-maid schoolteacher giving a sex lecture. But it wasn’t the way she acted. Between the Asiatic sheets, I would have matched her against any nymphomaniac in the world.

“What’s the matter?” My hand paused halfway down her beautifully rounded little belly.

“The lunar gods have frowned on us.”

“What the devil are you talking about?”

“It is the time of the woman.”

“Oh.” It clicked and I realized then what she meant. Like just about every man who runs into this particular obstacle when he’s bent on sex, I felt vaguely guilty without knowing why. This, despite the fact that sex is my business and I’m pretty familiar with all of its ramifications, including the menstrual ones. Now, this familiarity, with the awareness it gave me of how the female mind so often reacts at such times, prompted my next suggestion. “I know what,” I told Nisah. “There’s an American Western just opened downtown. Why don’t we go out to dinner and take in a movie tonight?”

“Suddenly you do not like my cooking any more, Steve?”

“I love your cooking. I just thought -”

“Then it is my body which disgusts you?”

“Not at all. I just thought--”

“Then why do we not eat at home and make love as we always do?”

“But you’re—-uhh-—incapacitated.”

“There are many portals leading to the pleasure parlors of love,” she told me with an enigmatic smile.

I made a mental note to revise my thinking on the psychology of women where sex was concerned. Evidently Oriental females took a more practical viewpoint than the Western girls I’d known. I started to kiss Nisah then, but she laughed deep in her throat and pulled away.

“First some saki. Then I will make some sukiyaki. We will eat and drink, and then make love. There is no hurry. New joys await us tonight.”

Nisah was a very good cook. I ate much too much of the sukiyaki. And I guzzled more wine than I should have as well. But this didn’t diminish my ardor. I was lying on the bed and waiting for her when she slipped into the bedroom to join me.

She wore a gauzy negligee that was completely transparent. Her only other garment was a loincloth of the sort worn by Japanese fishermen. It covered her in front, but there was nothing but string marking the cleft between her high, plump cheeks in back. Her small breasts arched against the gauzy material; so sharply pointed were they that breast, roseate and nipple seemed all of a piece, shading from alabaster white to creamy tan to dark red-brown at the penpoint-like tips. As my eyes ate her up, she arched her body and the faintest drop of dewy liquid appeared on each of the nipples.

Nisah lay down beside me on the bed and her perfume was an aphrodisiac in my nostrils, Her voice purred in my ear. “You have mentioned that you are familiar with Oriental erotica, Steve. Do you know Chin P’ing Mei by Wang Shihcheng?”

“The Golden Lotus³ ? Yes, I’ve had to read it in my work.”

“Do you remember the tale of Hsi-men Ch’ing contained in it⁴ ?”

“Yes. Yes I do. It’s one of the most stimulating stories in Oriental erotica.”

“Stimulating, yes. But it is better to do something than to read about it. That is more satisfying. Don’t you think?”

“And how, but-—?”

“You are wondering if I have the ingredients?”

“Well, yes.”

“I have them, and they are mixed. I have been anticipating this day, you see.” She unclasped her hand and held up a little vial so I could see. It contained a fine, red powder. “I shall apply this at the proper time,” she assured me. “But first let us build slowly and sweetly to the moment.”

Nisah bent over and kissed me then. Her lips were soft and warm and slightly moist; her mouth moved knowingly, expertly over mine; her tongue was a teasing butterfly. I cupped her breast and it nestled in the palm of my hand like a white dove. Her slow breathing excited me and I sipped the drop of moisture from its tip. Another appeared and my lips circled the source of it eagerly. My hand pushed the gauzy negligee aside to permit my kisses.

Now Nisah was also aroused. Her mouth was at my ears, at the pulse at the base of my neck, at the nipples of my chest where it paused to tongue-flick and provide an exquisite sensation. Her hand dropped between my legs, caressing the inner surface of my thighs. She leaned over me and across and gently bit my hips, my buttocks. Her tongue flicked at my manhood and I thrust upward uncontrollably.

But that wasn’t what she had in mind. Her own hips undulating in slow, eager circles all the time, she opened the little vial and began anointing the aroused warrior of my sexuality with the red powder. The powder burned slightly and I throbbed in response. And I swelled, swelled to proportions I couldn’t remember ever having attained before.

“I think we are ready now,” Nisah said, her eyes very bright, her hips twitching more spasmodically now.

She knelt on the bed, shooting me a coy look over her shoulder. “The flower of the backyard but awaits your pleasure to be plucked,” she murmured.

I looked at her quivering derriére. It seemed so small, so delicate: a perfect globe halved by the thinnest of lines, the center marked by a dot that seemed much too small for what she was suggesting. “I’m afraid I’ll hurt you,” I told Nisah.

“Do not be afraid. Appearances are deceiving. The tiniest bud may unfold to reveal a flower of adequate size. But open a door the merest slit and once unlocked it will easily open all the way. Come, my valiant warrior, mount your steed.”

I mounted. Nisah was right. It was a tight squeeze, but the sheath proved ample to enclose the sword to the hilt. Once it had, I stabbed again and again. It drove Nisah into a frenzy. Her foam-rubber buttocks bounced back against my thighs harder and harder, more and more insistently. This friction, plus the red powder she’d applied, seemed to turn the sword into red-hot steel. I drove it home again and again. Nisah shuddered violently. Then spasm after spasm shook her body until finally she threw herself back against me as if she wanted to engulf sword, sac, everything. I lunged upward to meet her and stars exploded before my eyes as my passion was released in one mighty surge that seemed as if it would never end.

But it did. We collapsed side by side on the bed. We were both spent. Nisah’s “woman trouble” hadn’t stopped her from accompanying me to the fullest on our joyous journey. We fell asleep in each others arms. I woke to find Nisah staring at me. She’d been patiently waiting. “Again?” she asked.

“Again!” I agreed gladly.

A while later the man-brute was again lodged securely in that snug little cave. It was just poised to unleash the molten fire of its rapturous fury when there came a sudden knock at the door. It was followed by a voice calling the name of Nisah Leyah.

“Yes?” She managed to control herself enough to answer. “What is it?” She squirmed against me, her flesh pinching me in a tight grip, determined not to let go.

“Ah’m lookin’ foah Mr. Steve Victor.” The voice had a strong Alabama accent. “He in theah?”

“Tell him I’m not here,” I whispered to Nisah.

“Ah heard that, Mr. Victor. Sorry to do this, but you all are wanted at the embassy pronto.”

“Tell them you couldn’t find me,” I shouted.

“Ah can’t do that. Ah’d like to ’blige you, but Ah got mah orders. They say you don’t wanna come, I bring you.”

“Don’t try it!” I told him grimly.

“Ah have to. You better come, Mr. Victor. Ah’m a pretty big fellah.”

“How big?”

“Six-four, 250 pounds, an’ nary a ounce of fat on me.”

That gave me pause all right.

“Yankee, go home!” Nisah shouted angrily.

“Now, ma’am, don’t you be calling me dirty names. You a-comin’, Mr. Victor; or do I have to come in an’ drag you out?”

“I’m coming,” I sighed, pulling loose from Nisah.

“You mean you’re going,” she corrected me.

“Yeah. I’ll be back as soon as I can, honey. Then we’ll finish what we started.”

“I’ll be waiting, Steve.”

I hope she didn’t wait. Because, you see, I never did get back there. An hour later I was on the specially chartered jet bound for Miami, suffering from sukiyaki heartburn and scratching uncontrollably at the area Nisah had peppered.

During that hour, I was closeted in a very special and very private room in the American embassy with my old-time acquaintance, Mr. Charles Putnam. Notice I didn’t say “friend.” That’s because it’s impossible to conceive of Putnam’s being anybody’s friend. He’s a machine performing the delicate operation of coordinating American diplomacy and espionage. Yes, a machine which as far as either our State Department or the CIA are concerned doesn’t even exist. A machine named Putnam—and, as he’d told me in the past, that wasn’t even his real name.

It was a damn ugly machine at that. Putnam looked like an embalmer who enjoys his work. His face was all scar-tissue, like a busted-up ex-pug. His eyes were steel nails driven into the irises. As usual, he was dressed in a diplomatic cutaway which looked as out of place on his bullish body as a tutu on a Notre Dame linebacker. As usual, his manner was cold, precise, formal.

“Good of you to come, Mr. Victor.” He crunched a few of my knuckles in the block of ice which was his hand and dropped my hand quickly. He wiped his hand on his handkerchief as if he’d inadvertently grabbed hold of a dead fish.

Nisah. I hadn’t taken time to wash. I decided the hell with him. “I didn’t seem to have any choice,” I answered him.

“Sorry about that. But speed is of the essence. We once again require your services.” That precise Harvard diction dribbling out of his mouth was like pearls dribbling out of a particularly clammy oyster shell.

“Why me? I’m not one of your spies, remember? I only helped you out because I was a patriotic jerk the last time. But I don’t remember enlisting for the duration of the cold war.”

“Yes. You were most helpful. Most helpful. Very laudable of you.”

“Most helpful.” I mimicked him. “Only as I recall, the object was for me to stop the Chinese from getting the bomb and they got it anyway.”

“Yes. But your operation was successful.”

“The operation was a success, but the patient died. Great.”

“Don’t blame yourself, Mr. Victor. And let us not waste any more time reviewing past cases. That’s all blood under the bridge, if you’ll allow me my little quip.”

“It’s out of character, but I’ll allow it.”

“Quite. Now, Mr. Victor-—” Whatever Putnam had been going to say was cut off by a brick crashing through the window. Without losing an iota of his poise, he bowed his head so that it whizzed over his balding pate. I moved more jerkily, and it just missed my shoulder.

“The natives are getting restless tonight,” I remarked.

“It’s getting worse lately,” he admitted. “Twenty thousand yesterday and I don’t know how many tonight.”

“It looked like at least that many as I drove up,” I told him. “Vietnam seems to have them pretty upset.”

“I know. We put all new windows in the embassy today. Tomorrow we’ll probably have to do it all over again. And it’s all so senseless.”

“The war in Vietnam?” I purposely misunderstood him.

“No. These riot-protests. The war in Vietnam is --” He paused. “Necessary.” He’d carefully picked his word.

“Why is it necessary?” I wasn’t just bugging him; I was interested. Like most Americans, I hadn’t been able to make heads or tails out of the Vietnam situation.

“To free the people of South Vietnam from Communist oppression.” He recited the words like a State Department news release.

“And naturally it’s necessary to keep them living under a military dictatorship and to allow no free elections while this is going on,” I observed.

“That’s right. It is. In the end, our position will be justified.”

“The end justifies the means, hey? That has a familiar ring to it.”

“There’s no need for sarcasm, Mr. Victor. The United States has an obligation to see that the people of South Vietnam secure their freedom.”

“If there are any people left after we get through with our napalm and nausea gas.”

“Isn’t that something of an overstatement, Mr. Victor?”

“I suppose so. But I just can’t help feeling that if the Vietnamese had a few more friends like us, the Commies wouldn’t have to fight to take them over. They’d go running to them for protection from their American friends⁵ .”

Putnam looked at me for a long moment. “Perhaps,” he said very slowly, “you are not the man I need for this job after all, Mr. Victor.”

“Maybe I’m not. But if you’re saying that because you doubt my patriotism, you’re a damn fool. I may speak out against policies I disagree with, but I think I’ve proved my loyalty to my country. In the past, many men have spoken out against such policies out of that very loyalty.”

“That is quite true, Mr. Victor. I apologize. Your loyalty, as you point out, is unquestionable. In any case, the Vietnam situation is not at all involved with the mission I shall ask you to undertake.”

“Why me?” I Wanted to know. “You’ve got the whole CIA at your disposal. I’m not a trained spy.”

“But you have experience. That’s one reason. You are not known as one of our agents; that’s another. And, most important of all, your unique profession makes you of special value in this case.”

There it was. It was the same reason which had drawn Putnam to me that first time, back in Damascus. Let me explain.

I’m a sex investigator. I took my training with the Kinsey⁶ team back at the University of Indiana. Then I decided I wanted to travel and I hit on a gimmick-—-not ethical maybe, but damned convenient.

I formed O.R.G.Y.—the Organization for the Rational Guidance of Youth. I formed it strictly as a one-man foundation to finance myself, Steve Victor. This had two advantages. First of all, any money I got my hands on was tax-free. Second of all, my foundation was in a position to apply for and receive grants from other foundations for research purposes.

Don’t get the wrong idea. This part of my operation was pretty legitimate. For instance, I’d been in the mid-East doing a survey of Arab sex customs when Putnam had first latched onto me. Nor had I faked that survey. I personally investigated every brothel, bordello, harem, red-light district and willing Arabian girl I could find. That was my job. I liked my work.

For reasons I shan’t go into here, it had been necessary for Putnam to make use of my entry into such places and to utilize me as an agent. Now it seemed the necessity had once more come up. Even as I argued, I was resigned to cooperating with him. I’d spoken the truth before. I’m not a flag-waver, but I am a patriotic American. If my country needed me, I was at her service. So now I settled back to listen while Putnam told me what was wanted.

“Do you know Victoria Winters?” he began.

“Oh, yes, I know the lady.” But not as well as I’d like to, I added to myself bitterly.

“That’s right, you worked together before. Then you know she’s a member of British Intelligence.”

“Yes.”

“Your job is to find her.”

“What do you mean find her? She’s right here in Tokyo. Probably shacking up with the whole CIA by now.”

“My, I had no idea you were such a bluenose, Mr. Victor. One would have thought your line of work would make you more tolerant of people’s foibles. You are referring, of course, to her brief affair with Alan Foster. That ended, of necessity, when she was called back to duty by our British allies.”

“I hope you found a replacement for Foster,” I said sarcastically.

“This is no jesting matter, Mr. Victor. Mr. Foster has been assigned by the CIA to help the British in tracking down Miss Winters. However, he is working on another aspect of the case. You see, the CIA doesn’t have the information I possess. Nor do I wish them to have it. Even so, it is possible that your path may cross with Foster’s. If that should happen, I trust you will not let personal animosities interfere with your duties.”

“I won’t,” I said morosely. “That big ape is too damn handy with the karate.”

“Good. Now, the point is that in the performance of her duties, Miss Winters has dropped from sight. The British believe her to be in the Orient. The CIA is likewise acting on that assumption. However, I have received reliable information which points to her having been in Miami. And a portion of this information points to her leaving there for Cuba.”

“So why not alert the CIA boys in Cuba? There’s more of them there than there are Cubans, anyway.”

“Not quite.” Putnam allowed himself a dry smile. It was like the sudden crack which appears in an iceberg when the sea beneath it shifts. “Anyway, for reasons I shan’t go into, our CIA agents there would not be helpful in this case. These are the same reasons why the British assigned a girl rather than a man to this project.”

“Then again, why me? I’m not a girl, in case you haven’t noticed.”

“Because of your legitimate occupation, Mr. Victor. We need someone who can penetrate the vice-world and whose reasons for doing so will stand up as legitimate.”

“Why did the British assign a woman?” I asked.

“I can’t tell you that. Only that it was necessary.”

“Well, what was her assignment?”

“To locate a certain man, a former Nazi, a scientist. To obtain a formula he has created if possible. At the very least to notify her people of this man’s whereabouts.”

“What’s the man’s name?”

“We don’t know that.”

“And what is the formula for?”

“We’re not sure. Possibly a liquid poison. Possibly a pill. Possibly a gas. Possibly even a special type of bullet. We’re not sure.”

“What does it do? What effect does it have?”

“That I shan’t tell you, Mr. Victor. In the first place, it might hinder your usefulness. In the second place, if you don’t have the information, you can’t be tortured into divulging it by enemy agents. In the third place,” he added frankly, “if I told you, it’s possible that you might refuse to help us.”

“I wouldn’t do that no matter what it was,” I said, never dreaming that the day would come when I might wish I’d eaten those words and turned Putnam down flat. “Anyway, this is quite an assignment you’re giving me. I’m supposed to locate a man I’ve never seen, whose name I don’t know. I’m supposed to latch onto the formula for an invention that might be anything from a Mickey Finn to a bomb. And to top it you won’t even tell me what the damn thing does. How will I know if I’m even getting close?”

“We don’t want you to get close, Mr. Victor. And you misunderstand what I’m asking of you. It is not your assignment to find the scientist, or the invention. Just to locate Miss Winters, provide her whatever assistance she needs, and put her back in contact with us. Above all, you are not to risk any chance of becoming a victim of this diabolical invention, whatever form it takes.” His voice was as grave as his face.

“And just how am I supposed to go about finding Vickie?”

“Let’s start with certain facts which I am able to tell you. When Miss Winters was assigned to this case, the British had information indicating that this German scientist was hiding out in Egypt. Subsequently, they received a tip that the Red Chinese were going to try to kidnap him—and his formula along with him, of course. They passed this tip on to Vickie Winters, who was by then in Cairo. Shortly after that, she disappeared. So now the British and our CIA are scouring both the Middle East and the Orient for her.”

“But you think she’s in Miami or Cuba. Why?” I wanted to know.

“A corpse turned up in Miami. A man’s corpse. There were two bullets in it. The man was an anti-Castro Cuban, a leader of the resistance fight. There is evidence tying this corpse in with the German scientist Miss Winters was seeking.”

“What sort of evidence?”

“Besides the two bullets, this man was a victim of the formula of which I spoke.”

“What did it do to him?”

“I’m sorry again, Mr. Victor. I cannot tell you that.”

“Oh, great. Go on. Tell me what it is you can tell me.”

“Of course,” Putnam resumed. “Now, this man had a girl friend, a stripteaser named Ophelia Tietz.-— Where do they think up these names?” Putnam grim- aced. “Now, the Cuban didn’t know it, but according to the CIA, this Ophelia Tietz is in the pay of Castro. Because of the way the Cuban died, we now fear that the German scientist and his formula may have fallen into the hands of the Cuban Reds. Believe me, Mr. Victor, no worse catastrophe could befall the United States.”

“But even if that’s so, you have nothing to indicate that Vickie went to Miami or Cuba,” I pointed out.

“Nothing except the fact that her last report indicated she was hot on the scientist’s trail. If he’s there, my guess is that she’s there.”

“That’s pretty slim.”

“Yes, it is,” Putnam admitted. “But it’s all we’ve got to go on. Our information is that the place where Ophelia Tietz works in Miami is a front for all sorts of illicit flesh traffic. Because of the nature of it, I naturally thought of you as the perfect man to investigate it. If you’re caught, you can always fall back on your professional curiosity as an excuse. Will you go to Miami for us, Mr. Victor?”

“You know damn well I will. When do I leave?”

“Right away. There’s a private plane waiting at the airport to take you. And I’ve made reservations for you at the hotel in which Ophelia Tietz resides.”

“You sure didn’t have any doubts about me, did you?”

“No, Mr. Victor, I did not. The car is waiting at the side entrance where you arrived. It will take you directly to the airport.”

“Wait a minute, I have to stop and pick up some clothes.”

“That has all been taken care of, Mr. Victor. While we were chatting, one of my men went to the home of Miss Nisah Leyah and packed your things. Your luggage is already on the plane.”

“You don’t miss a trick, do you?”

“No, Mr. Victor, I do not. Bon voyage.”

“So long. And keep out of the way of those flying bricks,” I called over my shoulder as I left.

And so I’d hopped the plane to Miami to begin my search for Victoria Winters. It had begun well. I’d latched onto Ophelia Tietz real easy. Too easy. So easy that now I was flat on my back with a half-naked girl perched on my chest and picking my nails with a Cuban stiletto.

“What are you after, Mr. Victor?” Blood spurted from a second and then a third finger. “What are you after?”

I gritted my teeth against the pain. I wished to hell I knew the answer. I wished to hell I knew!

CHAPTER THREE

OPHELIA WASN’T much for thumbs. When the four fingers of my left hand looked like maple tree spiggots spouting red sap, she switched over to my right hand. Or maybe she was only saving the thumbs for last. I don’t know.

By this time I was desperately trying to hold onto a Yoga technique I’d picked up in Pakistan. I was concentrating all my attention on the naked light bulb hanging from the ceiling, then on an infinitesimal fly-speck on the surface of the bulb. The idea was that by focusing all my powers of concentration in this fashion, I’d be able to blot out the pain. It was only partially successful, but at least it kept me from screaming.

I was yanked out of this semi-trance by the sudden crash of glass and the blur of a guy scampering across the ceiling. I did a double take, but it was all happening so fast that it took my mind a moment to catch up with what my eyes were seeing. When it did, I managed to separate the images and slow down the action until I could make some kind of sense out of it.

What had happened was that this agile youth had swung through the window and allowed his momentum to carry him across the ceiling and down one of the walls. There was a strange-looking sort of scoop attached to one of his arms. As he’d moved, an object had hurtled from this scoop, thudding off the skull of one of the hoods and ricocheting to catch the other plug-ugly in the belly. It was a carom shot any billiard player might have envied. The first strong-arm man hit the floor like a sackful of lead pipe; he was out cold. The second one simply sat down and held his belly; his eyes were blind with pain.

By then Ophelia had whirled around and was face to face with the intruder, who had finally come to earth. She lunged for him with the knife the way an enraged tigress strikes out to claw her prey. His arm moved fast to catch the knife-blow on the paddle attached to it. The dagger stuck there and his other hand snapped out to chop her wrist as she tried to pull it free. Then he spun around to swoop down and snatch the gun attached to the end of the unconscious hood’s out-stretched arm. The safety clicked off and he hopped back to cover Ophelia and the other heavy. The whole thing had been like a ballet performance, carefully choreographed, beautifully executed.

“Good morning, Mr. Victor,” he said with just the hint of a Spanish accent. His white teeth flashed a smile at me from the deep tan of his face, but his deep-set jet-black eyes never wavered from Ophelia. It was partly that she was still in a crouch of feline fury, set to pounce if she saw an opening, and partly that he was admiring the quick breathing of her naked breasts.

“Good morning, whoever you are,” I answered. “You’re as welcome as the horse marines.”

He circled over to me, moving like a panther. Then he changed hands so that the gun nestled inside the scoop, pulled the dagger free and began cutting me loose. “I am sorry you had to suffer so much pain, Mr. Victor. But I had to wait for just the right moment, when their attention was distracted, before making my play.”

“You mean you’ve been outside a while?”

“Si. Is there much agony in the hands?”

“Well, I’ll never play the violin again,” I told him, sucking at my bleeding fingertips. “I don’t want to sound ungrateful, but to what do I owe the honor of the Doug Fairbanks routine?”

“Doug Fairbanks?”

“Skip it. It was before your time, anyway. What I mean is, how do you happen to be here? Who sent you? Who are you?”

“I am Pedro Estalita.” He bowed with a flourish, the gun never wavering from Ophelia’s naked charms. His manner said that I should know the name.

I didn’t. “Hi, Pedro,” I said. “Glad to see you. Very glad!”

“You do not know me, Mr. Victor?” He sounded disappointed.

“Sorry. I’m afraid not. Should I?”

“You are not a jai alai fan?”

“No. I’m afraid I’ve never even seen an exhibition. This is my first time in Miami.”

“Then that explains it. I am number one scoop on the Miami courts. Maybe in the whole world. You have heard of Willie Mays?”

“Sure.”

"Well, I am to jai alai what Willie Mays is to baseball."

Maybe he wasn’t long on modesty, but after the dazzling rescue he’d staged, I wasn’t about to low-rate him for bragging. “Then I really am honored to meet you, Senor Estalita.” I hoped the formality would satisfy his yearning for homage.

Evidently it did. “Call me Pedro,” he said. “Some day you shall be my honored guest at the games. Once you have seen me play jai alai, the thrills of no other sport will impress you.”

“If tonight was any example, I’m sure that’s true.”

“Si. In a way it was. You see this?” He stooped down and picked up a small, hard, black rubber ball. “During play this travels at the speed of ninety miles an hour. It can be as deadly as a bullet.”

Looking at the unconscious hood and his still dazed partner, I could believe Pedro.

“The game is played on a cement court,” he continued. “Not only must the player have expert control over the ball, but he must also have great agility and strength so that he may climb the smooth cement walls to return the shots fired at him. This is a great strain on him. On his heart. Most jai alai players die before they reach the age of thirty-five because of this. Quite a few are badly injured or even killed in the action itself, of course.”

“With that kind of life expectancy, it seems like a helluva career to choose. How many years have you got to go?”

“A lifetime. I am only twenty-two. Live fast, die young and-—”

“Have a good-looking corpse.” I finished the bromide for him. “Well, Pedro, that’s all very interesting, but don’t you think it would be better if we postponed this discussion? It seems to me that we should get out of here before the lady’s playmates decide to see what’s keeping her so long.“

“Si. That’s good advice. Particularly since the lady is coming with us.” He kicked at the hoodlum on the floor and there was no response. He was still out cold, possibly dead; Pedro wasn’t interested enough to bother finding out. He sidled casually over to the other muscle-boy and cracked him over the head with the butt of the gun. The hood’s eyeballs rolled up and he crumpled over on his back. Then Pedro motioned to me to climb out the window, and I did. A moment later Ophelia appeared. She had finally remembered to pull up the top of her dress. Pedro was right behind her.

He led the way to a parked Caddy. There was another Cuban behind the wheel and the motor was running. As soon as we got in, the engine purred and we slid smoothly down the street.

“Where are we going?” I asked Pedro as the car crossed the causeway from Miami Beach to Miami proper and turned onto the highway.

“The Keys. Your people are waiting for us there.”

“My people?”

“The CIA. And my people, too. Members of the anti-Castro Cuban resistance movement.”

“Were they the ones who sent you to rescue me?”

“In a way. The word came down from the CIA to watch over you. There has been a tail on you all night. I picked up from him when you left your hotel. But they didn’t really expect trouble. Not so soon. I wasn’t really prepared. So I had to improvise. Fortunately, I had some of my jal alai practice equipment in the car.”

“Damn fortunately. And thanks again. I’m your biggest fan from here on in.”

“You must be a very important man in the CIA, Mr. Victor. They’re as nervous about watching over you as a mother with a new-born child.”

“I’m not even in the CIA.”

“Then who do you take your orders from? What is your mission? Can you tell me?”

“No. And the truth is that I really don’t know most of the answers myself.”

“I see.” Pedro fell silent.

I didn’t particularly feel like making conversation myself. I was dog-tired. After a few minutes, I dozed off.

“We’re here.” Pedro was shaking me and I blinked back to wakefulness. The sun was well up in the sky. It hit me a red-hot blow on the head as I stepped out of the car. I hurried toward the awning over the porch of the cabin in front of which we’d stopped. Ophelia came up behind me, Pedro following and nuzzling one of her vertebrae with the gun.

He motioned me inside and I went. A short, stocky Latin type sprang up from behind a desk to greet me. “Senor Victor? Welcome. I am Juan Carrera, in charge of liaison in this area. Please to make yourself comfortable. My CIA contact will soon arrive and you will undoubtedly wish to report to him.”

That wasn’t so, but I let it slide. I gladly relaxed in a large armchair and found myself looking at Ophelia sitting on a bench across the room. “How come you knew who I was?” I asked her. “How come you were all ready and waiting for me?”

“Go to hell!” she replied.

“That is not polite.” Pedro stood over her and balanced the dagger he’d taken away from her in his hand. “When Mr. Victor asks a question, you should answer him.”

“You go to hell, too!”

“You enjoyed the manicure you were giving Mr. Victor before,” Pedro observed. “Perhaps if I return the favor, you will be more responsive to Mr. Victor’s questions.” He grabbed one of her hands by the middle finger and neatly pared off the long, red-lacquered nail with the knife.

“Forget it,” I told him before he could go any further. “I know this dame. She laps up torture. She thrives on pain. The only thing giving her a going-over would accomplish would be to get her all hot and bothered. That won’t make her talk.”

“That’s right.” Ophelia laughed sneeringly.

“Then what will?” Pedro wanted to know.

“Damned if I know,” I admitted.

“Perhaps her dossier will give us a clue,” Carrera suggested “It’s quite complete.” He crossed over to a filing cabinet and drew out a sheaf of papers which he handed to me.

I studied them spottily. My eye landed on something that prompted a vague hunch. “I see you did time in New York,” I remarked to Ophelia.

“So what? It was only thirty days in the workhouse.”

“What was the rap?”

“You’ve got all the data right there. Why ask me? Look it up for yourself.”

“ ‘Soliciting,’ ” I read from the dossier. “So you were a hooker, hey, Ophelia? I’ll bet you were pretty good at it too.”

“I never had any complaints.”

“How come you stopped? This dates back three years. Once a girl starts turning tricks, she doesn’t usually leave off so easily.”

“I didn’t want to go back to the detention home.”

“No, I guess you didn’t.” I studied the papers some more. You didn’t take it too well, did you? As a matter of fact it says here that you flipped your lid and had to be confined to the psycho ward. Now I wonder how come that happened? You don’t exactly seem the sensitive type.”

“It was those lousy bulls!” Ophelia spat it out violently, with all the rage of a memory she would have preferred not to have revived.

“Bulls? You mean cops?” I asked innocently.

“Not cops. Bulls. Bull-dykes! Lesbos! They wouldn’t keep their dirty hands off me. They were always pawing at me. And at night, after the lights went out, when the guards weren’t looking, they forced me to do the filthiest things you can imagine. Dirty, filthy, perverted acts! I couldn’t stand it. After a couple of those nights, I flipped!”

“That’s the way it is in most women’s prisons,” I reminded her softly.

“It’s disgusting.” She shivered.

“That’s the way it’s going to be when we lock you up this time,” I told her. “And you’ll be put away for a good long time.” I pushed the point. “Years. Years of women grabbing at you and kissing you and making you make love to them. Years of being a mark for every bull-dyke that comes along. And you know what? We’re going to pull a few strings to make sure that no matter how bad it gets, there’ll be no psycho ward for you this time. No relief. Just hungry female hands and hungry female mouths and hungry female--”

“Stop it! Don’t you think I know? I can’t stand it!”

“It doesn’t have to be that way,” I told her, oozing benignity. “Not if you cooperate.”

“What do you want me to do?”

“Tell us what we want to know. Work for us instead of them.”

“You mean defect?” For the first time there was real fear in Ophelia’s eyes. “I can’t. They’ll kill me. No matter where I go, they’ll hunt me down and kill me.”

“Then don’t defect. Stay with them. Only, work for us.”

“You mean be a double-agent?”

“Yes. But remember whose side you’re really on.”

“But would you trust me if I did that? Would the CIA trust me?”

“No,” I told her honestly. “But you might be used to advantage. I think we’d take the chance if you cooperated.”

“All right. What do you want?”

“First of all, how did you know who I was? How did you know I was coming? How much do they know about what I’m after?”

“The word came from Tokyo by radio. A Chinese Commie agent there was on your tail from the time you got to Tokyo. It seems you’ve crossed swords with the Red Chinese before.”

I nodded. I had. It was an espionage battle between us that had brought me to Toyko in the first place. But that was a closed case. One the Chinese won, too. It had never occurred to me that they’d keep me under surveillance when it was over. Now it seemed that I should have figured it. “Go on,” I told Ophelia.

“They followed you from the embassy to the airport. When you got on the plane, they managed to slip a little device under one of the wings before you took off. This sent out a high frequency signal that made it a snap to follow the plane’s course by radar. We knew before you landed that you’d be coming to us.”

“Do they know why I’m here?”

“I’m not sure. But they know part of the reason, anyway. They know it has to do with the Cuban resistance leader who was murdered. And they know you’re looking for an English agent named Victoria Winters.”

“Why did they kill the Cuban?”

“I don’t know why. I only know that I was the bait. They told me to give him a big play and I did as I was told. Then one night they grabbed him coming out of my apartment and the next thing I knew he turned up dead. Oh, but I do know that there was hell to pay about that, incidentally. The trigger-men who got him were knocked off later for bungling the job. It seems his corpse wasn’t supposed to turn up at all. But the Miami cops spotted them in the act of trying to ditch it and they chickened out and ran before they could get rid of it.”

That made sense. It tied in with what Putnam had told me about the corpse being evidence that this new secret weapon—whatever the hell it was—figured in with the Cuban’s death. It confirmed the fact that the ex-Nazi inventor had been in Miami. And that meant that Victoria Winters must have been here, too.

“What about Vickie Winters?” I asked Ophelia.

“The English redhead with the basketball bosom?”

“You’ve seen her?”

“Sure. The same night they knocked off the Cuban, they picked her up. They had her in the back room of the Naked Grotto. The same room you were in.”

“What did they do to her?”

“Tried to make her talk—just like I did you. But she wouldn’t.”

“Just what was it that they wanted to know?”

“That’s what’s so peculiar about it,” Ophelia mused. “Nobody seems to know. They wanted information from her. And they wanted information from you. But the truth is I don’t really think they know what they’re looking for.”

That figured, too. Evidently they were in the same boat that I was. Unless Vickie had found out something and they’d managed to make her spill it. “What did they do with her?” I asked Ophelia.

“They smuggled her onto a small boat and took her to Cuba.”

“Is she still there?”

“As far as I know.”

“Did they grab anybody with her? Or at the same time?” I was thinking of the mysterious German.

“No. They seemed to be looking for somebody, but they didn’t know who it was. That was one of the things they kept trying to find out from the Winters chick.”

“Anything else you can tell me?”

“I can’t think of anyth—” Ophelia was interrupted by a low rap at the door.

Carrera answered it. A tanned man in a white Palm Beach suit entered. He had the lantern jaw of a business executive who’s worked his way up to the top, the shrewd blue eyes of an accountant behind rimless glasses, and the phony smile of an ad agency account executive. I didn’t much like him. I was going to like him a lot less. “Victor?” he greeted me. “I’m Dawes of the CIA. I’m in charge around here. I understand you have information for me.”

“You understand wrong,” I told him curtly.

“Weren’t you told to report to me?”

“Nope. And I’ve got nothing to report, anyway.”

“Then what are you doing here?” His voice was crisp; the smile was gone.

“Staying alive. Thanks to Pedro over there. Just staying alive.”

“You are one of our agents, aren’t you?”

“The CIA’s? Nope. I never got the call. Dulles⁷ must have been busy looking at fallen sparrows and overlooked me.”

“That’s not funny, Victor! I was told you’re on some mission for our government. And you’re in my area. That makes you responsible to me.”

“The hell it does. If I were you, I’d check Washington.”

“I’m going to do just that. And right now.” He marched into the other room and closed the door behind him.

“Pleasant fellow,” I observed.

“He doesn’t like his job,” Carrera told me. “He doesn’t like Cubans, no matter which side of the fight they’re on.”

“Then why don’t you complain? Hell, he’s the fellow you have to work with. Complain to Washington.”

“No.” Carrera shook his head. “You see, Senor Victor, he’s good at his job. I don’t care whether he likes me or my people or not. Just as long as he does what has to be done. And he does.”

Dawes emerged from the other room, subdued, but barely managing to conceal the anger inside him. “All right, Victor, you win. Damn gall bringing in an outside agent without consulting me. But my orders are to ask no questions and cooperate with you in any way you want. Okay, that’s it. Now what the hell do you want?”

“Transportation to Cuba. Immediately. Contacts there. I guess Mr. Carrera can provide me with those.”

“All right. Tonight. As soon as it gets dark. We’ll take you over by power launch and land you on the island.”

“Fine. Just so long as you don’t land me at the Bay of Pigs⁸ .” I couldn’t resist the dig.

The CIA man caught it and winced. “Don’t worry. We’ll get you ashore safely,” he told me icily.

“Senor Victor, I have a suggestion,” Carrera said. “Take Pedro here with you. He knows the terrain like the back of his hand. Also he knows our people. He will be able to simplify matters for you.”

“That’s fine with me if Pedro doesn’t mind missing a few jai alai games.”

“My public will not forget me,” Pedro assured me. “I will be glad to go with you.”

“Good.” I turned to Ophelia. “Just how close is the espionage tie between the Cubans and the Chinese Reds?” I asked her.

“Close. But there is also a certain amount of friction. Even Castro’s Cubans put Cuba first and world communism second. They know that both the Chinese and the Russians would be quick to sacrifice Cuba if it would serve some advantage. And they’ll double-cross the Chinese if they’ve got something to gain. It’s a game. They work together until they hit the point where they’re playing cloak and dagger behind each other’s backs. Right now, the Castro boys are convinced the Chinese know more about the Vickie Winters case than they do. So they go along with the Chinese -- but mostly because they’re trying to find out what they’re up to.”

“Our information bears that out,” Dawes told me. “I’ll be going now,” he added. “I have to set things up for tonight.” He left without shaking hands.

But Carrera had been right. Dawes was good at his job. I appreciated that after nightfall when Pedro and I were finally on our way to Cuba. The trip went fast and the boat made it without lights. We slipped over the side about fifty yards offshore and swam to the beach.

Pedro led the way. We plunged into the jungle. It was pitch-black. But he moved fast like a man who knows exactly where he’s going.

He did. After about twenty minutes, we emerged in a clearing. A tommy-gun was pointed at us and a figure rose from where it had been sitting under a tree. “Mujer de libertad.” It was the password. The voice was female.

“Hombre de libertad.” Pedro answered.

The figure stepped out of the shadows. It was quite a figure. Shorts and a halter with a cartridge belt criss-crossing it. Wild, tawny-gold hair spraying out over a magnificent bosom. Long legs, slender, but sturdy like a peasant girl’s, and hips so pronounced you could have slung a pair of water jugs from them.

“Mr. Victor, meet Dawn.”

“Hello, Mr. Victor.” Her gold-flecked brown eyes were amused at the way I was looking at her.

“Are you Cuban?” I hadn’t meant to burst out with the question, but she didn’t look Latin at all.

“No.” She laughed. “I’m a Svenska from Minneapolis."

“But what are you doing here?”

“You explain it to him, Pedro, while we get moving. I’ll keep about ten paces in front of you, just in case there are any of Castro’s bully-boys around.” She moved off, motioning to us to follow.

“It’s simple,” Pedro explained as we walked. “Before Castro, the Cuban economy under Batista⁹ was based on three major industries: sugar, gambling and prostitution. Now the first thing Castro did was nationalize the sugar industry. The second thing he did was to throw out the Mafia which had set up the gambling casinos. And the third thing he did was to make prostitution illegal. Now, that threw a lot of girls out of work. Not just Cuban girls, but many foreign beauties who had been imported for the tourist trade. Naturally, these girls didn’t thank him for this. No indeed. What it did was, it made many of them violently anti-Castro. They were in a difficult position. Stuck here. Unable to get back to wherever they happened to come from. Unable to ply their trade so that they might have food and shelter. They did the only thing they could do. They took to the hills and joined the anti-Castro movement. Some of them have developed into expert freedom fighters. For instance, Dawn here proved herself a real heroine during the Bay of Pigs fiasco.”

“You mean they actually fight with the guerillas?”

“Oh, yes. They are most fierce. I have a theory about why this is so. Would you like to hear it?”

“Sure.”

“I think it is because they are used to much sex. Here in the hills, not too much is available. Our men are otherwise occupied. So these girls become frustrated. And they release this in battle. It makes them doubly savage.”

“Pedro, for a jai alai player, you’re quite a philosopher.” I made a mental note to think about his theory when I had the time. It was interesting. Particularly interesting to me because, after all, sex is my field.

“There it is.” Dawn had rejoined us as we climbed over a small rise. She was pointing at a palatial-looking structure not too far in the distance. “That’s our headquarters.”

“Some digs,” I whistled. “I figured you people would be operating out of a jungle hut or something like that.”

“We used to,” Dawn replied. “But then we liberated this place from one of Castro’s commissars. It used to be one of Batista’s summer homes in the old days. Castro keeps sending expeditions to get it back, but we always manage to fight them off.”

She led the way across the plain and we were soon at the gates of the mansion. A sentry greeted Dawn and admitted us. Another guard let us into the house itself.

“I'll go check in with Bregaria,” Pedro said. “He’s the one in charge. Meanwhile, why don’t you show Steve to his room,” he told Dawn. “We’ll get together later.”

“Okay. See you later, then,” I told him. I followed Dawn down the hallway.

We turned a corner, and that’s when it went off. It was a siren and it sounded like a pit filled with a million yowling cats. “What the hell—!” I reacted.

“It’s an air raid,” Dawn said. “We’ve been afraid of this. Castro couldn’t take this place back from us, so now he’s going to destroy it. Quick, follow me.” She led the way to a staircase and I followed her down to a cellar. There were three other girls on the staircase and we were all tripping over each other in our hurry to reach shelter.

When we reached the bottom, Dawn darted across the basement and pulled open a trapdoor hidden in the floor. “This way.” She scrambled down a ladder and I followed her. The other three girls followed me.

It was a wine cellar. There were rows and rows of bins containing champagne bottles. With the girls’ help I managed to pull two of the racks together. We crawled under them and huddled together. Already we could hear the sound of bombs going off. They were getting closer. Closer. And then--

It must have been a direct hit on the mansion. The lights went out and the last thing I saw before they did was the wall falling in on us. There was a crumbling sound, then the sound of champagne bottles shattering and then a roar.

Champagne spilled over me and I tasted it on my lips. The cement floor shifted beneath me and I was at the bottom of a pile of writhing girls -- breasts, behinds, legs overwhelmed me. Everything started going black inside my head. Just before I went completely under, I remember thinking it really wasn’t such a bad way to cash in my chips. Like the old joke. A blonde in one arm and a bottle in the other. Only I had a lot of bottles and a lot of girls. Nope. It wasn’t such a bad way to go.

The only trouble was I didn’t want to go at all!

CHAPTER FOUR

WHEN I CAME TO, I was up to my ears in bosoms -- literally. Four sets of magnificent breastworks had converged to pillow my head. Four lacquered hands were taking turns stroking my aching brow. A fifth hand was holding an open wine bottle and attempting to pour a little champagne down my gullet. My eyes tiptoed up the naked arm attached to this hand, paused to admire the creamy, bare shoulders, and finally focused on the face. The face belonged to Dawn.

“How are you feeling, Mr. Victor?”

“Like the roof fell in on me.”

“It did. You got a nasty whack on the head.”

“It’s sore,” I admitted, touching the top of my skull and wincing. “But it’ll pass. How about the rest of you girls? Anybody else hurt?”

“Just shaken up,” Dawn told me. “Hey, what do you think you’re doing?” she exclaimed as I swayed to a sitting position.

“Looking the situation over,” I replied as I waited for everything to stop spinning.

“You’d better lie back and take it easy,” she told me, and the other girls chimed their agreement.

“I’m all right.” It was true. Sitting up seemed to have restored my equilibrium. The dizziness passed, leaving only the dull ache where my scalp was swollen. The first thing I noticed was a powerful flashlight propped atop one of the overturned wine bins so that it lit up the area where we were. “That’s a piece of luck,” I commented, pointing at it.

“I had that with me,” Dawn explained. “I sometimes use it when I’m out in the woods at night.”

“Well, let’s see where we’re at.” I got to my feet, still a little rocky, crossed over to the flashlight and hefted it. I swung it around slowly and took a good look at our surroundings.

We were in a chamber the size of a small room, approximately twelve by fourteen. Three of the sides of this area were walls of rough-hewn concrete blocks, the sturdy, original walls of the sub-cellar. The fourth side was a solidly jammed mass of debris where the ceiling had caved in to separate us from the rest of the sub-cellar. Over our heads, part of the original ceiling remained, slanting at about a thirty degree angle and mixed with all sorts of rubble. It angled downward from its original twelve-foot height to about seven feet. Thus there was ample headroom in the area.

The first thing I did was to investigate the artificial wall which had been created by the explosion. I tried moving some of the smaller slabs of concrete. They wouldn’t budge. I looked for a hole in the mass of rubble. There was none. I stooped down and leaned my weight against the lower part of the debris.

The mass shifted-but not the way I’d hoped it would. There was a rumble and the whole wall tumbled farther in toward the small area in which we were trapped. The girls screamed and scampered away toward the opposite wall, fleeing the sudden shower of rocks and dust which I’d brought about. I quickly stopped pushing. I was afraid I’d cave the whole damn wall in on us.

Next I turned my attention to the ceiling. It looked even less secure than the wall had. In a way, though, this was lucky for us. There were four or five small holes tunneling upward from it. These were undoubtedly the source of the air which was keeping us from suffocating to death. None of these holes was bigger in circumference than the size of a man’s head. I climbed on top of one of the overturned bins for a closer look at one of them.

I shone the flashlight into it and stretched my neck. Dimly, at the other end, I could make out that the small tunnel widened. It was hard to tell because it was night, but I guessed that it extended to the surface. I investigated each of the other holes in turn. At least three of them seemed to penetrate all the way through the roof of debris covering us. However, it was obvious that any attempt to widen one of these holes would bring the entire mess crashing down on us.

We couldn’t rescue ourselves. If we were going to be saved, help would have to come from above, from outside. But was there anybody left alive who would be interested in saving us? And if there was, would they guess that we were alive and trapped down here?

I sighed to myself, got down from my perch, and looked over the interior of the area in which we were trapped. A good part of the floor-space was taken up by three large bins which had been overturned. One of them contained bottles of champagne. There were perhaps thirty-odd bottles still left intact. The second rack also contained bottles. The liquid in them was colorless. They were labeled in a foreign language. I couldn’t read the labels, but I recognized the language. It was Russian. I opened one of the bottles and took a small swig. Vodka. I turned my attention to the third rack. It contained a hundred or more small jars of black caviar. These jars also had labels printed in Russian. I commented on this to Dawn.

“It figures,” she told me. “At one time Castro entertained a Russian trade commission in this house. I suppose they sent this stuff as gifts in return for the hospitality. Champagne and caviar,” she added bitterly, “while the peasants starve under the glorious Castro Communist rule.”

“Don’t be bitter,” I told her. “This is a lucky break for us. At least we won’t starve to death, or die of thirst. We could last for a month on this stuff. And the way things look, we may have to do just that.”

“If we don’t suffocate,” she observed morosely.

“We won’t,” I assured her. “There’s plenty of air reaching us. I checked on that.”

“But what are we going to do? Can’t we dig ourselves out or something?”

“Nope. Too risky. The only thing we can do is wait and hope. Meanwhile, there’s no immediate cause for concern. So we all might as well relax and see what daylight brings.” I smiled at her with a confidence I didn’t really feel. Then I turned the smile on each of the other three girls in turn.

They were game kids. They smiled back. One held the smile longer than the others, looking at me with frank, dark, Latin eyes. “Since it looks like we may be here a long while,” she said in Spanish, “should we not introduce ourselves? I am Rosita, Mr. Victor.”

“Hello, Rosita. That’s a good idea. Only call me Steve, will you? This situation doesn’t exactly call for formality.”

I took a good long look at her. Any man would have. She was really something to look at.

Rosita had long, black hair reaching to her high, plump buttocks. She was a small girl, petite, but stacked. Her features were Latin and aquiline, her complexion olive. She was slender, and her breasts and hips were too large for her small frame. I guessed that few men would complain about that. Certainly I wasn’t one of them.

She was vivacious and saucy. Her manner was openly flirtatious. Dressed in a simple low-cut peasant blouse and skirt, all in all Rosita was a picture of steamy Cuban allure. I tore my eyes away from her as Dawn introduced me to the other two girls.

The first of these was Brigid. She was as different from Rosita as night from day. As tall as Dawn, but not nearly as well-built, Brigid looked like a fashion model. Her breasts were very small, her hips slim, her hair close-cropped and red as flame. When she muttered a few words of acknowledgment at the introduction, I detected the lilt of an Irish accent. But there was none of the warmth I’d come to associate with the Irish. Brigid was cool and composed and there was a light in her dark green eyes which said she neither trusted nor liked men, and added that I was no exception.

There was no such light in the eyes of the fourth girl. She shot me a look which was as frankly sexy and appraising as Rosita’s had been. This seemed to annoy Brigid. I began to formulate a vague suspicion about these two and their relationship to each other. However, it was none of my business and I didn’t let it show as I said hello to Selma.

Selma was as American as apple pie—a wedge from a Brooklyn Automat, since Selma hailed from Flatbush and it showed in the pert, nasal way she talked. She was a friendly type with silver-blonde hair teased like the coiffure of a suburban housewife and providing a neat contrast to the unruly, tawny-gold mass of curls tumbling about Dawn’s face. Her figure was lush—maybe a little too plump in spots, particularly around the thighs and haunches—but juicily erotic nonetheless. The brief Baby Doll pajamas she was wearing enchanced this impression.

I gathered that both she and Brigid must have been startled from their beds by the air-raid siren. The redhead was also wearing pajamas. Only hers were full-length, Chinese silk, and they fit her like the skin of a reptile. I noticed that she was holding Selma’s hand as the latter continued to grin at me.

I had enough troubles. I turned away from the two of them and back to Dawn. “We’d better conserve the batteries on that flashlight,” I told her. “The best thing would be to turn it off and all of us get some sleep. Maybe daylight will show us a way out, or bring some help.”

Dawn agreed, and we settled down. I curled up in one corner, Dawn in another, Rosita in the third, and Brigid and Selma together in the fourth. I killed the light. Everything was very quiet for a while. Then I heard muted whispering from the corner where Brigid and Selma were. I couldn’t make out the words. But after another few minutes I could hear the rustle of their bodies and then the sound of rapid breathing. I fell asleep listening to it.

I woke up with an armful of Cuban curves. It was Rosita. Her lips were intimate against my ear. “Listen to those two go at it,” she murmured. “It’s disgraceful.” She was speaking in Spanish, and it took a moment for my sleep-drugged brain to make the translation. “I don’t understand how women can get satisfaction from each other,” she added. She was breathing very heavily and her breasts were hot against my chest under the thin peasant blouse she wore.

“To each his own,” I told her in Spanish. “Why don’t you just ignore them and go back to sleep?”

“I can’t,” she admitted. “They excite me despite how I feel about them. They make me hungry.”

I almost suggested she take some caviar before I realized that wasn’t the sort of hunger she was talking about. When I did, I tried to think if there was any good reason why I ought to turn her away. I couldn’t think of any.

“It had been so long since I have had a man,” she was whispering. “It is very lonely here in the hills, and the men are kept so busy fighting. For a girl like me who’s been accustomed to turning five or six tricks a night, it is like being on a starvation diet.” Her body writhed against me as if to accentuate the point she was making.

“You hardly seem old enough to have built up such a hunger,” I told her.

“I am older than I look. I am twenty-four.”

“That’s not very old. That would make you only about eighteen when Castro took over. You couldn’t have been working as a prostitute for very long at that time.”

“Six years. Since I was twelve.”

“But why so young? You were only a child!”

“It was necessary under Batista. It was the only way to get enough to eat. Indeed, that regime encouraged prostitution. It was good for the tourist trade.”

“Then perhaps Castro was right,” I mused. “At least he’s done away with turning children into prostitutes.”

“Right? I don‘t think so. Now they have no choice. They simply starve to death. I am sure they would rather have sex and food than neither.”

That struck me as one of the most valid comments in the field of economics which I’d ever heard. I made a note to remember it when I evaluated my future researches in the field of sex. Perhaps it would keep me from jumping to hasty moralistic conclusions. Rosita was right. It is better to have both sex and food than neither.

At the moment, she was opting for sex. Her eager wriggling was getting to me. We stopped talking and got down to a more basic form of communication. By tacit agreement we were very quiet and stealthy about it.

There was a drawstring at the low neckline of Rosita’s blouse. I pulled it. The blouse fell away and her heavy, opulent breasts tumbled into my hands. She was breathing heavily and they were inflating and deflating like twin balloons at the bursting point. They were very soft as I buried my face against them-—-very soft except for the tips which were stretched taut like quivering ruby penpoints.

She moaned low in her throat as I ran my tongue over them and I lifted my head momentarily to hush her. Her hands were gripping my legs now, the nails digging into the tendons under my haunches. One of them let go to stroke the inside of my thighs. Then it was at the waistband of my pants, fumbling at the buttons, pulling them down over my stomach.

I reached for the bottom of her skirt and pulled it up over her legs. She wore nothing underneath it. Her belly was smooth to my touch, trembling and eager. As my fingers tangled in the silken down below it, she bit my ear savagely and dug her nails into my flesh once again.

I bit back. Then I kissed her and felt her thighs separate at my knowing touch. A moment later she locked her legs around me. I thrust forward and then we were together, locked in a pulsating embrace, thrashing frenziedly in our quest for fulfillment.

Her body gave a mighty surge that lifted it clear of the cement floor. She started to squeal and I quickly clapped my hand over her mouth so that the others wouldn’t hear us. Rosita subsided—-but only for a moment. Those long, red breast-tips peeping through the strands of her ebony hair, she leaned the upper half of her body away from me, arching so that the lower portion was even more firmly fixed. Again she moved windlessly and again I had to muffle her cry of ecstasy.

I don’t know how many times this was repeated before I finally joined her in one last release that left both of us drained and exhausted. We lay quietly for a few moments. Then Rosita said “Thank you,” rearranged her clothing and left me to return to her corner.

I listened to Brigid and Selma for a few minutes. They were still at it, more audibly now. Finally, I drifted off to sleep.

Morning brought a few shafts of light to our cell. We breakfasted on caviar, which made us very thirsty. We washed it down with champagne, which relaxed us all.

We were still sipping the champagne when we heard the first tapping from above. I sprang from one to another of the holes in the ceiling to see if there was any sign of help. I saw nothing. But the tapping continued.

After awhile I detected a pattern to it. I recognized it as Morse Code. Somebody was trying to communicate with us. I told the girls what I had figured out. I also told them that while I could recognize Morse Code, I couldn’t understand it.

“I can!” Rosita was very excited. “That’s my job here. I’m a radio operator. Only we can’t use a radio. It’s too risky. It would give away our position. So we use Castro’s telegraph wires and keep changing the points from and to which we communicate. I work the telegraph key frequently.”

We were all very quiet now as Rosita listened. “They are asking if there is anyone alive down here,” she told us after awhile. She found a rock, positioned herself under one of the holes in the ceiling, and began tapping it against a slab of concrete. “I have told them we are here,” she said when she was through, “how many and who we are.”

Again there was the tapping from above. When it concluded, Rosita translated it for us. “It’s your friend Pedro,” she told me. “He is with Senor Bregaria and Senor Minneti.”

“Who are they?” I asked.

Dawn answered. “Senor Bregaria is in charge around here,” she told me. “Minetti is an Italian from the States. He was deported in the early 1950s and received refuge from Batista.”

“Why was he deported?”

“He was in the rackets. I gather he’s a big shot in the Mafia,” Dawn told me.

“How come they weren’t blown to bits?” I wondered.

“Pedro explained that,” Rosita continued. “He says that Senor Bregaria and Minneti were not in the house when the alarm sounded. They were out in back at the far wall surrounding the property to inspect some fortifications we just installed. Pedro was on his way back to join them when the bombs began to fall. None of them were hurt. Wait a minute.” She held up her hand. The tapping had resumed again.

“Pedro says not to worry,” Rosita translated. “Senor Minetti used to head a construction firm. Also he is a demolition expert. He feels sure he can extricate us. But it will take time. Two, perhaps three days. Pedro says we should all just relax and be patient.”

“This Minneti sounds like a handy fellow to have around,” I observed. “Tell Pedro we’ve got plenty of food and drink and that they should take it slow and get us out without blowing us up.”

Rosita relayed my message and then translated the tapping from above again. “Pedro says Senor Bregaria has information that the English girl you seek is in the prison in Havana. She was seen there by one of our men who recently escaped.”

That was encouraging news. At least I was on the right trail. Or anyway I would be if I ever got out of this make-shift fall-in shelter. “Ask him if there’s anything on the man I’m looking for,” I said, wondering if Vickie Winters had really been on the trail of the German scientist when the Reds grabbed her. “He’ll know what I mean,” I added to Rosita.

“There is a foreign man at Castro’s palace,” she told me a few minutes later. “But Pedro says they are not sure if he is the one you seek. Also, they are not sure if he is a guest, or a prisoner. Senor Bregaria is going to try to get further information. He hopes to have it for you by the time they rescue us.”

After that, we stopped tapping out messages to each other. The girls and I did as Pedro had suggested. We relaxed and waited. We could hear muffled sounds of digging from above, but not much more.

It got boring. Just that. There was nothing to do but eat caviar and drink champagne, so that’s what we did. And as the morning passed into afternoon, our little prison began to get unbearably hot. So we drank some more champagne to cool off. But that only made us feel the heat more.

I took off my shirt. Dawn loosened the straps of her halter. Rosita leaned back and waved her skirts higher to cool her legs. Selma pulled the top of her Baby Dolls away from her large bosom and angled her body so that some cool air would reach her breasts. Even Brigid undid the row of buttons down the front of her Chinese lounging pajamas and turned her back to me so that she might get some relief from the heat. But all this female activity only made it seem warmer to me.

I drank some more champagne. So did the others. By the time night came around, there were five dead soldiers lined up and I don’t suppose any of us were feeling too much pain. We supped on more caviar, which made us more thirsty. We varied our liquid diet by washing it down with vodka.

“Aren’t‘ you goin’ to be turnin’ out the flashlight now?” Brigid asked after a while.

“Why bother?” I answered.

“We don’t want the batteries to be burnin’ out on us, now do we?” Her hand was resting possessively on Selma’s thigh. There was nothing surreptitious in the way her fingers were stroking the thigh flesh.

“They won’t burn out,” I assured her. “Not if we left it on for the next three nights. And we should be out of here long before that.”

“Still, it’s time we were gettin’ some sleep and I’d prefer the light out.”

“Oh, all right.” I turned the light off and settled back in my corner.

It wasn’t long before I heard Brigid and Selma thrashing about again. I was just drunk enough to feel playful. I waited a minute and then turned the flashlight on again, catching them square in its beam.

The Baby Doll panties were down around Selma’s ankles. Brigid’s red curls glinted below Selma’s midriff. Her face wasn’t visible. It was buried in the blonde’s flesh. Selma’s eyes were closed. She was breathing very quickly. Her hands were moving in time to the breathing, squeezing Brigid’s small breasts.

Aware of the light now, Brigid sprang to her feet. “Sure that’s a dirty trick!” she exclaimed, her green eyes shooting contempt at me.

“So sorry. I was looking for one of my socks,” I lied. I turned the light off again and laughed to myself.

They were quieter after that. I was almost asleep when I felt a pair of soft, eager lips pressed against mine. Assuming it was Rosita, I kissed back and slid my hand up to encircle a breast. The breast was naked. It was large. It was straining with arousal. But it wasn’t Rosita’s breast.

I broke off the kiss and peered into the darkness. I barely managed to make out the face so close to my own. “Dawn!” I said, surprised.

“And why not?” she replied. “Does Rosita have a monopoly on you or something?”

“Definitely not!” I realized she was stark naked and the liquor she’d been consuming all day had made her bold.

“I’ve been in these damn hills even longer than she has,” Dawn explained, sounding a little defensive.

“Of course you have, honey.” I soothed her, stroking the vibrating curve of her magnificent derriére.

“And you wouldn’t turn down a fellow American in need, would you?” she asked.

“Not on your life!” I kissed her again and we didn’t talk any more.

She was even more passionate than Rosita had been. Her nether-mouth virtually bit at my flesh in its eagerness. And when it secured the grip she so avidly sought, it held on with viselike tenacity as she swung her body over mine to insure the maximum contact. Her beautiful breasts swung to and fro over my face until I halted the motion by catching the tip of one of them between my lips. It was burning and erect and damp with passion. And so was I.

It lasted an ecstatic eternity, but finally it was over. Dawn bent quickly to kiss the instrument which had granted her so much pleasure and then crept away into the darkness. I turned over on my side to go to sleep.

But there was to be no sleep just then. Rosita was determined about that. Yes, she was there. She’d been lying there, only a few feet away, waiting for us to finish. Now it was her turn. But I was so tired. I let her know I thought I was too tired.

That didn’t stop Rosita. First she showed me I wasn’t by emulating Dawn’s farewell kiss with variations. Five minutes of this and I was as eager as Rosita. I don’t know what they put in that caviar, but from the length of time Rosita and I sustained our passion, all I can say is that those Russian fish must really make the Black Sea churn.

It was almost daylight by the time she went back to her own corner. I fell into a deep sleep. The sound of tapping from above finally woke me.

It woke Rosita too. She translated. “Pedro says it will take about another twenty-four hours,” she told me.

“Tell him not to hurry,” I said with a conspiratorial smile.

“I will tell him.”

The others were up already. We had our usual breakfast -- caviar and champagne. “I’ll never eat another hors d’oeuvre,” I commented as the salty taste cloyed in my mouth.

“Rinse out your mouth with champagne,” Dawn advised.

I tried it, but it didn’t work. My Scotch ancestry asserted myself and every time I should have spit the liquor out, I swallowed it instead. The girls found this very amusing. They insisted on catching up with me.

Then it was noon again, and hotter than ever. “If I don’t wash, I’ll co crazy,” Selma commented.

“So wash.” Dawn told her.

“With what?”

“With that.” Dawn pointed at the champagne. “It’s got alcohol in it. It’s antiseptic. Better still, use the vodka. That’s hundred-proof.”

“A1l right, I will.” Selma opened a bottle of vodka and poured it over her arms and legs.

“Let me help you, honey,” Brigid said. She poured some vodka into the palm of her hand, raised the tops of Selma’s Baby Dolls, and rubbed it into the blonde girl’s back.

“Ahh, that feels good,” Selma said. “So refreshing and cool. It reminds me of when we used to open the hydrants on Bushwick Avenue when I was a kid. We used to take off all our clothes and dance around naked under the water in the streets.”

“Don’t let me stop you,” I told her.

“All right, I won’t. I used to be a stripper anyway.” Selma lifted the tops of the Baby Dolls coyly and slowly wriggled free of the garment. Then she put her hands on her hips and did an insinuating bump-and-grind as she inched the bottoms down her legs.

That started it. I guess we were all pretty looped. Rosita didn’t like the way I was staring at Selma’s figure and so she stripped off her clothes quickly and stood in front of me as if to prove she had a better figure. I took a swing of vodka and made some leisurely comparisons. Yes, Rosita did have a better figure. But Selma’s was somehow earthier. For the first time I began to envy Brigid.

Brigid was now succumbing to Selma’s coaxing. She had opened the pajama-tops and was standing with her back to me, facing Selma while the blonde girl rubbed her breasts with vodka. My attention was distracted from them by Dawn coming over with another bottle of vodka to wash my shoulders and back with it.

“How come you’ve still got your clothes on?” I asked Dawn a little drunkenly.

“I’m the modest type. I never undress myself.”

“Then allow me.” I’d made love to Dawn, but I’d never had a really good look at her magnificent figure in the nude. Now I pulled off her halter and gave her the bosom award over the other girls.

Rosita playfully tugged off Dawn’s shorts and then the two of them began trying to pull off my pants. I put up a mock battle, sure that I would lose, and I did. When I was as naked as they, Selma broke away from Brigid for a look at me.

“Mmm,” she commented, “a real man. It’s been so long that I forgot what one looks like.”

The look in her eyes aroused me even more. I took a long swig of vodka and reached for her. She came quite willingly and landed in my lap with perfect accuracy. Facing me, she locked her legs around my hips and began bouncing eagerly.

“Selma!” Standing over us with her hands on her hips, Brigid was so angry that she seemed unaware that the top of her pajamas was wide open. Her small breasts stood straight out. The nipples were long and sharp and bright red. They quivered—whether with indignation or arousal, I couldn’t say.

“Don’t get your Irish up,” Selma told her. “I won’t neglect you.” She pulled Brigid around beside her and pulled down her pajama pants. I just had time to appreciate that Brigid was a natural redhead before Selma buried her mouth against the Irish girl’s flesh.

Not to be left out, Dawn and Rosita crowded in on either side of us. I reached a hand out and Dawn pulled it against her. She began squirming madly. I raised my head and fastened my mouth over one of Rosita’s breasts. I saw one of Brigid’s hands slide surreptitiously up the Cuban girl’s thighs until it located it’s mark.

Brigid and Selma cried out at almost the same moment. Dawn pushed Selma off my lap and replaced her. Rosita was on her knees in front of Brigid now. And Selma was behind her, burrowing.

We lost all track of time. We altered our positions I don’t know how many times. We guzzled champagne and vodka, vodka and champagne. We figured out one sexual innovation after another. Afternoon passed into night and night into day and still we kept at it with no thought of rest. When we grew weary, we just drank some more and went back to the fun and games. Never have I so truly felt myself to be what I am—the man from O.R.G.Y.

“What’s that?” Rosita raised her head from my lap and listened.

“What’s what?” Brigid stopped the rhythmic motion of her hand against Dawn’s womanhood and also listened.

“They’re trying to signal us,” I managed to tell them through a drunken haze, ejecting a mouthful of Sehna’s bosom in order to get the words out.

Rosita listened some more. “They’re getting ready to detonate,” she told us finally. “Pedro says we should get some kind of cover to protect us from the flying rubble and stay under it until after the explosion.”

“Damn!” I grumbled. “Just when the party was getting good.”

We stood one of the wine bins up and angled it against one of the solid concrete walls. Then the five of us each took a bottle and huddled together underneath it. Rosita sent the message that we were ready and the word came back that it would take a few minutes to get the fuses set.

We made the most of those few minutes. We drank the champagne and vodka like it was water. Then we picked up where we’d left off to pass the time.

Somehow, I ended up on the bottom. One of my hands was busy with Dawn’s lovely breasts. The other hand was providing a fulcrum for Selma’s squirming enjoyment. My mouth was nibbling at Rosita’s plump derriére. And Brigid straddled me, shouting Irish blasphemies and moving her slender body as if it was filled with jet-propelled banshees. What they were all doing to each other, I couldn’t say. Despite all my other activities, Brigid’s wild movements were getting to me. I thrust upward with all my might in a final surge of ecstasy. She bore down. And at exactly that moment the dynamite went off and everything—and everybody — else exploded all at once.

I opened my eyes and pried myself out from under all the female flesh. I found myself looking at the sky through a hole in the debris above us. Then the sky was blotted out by Pedro’s face.

“We’ll have your out of there in a few minutes, Mr. Victor,” he called.

I took a swig of champagne and patted a stray fanny. “No hurry,” I sang back.

“It won’t be long.” He’d misunderstood me.

“Don’t hurry.” I squeezed a breast and reached for the vodka. “Don’t trouble yourself.”

But it was no use. The sons of bitches rescued me!

CHAPTER FIVE

NOW IT was business as usual. My four femmes fatales had taken their orders in crackling Spanish from their leader, Senor Bregaria, and departed to perform their assigned tasks. They were soldiers again, and as I watched them go I heaved a small sigh that it was so. Such a waste of pulchritude! Dawn, Rosita, Selma and Brigid—with such an array of valiant glamour against him, Castro can never prevail!

I too listened to Senor Bregaria. His information was sparse, but nonetheless pertinent. An English girl matching the description of Victoria Winters was being held prisoner in the basement of the Havana Libre Hotel. The very fact that she was being held in this particular place marked her as someone of special interest to the Castro-ites. Only prisoners of particular importance, usually those of some special political significance, were held there. The hotel was where Castro had his headquarters in Havana. The occasional person imprisoned in its basement was more likely to be subjected to a long, drawn-out process of torture to obtain information than to be summarily executed. Such might be the case with Vickie.

I guessed that they were trying to find out anything she might know about the mysterious German scientist. Were the Cuban Reds holding this shadowy figure?

There was a foreigner in one of the rooms at the hotel, a room not far from Castro’s quarters. Was this the man Vickie had been seeking? And if it was, then was he a prisoner, or a willing guest? Bregaria couldn’t answer that question. My own guess was that the Cubans were holding him for the Chinese, but perhaps unwillingly. For diplomatic reasons, they probably had to treat him with kid gloves. The Chinese doubtless knew they had him, and so it was like an extremely delicate game of chess. The Cubans were trying to find out just who and what it was they did have before surrendering it to the Chinese. But they couldn’t afford to do this openly, so they were stalling while they interrogated Victoria Winters for information. That’s the way I saw it, and as things turned out I projected the situation fairly accurately.

The first problem was how to go about rescuing Vickie. Senor Bregaria had already started the wheels rolling on a bold scheme aimed at accomplishing this. Pedro, myself and Minetti would be smuggled into Havana by different routes. We were to meet at a specific waterfront bar, the Casa de la Felicidad. Here we would work out the details of the rescue ourselves in accordance with a loose plan.

This plan was threefold. Pedro, a native of Havana originally, would be able to move about the city much more freely than either Minetti or myself. Also, he had the necessary contacts in the anti-Castro underground. One of these contacts worked in the Havana Libre Hotel as a waiter. It was he who had supplied the information we now had. It would be he who would tell Pedro where the weak points in the security of the hotel lay. Based on that, we would figure out a way of rescuing Vickie.

It was my job to arrange the details of our flight from Cuba after she had been rescued. Pedro would put me in touch with a CIA agent, and I would work this out with him. But before finalizing this aspect, it would be necessary to consult with Vickie about the importance of the foreigner at the Havana Libre.

The escape itself-was to be the concern of Minetti. He was eminently qualified for the job. Not only was he a high Mafia mucky-muck with connections in the Havana underworld, but he was also a demolition expert with actual experience where jailbreaks were concerned. He had thrice broken out of three different prisons in the States. Finally the authorities had decided it was simpler to deport him than to jail him, and he had wangled entry to Batista’s Cuba. Here he had rated high in the gambling setup run by the Mafia.

Minetti impressed me from the first. He was fortyish, a dark-skinned Italian and quite good-looking. When Pedro had pulled me from the basement where I’d been trapped, the first thing I noticed was the impeccable style of Minetti’s appearance. Pedro and Bregaria wore the practical garb of the guerilla fighter-—short-sleeved cotton shirts and dungarees -- but not Minetti. He was dressed in a tropical blue worsted of any expensive cut. His shoes were shined and the edge of a white handkerchief peeped out of his breast pocket. His tie was watered silk, a subdued stripe of blue and gray which wouldn’t have looked out of place in the Harvard Club. Even the tiny stickpin securing it was in perfect taste, a flawless ruby, expensive but not ostentatious. Minetti looked ready to preside over a board of directors’ meeting of an ultra-conservative corporation. Yet, despite the ruggedness of the jungle country around us, there was nothing ludicrous about the man. His mirthless smile, the cold pinpoints of his nearly black eyes, the economy of movement with which his small, slender body moved-all these added up to the manner of a man who must be taken seriously, to a man who calculated his risks before acting and then acted with precise deadliness.

He received his instructions from Bregaria and then left without a superfluous word. Pedro followed. “I will see you soon in Havana, Mr. Victor,” he promised, flashing me his usual smile of camaraderie. A half-hour later I too was on my way.

I rode in an ox-drawn cart, hidden under a load of stalks of sugar cane. I don’t recommend this mode of transportation. It’s not exactly my idea of traveling first class. I bounced around like a pinball with an overactive thyroid, and with every bump in the road my flesh was assaulted by the coarse, bilious green stalks covering me. Worst of all was the sickeningly sweet odor of the raw sugar.

I was damn glad when, after some hours of this, the cart pulled to a halt. We were at the outskirts of Havana, and the driver of the oxcart had paused for inspection at one of the Commie checkpoints. The cane above me rustled and I saw the glint of a bayonet as it was plunged among the stalks about an inch from the tip of my nose. Then I heard sounds of muffled laughter. I found out later that the driver had produced a jug of wine and passed it among the soldiers. As a reward, they stopped molesting his cargo. His papers were stamped, and he was allowed to pass into the city.

He went straight to a warehouse where we were expected. Here I was transferred to the back of a motor lorry. This lorry was labeled with the name of a liquor distributor. Its first delivery that day was at the Casa de la Felicidad.

Minetti was already there. We waited together for Pedro. He was silent, as chary of words as he had been at our first meeting. Finally Pedro arrived.

“She is being held in the cellar under the north wing of the hotel,” he told us.

Minetti reached in his pocket, drew out a large sheet of paper and spread it out on the table before us. It was a detailed diagram of the Havana Libre Hotel. On closer examination it proved to be an actual copy of an architect’s blueprint of the place.

“How did you get that?” I exclaimed.

“Simple. It was removed from the hotel safe on New Year’s Eve of 1958, the night before Fidel moved in. While everybody else was wailing and worrying about what he’d do, some of us kept our heads.”

“The Havana Libre used to be the Havana Hilton,” Pedro explained further when Minetti fell silent. “Castro took it for his headquarters that first day, January 1st, 1959. And it was only a day later that the roof fell in on Señor Minetti and his associates.”

“What happened?” I asked.

“His first official act was to close all the gambling casinos and bordellos. Immediately the employees of the gaming houses descended on the hotel to plead with him for their jobs. But Castro wouldn’t be moved.”

“Did the prostitutes appeal to him?”

“Not directly,” Pedro told me. “They wrote him very dignified letters, demanding that he give them back the right to exercise their profession.”

“They should have gone in person,” I said, thinking fondly of my experiences with the quartet of harlots in the bombed-out cellar. “I’ll bet they would have gotten a lot further than the croupiers.”

“Gentlemen, we haven’t got time to discuss history,” Minetti said, just the slightest edge of annoyance in his voice. He turned to Pedro. “Show me on this diagram, if you can, exactly where the girl is being held.”

Pedro studied it and then pointed with his finger. “Here.”

“It figures,” Minetti said. “This used to be a cold storage box where they hung sides of beef. The walls are three feet thick and lined with steel. A perfect prison. All they had to do was put the right kind of lock on the door. And that lock is the crux of the problem. I want you to find out everything you can about it,” he told Pedro. “And also find out when they change the guards.”

The following evening Pedro was back with the information. “The door is double-locked,” he told us. “There is a heavy iron bar across it which locks it from the outside. And there is a stout lock fitted into the door itself which opens with a key. Only the key isn’t entrusted to either of the two guards outside the cell. It is held by the captain of the guard at all times.”

“And where is he?” Minetti wanted to know.

“There’s no telling. Different places at different times. He has no set schedule of inspection.”

“Doesn’t he have to unlock the door when they feed her?” I asked.

“No. There’s a slot high up in the door through which they pass her food. This too is kept locked. But one of the guards has the key to it.”

“They sure aren’t taking any chances,” I observed. “Maybe the best thing would be to tunnel through to her from underneath.”

“Don’t be silly, Mr. Victor.” Minetti looked at me scathingly. “That floor is three feet thick and solid concrete.” Having dismissed my suggestion, he turned back to Pedro. “Did you find out when the guard is changed?” he asked.

“Si. Twice a day. At four in the morning and four in the afternoon.”

“Four in the morning. That’s the best time,” Minetti mused to himself. “Tell me everything you know about the guards’ barracks,” he told Pedro.

Pedro complied, and then Minetti sat back. He shut his eyes. He was obviously weighing various aspects of a plan.

During the next two days Minetti finalized this plan. Pedro helped him work it out, step by step. I myself, although I was theoretically in charge of the operation, had little to contribute.

On the afternoon of the third day the three of us were smuggled into the Havana Libre. Despite the fact that the hotel bristled with barbed wire, machine-gun nests and sentries, this was accomplished very simply. We were taken in by a laundry truck delivering fresh linens. The truck had a false bottom and we rode over the axle, only a scant few feet from the guards who stopped the truck and searched it at the entrance to the hotel.

After this the truck pulled up at an unloading chute at the rear of the hotel. Pressed linens were unloaded and sent hurtling down the chute. Then the washed but unpressed underwear of the soldiers stationed there was sent down the chute in laundry bags. The last three sacks contained Pedro, Minetti and myself.

Pedro’s contact was waiting. He untied the sacks and freed us quickly. Then, without words, he led us through a service passageway to a hall. Checking carefully to make sure we weren’t observed, he waved us across the hall one by one to a large linen closet. When all three of us were inside it, he closed the door and left. After that there was nothing to do but wait. We had committed the layout of the hotel to memory and I suppose the other two, like myself, were going over it in their minds. We didn’t dare talk, so there was nothing else to do but think of what we were going to do—and wait.

Hours of this, and then finally Minetti struck his cigarette lighter and looked at his watch. “Ten minutes more,” he told us. That ten minutes, somehow, seemed longer than all the hours of waiting which had preceded it. At last it was time. “Now!” Minetti said. We slipped silently from our dark hiding-place to the brightness of the hallway.

This was the most dangerous part. If, by chance, we should be seen now, the jig was up before it even started. It was three a.m., the middle of the night, and the hotel was as silent as a tomb. Uniforms were the standard form of dress here. Clothed as we were, we would be shot on sight. Thus it was our first task to obtain the uniforms we needed as disguises in order to bring off the rescue.

We went directly to the large room used as a barracks by the soldiers stationed to guard the hotel. This room had once been used as a gambling casino. We were in luck. We reached the entrance to it without incident.

Minetti stood guard outside the entrance while Pedro and I slipped inside the darkened room. There was the odor of’ male sweat, the sounds of masculine snoring, the feeling of army barracks around the world. I stationed myself at the door, peering through the dimness, trying to cover Pedro.

He moved like the shadow of a cat, lithe, and very surely. He went directly to the row of lockers against one of the side walls of the room. He moved down to the far end of the line. His fingers trailed expertly over their surfaces until he found the tiny pieces of chewing gum left there by our accomplice on the hotel staff to mark the ones which were to be robbed.

These had been carefully selected with two points in mind. The first was that they were the lockers of men who would not go on duty again until the next morning, men who would not awaken when the pair slated to relieve the guard to Victoria Winters’ prison went on duty at four a.m.--an hour from now—-men who would not miss their uniforms until long after our mission should have been accomplished. The second consideration was that these were men whose approximate height and build corresponded with those of myself and Pedro. Their uniforms must look like they belonged on us.

Finally, his arms loaded with clothing, Pedro started back toward me. A man rose from one of the bunks, stretched and then, half asleep, started walking straight toward Pedro. My finger stiffened on the trigger of the revolver I was holding. The soldier passed within inches of Pedro, reached beyond him and opened a door. A flood of bright light washed over Pedro. Fortunately, the sudden light must have blinded the soldier. He kept going through the door and closed it behind him. Pedro glided over to where I was and as we slipped out of the room we heard the sound of a toilet flushing behind the door the soldier had entered.

Minetti was waiting. He stood guard as Pedro and I changed into the uniforms. We hid our own clothes behind some draperies. Then, with Minetti between us, we marched boldly down the hallway.

Our first obstacle was expected. It was a guard seated at a desk in front of the entrance to a stairway. We halted in front of him with military precision. I let Pedro do the talking while I ostentatiously held a pistol on Minetti.

“An American agent, a CIA spy,” Pedro told the guard in Spanish. “Captain Garcia wants him held here for questioning.”

“Where is the captain?” the guard asked. “Doesn’t he know there is only one cell down there and that it already contains a prisoner? Besides, he is the only one with the key to it.”

“He’ll be along,” Pedro told him. “We are to stand guard until he gets here.”

“I don’t understand,” the guard grumbled. “There are already two guards down there. And besides, the prisoner in the cell is female. It’s not usual to put a male prisoner in with a female one.”

“You’ll have to argue with the captain,” Pedro told him firmly. “I just follow orders. Besides,” he joked, “maybe the captain intends to breed them.”

“Not likely,” the guard joked back. “There’s too many damn Yankees already.” Chuckling at his own meagre humor, he let us pass.

Pedro repeated the same story to the two soldiers who were stationed in the small area at the bottom of the staircase. They were sitting at a little wooden table in front of a stout barred door which could only be the entrance to Vickie’s prison. They accepted what Pedro said, grumbling much as the guard upstairs had.

Now we had to wait until the guard changed. There was a good reason why Minetti had planned it this way. A demolition expert, he wanted to set off just enough of a charge to blast open the lock on the prison door without arousing the guard upstairs or anybody else. It had been impossible for him to tell in advance just how much nitro this would take. He would have to examine the lock, prepare the charge and detonate it now, on the spot. It was conceivable that it might take hours to do it properly. Or it might not. Right now I wished I could read his mind and tell what his judgment was. But as I looked at his eyes, which were riveted to the lock of the door, I couldn’t tell what he was thinking.

Pedro made small talk with the two guards. I confined myself to grunts. One of them commented on this. “Your friend isn’t very sociable,” he told him in Spanish

“It is because he is filled with hate,” Pedro told them. “See how he watches the prisoner. He is just hoping for an excuse to kill him. He hates the Americans with all his soul.”

I tried to look as hateful as I could. I bared my teeth and snarled agreement. I gave Minetti a sharp jab in the belly with the revolver. There was the faintest glint of amusement in his eyes as he stared back at me. I was glad to see it. Minetti was not a man I would have wanted for an enemy.

“You see?” Pedro told the two sentries. “With him on the job, I never worry. A prisoner would have to be mad to try anything.”

They continued talking small talk until the two guards arrived to replace the two who had been on duty. Again Pedro explained the situation. “The Captain should be here shortly,” he added. The first two guards left. Pedro set about establishing a rapport with the pair of replacements.

After a while, he got to the point. “I understand from those other fellows,” Pedro said, “that your prisoner is a very good-looking girl.”

“Si. She is a real English beauty,” he was told.

“Too bad the captain has the key,” Pedro said. “I would enjoy a look at her. I am something of a connoisseur when it comes to women.”

“Who isn’t?” The guard guffawed at his own remark.

“Indeed.” Pedro laughed heartily along with him.

“But I suspect that the two who left were exaggerating her allure.”

“Not at all!” the guard told him indignantly. “She’s a real sexy piece. Many’s the night I wished I had the key to the cell instead of the captain. I might not find out what they want to know, but I’d make her squeal all right.”

“Isn’t it hot inside there?” Pedro asked, indicating the door.

“Probably. It used to be an icebox, but the refrigeration is turned off now. It probably is pretty hot.”

“Maybe she takes off her clothes to relieve the heat.” Pedro leered.

The two guards looked at each other. “I never thought of that,” one of them said, scratching his head.

“Too bad there’s no way of taking a look,” Pedro sighed.

“But there is.” The second guard produced a key and pointed toward the slot at the top of the door.

“Maybe she’s really naked,” Pedro said, feigning excitement. “I’d give a pack of cigarettes for a look at that.”

“Why not?” The guard held out his hand with the key dangling from it. Pedro reached for it. “First the cigarettes,” the guard chided him. Pedro handed him the cigarettes and the guard gave him the key.

Pedro pulled a chair over in front of the door. He stood on it and unlocked the slot. He peered through it for a long time.

“What do you see?” the first guard asked. Pedro didn’t answer.

“What is it?” the second guard demanded.

Pedro lifted his eyes from the slot and winked at them. Then he peered into the prison again.

“Is she naked?” The two guards spoke together.

Pedro leaned back again and gave a low whistle.

“Let us see!” Both guards were tugging at his legs now. One of them pulled a chair up alongside the one Pedro was standing on and climbed up beside him. The other one kept trying to pull Pedro down from his perch.

Pedro moved just enough to let the first man glue his eyes to the slot. Then Pedro and I moved together. Using our gun butts, we clubbed the two of them, Pedro felling the man on the chair at the same instant that I hit the one pulling at Pedro’s legs.

“That’ll teach ’em that voyeurism doesn’t pay,” I murmured as they crumpled to the floor.

“Get them out of my way!” Minetti sprang into action.

I Pedro and I pulled the two unconscious bodies off to the side and bound and gagged them while Minetti examined the lock. He still had his nose to it as I hefted the iron bar free of the door. “Not too bad,” he told us finally. “It’ll take about an hour to do it right, maybe two.”

Actually, it turned out to take about an hour and a half. Then, when Minetti was ready, I climbed up to the peephole and called Victoria’s name. Her face was startled, but there was no time to explain anything. “Get under your bunk,” I told her, “and cover your face with a pillow.” She quickly followed my instructions.

Minetti inserted the device he had created. It looked like a filter cigarette. Its twin nestled in his breast pocket beside the white handkerchief. He ran a string from it to the far side of the room, near the staircase. Then he soaked the string in lighter fluid. “Pull those two oafs over here,” he instructed us, “and get underneath them. If there’s any flying debris, they’ll make a good shield.”

When this was done, Minetti crouched down with us behind the two tethered guards. He lit the string with his cigarette lighter and the three of us buried our faces against the flesh of our prisoners. There was the sound of a faint sizzle and then a dull, thud-like explosion.

Minetti stood up. “Perfect,” he announced. The lock to the cell was still smoking. He picked up the iron bar and pried at the door with it. After a moment it swung easily open.

Pedro, his gun at the ready, stood at the foot of the staircase, poised to kill anyone who might have been attracted by the noise. I watched as Vickie came out from under the cell bunk and emerged from the doorway. She looked disheveled, but unhurt.

“Steve Victor,” she exclaimed. “Am I ever glad to see you!”

“Hello, you faithless bitch,” I replied pleasantly. “How’s the sweetheart of the CIA?”

“Be bitter if you want to, Steve, but I’ve really never been so glad to see anyone in my whole life.” Even that hoity-toity English accent of hers couldn’t disguise the fact that she meant it. “You are a sight for sore eyes,” she added.

“You look pretty good yourself,” I admitted grudgingly. And so she did. That flaming red hair, those sculptured Anglican breasts, the deep green eyes, the slim hips and long sexy legs, the air of sexiness and hauteur about her-—it was all there, all still there as it had been in the past when she gave me the gate for Alan Foster, all still there and sending that same old little thrill of desire through me as I looked at her. “You don’t look any the worse for wear,” I told her. “Word was that they tortured you, but you don’t look like they did.”

“Word was wrong. They were going to, but orders must have come from on high to keep me intact. They think I know something about—” She paused. “About something,” she finished lamely.

“You mean the German gentleman they’re holding upstairs?” I asked blithely.

“Then he is here!” she said excitedly. “I was right. I was on the right trail when they grabbed me.”

“Hold it,” I said. “Let me not mislead you. I’m not sure. We have info that there’s a foreigner here. But that’s really all we know. It may not be the guy you’re after.”

“But there’s a chance--” she began.

“Look,” Minetti interrupted, “we don’t have time for this now. We’ve got to get out of here.”

“Not without him,” Vickie insisted. “We’ve got to get him out with us.”

“Sorry. That wasn’t the way we planned it,” Minetti told her icily.

“Sorry, but that’s the way it has to be,” she answered with equal firmness.

“Is she giving the orders around here?” Minetti turned to me.

Remembering that Putnam had said I was to help Vickie in any way I could, I had no choice but to tell Minetti that we’d have to play it her way. His eyes said he didn’t like it. But he agreed to cooperate. “Wait down here,” he said, “While I take care of the bozo at the top of the stairs.”

He was only gone a moment. When he returned, we followed him up the stairs. The guard was slumped in his chair, his head thrown back. He’d sprouted a second mouth, a grinning mouth running with blood from ear to ear. Minetti had slit his throat neatly, quickly and silently from behind.

He slit two more throats in the same way before we were on the floor where Pedro’s information said the foreigner was. It also happened to be the floor where Fidel Castro himself had his quarters. Pedro silently garroted the guard sitting with his back to the stairwell up which we’d come. He dragged him through it as he finished choking him to death, and I quickly slipped out and took his place. I looked up and down the hall. There were two other guards in sight. I snapped my fingers and Pedro walked brazenly from the doorway behind me. We were both in uniform. He walked toward one of the two guards, I toward the other. We reached them at the same moment. Mine looked up questioningly as I approached. I answered his question by noiselessly clubbing him with the butt of my gun. Pedro did the same.

Minetti and Victoria joined us in the center of the hall. “That would be Castro’s quarters over there,” Minetti told us, indicating the door behind the guard Pedro had clubbed. “And the other guy must have been guarding his foreigner you’re after.” Pedro nodded agreement. “Okay then, come on. We’re going to do this right so we get away with it. I’ve been thinking and I have a plan. Follow me.”

He led the way to the door alongside the one leading to Castro’s bedroom. He tried the knob. It was locked. Minetti took a thin, hooked wire from his pocket. The lock was a simple hotel room lock and he picked it easily and quickly. A moment later the four of us were in a rather large bathroom.

“All right now, here’s how we’re going to pull off this caper,” Minetti said, reverting from his usually precise speech to the lingo of his early days in the Mafia. “That”--he pointed to the door on the opposite wall of the bathroorn—-“leads into a bedroom of none other than Fidel himself.” He took the gadget that looked like a filter cigarette from his breast pocket. “This,” he informed us, “has enough soup in it to blow up Gibraltar, rock and all. There’s a tiny timer mechanism in it, and I’ve set it already. It’ll go off in about thirty minutes.”

The three of us exchanged nervous looks and then looked back at Minetti.

“Don’t worry,” he told us. “We won’t be here when it blows. But friend Fidel will. By that time we’ll be at the other end of the hotel, right at the gate to the farthest guard post. They’ll hear the explosion and come running. If they don’t, we’ll just have to fight our way out. Even that shouldn’t be too hard, because any help they might get ordinarily if they sounded an alarm should be busy picking up the pieces of their bearded leader in there.”

“What about the German?” Victoria asked.

“I’m coming to that. Do you think he’ll come with us willingly?”

“I don’t know,” Victoria admitted.

“Then we won’t take any chances. Pedro and I will go get him. We’ll tie him and gag him and take him by force. You two wait here. We should be back in five minutes.”

“Don’t you think I should go with you?” I asked.

“No. The two of us can handle it. And in case we run into trouble, you’ll still have a chance to get away with her. That’s what this mission is all about, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” I admitted reluctantly.

“Don’t worry. It should be simple. But just in case—-” He handed me the cigarette-like cylinder. “If a stray bullet happened to connect with this, goodbye!” he told me with a grin. “You’d better hold onto it.”

I took it gingerly as Minetti and Pedro slipped out to the hallway. I looked at Victoria and smiled. “Alone at last,” I said, absentmindedly juggling the bomb in my hand.

“Put it down, will you?” she said nervously.

“Of course, my love.” I set the cylinder on the sink and took her in my arms.

“Are you crazy—?” Her rebuke was a sharp whisper.

“Not at all. But revenge is sweet, my one and only.”

“Stop it!”

“Hush, sweetness. Fidel needs his sleep.” I kissed her and let her go with a laugh.

She smiled back faintly. “Who do you think you are? James Bond?” she asked sarcastically.

“No. Merely the man from O.R.G.Y.,” I told her and pinched her succulent English bottom to prove it. She squelched a squeal and looked at me reproachfully. I smiled back. I was enjoying myself. I’d teach her to pass me up for a CIA mattress.

Suddenly there was the sound of the door being opened from Castro’s bedroom. I grabbed Victoria and pulled her into the bathtub, behind the shower curtain. We were lucky. It was solid, not opaque. After a moment I separated the curtain just enough to look through it.

There he was! The great man himself! The bearded terror of the Western hemisphere! Fidel Castro! There he was! Sitting on his potty-chair with his pajama pants around his ankles and making the sour faces of a man suffering from constipation.

Poor Fidel! Despite everything, I could identify with his struggling. It seemed truly mammoth, but destined to defeat!

However, I had no time to dwell on his travails. There was the sudden chatter of a machine gun sounding very close. Then everything happened at once. Fidel sprang to his feet. Pedro leaped through the door and locked it behind him, flattening himself against the wall to avoid the splatter of tommygun bullets following him through the door. I shot out from behind the shower curtain and waved my gun under Castro’s nose. He got the message. He sat back down.

“Pedro. Tell them we’ve got this fink here,” I said.

“Better let him tell them himself,” Pedro replied. “They might not be so quick to believe me.” He chattered to Castro in Spanish. Castro shouted out a few words and the shooting stopped. But we could hear them in Castro’s bedroom as well as in the hall now.

“What happened?” I asked Pedro.

“They got Minetti,” he told me simply.

“Dead?”

“Si. We had the foreigner all tied up and were ready to bring him here when a whole platoon of soldiers came into the room. They took us by surprise. Fortunately, they were as surprised as we were. Otherwise I wouldn’t be here now. Minetti and I both bolted. One of their bullets blew off the top of his head just as we reached this door.” He fell silent a moment. “What do we do now?” he asked finally.

Before I could answer, Castro chattered something in Spanish to Pedro.

“What did he say?” I wanted to know.

“He asked the same question I did,” Pedro translated.

“Tell him not to worry about it. Those guys out there aren’t going to bother us as long as we’ve got him for a hostage. Tell him to just put it out of his mind and go on with whatever he was doing. Or, rather, trying to do,” I added on second thought. “We’ve got all the time in the world to figure a way out of this.”

“Do we?” Victoria Winters asked. “Aren’t you forgetting something?”

“What?”

“That.” She pointed to the little cylinder I’d left on the washstand. “From what Minetti said, we’ve got less than twenty minutes before it goes off. Unless one of you two know how to dismantle it. Do you?”

We both admitted that we didn’t. Pedro picked it up and I looked over his shoulder as he examined it. Mi- netti had done a good job. It was perfectly smooth. Neither one of us could figure a way of de-fusing it. And the truth is that even if we’d had a hunch we’d have been afraid to try it lest we blow ourselves to smithereens.

Castro spoke again and Pedro put the bomb down carefully and translated. “He asks if he might not pull his pajama pants up since there is a lady present.”

“Tell him okay. Even a Commie should be allowed to die with his pants on.”

After that we fell silent. The only sound was the faint buzzing from the time-bomb. It was buzzing off the minutes, precious minutes, minutes of life. I stood up and investigated the window over the bathtub. If worst came to worst, maybe I could just heave the bomb out the window and hope it exploded far enough away so that we could survive the blast. No luck. The windows were sealed with steel shutters. Security precautions, no doubt. The Reds didn’t want their head fink bumped off in the undignified process of coping with his constipation.

I sat down on the edge of the tub. The faint buzzing seemed to grow louder. Fifteen minutes left. Ten minutes. Five. Our lives were buzzing away and there didn’t seem to be one damned thing we could do about it.

CHAPTER SIX

FIVE MINUTES. The buzzing—-more of a hum really—- continued, grew louder, more noticeable. Castro heard the noise. He cocked his head. He didn’t speak English and so he hadn’t understood our discussion of the bomb. Now, slowly, recognition of what the sound meant showed in his eyes.

Four minutes.

Castro spoke in Spanish. “He asks if he is correct in guessing that this object is a bomb,” Pedro told us.

“Give that man $64,000,” I replied drily¹⁰ .

“What?”

“Tell him he’s right.” Pedro told him and Castro spoke again. “When is the timing mechanism set for?” Pedro translated.

I looked at my watch. “Three minutes,” I told him.

Three minutes!

There was a lot of urgency in Castro’s voice as he spoke again. “He asks if we are not going to dismantle it,” Pedro said. “And he advises that we do so with all speed.”

“Tell him I couldn’t agree with him more. But fill him in on the facts, which are that we just don’t know how to stop this particular clock.”

Castro chattered rapidly. “He says he does,” Pedro told us. “He says he will if we will guarantee to let him go. He says he has had much experience with this type of device during his days as a terrorist.”

“Tell him we’ll let him go in exchange for his promise of safe conduct out of the hotel,” I told Pedro.

Two minutes!

“No!” Pedro said. “A chance like this may never come again. What does it matter if we die? So long as we take the tyrant with us.”

Lordy save us from true believers, I thought to myself. Desperately, I pulled rank. “That decision is mine to make,” I told Pedro. “Tell him what I said.”

With obvious reluctance, Pedro translated. Castro nodded agreement. I handed him the cylinder. He hunched over it, examining it carefully, beads of sweat breaking out on his forehead and face and dribbling into his beard. Still the whirring noise continued.

One minute!

Castro’s fingers were trembling, but busy. Pedro crossed himself. Victoria clutched my arm, her nails digging into my flesh. I put my other arm around her and repented all the sins I hadn’t committed-—particularly the sin of carnality with Vickie.

Thirty seconds!

Twenty!

Ten . . .

Nine . . .

Eight . . .

Castro bit through his lip. His fingers tensed and he closed his eyes. Then his body sagged into relaxation and he opened them. The cylinder had been opened and he held the tiny timing mechanism in one hand, the vial of nitro in the other.

Pedro reached for the nitro before the head Red could get any ideas. He was too late. The idea was already shining from Castro’s eyes as he jumped up and took a step backwards. He held the vial of nitro shoulder-high and he stared at us threateningly.

He froze that way and so did we. It was a tableau, an impasse. Castro broke it. He took another step toward the door.

Promises, promises, I thought to myself. Right then I could appreciate the philosophy behind Castro’s whole career. He knew what to promise and when to promise it. But most important of all, he knew when to break the promise. It had worked well in his exercise of Commie politics, so why not with us, here, now?

I decided quickly that this was one time he wasn’t going to get away with it. I leveled my pistol straight at his gut. “Tell him if he takes one more step, I’ll shoot,” I told Pedro.

Castro chattered back in Spanish and Pedro translated. “He says that if you do we’ll all die just as if the bomb had gone off. He says he will not move again until you have time to think this through and see that you are trapped and surrender. But he will not give up the nitro.”

“Tell him that I’m going to count to ten and that if he doesn’t hand over the nitro by then, I’m going to fire and we’ll all go together.”

Pedro told him and I began counting: “One . . .”

“Uno,” Pedro translated.

“Two . . .”

“Dos . . .”

“Three . . .”

“Tres . . .”

At the count of nine I clicked off the safety of the revolver. It was a loud sound in the room. Fear sprang to Castro’s eyes. He quickly handed the vial of nitro to Pedro.

I took a deep breath of relief. Would I have fired?

No. I’m neither that much of a fanatic, nor that much of a hero. But if I hadn’t, Castro could have just walked out of there and we would have had no choice but to surrender to his waiting soldiers.

Now we held the trump card again-—-the joker with the beard. “Tell him our original deal still goes,” I told Pedro. “Tell him to tell his men that if they fire on us we’ll kill him. But if we get out of the hotel, we’ll set him free.”

Pedro told Castro, and he in turn shouted some orders to the men outside the bathroom. Then we opened the door and marched out. The hallway bristled with guns. But the crowd of men parted to let us pass when they saw the gun at the back of Castro’s head.

We marched him out of the hotel. There was a limousine parked in front with a soldier-chauffeur in the driver’s seat. Pedro pointed a gun at him and motioned him out. We got in with Pedro at the wheel. I sat in the back between Victoria and Castro. We sped off. Three blocks later Pedro slowed down and I pushed friend Fidel out of the car. After that we lost ourselves in the twisting, turning streets of Havana.

Finally we ditched the car near the waterfront. We went by foot to the room Pedro had rented near the Casa de la Felicidad and holed up there. We didn’t budge for over a week. We knew Castro’s cops would be tearing the city apart searching for us. But in a city like Havana, a city of over 700,000 people, it’s easy to stay lost if you want to—and we wanted to very much.

However, we couldn’t stay there indefinitely. Victoria had a job to do, and it was my job to help her do it. And it was Pedro’s job to help me help her. So, finally, we had to venture forth once again.

Pedro didn’t dare go near his contact at the Havana Libre Hotel directly. So it was necessary for him to get in touch with the man through others in the anti-Castro underground. This took time -- frustrating time, but finally we got a lead on the mysterious foreigner the Cubans had been holding. What we learned pointed pretty definitely to the fact that he was indeed the German scientist Vickie was seeking.

The night Pedro and Minetti attempted to kidnap him, there had been a particular reason why their efforts were interrupted by the squad of soldiers. The soldiers had been detailed to escort the man to a waiting helicopter in the dead of night. The Cubans had been unable to learn his secret, or why he was so important to the Chinese Reds. But they had also been unwilling to turn him over to the Chinese without knowing the importance of what they might be relinquishing.

This presented them with a delicate diplomatic problem. The Chinese knew they had the man and they couldn’t just refuse to turn him over to them outright. They couldn’t afford to incur the wrath of the Chinese. So they had come up with a scheme. They had decided to smuggle the man out of Cuba and to tell the Chinese that he had escaped. Pedro’s contact at the hotel had managed to learn that they’d taken him to Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic.

It was a logical place to hide him out. Castro had been busy “exporting revolution” to the Dominican Republic for a while now. Many of his agents were there. So many, indeed, that the rebel faction which had been trying to oust the military junta which had deposed the legitimate government in 1963 was being kept almost as busy guarding against Commie infiltrators as preparing for the battle to come. Later events would show that how successfully they’d done this was an accomplishment seriously misjudged by many— and by the U. S. State Department in particular¹¹ .

At this time, however, the Dominican bubble, while close to bursting, had not yet burst. Castro, as misled as the U. S. was, overestimated his influence in the rebel camp. Had he not done so, it’s doubtful that he would have sent the German scientist to such a shaky place for safekeeping. Obviously, his influence didn’t include being informed of the rebels’ plans to attempt a coup d’état. If he had, he would have chosen some other spot to hide this man of mystery.

The result of the information Pedro had obtained was that I made contact with the CIA and arranged to have the three of us smuggled out of Havana. This was done with a small fishing schooner. When it was well clear of Havana, a helicopter floated in from the dark night to meet it. Victoria Winters and I boarded the ’copter. Pedro stood on the deck below and waved goodbye as the night sky swallowed us up.

I’d made the decision myself. Charles Putnam had not only said I was to find Vickie, he’d also said I was to help her carry out her assignment in any way I could. Whatever restrictions he’d put on the help I should give were stretchable as far as I was concerned. Thus I’d simplified matters by telling Victoria that my assignment was simply to help her carry out her assignment, without mentioning anything about the fact that Putnam might well have considered my job to be over at this point. Aside from all the other reasons, I still had butterflies for this British beauty. However, I had seen no reason to drag Pedro any further into the situation. So I’d sent him back to Miami and his jai alai games.

And we were on our way to Santo Domingo. It was night when we set down there. Dawes, the CIA man in charge back in Miami, must have wired ahead and arranged everything. I didn’t like the guy, but I had to admit he was thorough. Vickie and I were hustled off to a swanky hotel catering to American tourists. Adjoining rooms awaited us there. In the closet of each room there was a complete wardrobe for both of us. We each had our own private bathroom as well. There’s nothing like living high on the hog supplied by the American taxpayer, I told myself.

I took a shower and put on a crisp new pair of pajamas. There was a positively depraved red velvet lounging robe to go with them. I put that on, too. Then I crossed over to the door separating my room from the one occupied by Victoria Winters. If I’d had a mustache, I probably would have twirled it, I was feeling that sure of myself.

I turned the doorknob. It was locked. “Vickie?” I called. No answer. My ego deflated, and I knew in my heart that it figured. She’d managed to make me cool it all the time we’d been together in Havana. Now I got the message. I just wasn’t her type. She obviously dug professional spy-boys from Boston like Alan Foster more than she did amorous amateurs like me. But I knew myself well enough to know I’d keep trying. Moon-calfing it for a while, I went to bed and finally to sleep.

The next morning I got my first good look at Santo Domingo from the terrace outside our hotel rooms. While we were breakfasting, I looked out over the city and admired its charm. It looked sleepy and peaceful. In retrospect I’m glad I saw it that way. Before long this tropical air would be thick with gunsmoke, the narrow streets flowing with blood, the sleepy silence shattered by the chatter of machine guns, the cannon’s roar and the screams of the wounded and dying.

But this morning there was nothing of the chaos to come in my view of Santo Domingo. It was a clear day and I could look down the geometrically precise streets with their right-angle intersections all the way to the mouth of the Ozama River on the landward side of the city. Looking in the other direction, I could view the blue-green of the Caribbean Sea.

It was, however, the city itself which I found most colorful, rather than the scenery which surrounded it. Santo Domingo--known as Ciudad Trujillo¹² during the dictator’s rule from 1936 through 1961—is more than just the capital city of the Dominican Republic, more than a Mecca for sun-seeking American tourists, more than the home of more than 420,000 people, more than the hellhole it was to be for thousands of U. S. troops. It is also the oldest existing city in the Western Hemisphere, having been founded in 1496 and it is made up of some of the finest examples of Spanish colonial architecture to be found anywhere in the world. The houses are huge, built of large stone blocks, violently colored, with large doorways and windows gashed out of them as though by the precise knife of an ancient Inquisitor. The cathedral I was looking at in the distance dates back to 1512, contains the tomb of Christopher Columbus¹³ ,, and stands as a monument to the soaring spirit of man which impressed even a confirmed cynic like myself. Not far from it stands the old fortress in which Columbus was confined and tortured on order of the ancient tyrant Bobadilla-—like the cathedral, a monument, but not an inspiring one; rather a reminder of man’s baser nature.

“Any time you’re through rubbernecking, we can get to work.” Victoria interrupted my musings.

“I’d rather play.” I was completely back in the present now.

“You Americans are so persistent! You never know how to take no for an answer!”

“Maybe that’s because some of you English are so quick to say yes to some of us.”

Her cheeks flushed. She knew damn well I was referring to Alan Foster. “Some of you don’t behave like such boors!” she told me icily.

“That’ll teach me,” I said, feeling really put down. “Never help a damsel in distress!”

“I am grateful for your having rescued me,” she said with more than a hint of apology in her voice. “But that doesn’t mean I want you to compromise me.”

Brother! Compromise her! The cool, English gall of this babe! After I’d actually caught her in the sack with Foster! Oh, my aching ego! “Let’s just forget the whole thing,” I told her. “Consider yourself revirginized and let it go at that. We’re here for a reason. Let’s get down to it, and the hell with romance.”

“I’m as anxious to get started as you are,” Victoria told me. “But I have to wait for further information. We can’t operate in a vacuum. British Intelligence knows I’m here. They’ll make contact soon.”

But it wasn’t British Intelligence that contacted us later that afternoon. To my chagrin, it was none other than my romantic rival, Alan Foster of the CIA, who came sailing into our rooms. He was as personable, as Bostonian, and as welcome to Victoria as ever. He explained that since the CIA had its hand on the pulse of things in the Dominican Republic-—a dubious claim as subsequent events would show—-British Intelligence had decided to work through and with its U. S. counterpart. And since Foster had been in on the case almost from the first—albeit on the wrong track—he had been assigned as Victoria’s contact.

I was afraid that the first instruction he might relay would be to tell me my job was done and I should bow out. It wasn’t that I was so anxious to risk my neck. I just didn’t want to leave the improper Bostonian a clear field with the bundle from Britain. He’d cut me out once. A second time would really undermine my competitive spirit.

However, far from bearing instructions dismissing me, Foster brought information which made my continued participation essential. While the German scientist seemed to have vanished from sight after having been taken to Santo Domingo, the pilot of the ’copter which had brought him here was still in the city. It was a slim lead, but it was the only one we had. This pilot’s name was Raoul Marti. He was holing up in a brothel in the southern part of the city—and that’s where I came in. As the man from O.R.G.Y., I had a believable pretext for investigating that brothel and tracing him down.

Why was Marti hiding out in a brothel? The information Foster brought provided the answer, along with a story that was almost touching. It seems that Marti, back in the pre-Castro days, had been a procurer in Havana. As such, he had broken in a thirteen-year-old girl named Consuela—-last name unknown—as a prostitute. Subsequently, in a decidedly unpimp-like manner, he had fallen in love with the girl.

Conflict. Holding himself responsible for her downfall, Marti had begged Consuela to resign her trade. Consuela, however, liked her work. Not only was it bringing in more money than she had ever dreamed of getting her hands on, but she also enjoyed the sex involved and the experience of a constant variety of partners. No matter how Marti pleaded with her to quit, the child-whore refused.

Things were still at this impasse when Castro took over. Consuela had fled to Santo Domingo with a group of fellow prostitutes. Marti had joined the revolution. Somehow, a few years later, he had found out where Consuela had gone. From that point he had wangled and connived to find a way to join her there. When the opportunity had come up to train as a helicopter pilot, he had leaped at it. However, it took three years after he qualified before his duties finally took him to Santo Domingo. Pure chance had resulted in the ex-procurer’s being assigned to fly the chopper carrying the mysterious German scientist out of Cuba.

Foster’s information was that Marti had indeed found Consuela, now grown into a woman, and refused to leave her. In essence, this meant that he had defected from the Castro cause. Considering what he might know about the German, it also meant that Castro’s agents were probably after him. If they found him, they’d kill him just to shut him up. It was up to me to find him first.

That night, reluctantly, I left Foster and Victoria alone in the hotel room and set out on my mission. The city was strangely quiet, almost ominously so, as I strolled to the native quarter where most of the bordellos were located. This was in the part of the city to the south of what would later be the International Zone.

I found the address Foster had provided without any trouble. A maid led me into a large parlor. It was lavishly decorated in the Spanish style. Girls in various stages of undress were spaced around the room in twos and threes like clusters of grapes. Their mood was desultory. I judged that it was a very slow night.

The maid turned to leave me. I grasped her arm and stopped her. “I’d like to see the madam,” I told her.

“Si.” She nodded. “Un momento.” She waved away the girl who had started to approach me and then indicated that I should sit down and wait.

A moment later she returned with a fluttery, fortyish, plump little woman whose blondeness looked like it had been sprayed on by a myopic hairdresser. Gray-black underlay the brassy sheen and the olive-complexion-turned-leathery of the face didn’t go with the try for Nordi-ness. “I am Mrs. Alvarez,” she introduced herself. She spoke English with just the trace of a Spanish accent.

“Steve Victor,” I replied. “Is this your place?”

“I am in charge here,” she replied a bit cautiously. “What is it that you wish?”

“I’m with O.R.G.Y.,” I told her.

“That will be very expensive.” Her eyes narrowed shrewdly.

“You misunderstand. O.R.G.Y. is a research foundation. We conduct investigations into the sexual traditions of various countries. Currently I’m conducting such inquiries in the Caribbean,” I added a bluff. “The local authorities,” I told her, “assured me that you could be most helpful and would gladly cooperate.”

It threw her. She was flustered, but obviously afraid to take the chance of offending me and whatever “local authorities” might have sanctioned my visit. “I will be happy to help you in any way I can, Mr. Victor. Of course, by its very nature, ours is a very confidential profession, but --”

“I respect all confidences,” I assured her. “Think of me as a doctor bound to secrecy. Also, I make no moral judgments. I am only interested in compiling data, not in infringing on the privacy of your clients, nor on anything specific in the intimate nature of your business. I want only to get the answers to some general questions. The main thing I’m concerned with at the moment is tracing the pattern of Cuban prostitution in the Twentieth Century. I have learned that since Castro many Cuban prostitutes have emigrated to the Dominican Republic. If you have any of these working here, then I would be particularly anxious to speak with them privately.”

“I will arrange it immediately.” She summoned the maid again and I was taken upstairs to a small room.

After a short wait, a girl entered the room and closed the door behind her. She was a girl in her twenties, small, very dark, quite slender. This slenderness was accentuated by sharp, jutting hips and extremely large, womanly breasts. These features were accentuated by the garment she wore.

It was a sort of negligee made of a transparent white gauzy material. It hung loosely from her shoulders to her knees. A small triangle at the juncture of her legs was made of more opaque stuff and concealed her there. Judging from the smallness of it, there was no doubt that this area of her flesh had been shaved. Two fingertip dots at her bosom were also made of thicker material and concealed the tops of her breasts. A thin white silken cord ran down from behind her neck and under her arms to support her breasts and keep them in place.

The nipples themselves were concealed, but the roseates flashed into view as she moved. They were very large and a dark pink color as contrasted with the brownness of her skin. Her movements were automatically erotic, and her mane of glossy black hair was tossed about like a fetish as she approached me.

“I am Dovita,” she announced. “You weesh to”-— there was a meaningful pause here—“speak to me?”

“Yes. Did the madam fill you in on what‘ it’s all about?”

“Si. She say you are some sort of sex investigator. She say you ask me questions and I answer.”

“That’s right.”

“You just want talk?” She looked disbelieving. “You no want make love with Dovita?”

“I’d love to,” I told her. “But I don’t have time right now.”

“Some can and do,” she shrugged. “Others, they no can so they talk-talk instead.”

“That’s not it,” I told her, sidetracked into being offended. “I told you, I don’t have time right now. I’m working. This is my work. And I never mix pleasure with business.”

“So! For you to be sorry, Mr. Victor. You don’ know what you missing. Dovita pretty damn good.”

“I’m sure you are. But do you mind if we get down to the reason I’m here?”

“Suit yourself. It’s okey-doke if I sit down?”

“Sure. Go ahead.”

She sat down on the bed beside me. She really had no choice. Outside of a bureau and a sink, it was the only piece of furniture in the room. But she didn’t have to sit so close to me. Her slender thigh rubbed against my leg. I tried moving away, but she only shifted closer again. I didn’t move a second time. If I did, I was sure she would, and at that rate I’d end up sitting on the floor.

“Shoot,” she said.

“Right. Now, as I get it, Dovita, you’re originally from Havana. Is that right?”

“Si. I come here when Castro hit the fan.”

“That would be around the beginning of 1959?”

“In February, si.”

“And how old were you then, Dovita?”

“I am twenty-four now. So I was not quite eighteen then.” Her hand dropped all too casually on my knee and stayed there, palm-up.

I decided to ignore it. “How long had you been turning tricks then?”

“About one year-for money, that ees.”

“And before that?”

“I do it for fun. Is fun, no? I like very much from when I am fourteen. I still like. You no like?” The hand turned over now and the fingers stroked my leg.

“Uhh, yes.” I steadfastly kept to my line of questioning. “When you left Havana, did any other girls come to Santo Domingo with you?”

“Si. About a dozen.” Her fingers were tiptoeing higher.

“Did they all come to this place?”

“No. Only three of us come here.”

“I see. And were the other two as young as yourself?”

“One ees much younger.” That sounded to me like it might be Consuela. “The other,” Dovita continued, “is about same age.”

“How young was the other one, the first one you mentioned?”

“Thirteen, maybe fourteen. She is very good at her job, though.”

“Is she still here?” I asked.

“Why you want know?” Dovita looked at me suspiciously. “What that have to do with your survey?”

“I’m particularly interested in how children got involved in prostitution in Havana before Castro took over,” I explained.

“How you think? Is always some man looking for new stuff to market. He throw girl a little love-talk, take her to bed, and then before you know it he renting her out to other hombres and taking all the money she make for himself.”

“Is that what happened to this girl?”

“Sure.”

“Is she still around here? I’d like to talk to her.”

“She still here. But not tonight. What you want from her, anyway? She not so young any longer, you know. If you want girl-whore, she over-age. An’ she not so good as Dovita. Why you don’ concentrate on what’s here? Stop asking questions. You be glad you do.” She took one of my hands and pressed it against her breast. The tip was rigid and burning.

“I’d just like to talk to her,” I repeated. “Where can I find her?”

“You not find her tonight. She busy with her boyfriend.”

“Oh, so she has a boyfriend. And what sort of fellow is he?”

“Why you ask? You want boy steada girl?” She thrust my hand away from her breast.

“No. Not at all. I’m just curious, that’s all.”

“You sure ask a lot of questions.”

“That’s my business. I told you.”

“Well, this my business.” She reached for my hand again and this time she put it between her thighs.