Mission Earth Volume 3: The Enemy Within

  Up you go, up you go, bloom, bloom, bloom.

  Now you come, now you come, boom, boom, BOOM!

  What in blazes was going on in there? Were the boys dead? Was she dancing a funeral dance?

  No. I could hear some little squeals. Laughter? Delight? They surely weren’t squeals of pain! Too cheerful. More like ecstasy? Delight. It was delight.

  I gave it up. It was nine. I had had a hard day. I turned out my light and without much hope, I left my door open. I went to bed.

  It must have been half an hour later. I was jerked awake by a rustling sound.

  My bed moved slightly.

  Hands.

  It was Utanc!

  She was fully clothed but her lips were warm as they touched my cheek. Then they were blazing hot as they crushed against my mouth!

  Her hands were all over me. She pushed the bedclothes back to get at me better.

  “Utanc,” I whispered.

  “Sssh. This is all for you. The mouth is everything!”

  Her hands!

  I started to turn into fire with passion.

  It went on and on!

  After a long time, I was lying there, gasping, spent.

  Her arm was across my naked chest.

  Joy began to well up in me.

  I had WON!

  “I am so glad you came,” I whispered.

  She whispered back. “I get so aroused.” Then after a bit, “They don’t have much endurance and you’re the only other man around, such as you are.”

  “Do they look like Rudolph Valentino and James Cagney?”

  She gave a shuddering sigh. “Oh, yes. I thought it was just makeup at first but it didn’t wash off. They look like them when they were little boys.” She sighed again. Then, “As the years go on they will become like them exactly! I compared the pictures.” She sighed again and shuddered.

  Once more she was all over me, her mouth searing my flesh in beautiful ecstasy. It went on and on. And then I felt like the whole world had exploded!

  She lay there panting. Gradually she quieted down in the darkness.

  After a bit, I got very brave. I came to a momentous decision. I decided to be honest with her at least just this once.

  “Utanc,” I said. “I have to go away.”

  No response.

  “Utanc, you are in danger here.”

  A slight stiffening of limbs?

  “I have procured a diplomatic passport. I want you to come with me, posing as my wife. I have had the photo taken already—just a veiled woman. And you can go veiled.”

  “You have money?”

  “Yes.”

  “You will let me take care of the money and bills on the trip?”

  “Well . . .”

  Was she going to get up and leave? Hastily, I added, “Yes.”

  “And you will go where?”

  “New York.”

  Swiftly she asked, “I have no clothes. You can stop over in Rome, Paris, London en route?”

  I considered. Was she getting up to leave again? “Yes,” I said quickly.

  “And I can take twenty trunks under diplomatic seal?”

  Yikes! At the cost of air freight? “One trunk.”

  “Five trunks.”

  “Five trunks?”

  She said firmly, “Five trunks.”

  I knew when to give in. “Five trunks,” I said.

  “Good,” she said. “And we will have separate rooms in hotels, of course.”

  Well, naturally she’d want separate rooms, she was so shy. I nodded, then realized she couldn’t see me in the dark. “Agreed,” I said.

  “And you promise to bring me back to these dear, darling little boys in a few weeks?”

  The boys? She suddenly seemed totally fixated on those two little boys! I realized she wasn’t going to put them on a shelf as knickknacks the way I had planned! But I said, faintly, “Yes.”

  “Good, then I will go with you.”

  My joy surged!

  “Thinking about the little boys, I had better go back now and make sure they are sleeping peacefully in my bed.” She got up quite abruptly and hurried out.

  I lay back. It suddenly occurred to me that as time went on, as she had said, those two (bleeping) boys were going to look more and more like Rudolph Valentino and James Cagney. I had miscalculated just a little bit. I had two little boys as rivals right now and it would get much worse.

  But then I stretched, luxuriating. I had really won. She had come to my bed. And she would come to my bed again and again!

  Not a single thing now stood between me and the total wreckage and demise of Heller.

  How sweet life was!

  How sweet!

  PART TWENTY-SIX

  Chapter 1

  Although I pushed, we could not get off the very next day. Utanc had to take the two little boys to a photographer in town to get their portraits and gold frames for them.

  They did resemble the actors quite a bit, or at least the way those actors had looked at that age, if a small boy can be said to resemble anything. They were insufferably smug about their new looks. Even their own mothers didn’t know them and claimed Devils had been at work. I thought so, too, to get them born in the first place!

  Utanc also had to pack and Gods, when she finished, were those heavy trunks!

  True to my promise that she should handle the money, I gave her one hundred thousand dollars US and told her that was all I had. It seemed a fortune but I was cautious: I told her to take it easy on the bills so we’d have money left when we got home.

  And so, with much fuss and hurry and scurry, the following day she, I and five trunks took off in a cloud of jet fuel.

  Now, to give you some idea of how hard it was to get to Washington—the capital of the United States where I had my first business to conduct—and to give you some idea of the trials an Apparatus officer faces in his efforts to do his duty, I should touch briefly on that trip.

  Our first stop was Rome. Apparently Utanc had telephoned on ahead for reservations. And while one could understand that a shy, wild desert girl was tired of privation, I hardly expected that we would stay at the Hotel Salvatore Magnifico Cosioso, the jewel of the city’s center. In fact, I would have been kind of lost trying to find the city itself! But Utanc, peering over her veil, seemed to be looking at road signposts and she seemed to get the idea that the Italian taxi driver was going round about to run up the fare.

  In purest Italian and in purest vitriol, she told the driver, “Listen, you emasculated rooster, if you think you can swindle me just because I am the helpless wife of a sheik, you got another think coming! If you don’t get on the right road instantly, I’ll shove a stiletto up your (bleep) so high you’ll think you’re having a tonsillectomy!”

  It was something she must have learned in a tourist phrase book, of course, but it startled me.

  At the Salvatore Magnifico Cosioso, we were promptly introduced into the bridal suite—which the reservation seemed to call for. It was magnificent—gold and white! Huge! Awe inspiring! She kicked me and my baggage into its sitting room and locked the bedroom door on me.

  After wondering for three hours what she was doing in there with her five trunks, I decided I wasn’t going to find out and decided to go to the bar and see what I could see.

  In the corridor, I beheld the most beautiful European woman I have ever seen. She was walking toward our suite. She was dressed in the latest feminine mode, wearing stilt-heeled shoes and twirling a handbag to match.

  It was Utanc!

  She went by me and into the bedroom and locked the door. And that was my stay in Rome—two days of it.

  In Paris, we had reservations for the bridal suite at the Chateau Le Beau Grand Cher. It was gorgeous, spacious, gold and white. The manager himself showed us in. Utanc pointed at the champagne bucket that was courtesy of the hotel and in what I recognized must be French, said something that must have been very disdainful. The manager picked up the bottle and looked close
ly at the year and then went quite white. For ten solid minutes she lectured him before she let him stumble off to return with a wine steward. She found what she was looking for on the wine list and they hastily came back with a different bottle. And also a bottle of Malcolm Fraser Scotch.

  Well, naturally, a shy desert girl would object to out-of-date champagne. But I hadn’t seen her studying any tourist phrase book. I must be getting unobservant.

  To say the least, I got neither champagne nor Scotch. I spent those two days sleeping on the sitting-room couch and wondering what all the laughing was about in the bedroom. She came and went, of course, as she had in Rome. And I saw someone delivering a mountain of shopping packages the last afternoon. Was she buying the town out?

  In London there was a change. The reservation was the Royal Suite of the Savoy Hotel. It was a magnificent suite. The sofa in the sitting room was even harder than those of Rome and Paris.

  For three days in London, Utanc came and went at all hours. I didn’t see her, however. I only heard her corridor door opening and closing and the noisy elevator. She must be buying London out. But when we met at the plane again, there she was in her veil and hooded cloak, shy and demure, if a bit hollow-eyed.

  The direct flight first-class to Washington was fairly swift but the ride in from the airport was quite long. I found we had a reservation for the Presidential Suite at the Willard Hotel, a landmark in the city’s center. Her five trunks were no more moved into the bedroom than she threw herself on the bed and said to the manager, who had escorted us in, “Please send up a cold supper. Chicken salad and Liebfraumilch ’54. And perhaps some orange sherbet. Oh, yes, order me a limousine, preferably a Cadillac, for 9:00 AM. And now, be off. I am completely exhausted.” She said it in purest English. But I had her. The tourist phrase book was peeping out of her bag. That mystery was solved!

  I went in to the sitting room with my baggage so she could lock the door. After all, she must be tired after all that travel and shopping. I had arrived!

  I could get to work!

  PART TWENTY-SIX

  Chapter 2

  The ease with which you can get to see a United States senator is mind-boggling. You just tell his secretary that you are the head of a local labor union from his home state and bango, there you are in his presence!

  I was no longer garbed as a sheik, of course. I looked far more Sicilian in my tight and modish three-piece suit and dark slouch hat, even though I would be a pretty big Sicilian.

  Senator Twiddle sat at his desk, flanked on one side by the American flag and on the other by that of his home state, New Jersey. He was the very picture of a noble politician—blond, swept-back hair, a patrician if somewhat alcoholized countenance, upright of bearing and deep and resonant of voice. A man in whom you could have confidence. He was the Mafia contact given us by Gunsalmo Silva. He was also Rockecenter’s man.

  “Sit down, sit down,” he said. “And what can we do for you? Always glad to meet men from the unions.”

  “Senator,” I said, taking a chair and refusing the cigar that would gas me flat, “what would you say if I told you that the Rockecenter oil interests—in fact, all of Octopus—was in dire peril of competition?”

  “Aha!” he said. “I’d get right on that phone and call his attorneys!”

  “Well, Senator,” I said, “it’s too delicate to go on the phone, monitored as they are. And even a bit too delicate to put to his attorneys.”

  “You mean you want to talk to the man himself?” He was stunned.

  He fiddled with his cigar. He put it down. He opened a drawer and got out a pint of Jack Daniels. He took a bottle of sparkling water that is furnished the Senate free by the company. He poured two drinks. I pretended to drink at mine. He tossed his off.

  He sat back, “Young fellow, I like your looks. It’s obvious you don’t know danger when you see it. And it’s obvious that you don’t know the man in question. Not that he would ever be in question, understand, so don’t quote me.”

  He scrubbed his chin with a puffy hand. He tipped out another drink to sip. He sat back. “Young fellow, I like your looks. And any favor to Rockecenter is a favor to me. You understand? Don’t quote me.”

  I nodded.

  “You know any part of that family?” he asked. I shook my head. “Well, educating the young is a sacred mission of the experienced. I vote affirmative on all education bills. And on all union-sponsored bills,” he added hastily. “And there are some things that aren’t in the Rockecenter account in Who’s Who. If you don’t know them, you won’t get anywhere with Delbert John Rockecenter. But don’t quote me.

  “Off the record, that family goes way back. They were emigrants from Germany in the 1800s. The right name is Roachengender. The family founder in this country sold crude oil as a quack cancer cure and was a wanted criminal for rape. Don’t quote me. I’ll deny everything. And you’ve got too frank a face to be from the FBI.

  “The family proceeded to go downhill while their finances went uphill. The first generation in America changed its name to Rockecenter and expanded into crude oil and, with the advent of the automobile, got a monopoly on the nation’s petroleum. Congress itself tried to break up that monopoly in 1911 but it just dodged.

  “The next generation controlled oil and drug companies. The third generation controlled oil and drugs and politics. The fourth generation started to go to pieces.

  “Now usually, great fortunes only last three generations. The socialists have seen to that, mostly. But the wealth of the Rockecenters was so great it went into the fourth generation. But it was wobbly. Politically, it stumbled. The third generation only got to the vice presidency but the fourth generation appeared to fade even below that.

  “Then out of this fourth generation and onto the world stage stepped Delbert John Rockecenter. A dark horse. A candidate nobody even noticed until they were buried in landslides! He apparently had read up and followed all the principles of the original American Rockecenter. And I quote: ‘Be moderate. Be very moderate. Don’t let good fellowship get the least hold on you.’ Another is ‘Trust nobody!’

  “In short, young gentleman, he resurrected the basic Rockecenter policies. Gouge everybody. Don’t tolerate competition of any kind. Do everybody down including your own family. Don’t quote me. This is off the record.

  “That Delbert John grabbed all the holdings of all the other Rockecenters and lumped them up again in one huge pile. He even had his Aunt Timantha murdered to get her inheritance. He mended all the ropes they had ever had on anything–banks, governments, fuel, drugs, you name it. And he took those ropes into his own hands. Alone and personal. Single. Never married. Not about to. Why should he when the whole world is his to (bleep)!

  “Now, you may think he’s old to look at him. But don’t let that fool you. He’s a powerhouse of cunning! He’s the most rapacious (bleepard) I have ever met. He is as crooked as a corkscrew. He has my undying support!”

  He finished off his drink. He sat forward. “And that’s the man you’re asking to see personally.” He shook his head. “Not even heads of state get to see Delbert John Rockecenter when they want.” He sat back and smiled a politician’s smile, totally false. “And so, you tell me all about it and I’ll tell his attorneys.”

  “Well, sir,” I said. “I can talk to his attorneys myself. A Mafia chief assured me that you could help.”

  Oh, that shot told. I had hoped I wouldn’t have to use it. In a sort of haggard way, he said, “The unions and the Mafia. I should have known. Are you sure this is in the Rockecenter interests?”

  “A new cheap fuel that threatens his monopoly is of great interest,” I said. “I’m only trying to help.”

  “All right,” he glanced at the note which his secretary had made and which bore the name I had ID for at the moment, “All right, Inkswitch. What do you want?”

  “Credentials as a Senate Investigator,” I said. “Full, complete and bona fide. He’ll see me.” Then I added the clincher
. “Off the record, you can take the pay for yourself.”

  His face brightened. “Aha! You’ll go far, Inkswitch. I head the Senate Energy Crisis Committee. I do favors for him all the time, keeping down excess supplies of fuel. He’ll see my name and know I’m in there pitching for the old Rockecenter interests come next election time! A new cheap fuel, eh? Well, that is a crisis!” And he promptly wrote the order to issue me what I needed.

  I was glad to see somebody else writing orders for a change.

  We parted the firmest of friends.

  And two hours later I had all the ID anyone could ask for, a Senate Investigator, including the right to bully any official in the land and even the right to carry and shoot a gun—limited only by an oath not to shoot any senators.

  Heller, I said to myself, your chin is almost under. All you need is one firm push to grease your hair with boiling oil.

  Now all I had to do was pry Utanc out of Washington.

  PART TWENTY-SIX

  Chapter 3

  After two days, when Utanc showed no signs of moving on, I resorted to a masterstroke. Using Washington cabs, I tailed her limousine. It was easy to do: I would jump in a cab and flash my credentials as a Senate Investigator and say, “Follow that limousine!” and the cabby would say, “Oh, you god (bleeped) Feds!” and follow the limousine.

  I got to see quite a bit of Washington. I several times passed the huge advertising sign that dominates Pennsylvania Avenue:

  J. EDGAR HOOVER

  I decided not to buy any. But I did toy with the idea of going in and finding Stupewitz and Maulin and telling them, as one Federal to another, how Heller had tricked them, but as sneering laughter might arouse professional jealousy–leading to their shooting Senator Twiddle and leaving me without credentials–I forbore.

  Utanc was covering museums and things. She was easy to spot, she was so well dressed and chic.

  In late afternoon I found the limousine stopped in Potomac Park. It was almost in the exact place where Heller had been grabbed. I even recognized the mounted park patrolman as the same one who had spotted him. Seemed like old times.