Well, it was time I had a showdown with this Lebanese! He'd helped wreck the banking business in Beirut and now he was wrecking mine!
He was in the basement!
There was a little office just inside the secret entrance—it had heavy bars and wire nets across it, something new! You couldn't get into it with a blastgun! A maze of bulletproof glass to push things through, a big swing basket for heavy objects. You had to get down and shout through the glass maze to communicate with the cashier! Something, I guessed, that he'd learned in the Lebanon revolt!
"I want some money!" I yelled through the maze.
He sat there behind it and looked awfully deadly. He was bright yellow, no hair and only a couple of fangs left. "No money!"
Right on his desk, in plain view where he'd been counting it, were stacks and stacks of money! I never saw so much money in one pile. U.S. dollars, British pounds. Even some diamonds!
"Some gangsters have arrived!" I yelled at him. "I see the evidence!"
He threw some blank account sheets on top of the money. "Only ten so far!"
"There were two hundred on that list!" I yelled through the maze.
"They're scheduled, spaced into the future. Some of them had to rob banks before they arrived!"
"But ten," I yelled through the maze, "must mean you have collected a million so far! The price was a hundred thousand U.S."
"This place cost a million!" he snarled back through the maze. "We're not covering running expenses yet!"
I heard something to my left and right. I looked up. Two automatic-shotgun muzzles protruded from remote-control turrets. They were pointing straight at me. The Lebanese had his hand on a button that apparently controlled them.
I left.
I sat outside in the dilapidated Ford station wagon. The unfairness of it was very plain. I was making money for the base in rivers! They still had one hundred and ninety gangsters still to remodel! They had nineteen million U.S. in plain sight over the coming weeks or months and already had a whole million!
Aha! Mudlick Construction!
I drove madly to their office. I told the manager to fork over.
"They've got money?" he said.
"They can pay you in cash for the first job this minute!"
He drove madly to the hospital.
He came back.
He handed me a quarter of a million!
I madly stuffed it into a paper sack. A big one. It was half what I was due but he had only been paid half.
We shook hands beamingly.
I drove home.
Chapter 8
Utanc was out. Melahat was cleaning her room. Utanc apparently had swallowed the tale about grandmothers. Her attitude toward me during the past week was as usual—nonexistent. Ah, all that would change!
Melahat was sort of hanging around to lock up the room and I didn't have a chance to plant the bug well. I pretended to be inspecting for cleanliness and kicked it under the carpet.
I went to my room and set up the audio-transmitter-responder for it. I fiddled a bit with the telescope but the directions were right. I could see through a wall a hundred feet away but no closer. Ah, well, it would do for New York!
I phoned Prahd. Tomorrow morning, bright and early, he said. There had been a little delay, other business coming in. But if I would be there around eight, he would deliver "the two packages." He said the bandages were ready to come off. I said to leave them on.
I fended his query about pay. Later, if the job was perfect.
That night I dreamed of Heller being dropped from high places, being squashed between two trains engaged in a head-on collision and being boiled in oil by Manco Devils. Wonderful dreams!
And then, just before dawn, the most beautiful dream of all: lovely Utanc stealing into my bed. It was a dream I meant to become reality!
At eight on the dot, I was at the hospital side entrance. The two little boys were brought out by two deaf-mutes Prahd had hired.
I was quite surprised. The two little boys simply sat down in the front seat where a pointed finger told them to sit. They were all wrapped up in bandages. They seemed very still.
I was prepared. Down the road in a quiet place I stopped. "Which is Rudy?" I said.
They didn't answer. So I did an eenie-meenie-minee-mo. I had the photos from Illustrated Lives that Prahd had used. I put the photo of Rudolph Valentine on one and the photo of James Cagney on the other.
I had some colored ribbons and some tags. I wrote To my darling Utanc. Unwrap carefully. From Sultan Bey, on each tag.
Although I had brought the .44 Magnum Colt, there didn't seem to be any need of it. The two little boys just sat there in their bandages, very quiet.
I drove into the yard. Utanc's BMW was sitting there—she was home.
I took the two little boys quietly into the patio. I stood them by the fountain. I made a final adjustment of the gay ribbons. Then I kicked them!
They screamed!
I withdrew.
Utanc's bars came off with a clang.
Her door opened!
The two little boys fled to her like streaks!
Gleefully, I made my way to the audio activating unit. I turned it on.
Silence!
No, some slight background sound. I thought the rig wasn't working. I hastily got out the directions—I had not read them before.
This bug was designed to be put on top of picture frames. It said never put it under muffling objects. Gods, I'd put it under a rug! Blast!
I turned up the gain all the way. Just an occasional sound when a voice was raised sharply. Blast! I could get no data on her reaction!
She didn't come speeding to my room to thank me. Not enough coming through on this bug to determine anything.
Almost an hour passed and a tense hour it was!
Then, what was that sound? Water running? Yes, water running.
Then, suddenly, a song. Utanc was singing! She sang:
Come wash my back, little Rudy.
Hand me the soap, little James.
Kiss me and make me less moody.
Hug me and call me sweet names.
Then we will go in the bedroom,
And I'll teach you more lovely games.
I almost sobbed with relief. They obviously had some youthful resemblance to the movie stars. Everything was all right!
I had been under such a strain, I had hardly eaten at all the whole week. I made them bring me a marvelous early lunch. Platters of hunkar begendi ("His Majesty liked it"), stewed lamb with chopped eggplant, kadin gobegi ("woman's navel") for dessert. I washed it all down with pitchers of sira and then sat back to drink my kahve. Marvelous.
About two in the afternoon, the bug went live again. I hung over the receiver. A cymbal clash? Yes, another and another and another. Some kind of a dance!
And then Utanc's voice came through very loudly. She was pleased. She was singing:
One little kiss went to market,
One little sigh stayed home.
One little hug went, "Weep, weep, weep!"
And all of them gasped in the foam.
I didn't know quite what to make of it. Maybe the bug was defective. I had never heard that nursery rhyme before.
With lots of preparatory things to do such as costumes and counting money, I whiled away the time, expecting Utanc would come flying in at any moment to thank me.
Evening came. Well, shy as she was, she would be waiting for night. I took a bath. I held dinner. Then, at length, I ate it by myself. It didn't taste very good.
I checked the bug from time to time. Suddenly a clashing sound. Swords? A sword dance? Must be from the foot thuds and clashes.
And then her voice, raised high in song, came through:
Little, little feet on my tum, tum, tum.
Dancing like fairies, run, run, run. Up and down, up and down, leap, leap, leap.
Get it in, get it in, deep, deep, deep.
Up you go, u
p 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 Valentine 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 Valentine 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 U.S. 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 closely 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 fight 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 A.M. 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!
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!