The Vulcan Disaster

Chapter Four

“How many of them are there up there?” I asked.

The door had swung open slightly; perhaps she hadn’t slammed it shut hard enough. There was a crack of light coming in from the compartment forward. I was sitting up, faying to struggle to my feet; she sat before me, buttoning up the black blouse. The dim light outlined her face for me, showing off those delicate bones, that almost European nose.

“My... employer,” she said. “The pilot. One other. A sort of bodyguard. Mr. Carter, do you think...?” The fine-boned face turned to me. “But no, no, I couldn’t ask you...”

I let her lead pass for now. “I take it this is an unscheduled flight?” I’d worked the knife back up into its chamois case inside my sleeve. I reached for my wallet and found it still there, much to my surprise, in my coat pocket. Good. They’d have accepted the ID inside, which identified me as Peter Cowles, a staff assistant to the senior senator from a state not far from Washington. That would have jibed nicely with the story she’d given them about me. The senator in question was one of the more loud-mouthed supporters of the war in Vietnam. He’d have been approachable, perhaps through his obliging, and grateful, staff assistant.

“Unscheduled?” she replied. “I... I’m sure it is. He... they had to bribe a lot of people to get permission to take off. Why?”

“Unscheduled takeoff means unscheduled landing,” I said getting to my knees. She gave me a hand up, but even with the help it wasn’t fun standing all the way up. “They’ll have to radio ahead to Hong Kong and try to get an okay on coming in. The terminal at Kai Tak will try to fit them in somewhere — particularly when they find out who he is. Anyhow, the negotiations should keep them busy coming in. And from the sudden change in our altitude I’d say that wasn’t a long way off.”

“What are you... what do you think you will do?” she said. One tiny hand stole into mine.

“Give them the shake,” I said. “Fold my tents and steal silently away. Did you think I’d be setting up in business with the bastard in Cameron Road somewhere? And you are coming, of course. Right?”

“I... oh, no, Mr. Carter.” The hand in mine was moist and shaky. “I... I’ve thought about it. I... I gave my promise. I must...”

“You don’t want to work for a shark like that, do you? Particularly knowing his plans for you?” I felt her hand; no, she didn’t. What was bringing this on? “Hey,” I said, “what’s the matter?”

“Oh, Mr. Carter, you don’t understand. I... I have enemies now. Enemies who knew I was with Walter. Now... now there’ll be no protection from them. None at all. Unless... unless I go with him. No one would dare...”

“The hell they wouldn’t,” I said in a flat voice. “This isn’t going to be Saigon. The big cheese isn’t going to be so big once we’ve landed. There’s the British government to get around, you know. There’s...”

“Mr. Carter.” Both hands gripped mine. “Walter always said that in Hong Kong the power resides in the Jockey Club, Jardine-Matheson, the Hongkong and Shanghai Bank, and Her Majesty’s Government, in that order. He... he has on deposit over one million pounds sterling in the Hongkong and Shanghai Bank. He is transporting an almost equal sum in the present flight. One can buy quite a bit of protection with that kind of money.”

I whistled; the sound almost wasn’t there under the still-deafening roar of the big engines. “Maybe you’re right,” I said. “Suit yourself. But do me a favor.”

“What?”

“Get up front just before we touch down... and keep the three of them distracted. I’m going to ditch this thing while we’re still on the runway.”

“No! No, you’ll be killed...”

“I don’t think so. Anyhow, I’m not sticking around. If you can keep everybody busy during that last couple of minutes, I’ll just crack that door over there and ease out. I ought to be able to hit and roll and do okay for myself if they’re on a remote enough airstrip and I think with the usual congestion at Kai Tak, and with everybody knowing how easy it is to land a DC-3 on anything from a skateboard to a cow patty, we’ll probably get shunted to something nice and rustic. I’ll take my chances.”

“Goodness.” Both the little hands held mine hard. “Mr. Carter. I suppose... I suppose it wouldn’t do much good to wish that things had gone differently, would it?”

“How?” I said. I stood and checked the side door. “You mean if Walter had killed me back at the Grand-Bretagne? It...”

Her head melted into my shoulder again. I could feel those soft breasts pressing against me, all aroused again under the thin cloth. “Oh, no. No. If only... years before Walter came along... before he came along...” Then she straightened herself up, reached up to kiss me on the chin, and squeezed my arm hard in one little fist. “But no. What is past is past. One must live with the present...” The words trailed off. We were coming down fast, then choking down; the flaps were down; I held her hard for a moment, then she pulled free. “I... I have business up front,” she said. “No, it’s ‘forward,’ isn’t it? Well, never mind. Goodbye, Mr... ah... goodbye, Nick. I will... never forget you...” She rose on tiptoe to kiss me again; then she slipped through the open door and pulled it tight behind her. I looked after her in the dark for a moment; then I sighed and worked the door open. When I did, a blast of cold, foggy air hit me and, just for a moment, I had second thoughts about taking a nosedive out onto that dark ground from a moving ship, even if — as I’d suspected — we’d come down on a landing strip that antedated the invention of the bulldozer; then I bit hard on that imaginary bullet again and stuck my head out of the door once more. When the roar of the engines dropped and the plane slowed to taxi around a 90-degree turn I slipped out; rolled; and narrowly missed getting run over by that pesky third wheel...

I got up with no new broken bones — but I looked like hell and felt worse. This wasn’t Kai Tak; it was up north somewhere, and there’d been a predawn rain so I was covered with mud. That put a crimp in all my brave plans to get working as soon as I got to town, trying to find out what was going on. After taking a nosedive in that sticky goop I’d have to dump virtually everything I owned into the cleaners before I did much of anything. And, on second thought and sober reflection, I decided that would work out just fine; I could use forty winks. I was so damned tired, I thought, that I might even be able to get off to sleep despite the dull ache in the ribs.

As luck would have it the second car I flagged stopped for me, and it turned out to be a licensed cabbie, coming back from dumping a fare way up in the New Territories halfway to Canton. My stolid Oriental chauffeur didn’t so much as bother to waste a glance on me as I settled back on the leather seats, croaked “Peninsula Hotel,” and passed out cold. I slept soundly; I had some favors piled up at the Pen’s front desk, and folks would take care of me there...

It worked even better than I’d expected. Matter of fact, somebody not only hauled me out of the cab, booked me, and lugged me up to an elegant third-floor room, but undressed me, put me in a big double bed, and sent every stitch I’d been wearing out to be cleaned. When I woke up, everything was hanging, impeccably cleaned and pressed, on the door.

I sat up quickly — and then wished I hadn’t. It was a relief to see the harnesses of my three lethal little friends Hugo, Wilhelmina (empty, I saw) and Pierre laid neatly on the bedside table. I took note of another fact: someone had changed the bandage on my ribs.

The Pen thought of everything.

It was already late afternoon. I was famished, but it was too early for Peking Duck at the Princess Garden and too late for lunch anywhere, and without a day’s notice there was no sense in looking forward to beggars’ chicken at the Tien Hong Lau. I sent out for coffee and settled down to the telephone.

I placed the call, put the phone down, and began the wait. The coffee came; I got a cup and a half down before I finished dressing, thinking all the while about what had happened, and, worse, about how I’d go about explaining it all to David Hawk. I could imagine it all pretty easily, but nothing I could imagine was very reassuring.

Yes, sir, you see, Corbin got himself shot by this one-eyed, one-armed guy after he’d wiped the floor up with me. But, in the meantime, somebody had picked him clean. And I went to the last guy who could have seen him alive, and he was dead too. And then I’d explain, nice and cleverly, how I came to be alive and breathing and sitting up on a big bed in a posh hotel in Kowloon without that little roll of film Hawk wanted.

Maybe after that he’d explain what I was in the Far East for, and what was on the film, and who we were chasing this time. Maybe.

I poured another cup of coffee and the phone rang. I put the coffee down and picked up the receiver. It wasn’t Hawk and it wasn’t Washington. It was one of the staff downstairs at the switchboard. “Mr. Carter?”

“Yes?”

“This is most unusual. May I please have that number again?”

I gave it to him. “Why?”

“Well, sir... I thought I might have got it wrong. But that was the number I’d asked for all right.”

“What’s the matter?”

“There doesn’t seem to be any such number.”

“You mean it’s been disconnected? Or that it’s, uh, ‘no longer in service,’ as they say?”

“No, sir. There doesn’t seem to be any such exchange in the District. Neither there nor in the Maryland or Virginia suburbs served by the Chesapeake and Potomac Telephone Company.”

“No such exchange? But... but I’ve called the number a hundred times. I’ve talked on that line. I...”

“I was sure you knew your business, sir. That’s why it all seems so extraordinary. Shall I make an inquiry?”

I thought about that. “Uh... no, thanks. I’ll send a cable later, perhaps. Can I dial outside directly for a local call?”

“No, sir. You may call for me. Operator Two.”

“Thanks.” I hung up. Then I sat there on the bed, thinking. The wire was Hawk’s semi-covert line. He’d answer... oh, this month is was “Westinghouse. Repair Department.” Then you could say anything you pleased to him on it, so long as it sounded like a repairman calling in, or perhaps a salesman or parts jobber. You’d be surprised at how much of your message you could get across if you both knew in advance more or less what you’d be talking about on that line. Of course there’d always be the other direct line. You could say anything you chose on that one. But you couldn’t call on that one from anywhere outside the continental United States. It was on a very special scrambler, and only the Bell System was equipped to handle it.

I called downstairs again and gave Operator Two a number. “It should take another couple of minutes to get through again, right? Okay. I’ll be making one brief local call in the meantime. I’ll keep the wire open after that. Okay?”

“Splendid, sir. May I have the local number?”

I had the Hong Kong book open and had a finger on it. I gave it to him. I didn’t have long to wait this time.

“Hermann Meyer,” the voice said. “Import-Export.”

I sat up fast. It’d been just a wild idea, and I hadn’t expected to find anyone home. “Uh... Mr. Meyer, please.” There was a pause at the other end. The accent had been British public school, but the speaker definitely had English for a second language, not a first “Who shall I say is calling, please?”

“Mr. Cowles. He’ll remember me, I’m sure,” I lied. “We met last year in San Francisco, on the ferry to Oakland.”

There was another pause, then another voice came on: “Ah, Mr. Cowles. Hermann Meyer. What can I do for you, please?”

I blundered onward: “I... well, sir, I remembered the fine time we had in San Francisco, and how you said to look you up the next time business brought me to Hong Kong...”

“Certainly, certainly. Where are you staying? I can have a car sent over for you.”

No thanks, I thought. “I’m staying at the Gloucester, on the Island, but I’ll be out for the rest of the day. I was wondering if we might get together tomorrow sometime.”

“Splendid. I’ll send my chauffeur in the morning. No, I won’t take no for an answer. We’ll have a holiday of it. I’ll show you the town, as you might say.”

“Fine. I’ll look forward to that.”

“Splendid, Mr. Cowles. Shall we say ten? Time for elevenses, perhaps, at my place?”

“Okay. Fine.”

“See you then.” He hung up.

I looked at the wall.

Well, first off, there wasn’t any Hermann Meyer. Hermann Meyer was dead many miles to the south in Saigon. And if he’d been alive he’d have spoken with a German accent, not with this old-school-tie British accent with something oddly out of place in the middle of it. Then, too, there wasn’t any Mr. Cowles for anyone to remember, and he hadn’t met anybody named Hermann Meyer — neither the real one nor the phony one — on any ferry from Frisco to Oakland last year, because the ferry had been discontinued fifteen years before. Interesting, I thought. I’d have to pay Mr. Meyer a call, but not at any morning tea at his place. Any call I’d pay on him in the near future would be done in the wee hours, with a jimmy in one hand and Hugo up one sleeve. Damn, I thought suddenly; I’d have to see about digging up a replacement for Wilhelmina...

The phone rang again.

I picked it up. “Carter here.”

“Mr. Carter?” It was Operator Two again, and his voice registered perplexity once again in that subdued British way of his. “I... this seems not to be our day, sir.”

“Why?”

“Well, sir, the second number is an answering service number, sir, as you said. But the name of the client seems to have changed.”

“The client? You mean the reference for the service?”

“Yes, sir. It seems no longer to be Westinghouse Repair Department, as you thought. And this is odd. It’s still a refrigerator repair service, it appears. But the name of the company has changed.”

“Changed to what?”

“Maytag. Shall I keep trying, sir?”

“No,” I said. “Thank you. That’ll be all.” I hung up, and my hand was shaking. There wasn’t any mistaking what had happened.

AXE had had its cover blown. Hawk had flown the coop and he’d covered his tracks. The message he’d left me — in German — was as clear as if he’d left it in English.

Maytag — with the original German pronunciation was the international distress signal, and Hawk had chosen this way of tipping all the AXE agents off whenever they called in for progress reports, and further instructions. I whistled, long and low, and the words formed silently on my lips:

Mayday! Mayday!