The By-Pass Control (13 page)

At ten o’clock I angled over to Ernie Bentley’s lab and went upstairs to where he was buried among his reports and poured myself a steaming mug of coffee. When I gave him the rundown he nodded as if I were reading off the ball scores and finished what he was doing before deciding to answer me.

“Got yourself a lot of pieces, haven’t you?”

“Too damn many.”

“Nothing leading to Louis Agrounsky?”

“No.”

“Maybe I got something,” he said. He walked to his desk, pawed through some mail and came up with a dye-smeared envelope and pulled out the letter inside. “One of the suppliers of sub-mini parts Agrounsky corresponded with. A few years ago he submitted several pieces for inspection and the manufacturer was pretty interested. Agrounsky came up with a few unheard of ideas that had a big potential. He wrote several times and got no answer until I contacted him. Right now he’s pretty interested in re-establishing contact himself. In view of the new space developments Agrounsky’s ideas can come in handy.”

“No address?” I asked him.

“Just his Eau Gallie house.”

“Damn!”

“But there’s a lead. He apparently wrote his last letter on his friend’s stationery. Guy named Vincent Small, address, 37 Meadow Lane, Eau Gallie, Florida.”

“We’re back to there again.”

“It started down there, didn’t it?” Ernie said simply.

“They’ve gone all over that route, Ernie. I.A.T.S., the other bureaus, our own teams. We have to pick it up closer than that.”

“But
you
haven’t, Tiger buddy,” he reminded me.

I looked across the room at him, sipping at the coffee.

“Okay,” I finally said, “it might be worth a try. I’ll clean up the loose ends here first and see what I can pick up in that section.”

“Then keep the plane up here. If you need special equipment I’ll send it down.”

“Keep your toys to yourself,” I said.

“They saved your tail a few times.”

“I don’t like the instability factors involved.”

“So we all make mistakes. Besides, those details have been smoothed over. I have a new gadget here....”

“Save it,” I grinned at him. “I’ll stick with the old fashioned way.”

“You and that damn gun,” he said.

At noon I met Charlie Corbinet at the Blue Ribbon, took a table upstairs and waited until our order was taken before I gave him the latest developments. Charlie let me finish and said, “I’ll get with the Treasury Department on that heroin buy this afternoon.”

“Lay off my sources.”

“Don’t sweat it. You know me better than that.”

“What did you hear from Washington?”

Charlie reached down and laid a manila envelope on the table between us. “There’s all the UR’s from the security department. Doug Hamilton turned in thirty-four and half of them checked out with unsatisfactory reports from prior investigations. Several were known or suspected Commie agents and the rest we’re working on.”

“Any description fit Agrounsky?”

“None. But then, we haven’t checked them all out yet. A batch are itinerant workers who showed up for simple laboring jobs, but their associations were listed as n.g., so they were disqualified. All this went through Belt-Aire Electronics before it was submitted to Washington anyway.”

“That’s what Camille Hunt told me.”

Our waiter came along then, laid the lunch down with a flourish and went to get coffee. Charlie watched me across his plate, his eyes bright. “You two got along pretty well, didn’t you?”

“Why not?”

“Hal Randolph dug into Belt-Aire pretty thoroughly.”

“So?”

“You know they have top priority in the new space project?”

“Uh-huh.”

“To what extent?”

“That’s Martin Grady’s business.”

“Then let me fill you in.... What they’re proposing can put the balance of power on our side. Mention Belt-Aire in Washington and you’re in for a security check no matter who you are. They want nobody poking around. This is getting pretty damn touchy. Even we don’t know the full extent of the operation. That’s a highly sensitive area and if anything goes haywire there will be hell to pay.”

“It can’t be any worse than it is,” I said.

“No, but now everybody is running scared. We haven’t got much time to break something loose. I get the feeling the Reds are closer than we are and if they let the cat out of the bag this is going to be one shook up country.”

“I don’t need any reminding, Charlie. I was there at the beginning, remember?”

“Then keep your memory refreshed. What do you plan to do with this information?”

“Exactly the same as you—check it out step by step, only from a different direction. Can I have these names?”

“They’re yours ... all copies of the original.”

I took the folder and put it beside me. “How does Hal Randolph like me being dead?”

“He’d like it better if it were true. My advice is to stay in touch, Tiger. Daily reports ... the works. He’s scared stiff you might do something that will trigger the works and I can’t blame him. Right now we can’t take any chances.”

“The chance was taken when they hired Agrounsky,” I said. “If he decides to use that by-pass control then we’ve had it.”

“Hasn’t everybody?” Charlie told me softly.

When we left I gave him a five minute start before I cleared out through the bar entrance. On Sixth Avenue I picked up a cab that was discharging a passenger on the corner, had the driver let me off a block away from my quarters, and walked the rest of the way.

I gave the bell the V signal, did the same thing with a tap on the door and let Rondine throw off the locks. Even then she was being careful, the little automatic in her hand being on full cock until she was certain it was me.

She shut the door, locked it securely and followed me inside. “I was beginning to get worried,” she said.

I grinned and pushed a chair up for her at the table. “Don’t waste time doing that,” I told her. “It takes away from other things.”

“There was an item in TV about the incident at my place again. The police are supposedly still investigating.”

“Eyewash. They’ll keep it up a couple of days and let it quiet down.”

“Weren’t you taking a chance going out in the daylight?”

I shook my head. “Not in this town, kid. People are like ants. You can’t tell one from the other unless an army is searching for you. I played it cool.”

“And your ... meeting?”

Briefly, I gave her the details, then dumped the contents of the envelope out on the table. “I want you to do something for me. For a while you’ll be free to move around and since you’re not generally known it might work.”

“Oh?”

I looked up at her, knowing my face had that tight expression again. “You’ve been well trained for this work, baby. You have the background and experience and I need your help.”

She didn’t hesitate. She knew the implications as well as I did and her own future was involved with everyone else’s. “Just ask, Tiger.”

“Here is a list of people I want you to run down. I.A.T.S. ran a check already with no results, but there’s a lot of difference when they ask questions and a dame does. Even if these people aren’t available, I want background material on them, their associations, and angle for any possible Commie affiliations. You have people attached to your British Embassy you can call in if you need help.... They’ll know how to proceed ... and I’ll keep a constant contact with you here.”

“And where will you be?”

“Eau Gallie, Florida. I’m picking it up from there.” I wrote down two phone numbers, Ernie Bentley’s and that of Newark Control with an identification name that meant she was clear to use our lines of communication and be given limited information. I let her study the numbers until she had them memorized, then burned the slip they were written on. “Dave Elroy will be available and if anything turns tough, you duck out and let him take over. Just make sure you don’t stick your neck out. The ones we’re bucking play for keeps and being a woman won’t keep you alive. Understand?”

“I understand.”

I slid a sheaf of bills across the table and said, “This will keep you going until I get back. If you have to pay off for any information, contact the Newark number and it will be arranged. And don’t hesitate to buy what is up for sale. Money is the cheapest thing we have in our business.”

“Tiger ...”

“What?”

Something had changed in her face. There was a seriousness there I hadn’t seen before and her eyes were those of others I had known before in bomb shelters, scanning the ceilings above them as though they could see through them to the hordes of death dealers flying high in the night above.

“Do you ... really think you should have such a part in all this? Isn’t it better left to those ... equipped to handle a ... a situation of this sort?”

My teeth were together so hard they almost cracked. “Like who, baby?”

“Our governments. They...”

“They’re composed of great guys,” I almost hissed. “... mainly. But in the ranks are too damn many selling us out through sheer stupidity ... or cupidity ... or avariciousness ... or because they got caught with their pants down and face public exposure through blackmail. No, kitten, guys like me belong here. We’ve been here a long time and are going to stay. When one goes another takes his place, but somebody is always there to make up for the tacky ones who masquerade under cute government titles. They’re not elected ... the people can generally see through them if they try. But they’re appointed or assigned to critical posts and suddenly we have a new pseudo-government functioning on collegiate political philosophy or the theoretics of some obscure but red-tainted brain hoping that someday he’ll be holding the reins of a one world dictatorship. You want me to mention names? Hell, I can give you fifty offhand from your country and this one. I can make your hair curl with what I know and the public should know, but to protect themselves the biggies upstairs keep these babies under cover with a little pressure and promises here and there. So think it over. You’ve heard it all before from me. At least we’re a damned talented bunch in a strange way, but we get things done nobody else can do and we’re not hamstrung by niceties or afraid of losing our jobs ... and we sure don’t worry about what anybody else thinks about us, either.”

Rondine absorbed it all, but the expression never left her face.

Age,
I thought,
she should have been there during the war. She was too young to know what it really meant, and unless you experienced the double dealing and the killing you could never really understand. You had to know the meaning of death and face it time after time before the calluses grew. You had to hold death in your hand and expose an enemy to it to stay alive yourself ... then each time became easier and you became better at living and knowledgeable in the ways of this crazy world so that you became formidable as an opponent and could deal in extremes no matter the cost.

It was what I didn’t say that made the impression. Her eyes seemed to bore inside me and search my mind for the hidden answers and what she saw satisfied her, and very slowly her face relaxed into that classic beauty so much her own. I felt that warm turmoil start in my stomach again.

“I’m sorry,” she said simply.

“Forget it,” I grinned. “It’s a new game to you and I’m an old soldier.”

Her teeth showed a flash of white in a terse smile. “
You’re
forgetting, Tiger. In a way, I’m an old soldier too. Twice before ...”

“Forget that too,” I said.

“Should I?”

I studied her face, my eyes going narrow again. “No ... maybe it’s better you remember it after all. It might keep you on your toes.”

 

Mason was at Newark Airport with the converted F-51 gassed and warmed up. While he filed his flight plan I stowed my suitcase in the wells that used to house the .50 calibre guns and climbed into the back seat. Ten minutes later we were airborne and headed south, climbing to eight thousand above the overcast that blanketed New Jersey below. When Mason leveled off he held the ship at maximum cruise, made a gas stop at Charleston, South Carolina and was back in the blue again in twenty minutes. An hour and ten minutes later we let down into the traffic pattern of the field a little south of Eau Gallie, landed and taxied up to the transient hangar.

The car I had arranged for earlier was waiting and I got in after telling Mason to be available at any time. He grinned, nodded, and headed off for a cold beer someplace. I didn’t ask for directions to the motel I was quartered at until I reached town, then found the place not far from the beach and signed in under T. Marvin from New York City. Aside from Newark Control and Ernie Bentley, nobody knew where I was staying and until a break came, I wanted to keep as much of a cover as I could.

At eight fifteen I showered and dressed, grabbed a bite at the adjacent restaurant, got directions to Meadow Lane, and drove off in that direction. Number 37 was a red brick ranch-type house set back from the road, surrounded by a hodge-podge of foliage with huge red blooms that gave off a sickly sweet odor and seemed to attract a horde of pale blue butterflies. I turned in the driveway, parked behind a new Chevy convertible and killed the engine.

I didn’t have to knock. The door opened as I went up the flagstone steps and a short, chunky guy with a big friendly smile grinned up at me and said, “Hello, hello. I’m Vincent Small. Something I can do for you?”

I shook hands with him, almost smothering his with my own. “My name’s Mann, Mr. Small. I’m trying to locate a friend of mine and if I can bother you a few minutes, maybe you can help.”

“Why sure ... sure. Come on in. Always glad to help out.” He ushered me in, closed the door and waved me into a spacious living room lined on two sides with fully packed bookshelves. “Make you a drink?”