Assignment Nuclear Nude Read online

  3

  He flew to Miami the next morning, met Juan Piedra, the K Section man there, and had Piedra fly him in a four-seater Cherokee over the long line of Florida keys toward San Mirabel. Piedra was a slim, dark Cuban who had been recruited shortly after Castro's missile crisis. His knowledge of the regime and his ability to screen Havana's refugees was invaluable.

  "San Mirabel," he said, pointing down. "Quite a joint."

  The sea below was a milky, mottled pattern of pale blues merging into coral reefs, with the green of the keys stringing the Overseas Highway together. The sky was clear and hot. A few sports fishermen made small wedges of white wake near the channels between the Gulf and the Florida Straits.

  "Money, money maketh the man, as Pindar said, long ago," Durell murmured. "There's only one approach?"

  "Check, friend." Piedra's English was only shghtly accented. "Bridge with barricade and guardhouse. Those are mangrove swamps to the south. That's a big yacht down there."

  Durell nodded. San Mirabel from the air was a gleaming, manicured green gem in a jungle of drowned coral. A large schooner yacht was moored at its private pier. Bright lawns swept up to a sprawUng complex of pseudo-Spanish architecture.

  "Come down a little," Durell said. "He's got a float plane, too, and a big radio antenna."

  "It's an amateur band, all in code. We can't break it. It's worldwide, and we figure he keeps in touch with his commercial interests with it. Buy and sell a few countries, this and that. Like a five-and-ten, friend. What's a few million people between billionaires?"

  "Has the Federal Bureau ever checked him out?"

  "Man, but gently. Clifton C. B. Riddle is a buzz saw you don't test with your finger."

  Durell nodded. "All right. Put me down in Key West, and go home, Juano. If I need you, I'll use Code Two."

  He checked into the Poinsettia, an apartment-motel, before dusk, swam in the pool below his private balcony, and walked to the Sands Club at the foot of Simonton Street for dinner. Afterward, he went back to his rooms, brewed a pot of Cuban coffee in the efficiency kitchen, and spent two hours studying the dossiers McFee had given him.

  File S/2547.NC 9/09/276 K/A.14

  RIDDLE, CLIFTON CARLTON BENJAMIN

  Born 1911 Carl Smith, one of 11 children of James and Amanda, sharecroppers, Ascalon, Miss. No formal educ. Employed field hand, Tri-Cont. Offshore Oil, salesman Jackson Rigging Supplies, promoted mgr., assumed company control 1935, pres. Tri-Cont. 1938.

  Married Alice Coburn (d. 1937), Judith Mitchell, div. 1941, Eliz. Washburn 1945 (suicide), Margaret Asbury, div. 1956 (whereabouts unknown).

  Present legal residence: Dallas, Texas Other addresses: San Mirabel, Florida Present financial worth: Unknown Political affiliations: Unknown

  Hobbies: Art collection, said to be finest of contemporary Am. paintings, including Bessar, Calder, etc.

  Comment: INT. KA/14/12.9.76: It is believed that C. C. B. Riddle's political influence ranges between both major parties and one American Patriots splinter group. Influence in administration. Congress, and various federal appointments. Heavy campaign donations. (See attached Sub/2546/B case of Vernon Bayles.) (See atached transcript 62/KRa of C. R. testimony Senator Doyle's Sub-Committee.) Photos A2 and A3 unauthorized.

  Durell turned the folder. There were no attached statements. He was not surprised. But he wondered how they had been removed from the files.

  He poured another cup of coffee and looked for a dossier on Linda Riddle; There was none. The folder on Ulrich von Golz was fat and ponderous. So was the German's glossy photograph. Von Golz had been tried in 1947 by the War Crimes Commission, sentenced to three years, released after three months. Von Golz had thick white hair and starthng winged black brows, a hawk's nose. The eyes were cold and bleak. The jowls were heavy, forming dewlaps over a thick and massive neck. He had been married to the daughter of a Jewish industri-ahst, and her death in a concentration camp was due to his prompt divorce under Hitler's Aryan laws. There had been no offspring from this marriage. A second wife, a recluse, gave him a daughter, now nineteen, named Anna-Lise. Her photo was attached. She was blond, Uke Linda Riddle, but she had her father's fierce, Teutonic strength. Durell examined the girl's photograph with care.

  Anna-Lise von Golz also wore a sunflower pendant on a heavy gold chain about her long neck. It was identical to the one he had seen Linda Riddle wear in Washington yesterday.

  The bulk of the dossier on Yussuf Hadad Fazil came from the Narcotics Bureau. Fazil, as a youth growing up in the eastern mountains of Anatolia, had been involved in heroin and opium shipments out of Syria and Lebanon to the Naples refineries and from there to the syndicate operations in the U.S. He was markedly younger than the other men involved, not more than forty, a slight, handsome man whose extraordinary wealth was now invested in an import-export corporate entity tied into Greek shipping. He was known to be a recluse with an island in the Aegean, yachts and private planes, with a penchant for exotic young women, an interest that occasionally drew tabloid attention to him. For all that, his life was a mystery.

  His only daughter was Ryana Fazil, a small, dark-haired, frightened-looking girl.

  She, too, wore a sunflower pendant.

  He put aside the last dossier on Han Fei Wu to read a summary from the Atomic Energy Commission dealing with the study of neutrinos by means of a "nothing trap" designed to capture the elusive, ghostly subatomic particles involved. Neutrinos were believed to have amazing penetrating power, able to penetrate intact and at the speed of Ught any depth of matter. Denis Deakin had helped design a subterranean limestone tunnel and cave in Nevada to study the residual missing particle from decayed atoms from cosmic radiation. The difficulty was to shield the neutrino chamber from the massive cosmic ray particles from outer space and the upper atmosphere. Measurements to observe the penetrating power and behavior of neutrinos were aimed at eventual harnessing of such enormous cosmic ray power as to make present atomic reactions and bombs as obsolete as animal power before the invention of the steam engine.

  The departure of young Denis Deakin from the AEC project for employment in private industry was noted with regret.

  Mr. Han Fei Wu looked like a benign, elderly mandarin of strict Confucian morality. His photograph depicted a fragile, gentle Chinese of about seventy, with a wispy beard and crinkled wise old eyes. A refugee from Mao's Red China, he had fled to Hong Kong and taken up final residence in Singapore. His collection of Ming pottery was reputed to be unrivaled by any museum in the world. He had made a fortune in restaurant and motion-picture houses, but no one could estimate his present worth. It was rumored that at one point he had had five wives. His current web of financial interests included rubber, tin. East Asian shippmg, and oil. If Mr. Han had children by any of his former wives, none were reported except the daughter, named Pan Liang.

  British M.I.6 security dossiers from Hong Kong suggested that Han Fei Wu had the resilience of a reed, bending in the violent poUtical winds of China's last fifty years. A supporter of Sun Yat-sen, and then the head of a band of KMT gunmen for Chiang Kai-shek's Kuomintang revolutionary armies, it was believed that loot and plunder, in Mr. Han's early violent years, had formed the basis for the spider web of his uncounted fortune.

  A police note from Hong Kong and another from Singapore suggested that Mr. Han was presently the head of the notorious Five Rubies Society, an offspring of the revolutionary Triads that had degenerated into massive crime syndicates in today's world.

  The photograph of Mr. Han's daughter, Pan, did not surprise Durell. Another sunflower pendant hung around the girl's neck.

  A sealed envelope was clipped to the dossiers. The envelope was of the heavy cream-colored paper that always enclosed a personal note from General Dickinson McFee. Durell put it aside for a moment and washed out the coffeepot and opened his apartment door. The pool below his balcony lay in quiet turquoise under the floodlights. The Poinsettia's guests were either out on the town or gone to bed.

  O
n Durell's left arm, just inside the elbow, was a small red spot that might have been a birthmark. It was not. Under a magnifying glass, it could be seen as five small gem-like tattoos. Five Rubies. It was the sign of the Five Rubies Society, and he was a member of the Third Stage in the Singapore Lodge of that secret Chinese society devoted to blackmail, shakedown, murder, lotteries, and the terrorization of new refugees from the Chinese People's RepubUc.

  Some years ago, when he had been in Singapore, the local K Section Control had thought it might be useful to induct him into the Five Rubies Society. He remembered the somewhat awesome ritual, held behind the smelly facade of a Singapore tenement in the Chinese quarter. He had been led there by a "snake," a key-cutter who located easy targets for the lodge burglar teams. He had been sworn into the special "killer squad," run on military lines by five Tiger Generals of the lodge. His induction had involved the symbolic journey of a triangle that represented the harmonious blending of Heaven, Earth, and Man. He passed the "Mountain of Daggers," the "Red Ruby Pavilion," and walked through a bamboo circle representing Heaven and Earth, Yin and Yang, and at the altar he had knelt before the memorial tablets of the Five Ancestors.

  Nothing came of his membership at that time. But the tiny tattoo mark inside his left elbow, and his recollection of certain passwords and signs, were still sharp in his mind.

  He thought wryly that it was interesting to learn that, according to his sword oath, Mr. Han as head of the Society had the power to command him to do anything whatsoever, at any cost or any danger. . .

  On the other hand, in the strange world of Triad society, he in turn could made certain demands of Mr. Han.

  He opened McFee's private note.

  It was brief, and it also concerned Mr. Han Fei Wu.

  Dear Samuel: A check with Singapore police indicates that Mr. Han's most recent mistress — or associate, considering his age — is a certain Madame Hung Ta-po, She now runs a "pleasure island" off Singapore. I believe you will remember her from a recent encounter in Iran. Madame Hung, as I need not tell you, is also a collector — of K Section agents. Walk with care. D. McF.

  He felt a blow within Kim like an implosion of vast and incalculable power, almost physical, shaking his mind and soul with something greater than hatred, deeper than loathing. He did not know if what he felt was fear— primordial, atavistic, mind-erasing. He shivered. An image, a face, grew in him. A woman's face, so utterly inhuman as to lack all moral expression. Malevolence, cruelty, implacability—words had no meaning. Nothing even approximated the essence of Madame Hung.

  He had thought her dead in that mountain in the Dasht-i-Kavir desert of Iran. He had hoped she was corrupted into worms and dust. He remembered her words: "If I must die, I shall take the world with me."

  He remembered she had said: "One day I shall kill you, Sam Durell. Slowly, with such infinite and exquisite pleasure. One day, yes. Wait. Yes, it will come."

  He had believed her then. He believed her now.

  Madame Hung Ta-po. Head of Peking's "Blue Line" killer squads. A female spider sitting in the center of a worldwide web of dedicated, mindless assassins.

  He was at the top of her list.

  Durell checked the louvered windows and door of his apartment. The glass was flimsy. He felt exposed to the night, to the whisper of warm wind in the palms, the rustle of a bird in the oleander bushes, the lap of blue water in the pool. He took his gun, a snub-nosed .38 Smith and Wesson, and checked the cylinder, the cartridges, the trigger pull. From his suitcase he took a fountain pen of tear gas, a knife, and a pencil. The pencil looked ordinary, but a single drop of Uquid squeezed from its point could bring instant heart arrest. In the heel of his right shoe were other gadgets from the lab boys. He looked at his hands. They trembled slightly. He was not a man who despised fear. It could be useful. But it could also be a mortal weakness.

  He put away most of the weapons and kept only the gun, the knife, and the poison pencil.

  Then he left the apartment.

  He spent two hours checking the artists' quarter and the galleries of Key West, the bars along Duval Street, crowded with sailors and whores, the alleys and lanes of the Old Town, with sagging fences, palms and hibiscus, tin roofs and Bahamian porches inhabited by proud local Conchs.

  Everywhere he went, he asked about Harry the artist. Several people knew of him. In one gallery a handsome Negro girl wearing beads and a leather headband over a denim smock excitedly told him that Harry was expected any day. She gave him the address of Harry's house and gallery, and he walked there through the soft, dark air of the night.

  The place was closed and locked. Not a glimmer of light showed beyond the barred gate. He glimpsed over the stone wall an overgrown, jungled garden. From the houses nearby came the beat and thump and wail of the Havana radio. Jet patrols returning to Boca Chica shook the starry sky.

  He gave it up and returned to his apartment. It seemed to him as if the witch-figure of Madame Hung shadowed his every footstep.

  There was a tiny triangle of white paper under his door when he mounted the steps to his balcony. He stared at it, and didn't touch it, and then very gently and carefully inserted the key in the lock and turned it, Hstening, with infinite patience. Nothing happened. He opened the door inward with equal care. The triangle of paper was an envelope. He did not touch it. Inside, the rooms looked as before. Nothing had been changed. He checked the windows, the bed, the closets, the kitchen. No booby traps anywhere. It took twenty minutes.

  Satisfied, he took a fork from the kitchen and lifted the envelope with it and examined it under a light before he touched a finger to it and opened it.

  The message was simple and brief:

  Durell — I don't need you now. Go home. Appointment cancelled at San Mirabel, — C, C, B, Riddle.

  He had seen samples of Riddle's massive, imperious handwriting. The note was genuine. He was fired.

  4

  In the morning he rented a car and drove out of Key West on the Overseas Highway, beyond the Bahia Honda bridge. The day was hot and humid. The sunlight was stinging. He put on dark glasses and checked the rear-vision mirror and could not spot anyone following him. From the air, in Piedra's plane, he had noted the sandy track that led from the main road toward San Mirabel Key. It was not easy to find. Beyond a cluster of junky eating places and souvenir stands and a fishing colony of mosquito-infested cabins, he turned left. The track was deliberately rough and inhospitable. The rented car squeaked and protested in the ruts. And the moment he left the main highway, he entered a primordial jungle of mangrove and drowned lagoons and coral reefs that seemed untouched since the world was new.

  He crossed two bridges made of old railroad ties, a concrete causeway that gave him a glimpse of flat, aquamarine sea shimmering in the heat, and then there was another mangrove swamp and the road became a Uttle better.

  A small plane circled overhead, going nowhere. It was not Piedra's four-seater Cherokee.

  A hundred yards from the last bridge he saw the barrier, a striped steel pole across the causeway that could check the passage of any car. Two men lounged in a thatch-roofed hut, looking his way, attracted by the noise of his laboring engine. The men were big, alert, and armed, and they wore paramihtary uniforms.

  Durell braked and got out of the car. The men moved a little apart, their eyes watchful.

  "I have an appointment with Mr. Riddle," Durell said.

  "No, you don't," said one of the men. "You been canned. Out on your ass. He don't need you no more. That's our orders. You want to stay in one piece, Durell, you turn around and go back. All the way back, where you come from."

  "You have a telephone," Durell said, looking at the wires to their hut. "Call Mr. Riddle and check."

  They both shook their heads. They carried their semiautomatic rifles with a casual manner that betrayed their f amiUarity with the weapons.

  "Go back," said the guard. "And don't try nothing stupid."

  "It's important," Durell urged.
>
  The guard sighed. "I guess you need to be told the hard way. What Mr. Riddle says we do, we do."

  "He gave you the orders personally?"

  "That's right."

  "Very well," Durell said.

  The guards were suspicious of his easy compliance, but Durell saw no advantage in trying to use force. Even if he could take this pair, there would be others farther on. He shrugged, lit a cigarette, pushed his sunglasses up a bit, and walked back to his car.

  His back tingled. He didn't know if they would shoot or not.

  After a quarter of a mile, he drove the car off the trestle bridge onto an embankment of hard coral that left no tire marks. He chose a time to do this when the plane circling overhead was to the north, but he still didn't know if his maneuver had been spotted. He hid the car as best he could behind tall reeds, and scuffed the marl he had driven over and then set out on foot.

  Mosquitoes promptly found him, whining in hungry clouds about his head. Mud sucked at his feet. Water glimmered above claw-like mangrove roots in the milky sea, and he pushed forward in that direction. Twice he slipped, went knee-deep in the lukewarm water and mud, pulled himself up, and went on. He waded a small channel, stepping carefully on coral that crumbled and made great dusty clouds in the quiet water. Birds flew up, screeching, alarmed by his approach. He swore silently at them.

  Long ago, as a boy, he had been lost in the bayous around Peche Rouge, forgetting the old Indian cheniere, or dike whose footpath could have guided him through the swamp. He had spent the night shivering under moss-grown cypress, too proud to call for help to his Grandpa Jonathan. It seemed in those hours that he would never again find the welcome hulk of the old paddlewheeler that the old man had turned into a home for the two of them.

  In the morning, however, he had collected his wits, choked down his fright and thirst and hunger, and used the lore the old man had taught him to find his way out of the swamp. He had followed a sleepy tidal channel, marked by the slow drift of twigs and leaves, and found the open bayou where the steamboat hulk was moored, in time for lunch.