The Vulcan Disaster

Chapter Eight

So I waited.

Basil Morse wasn’t exactly my type of guy: a little too much Eastern private school and Ivy League accent and most of the attitudes that come with that kind of upbringing. But I was determined to give Basil the time of day when he arrived, no matter how mad he made me. I’d even offer him a drink, if he’d take it. I’d put up with his patronizing attitude — after all, he probably couldn’t help it — and I’d try not to needle him. Well, not too much, anyhow. There are things I can’t help, either.

He wasn’t quite as good as his word. It took him thirty-two minutes to get there, and he must have really poured on the steam. Imperturbable Basil Morse, a splendid physical specimen who put in an hour of handball every morning and an hour of tennis every evening and hadn’t gained an ounce in years, was actually puffing when he came in the door, and there were beads of sweat dripping down that long patrician nose.

“Hello, Basil,” I said. “Sit down. Scotch?”

“Where’s the material?” he said. “Oh, I see.” He headed for the bed, all business. He sat down and started picking through the General’s papers. Then he spotted the funny Oriental weapon on the bedside table. “Where did you get this?” he said. He didn’t touch it.

“Took it off his bodyguard after I’d slit his gullet. What the hell is it? I’ve never seen one before.”

“It’s a weapon of Okinawan origin called the sai. You don’t see much of them down here. Sort of replacement-species version of the Chinese butterfly knife, and I suppose it’s making a comeback the same way. You’d better hope you don’t run into one of those. This was mainly developed as a self-defense weapon at a period when the Okinawan warlords prohibited the ownership of swords or spears. You could also use it as a kind of small plow. Most of the weapons used in Okinawan karate were made to look like harmless farm implements. The kama, for instance, was shaped like a sickle. You can imagine how it was used.”

He picked it up. “This is a little more lethal than most. It’s the fashion to blunt the point these days, and to do away with the sharp blade. This is the weapon of a grand master of the art. They won’t even sell you one for practice unless you’re a brown belt.” He looked up at me, a bland noncommittal look in his eyes. “Oh, by the way. Tamura — the man you killed carrying this thing — was fifth dan black belt. He was also a renegade in the art, a professional assassin. My compliments.” He wasn’t saying it in any complimentary fashion. That was Basil. But I could read a new respect behind his words. He knew better than to sell me short, either.

He looked back at the pile on the bed now. “Damn,” he said at last. “This isn’t much of a haul. Of course we’re going through his rooms and well be having a look at that H. and S. bank account, too. There may be some leads there. Not much here, though.”

“Hey,” I said, pouring myself another stiff one and sitting down carefully. “Maybe you might tell me what this is all about?” He stared at me, the corners of his mouth turned delicately downward. “All right,” I said. “I understand. Your turf. Me first.” I gave it to him in capsule form, not leaving out very much. There were a couple of little facts I did withhold, matters of unfinished business I wanted to deal with before I left Hong Kong. At the end I said, “That’s it. I’m still in the dark on most of it. I know a few whats and whens and no whys and wherefores at all. Your turn.”

He rolled the General’s effects up in an oilskin pouch and stuffed it in his coat pocket. As he did, something dropped out of the pile and fluttered to the floor. I didn’t call it to his attention. “Well,” he said. “It is something rather big — the part we know about, anyhow. You see, the South Vietnamese Government claims that President Nixon sold them out, that he’d promised a shipload of arms and then failed to deliver at a crucial time in the last days of the defense of Saigon.”

“Yeah,” I said. “I heard about that.”

“Well, the official version we give out on that is that the vessel never left port — that it was held up by an order from Congress. This will have been what you read in the papers. Well, we know better than to believe what we read in the papers. The vessel went to sea, but it never got to Saigon. Until just now we didn’t have the faintest clue as to what happened to it. Now it appears the matter was fixed as far back as the Port of San Francisco. On the basis of what you’ve been telling me, the ship’s registry and papers must have been changed en route, and the ship itself diverted to a new destination, all at the behest of our friend the General. We’d guessed some of this, but had no evidence to support what was only a wild theory until now. Now we know the port to which it was diverted was very likely Hong Kong, and we know that the cargo has been unloaded and the ship sent on its merry way. Obviously the case of rifles came from the shipment. Precisely which warehouse contains it now, in a city full of warehouses, is the problematic matter of the moment.”

“It wasn’t the warehouse they took me to,” I said. “It was empty.” I thought about that over a sip of scotch. “Besides, the General wouldn’t meet them at the site. He’d pick neutral ground for making the deal. He was just bringing samples. He’d be afraid of being ripped off.”

“Precisely,” Basil said and stood up. His shoe rested on the vagrant piece of paper. I hoped, somehow, that it wouldn’t stick to his sole. “Another factor: who are these mysterious Israelis? Frankly, we have no idea. They seem to be some sort of link between your original mission — whatever it was — and the matter of the ship.”

“Hey,” I said, sitting up. “That reminds me. What do you know about AXE? What the hell’s happening back there? Where’s Hawk?”

“Mum’s the word on most of it,” he said. His face was cold and distant-looking. “All I know is that all agents are on frozen status as of now. You’re to report in to... ah, to ‘us,’ as it were” — his fingers made quotation marks around the word — “and, ah, make yourselves available as you are needed.”

I scowled up at him. “And do you need me? I gather I’m not really wanted back in Washington right now? Do I detect that delicate little wisp of a nuance? Ah, good. If I’m not wanted in D.C., I want to see what I can find out about this business. The Israelis are still at large, for one thing.”

He chewed on his overhanging upper lip. “Mmmm... yes, perhaps. Perhaps...”

“There’s not much I can do about the General’s end of this matter that you guys can’t do better in the clear. But, working under cover, I might be able to find out something about this other group. I think I’ll muck about in that area and see what turns up.”

“Yes,” he said at last. “Yes, I think that might be best after all, in spite of everything.” Thanks, I thought. Thanks loads. “One does hate a lot of wild cards in the deck. These new factors make things a little messier than one might wish. We don’t know, for instance, that the Israelis don’t have a lead on the new wherabouts of the shipment. We can assume that, but we don’t know for sure. You could find out for us?” Just like that, moving me about like a damned pawn. Well, I’d fool the hell out of him.

That was that, though: he’d dismissed me, and was heading for the door. The one afterthought he allowed me was to turn and remind me to call in daily.

I scowled. “Oh, by the way,” I said. “If you’re going anywhere over water, you might drop this in.” I handed him a not very neat, fairly heavy package wrapped in a hanky. “And it wouldn’t do to go waving it about on the way there.”

He gave me a cold glare. “What’s this? I...”

“The murder weapon,” I said. “The one I shot the General with.”

After he’d gone I finished my scotch and sat there thinking for a few minutes. My reverie was interrupted by the hotel boy’s arrival with my mended coat; I tipped him a dollar, U.S. — somehow I’d never gotten around to changing money yet — and let him out again. As I turned back to the room I spotted the little piece of paper Basil had missed. Cursing the bad ribs, I bent down and picked it up.

When you carry a letter around in your pocket for a long time, folded in three the way letters are, the paper tends to fray along the fold, then, as time wears on, to break off. This was the bottom third of a very short letter. Basil presumably had the top of it, and that part would tell him what the letter said. It wouldn’t — or could, once I thought about it; the expensive deckle-edged stock might be monogrammed or even embossed at the top — tell him who the writer was. Basil Morse had his half, I had mine. I wished I could see his half right now. Mine told me damn little:

That was all. And “Komapob?” No. The signature had to be in Russian, even if the letter had been in French. Even now, if a Russian studies a foreign language and it’s not English, it’s likely to be French — tradition. “Komaroff,” then. But who was Komaroff? The name didn’t ring any bells at all. Perhaps — just perhaps — the General had been playing a little game with the Russians. Selling the arms to the highest bidder, toying with the notion of dumping the arms shipment on the Soviets so they could, in turn, “loan” the lot to one of their ever more strange bedfellows around the world for a revolution, or a palace coup.

And if he had been, who would Komaroff — apparently his contact in the matter — be? I gave the mental file a quick check, then a slower one. At neither time did I come up with any reference to anybody named Komaroff, at any level I knew about — and that would be pretty high level. KGB, the Party hierarchy, the whole list of “diplomatic” phonies operating out of the embassies and consulates — everywhere in my mental file that I looked, I drew the same blank.

I poured myself another painkiller and settled back into the seat, favoring the rib cage. Russians, Russians... my mind started free-associating all by itself. Who did I know in the Far East that was Russian? Who would the General know? Who would...

Who would Meyer know?

Of course.

I dug out my wallet and pulled out the homey little photo the late Mr. Meyer had been so fond of. And there she was: gorgeously dressed in a platinum wig and a flawless full-length mink coat, her wide-set, almond-shaped eyes looking up at the photographer through long lashes in a pose so sexy, so seductive, that... well, it made me begin to think interesting thoughts. Erotic thoughts. I blinked, came to, and gave her the once-over again, this time for purely informational purposes, trying to fix the face so that I’d be sure to recognize it.

The mouth was a trifle too wide and a little too full-lipped for absolute perfection, whatever that is. The cheeks had a Tartar broadness that seems to be out of style in some quarters. Not in mine. For my dough she was a lot of woman.

To Hermann with love, the delicate writing on the back of the picture had said. Tatiana...

Okay, so I had a face and a name. There are enough White Russians — daughters, granddaughters, and even great-granddaughters of the original Civil War exiles — left in the Far East for the name to be less of a novelty than it might be in Dubuque. But girls with that name and that face?

I got on the phone again.

“Fredericks here.”

“It’s Hong Kong’s favorite import.”

“What can I do for you, Nick?”

“I need some dope on a broad. The girl is White Russian, and she’s got a blonde wig on in this photo I have. The eyes are set nice and wide and they have this lozenge shape about them, with a little tilt at the corners. Maybe some Oriental blood. On her it looks terrific. The cheekbones are wide — Slavic influence — and the mouth is nice and full...”

“And her name is Tatiana?”

“How’d you... oh, yeah. I sort of thought she’d be hard to hide in a town like this.”

“Oh, she does precious little hiding, chum. Rather the other way round. What do you want with her?”

“Well, I want to see her...”

“Few things could possibly be more easily arranged. Go on.”

“And I want to talk with her...”

“And so do we all. Even myself, in my modest way.” Straight-faced stuff. Hah. Fred wasn’t the most successful plover in the British foreign service, perhaps — just the best below Cabinet rank or so. “That’s not so easily arranged. To put it bluntly, old man, His Excellency himself has been attempting to get into the lady’s boudoir for the better part of a year, with deplorable results, I might add. And the object of this... conversation?”

“Work, not play. She may have information that I need.”

“Oh, Nick! You can get information from the bloody museum, chum. Have you no sense of the proprieties? Have you no sense of masculine honor? Have you no...”

“Where do I find her?”

“Oh, let’s see. It’s after nine. Give a call down to the Baghdad, in Kowloon. Nice little walk from where you are. You’d be just in time to catch the last show, I think, if you can get reservations. Pity I can’t make it: His Excellency has entree, and we could sort of sneak in on the old boy’s coattails. Better cash in a few war bonds, Nick. It’s steep there.”

“She’s in a floor show? In a night club?”

“Just call the number, Nicholas.” Fred’s voice sounded I tired and disgusted.