The Vulcan Disaster

Chapter Sixteen

I did what Hawk said. And next day, when I walked in that ratty-looking door and sat down, I handed him the digested file with an air of finality.

I didn’t need it. I’d memorized it.

“I almost don’t believe it,” I said. Hawk was poring over a report, not paying any attention to me, taking sips from time to time from a paper cup full of coffee that looked blacker than his own cigars and thicker than Basil Morse.

Finally he looked up. “Oh. Oh yes, Nick. Good to see you. You read the file?”

“Yes sir. Read and digested and ruminated upon. But I can barely believe it.”

“Hmm? How’s that?”

“Komaroff. I mean, how could he get that big... and cause that much trouble... without somebody getting wise?”

“You’re wrong, you know,” Hawk said, swivelling around to face me.

“Wrong?”

“Komaroff doesn’t cause trouble. He only makes it possible. He doesn’t start wars. He just sells arms to both sides, on such a scale that it’s almost impossible for anybody with a belligerent urge in the war cabinets of either side not to start some sort of conflict.”

“He takes sides, too. Guatemala, Chile, the generals’ coup in Greece...”

“Sure he does. You’ll find he always winds up taking sides sooner or later. And that the minute one side starts faltering in any way — showing signs of possibly losing — you’ll find Komaroff cuts off credit so fast you wouldn’t believe it.”

“Strictly dollar-sign Realpolitik, huh?”

Hawk scowled. “You overvalue the dollar these days. There’s a better medium of exchange in the Petrobuck, or whatever they’re calling it right now. No matter. That, as you could see, was one hell of a success story. And, as you’ve guessed, somebody had to be deliberately looking the other way to let him get that big over a period of no more than twenty-five years while simultaneously — and none too secretly, for that matter — bending all the regulations on international arms traffic out of shape.

“Komaroff has one Senator and several members of key congressional committees right on the payroll, directly or indirectly. Two others — Senators — have their wives working for Komaroff on highly paid consultancy jobs on which no work at all is done.”

“But operating as brazenly as all that...”

“Now recently, Globalarms, the Komaroff corporation...”

“Hey,” I said. “Fredericks was trying to tell me something. As he was dying, his finger traced a G in the air...”

“I thought of that. Very likely. It seems Fredericks happened on the ‘G’ file just as they were breaking in — beating you and Will to it, as a matter of fact. And they nabbed it after killing him. You remember Will sent you after the ‘G’ file...”

“Yes, sir.”

“Anyhow. Back to the meat. A few years ago the Gun Control Act of 1968 put a real crimp in the operations of the big fish. You’ll find the new ground rules detailed in this.” He handed over a State Department booklet called Title 22, Code of Federal Regulations, Parts 121–128: International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR). The date was November 1973.

“Yes sir,” I said. “This was cut up in bite-size chunks for that digest you gave me, I think. It must have caused some problems.”

“The effect of the 1968 law that we’re interested in is the effect on a shark like Komaroff, who had no diversified interests to fall back on. And who, in the volatile atmosphere of today, with pocket revolutions and two-bit takeovers going on on all sides, has started meddling again in the affairs of various small countries just to get his business back in operation again.”

“Pardon me, sir,” I said. “Komaroff is an American citizen? I didn’t get that straight.”

“No, he isn’t. He was a refugee after World War II — one who managed to smuggle his money out through Switzerland. We let him in, and he managed to live here for twenty-odd years and grow fat, and...”

“So where’s he operating out of now?”

“A yacht in the Mediterranean, Liberian registry. And because we no longer have a man in the castle, so to speak, ratting on Komaroff’s activities for us, we...”

“No longer?” I said. “We had one?”

Hawk looked at me through those beetling brows. The look was bland as cream of mushroom soup. “Yes,” he said. “His name was Walter Corbin.”

“Corbin?” I said, incredulously. “But...”

“Yes,” Hawk said. “And the big job Corbin had to do was to... Well, Komaroff had been breaking out in a furious flurry of activity lately. Buggering up the entire world balance-of-power situation, as a matter of fact. Overloading several of the little OPEC countries with arms, allowing for a buildup in the continuing war against Israel that exceeds anything we consider safe or manageable. Beefing up tiny little African banana republics’ stores of arms just as the ‘republic’ parts of the places were tottering and falling into the hands of people like Idi Amin and company. That southern tip of Africa is ready to explode right now, Nick, and if there isn’t a major Vietnam-type incident there before the year’s out it’ll surprise me plenty.”

“But Corbin?”

“We smuggled him aboard as a Diesel mechanic,” Hawk said. “He wasn’t a reliable type in the first place, you know, but he was the only free agent we knew who had the requisite skills. We had to take the chance.”

“And his job?”

“To bust into Komaroff’s files and microfilm the whole damned thing. Records of everyone he’s doing business with, times, places, amounts, type of armaments, so on.”

“And what went wrong?”

“We’re not absolutely sure. We just got a tip that Corbin had sold us out. We weren’t sure to whom. But with him disappearing on us and then turning up in Saigon like that all we could think was that he wanted the info for sale to the Cong. Now, I’d lay odds against it. It had something to do with Meyer as a middle man, and the thing we now have to do — well, one of the things we have to do — is find out who the outfit was that grabbed it. The Israelis, for instance? The guys who killed Fredericks, and almost got you? The strange new crowd that killed Will? Somebody we don’t know anything at all about? Well, that’s where we’re at, Nick. That’s your job — finding it all out. Well, part of your job, anyhow.”

“Okay,” I said. “Now how about dropping that other shoe, sir?”

“Oh, yes. You’re to finish the job Corbin was hired to do.”

“The whole thing? The mircrofilm? Get it back... or replace it?”

“Right.” Hawk opened his desk and got out one of those awful cigars. “Play it by ear. Komaroff’s thing has to be stopped. He seems to be operating out of some sort of panic these days. These moves of his... they don’t seem to make any sense. Beforehand, Komaroff’s sales pattern had one dominating factor: money. Money we can understand. But now? There seems to be some sort of ideological tinge in there. He’s backing one side at the expense of the other and the only people who really stand to gain are those nice fellows who vote in blocs against us in the U.N.”

“You said play it by ear.”

“Yes. Get the intelligence covertly, if you can. If you can’t, do whatever’s necessary to foul things up. The files? Film them if you can, bum them if you can’t, but memorize everything you can get in your head before you burn it. Cover your tracks as much as possible.”

“Couple of unanswered questions,” I said.

“Yes?”

“That arms shipment to Vietnam, for one.”

“We’re working on that. Maybe you’ll find out where it went before we do. If so, you know how to get the news to us.”

“Right. Meanwhile, the Israelis.”

“Got Tel Aviv working on that. Matter of fact, they’ll be sending you one of their boys to work with you.”

“And I’m supposed to be working my way aboard Komaroff’s boat covertly?”

“That’s all right. Their man’s already aboard, from what I understand. May even be some help. Their agents tend to be pretty good.”

“Yeah,” I said grudgingly. “And my cover?”

“You’re in luck there. Know anything about astrology? Komaroff’s daughter — she’s one of these freaked-out jet-set types from all reports — just fired her resident gum.”

“I’ll bone up.”

“You better. Your application’s already being processed.”

“Hey,” I said. “How do I recognize the Tel Aviv agent? The one that’s supposed to meet me on the boat?”

“He’ll contact you.”

“And the... uh... password? He’ll be wearing a red carnation?”

Hawk frowned. “He’ll slip you that handshake of Will’s.” The corners of his mouth turned down even more. “It was all I could think of offhand.”

Going out onto the Circle again I ran into Bob Franks again. “Say,” he said before I had a chance to open my mouth, “haven’t changed your mind about the weekend, have you? Damn. Hmmm. Too bad. I could have used a ride. Say, you’ve got a pensive look about you, today. What’s the matter?”

“What do you know about astrology?”

“Astro... Hmmm. From what angle?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean are we proceeding on a basis of logical and rational discussion, in which case sorry, Nick, it’s a lot of hog-wash, or are we proceeding under the assumption that...”

“I’ve got to bone up on it in a hurry,” I said. “What have you got hidden away under that bald spot that will help me convince somebody that I know all about the mysterious stars and the secret personal message they have for each and every one of us?”

“How fast do you need it, and how smart do you have to sound?”

“I have to become one of the immortal masters of the art by, uh, let’s say yesterday afternoon, around four p.m. or so.”

Franks’s sandy eyebrows went up and down like Groucho Marx’s. He chewed his lip. “Better come get a cup of coffee with me after all. The mystical wisdom of the centuries cannot be imparted to the uninitiate who knows not the secret password.”

“Copping out?”

“No, but that’s shortish notice. I was, after all, going to fob off this book I have which’ll buy you just about enough double-talk to impress some dimbulb you picked up in a bar somewhere after about four hours’ study. Just read the book and memorize a few stock phrases...” He chewed his lip some more. “But a master? An exalted panjandrum of the mystic shrine? Hmmm. And by tomorrow? This will take the full Robert M. Franks Special Treatment...”

“I said yesterday, you know.”

“I can tell when you’re in a hurry and when you’re just talking. Okay. Tomorrow it is. Tomorrow you will pass for a master astrologer in any crowd that doesn’t include Sydney Omarr. Make that virtually any crowd. Stay away from anybody at the party who wears a red bandanna around her head and gold bangles in her ears. She’ll tip off your scam in a minute.”

“Sold,” I said. “I’m in your hands. You said something about coffee?”