The Snake Flag Conspiracy

Chapter Three

I had to drive the Citroen station wagon down onto the sands of the calanque before I could get the Russian into it. He was almost unconscious by then and completely helpless, so I had one hell of a time trying to lift him over the tailgate of the car. I’d taken the precaution of wrapping him in the blanket so I wouldn’t get more of his blood on my clothes.

Clarisse was light enough to carry easily. I put her in the front seat with me. She was still unconscious. I didn’t know how long that would last, but every minute she was out gave me one more minute before I had to think up explanations for her. I was damn glad she hadn’t seen me kill the two Russians.

The road to Marseilles is Route N559. When you get into the environs of the city, it becomes the Avenue du Prado. There wasn’t much traffic on it at that time of night.

In the heart of the city I turned right onto La Canebière, the best known of the avenues of Marseilles. In the daytime La Canebière is jammed with shoppers, shop girls and sailors. Now, at three in the morning, the street was practically deserted. I drove past the Church of St. Vincent de Paul and onto the Boulevard de la Liberation.

Half a dozen turns in the small streets that cluster to the southeast of the railroad yards of the Gare St. Charles finally took me to the house I’d been looking for.

I left the Citroën at the curb and went up to the old, heavy wooden door. The brass knocker was green from years of neglect, the paint had long since peeled away, and the frame canted at a slight but definite angle. There was a modern doorbell to the right of the jamb. I pressed it and waited. After a long time a small panel in the top half of the door slid to one side and a voice asked, “Qui est la?”

“C’est moi — ouvre la porte, mon vieux!”

Jacques Crève-Coeur wasn’t as old as the house, but he looked it, and I doubt he was much younger. I’ve known him for years. He’s always looked on the verge of stumbling into his death bed from malnutrition, but you wouldn’t want to let his feeble, aged appearance fool you. He can get around pretty fast when he has to, and when he does, he’s deadly.

He opened the door wide, smiling broadly at me.

“You forgot to put your teeth in, you old rascal,” I told him. “Stop grinning at me like that.”

Jacques threw his scrawny arms around me in a tight, enthusiastic Gallic embrace. His breath was almost overpowering with the smell of garlic.

“What do you want from me now?” he asked in his thin voice, stepping back.

“What makes you think it isn’t a social visit?”

“At this time of night? Bah! In all the years I’ve known you, mon ami, you’ve never come to me unless you were in trouble, hein? What is it now?”

I told him about the wounded Russian in the car and about Clarisse. He paused for only a moment. Hiding wounded men from the authorities was nothing new to Jacques. He’d been a maqui leader during World War II and had hidden scores from the Nazis.

“Bring the Russian into the house,” he said. “I’ll see that he’s taken care of.”

“Will you get in touch with Washington for me, too?”

Jacques nodded. In the light coming from the house, I could see his scalp glowing pinkly under his sparse white hair. “I’ll inform them. Leave everything to me. Where can David get in touch with you?”

David. How about that! I’ve never yet had the nerve to call Hawk by his first name, but this old Frenchman did, and I’ll bet he even called him that to his face. Sometimes I wondered how many years those two had known each other and what adventures they had gone through together.

“He can’t,” I said. “Have Washington set up a direct flight for me. Top priority. Hawk will arrange it I’ll be at the airport in Marseilles in the morning. When I get to the States, I’d like to have him meet me at Andrews Field.”

“You know David doesn’t like to leave the office. The matter is truly that important?”

“Yes.”

The single word was enough. I knew Hawk would get the message. Jacques didn’t question me further except to ask, “And the girl?”

“We’ve been staying at the Ile Rousse in Bandol,” I said. “Somehow I don’t think it would be smart for either of us to go back there. Where do you suggest I leave her? She may need medical attention, too. She’s been hit on the head.”

Jacques took only a moment. “Aix-en-Provence,” he said. “It’s not too far a drive. I’ll have a friend meet you at the Roy René Hotel.”

I nodded my approval. Then, together, Jacques and I got the Russian into the house. He was completely unconscious by now. I left him stretched out on the couch in the living room. Jacques was on the telephone even before I closed the door behind me. I knew that in minutes there would be a doctor attending to him. I also knew that within the hour the Russian would be in a private clinic receiving the best medical attention and that when he was well enough to travel, he’d be flown secretly to the States. Hawk would keep my promises to the Russian.

Clarisse began to stir when we were halfway to Aixen-Provence. The highway was unwinding itself monotonously in the beams of the headlights when she finally awoke. She put a hand to her head, staring blankly out the window of the car.

“Merde!” she said, more ruefully than in anger. “I hurt.”

“Sorry about that, chérie,” I said.

“What happened?”

“Don’t you remember?”

“No. We were on the beach, making love. Now I’m in a car. I’m fully dressed. I don’t remember anything,” she said, puzzled. “Were you that violent with me?”

I chuckled. French women are really something. “You fell and hit your head,” I told her, not taking my eyes off the road.

“Moi-même je me coupe?” she asked dubiously.

“Oui. You fell and cut yourself,” I said in French. “It was quite a blow you took.”

“I don’t remember,” she said, a tiny frown making small creases in her brow. “Isn’t that strange, Nick? I remember that the beach was full of rocks of all sizes, but I don’t remember falling down.”

“You hit one when you fell.”

“And you are a liar,” Clarisse said almost conversationally. “Because if that’s what happened to me, then why aren’t we on the road to Bandol? Why aren’t we going back to our hotel? This is the way to Aix-en-Provence. You think I don’t recognize the highway just because it’s dark?”

“I’m a liar,” I said cheerfully.

Clarisse moved closer to me so that we touched all alone the right side of my body. I could feel the weight and the heat of her breast pressing against my arm. She put her head on my shoulder.

“Is it a little lie, or is it something too important for me to know?” she asked, snuggling closer with a small squirm of her body.

“It’s a little lie, and it’s also something of utmost importance.”

“Ha! Then I shall not ask questions. You see how nice I am not to ask questions that would embarrass you to answer?”

“You are very nice,” I agreed.

“Where are we going?”

“To a hotel in Aix-en-Provence.”

“To make love?”

“You are hurt,” I pointed out. “How can we make love?”

“I’m not hurt that much,” she protested, a mischievous grin on her pixie mouth. She shook her short ash-blonde hair against my cheek. “Besides, it is only my head that pains me. An aspirin will take care of it.”

Clarisse was quite a girl. If Hawk only knew how much I had sacrificed!

“We will make love when I come back,” I told her.

“You are going away?”

“Tonight.”

“Oh? What is so important that you must leave tonight?”

“I thought you weren’t going to ask questions.”

“I’m not,” she said quickly. “I just want to know...”

“No questions,” I said firmly.

“All right.” Petulant. Lower lip thrust out moistly in a tiny pout. “When are you coming back?”

“As soon as I can.”

“And how soon is that?”

Her hand was on my right thigh, moving slowly in a most intimate caress. “I don’t want to wait forever, cheri.”

I pulled the car over to the side of the road, set the handbrake and switched off the lights. Turning, I took her in my arms and put my lips to hers.

Her slender arms went around my neck. She made a quiet, amused sound in her throat and said, “How wonderful! I haven’t made love in a car for years!” and bit me in fierce, but controlled nips that traveled the length of my neck. Her hands slid inside my shirt.

One moment we were dressed, and the next, there were no clothes between us. My hands cupped the plump, ripe contours of her breasts as her lips found their way to mine again and our tongues explored each other’s mouths, warm and wet and teasingly hot.

And then we explored the most intimate warmth and the wetness of our bodies, Clarisse exclaiming in breathless whispers about my hardness and I savoring her softness. The car was filled with the musky aroma of passion. Clarisse squirmed down onto the seat beneath me as I thrust myself into the slippery cave of her body.

“Quel sauvage!” The sound was half a whisper, half a cry, pain and pleasure, delight and agony all in one phrase, and then I was caught in the wine press of her thighs as they wrapped tightly around me, extracting the juices of my body in one final, explosive tremor that she shared.

When I finally started the car again and turned back onto the highway, Clarisse reached up and touched my cheek with her palm.

“Come back as soon as you can, mon amour,” she said languidly.

Hawk looked even more rumpled and disgruntled than usual. I don’t know whether it was because of the time of day, or because I’d caused him to leave the comfort of his office. We hadn’t bothered to drive back to Dupont Circle. We were sitting in a room at the Marion Hotel just across the Alexandria Bridge. Pick a hotel at random and pick a room in that hotel at random — the chances are damned good that you won’t be bugged.

“Go ahead,” he said, lighting up one of his cheap cigars. “Let’s hear what made you drag me out here.”

In self-defense against the stench of his smoke, I lit one of my own gold-tipped cigarettes, inhaling deeply. Hawk was sitting in a big easy chair. There was a pot of coffee on the low table between us.

“Hawk, what does an insurance company do with its money?”

“Is this a quiz on economics?” the head of AXE asked tartly. “Is this what you hauled me out here for? Get to the point, Nick!”

“Be patient. Just answer the question. It’s important, believe me.”

Hawk shrugged. “They invest it, of course. Any idiot knows that. They have to earn money with the money they take in.”

“And banks?”

“Same thing.”

“What do they buy, Hawk?”

He cocked a shaggy eyebrow at me and then decided to humor me a little longer.

“Stocks, mostly.”

“What would happen,” I asked him, “if, on a given day, several of the largest insurance companies in the country suddenly dumped every share of stock they owned?”

Hawk snorted. “Assuming that improbability, they’d lose their shirts. The stocks would plummet to practically nothing. They’d have to be crazy to do something like that.”

“Suppose they didn’t care if they lost every penny. What would happen, Hawk, if hundreds of millions of shares of stock — stock of every major corporation in the country — flooded the market simultaneously?”

Hawk snorted and shook his shaggy gray head. “Preposterous! It couldn’t possibly happen!”

I persisted. “But just suppose it did happen. Tell me what the result would be if that situation arose.”

Slowly, deliberately, as though talking to a child, Hawk said, “What would happen would be the worst financial panic this country’s ever had. It would ruin us completely! I shudder to think of the consequences.”

“That’s right, Hawk. Unlike a communist state where the government owns everything and determines the value of everything, this country lives on trust. Trust in pieces of paper. Paper money, stocks, bonds, mortgages, leases, letters of credit, IOU’s, bank books, deposit slips — you name it. Take stocks, for example. None of them are worth more than someone is willing to pay for them. If the value of a stock is seventy-two, that means someone’s willing to pay seventy-two dollars a share for it. Now, what makes that stock worth seventy-two dollars, Hawk?”

Hawk was controlling his impatience. He glowered at me and then answered, “The present assets of the company to a large degree, but mostly its potential, future sales, the dividends it’s expected to pay—” he stopped short. “I guess what you’re trying to get me to say is that, in effect, no stock is worth any more than people believe it’s worth. Right?”

I nodded my head slowly. “That’s right. Hawk. It comes right back to trust again. Destroy that trust—”

“—and you’ve destroyed the American system!”

“So,” I said, taking a deep breath, “if any given stock were dumped on the market in huge quantities without any explanation, it would be like announcing that it’s worthless.”

“Come on, now, Nick, you know better than that! That’s not the way the market works,” Hawk protested. “The trading specialists in that stock from the brokerage houses would have to keep the price up — even if they had to buy it themselves.”

“If two or three million shares of a single major corporation were dumped all at once? Say the stock was selling for over a hundred dollars a share. How many brokerage houses could afford to buy it to keep its price up?”

Hawk shook his head. “None,” he said. “Not one. There isn’t a brokerage house that has that much money. Assuming it could happen, the value of the stock would drop like a rock.”

“How far would it drop?”

“It depends. Probably, it could go to a fraction of its value.”

“Sure. You drop enough shares of any stock into a market without enough buyers to absorb it, and each share finally winds up worth less than the paper it’s printed on!”

“Couldn’t happen,” said Hawk firmly. “The Board of Governors of each of the Exchanges would suspend trading in the stock immediately.”

“And suppose that when the market opened again the next day, even more sell orders came in, Hawk? And not just one stock, mind you, but stock in every major company in the whole United States!”

“I don’t believe it!”

I pressed on. All I was doing was telling him what the wounded Russian had told me. “Suppose half a dozen of the biggest commercial banks joined the insurance companies in selling off all their stocks?”

“Christ! You’re out of your mind, Nick!” Hawk exploded. “They wouldn’t dare! There’d be a run on every bank in the country!”

“Now you’re getting the idea.”

Hawk looked at me carefully. His cigar had gone out. He made no attempt to light it.

“Add to that three or four of the major mutual funds,” I said. Hawk waved a hand for me to stop.

“Are you telling me this is what’s due to happen?”

“That’s what the Russian said.”

Hawk took a moment to relight his cigar. He took a deep breath.

“It’s pretty farfetched, Nick.”

I shrugged. “Hell, Hawk, I don’t know. It was devised by one of the top Soviet economists. The way he figures it, our economy is the most vulnerable area they can attack. You remember what happened a couple of years back when the Russians bought a few million tons of grain? Christ, the price of food shot sky high. Inflation took off like a rocket. It triggered a round of strikes because the cost-of-living went soaring. I guess that’s what gave this economist the idea that the quickest, easiest way to destroy this country is not through war but economically!”

Hawk was somber. “The domino theory,” he said musingly. “Yes, the plan could work, Nick. If the market goes to hell, the banks follow. Then every industry in the country would have to close down in a matter of days. Once that happens, tens of millions of people are out of work. The country goes broke. Without enough money to take care of our own people, there’d be no foreign aid, no foreign trade, no NATO, SEATO or other alliances. The European Common Market would have to turn to the Soviet bloc to survive. Japan would turn to Red China. The United States would be reduced to less than a fifth-rate power!”

I’ve never seen so serious an expression on Hawk’s face. He went on, thinking out loud, “There’d be riots in every city and town in the country!”

Then he got to his feet angrily and began pacing the room in short, rapid steps. “But how, Nick? For God’s sake! You’re asking me to believe that every responsible financier and money man in the country would act contrary to his own self-interests! I just can’t see men like that acting that way!”

“The Russian says there are only a few of them, Hawk. Just a few key men, strategically placed — men with authority to issue sell orders of that magnitude. They could trigger it. The others would follow out of panic and desperation.”

“He could be right,” Hawk said finally. “Dammit, he could be right!”

“The Russians believe it can be done,” I said. “That’s why they almost killed him when he found out what was going to happen.”

Hawk paced the room like a caged leopard. “There’d have to be an organization,” he said savagely. “A tight little group, with each man a power in his own company.” He nodded, talking almost completely to himself now. “Yes, an organization, but with one man at the top. One man to give the orders.”

He turned to me suddenly. “But why? Why would they do it, Nick?”

I knew better than to answer. With Hawk’s knowledge of human nature, it had to be a rhetorical question.

“Power!” he exclaimed, slamming his fist down on the table top. “That’s the only motivation for men of that stature! They’d do it for power! Tell them that they’d be running the country the way they think it should be run and you’d have them eating out of the palm of your hand! You take a man who’s fought his way into control of a giant company and ten to one he wants to control the country as well.”

Hawk dropped the stub of his cigar into the ashtray. The outburst seemed to calm him down. I poured myself a cup of the now cold coffee and sipped at it. Hawk came over and picked up his own cup. He took his time about filling it.

“Alright, Nick,” he said almost quietly, “now you tell me how the hell the Russians fit into this thing. How did the Kremlin get their hands on the top man? Blackmail? I can’t believe that.”

“He’s a plant,” I said and watched the expression on Hawk’s face. Only a quick flash of surprise in his eyes showed that he’d even heard me.

“When did they bury him?” he asked quietly.

“According to the Russian, he was planted here right after World War II — somewhere around 1946. He’s been lying low ever since. About eight years ago he began forming this organization. You guessed it, Hawk, there is an organization. And every one of its members has a key position in his own company. Every one of them is a top financial officer.”

“You know anything else about this organization? It’s name?”

I shook my head. “The Russian didn’t learn that much. But he was able to tell me the outline of the plan. Actually, the Kremlin didn’t know what the hell to do with this organization until Krasnov — that’s the Russian economist — came up with his idea. That was about a year ago. They’re ready to go now.”

“When? When’s the kick-off date?”

“Twelve days from now,” I said. “Eleven, if you don’t count today.”

Hawk drained the rest of his cold coffee, made a face and put the cup down on the table.

“Anything else? Any clues as to who this top man might be?”

“The Russian said something strange,” I said, remembering. “He said the man was a Brahmin. Whatever that means.”

Hawk was silent for several seconds, then suddenly he whispered, “Boston!”

“What?”

“He’s a Bostonian, Nick! Upper class, old family, high in the hierarchy of the financial world. Only one group in the U.S. are called ‘Brahmins,’ because they’re top caste.”

He saw I didn’t understand what he was talking about.

“Certain Bostonians got tagged with that nickname around the middle of the nineteenth century, Nick. That’s when Boston considered itself the intellectual hub of the universe. Emerson, Thoreau, and Longfellow were their literary and philosophical leaders. Old Yankee families had a pretty high opinion of themselves. So much so that Boston society looked down on New York society as Johnny-come-latelies. Like high-caste Hindus, they got to be known as Brahmins. The man we want is a Bostonian, Nick. You’ll find him there.”

I got to my feet. It was time to go. I’d been given my assignment. As I put on my jacket, I said, “Hawk, are you going to let the White House know about this?”

David Hawk looked at me strangely. He came over and put his hand on my shoulder in a rare gesture of warmth.

“Nick, so far you’ve done a fine job. You just haven’t thought far enough ahead. If I tell the White House, word will get to the Treasury Department in minutes. What makes you believe that this organization hasn’t got someone in there at the top level?”

He was right. I hadn’t thought it through. Well, I wasn’t in the think-tank group at AXE. I was Killmaster N3. My forte was action.

“How do you want it handled?”

“The quickest way. Eliminate the top man,” Hawk told me grimly. “Find him and get rid of him!”

“Any way I want?”

“No,” Hawk shook his head. “Definitely not! If he’s that big a man, who knows what would happen if he died under extraordinary circumstances? No, Nick, it’ll have to be an ‘accident.’ A believable accident,” he stressed. “The kind no one will ever question — or investigate.”

I shrugged. He knew he was cramping my style.

“That’s an order, Nick,” Hawk said quietly. “It’s got to be an accident.”