Amazing Mrs. Pollifax (2 page)

“I’m off on a little trip, Lorvale,” she explained. “My daughter-in-law in Chicago needs me for a few days. I’m terribly sorry but I shall have to miss my Thursday lesson.”

“I’m sorry, too,” he said reproachfully. “You won’t have a chance to practice your omo-tude, will you.”

“No, Lorvale,” she agreed solemnly.

Her note to Miss Hartshorne was the more difficult because Miss Hartshorne lived across the hall and had met Mrs. Pollifax’s son and daughter-in-law at Christmas. The note had to be couched in dramatic enough terms to explain Mrs. Pollifax’s precipitous departure—thus canceling a lunch date with her—yet contain just enough information so that Miss Hartshorne would not unduly worry over Roger’s wife and telephone Chicago to express her concern.

When the knock came upon her door Mrs. Pollifax was at the telephone again, having nearly forgotten the Art Association tea on Sunday. “Come in, it’s unlocked,” she called,
and turned to nod at the young man who entered her livingroom—he was undoubtedly the plainclothes policeman sent by Mr. Carstairs. “It’s my taxi,” she blandly told the president of the Art Association. “Goodbye, dear.”

“You’re Mrs. Pollifax?” said the young man as she hung up.

“Yes, and you’re—”

“Lieutenant Mullin. The car’s outside. This your bag?”

“Oh—thank you.” Mrs. Pollifax picked up her purse, hesitated and turned to glance with finality at her dear, familiar apartment. For the first time she allowed herself to compare the world that she was leaving—safe, secure and predictable—with the world she was about to enter, and about the latter she could know nothing at all except that it was certain to prove insecure, difficult and totally unpredictable. “At my age,” she murmured doubtfully, and then she recalled that at her age, less than a year ago, she had been held captive in an Albanian prison for a week, and before she led an escape party to the Adriatic those seven days had proven extremely informative and lively: she had met two Red Chinese generals, a Russian spy, and a rogue of an American agent. It was quite unlikely that she would have met them in New Brunswick, New Jersey. It was the quality of a life that mattered, not its quantity, she reflected; and recalling this she straightened her shoulders.

“We’re in a hurry,” Mullin reminded her.

“Yes,” said Mrs. Pollifax, took a deep breath and followed him out into the hall, closing the door firmly behind her. She slipped her note to Miss Hartshorne under the door of apartment 4-C and with this act, at once so final and so irrevocable, all doubts fell from her and she experienced a sudden exhilaration. She had committed herself to another small adventure: something was going to happen.

The elevator door slid open at the first floor, Mullin hastened ahead to hold the outer glass door for her, and they walked into the sticky heat of a July afternoon. The unmarked police car was parked at the curb, next to the N
O
P
ARKING
sign, with a second man at the wheel. Mrs. Pollifax was no sooner seated, with Mullin beside her, when the driver’s foot hit the accelerator, a hidden siren began to scream, and Mrs. Pollifax, clinging to her flowered hat, was
startled into delight. How marvelous to be involved in so much haste, she thought, and was not even dismayed when she found herself suddenly gazing into the eyes of her astonished pastor, who barely escaped the racing car by jumping back to the curb.
“C’est la vie,”
she called out gaily, fluttering her hand at him, and then they were leaving the city behind, cars scattering to right and left at the sound of the siren. Moments later they entered the gates of the small local airport. The police car bounced across the field and came to a screaming halt in front of a helicopter whose blades were already beating the air. Mrs. Pollifax, clinging desperately to her hat now, was boosted into the copter, and almost before she had reworked her hatpins the helicopter was landing at a very busy and much larger airfield.

They appeared to be expected: a man in a wrinkled beige suit left a waiting car and raced toward them. “Mrs. Pollifax?” he shouted up at her.

“Yes,” she screamed back, and was dropped from the cockpit into his arms.

“Over here,” he said, grasping her elbow. “They’re holding the plane. Jamison’s my name.”

“Yes, but where am I going?” she gasped.

“Later.” He hurried her into the car, which immediately tore off with a squeal of tires.

“Then where am I now?” demanded Mrs. Pollifax.

“Kennedy International,” he told her. “You did very well time-wise, but that plane over there is waiting just for us and they’ve already held up the flight five minutes.”

“Flight for where?” asked Mrs. Pollifax again.

“Washington. Carstairs wants to brief you personally before you leave the country.”

So she was to leave the country; Mrs. Pollifax felt that shiver of the irrevocable again, of forces in motion that could no longer be halted, and then the reaction passed as swiftly as it had arrived. The car stopped, the door was thrown open and Mrs. Pollifax was hurried up steps and into the plane, where she and Jamison were belted into their seats at once. Before Mrs. Pollifax had sufficiently caught her breath they were landing again.

“Dulles Airport,” contributed Jamison with authority, and once they had reached the terminal he guided her through
the building to the parking area. “Here we are,” he said, pointing to a long black limousine, and from it emerged Carstairs, tall, thin, his shock of crew-cut hair pure white against his tanned face.

“Good afternoon, Mrs. Pollifax,” he said gravely, as if they had met only yesterday and she had not been spirited to his side in less than an hour.

“I’m delighted to see you,” said Mrs. Pollifax, clasping his hand warmly. “It’s seemed such a long time. How have things been going?”

Carstairs said cheerfully, “Abominably, as always.” He gestured toward a stolid-looking young man in a dark suit and black tie. “I’d like you to meet Henry Miles first.”

“How do you do,” said Mrs. Pollifax politely.

“Henry is going to be traveling behind you but not with you, and it’s important you know what the other looks like.”

“Behind me?” echoed Mrs. Pollifax as they shook hands.

“He’s keeping an eye on you,” explained Carstairs, and added with a faint smile, “This time I’m taking no chances with you. All right, Jamison, take Henry off to seat 22 and make sure that plane doesn’t get away!” To Mrs. Pollifax he said, “You’re about to depart for the Near East. Come and sit in my car, we’ve only fifteen minutes in which to talk.”

“The Near East!” echoed Mrs. Pollifax.

“Yes, on a ticklish courier assignment, and a risky one, the necessity of which became obvious only thirty minutes before I telephoned you.” They were seated now in the rear of the limousine and he brought his attaché case to his lap. “I’m sending you to Istanbul,” he said.

“Istanbul!” exclaimed Mrs. Pollifax, and in an astonished voice added, “Do you know, I was reading a news story from Istanbul only a few minutes before you telephoned!” She looked at him doubtfully. “Are you—that is, does this have anything to do with the Ferenci-Sabo woman, the Communist spy who tried to defect?”

“A great deal to do with it,” Carstairs said. He unzipped the attaché case to expose an interior bulging with papers. Glancing up at her he said, “Except that rather a lot has happened since that news story you read.”

“She’s been found?” said Mrs. Pollifax eagerly.

“No.” He shook his head. “If you take a second look at the dateline on your news story you’ll discover the story was held up for twenty-four hours—Ferenci-Sabo reached the consulate Friday night, God knows how, and was taken in. No, she’s not been found. This is Sunday afternoon—already late evening in Istanbul because of the time difference—and during these hours Istanbul has turned into a hotbed of intrigue, with agents pouring into the city from every point of the globe, all with one hope: either to find Ferenci-Sabo and
offer her sanctuary in their country, or find Ferenci-Sabo and silence her, depending upon their political stance.”

“She really was abducted then,” said Mrs. Pollifax. “I thought—because of her importance—she might have been hidden away somewhere by the British.”

“She was abducted all right,” Carstairs said grimly. “Very cleverly, too, and it’s believed she was abducted by Communists. The curious point is that she was abducted and not murdered. If it was silence her captors wanted, they need only have killed her in her bed at the consulate—the devils seemed to have had no problem entering the building! It leaves the implication that Ferenci-Sabo still has more value alive than dead—a conclusion,” he added dryly, “that many other intelligence agencies have also reached. Ferenci-Sabo has now become fair game for everybody—and a great number of ruthless people have entered the game. A woman of Ferenci-Sabo’s background was bound to be coveted but since she’s been abducted, and is presumably still in Istanbul, there are high hopes that what one country has accomplished can be neatly done by another.”

“I see,” said Mrs. Pollifax, and waited patiently for the explanation that might make some sense of her being here. At the moment she could see no light at all.

As if reading her thoughts he said gravely, “I’ve called upon you, Mrs. Pollifax—with Miles to keep an eye on you—because in a city teeming with professionals you lack the slightest aura of corruption or professionalism yet at the same time”—his mouth curved wryly—“at the same time you give every evidence of being a resourceful courier.”

“Thank you,” said Mrs. Pollifax, “but a courier for what? I don’t understand.”

He said quietly. “We have heard from Ferenci-Sabo.”

“You?” she said in astonishment. “The CIA? But how? When? Why?”

He held up his hand. “Please, we know almost nothing except that in a situation where we’re technically only innocent bystanders we suddenly find ourselves in the position of being like the recipient of a ransom note in a kidnap case. No, that’s misleading: she’s apparently eluded her kidnappers and is alive and in hiding in Istanbul.”

“How incredible,” said Mrs. Pollifax.

He nodded. “The message, received late this morning, said only that Ferenci-Sabo would go each evening at eight o’clock to the lobby of the Hotel Itep—a small Turkish hotel in the old section—and look for someone carrying a copy of
Gone with the Wind
.”

“Gone with the Wind!”
echoed Mrs. Pollifax, suppressing a laugh.

“In Istanbul it’s now almost Sunday midnight,” went on Carstairs. “We had time to immediately notify our agent in Istanbul, who presented himself at eight o’clock at the Hotel Itep.” Carstairs’ mouth tightened. “Word of his death reached us thirty minutes before I telephoned you, Mrs. Pollifax. I
cannot
regard it as an accident.”

Mrs. Pollifax expelled her breath slowly. “Oh,” she said soberly. “Oh dear!”

“Yes. At eight-fifteen he walked out of the hotel with a woman companion—and a car suddenly went berserk in the street, pinning him to the wall and killing him instantly. The woman seen with him vanished into the crowd.”

“I’m terribly sorry,” Mrs. Pollifax said. “You think he met Ferenci-Sabo there?”

Carstairs shrugged. “It’s quite possible, in which case she must be even more desperate after seeing her contact killed before her very eyes. You are in effect replacing a dead man, Mrs. Pollifax—but with one difference.”

“Yes?”

“There may be a leak somewhere—or with so damn many agents in Istanbul they may be keeping one another under surveillance—but no one could possibly recognize you, or suspect you of being an agent. I intend that no one outside of this building know of your departure. In the world of espionage there are only two living people who have ever met you—John Sebastian Farrell, currently in South America, and General Perdido, now recovering from a heart attack in Peking. And this is the way I plan to keep it. Henry Miles knows nothing except that you are to be kept under surveillance—I’m sure that not even in his wildest dreams would he guess that a novice is being sent into such a maelstrom, even if he should know the situation—which he doesn’t. In turn you are to send no cables nor contact me at all. You are to trust no one and above all,” he concluded
grimly, “you’re to watch for reckless drivers when crossing streets in Istanbul. Now I think you will be happy to learn that this time you travel with a passport—a bona fide one accomplished for you in an hour’s time.”

“How nice,” said Mrs. Pollifax, as he handed it to her. “Even my photograph!”

“Yes, we took one for our files, you may remember.”

“Very efficient.”

“Also money,” he said, drawing a manila envelope from the attaché case and handing it to her. “Rather a lot of money because of the unpredictability of the—er—situation. And in this second envelope is money for Ferenci-Sabo, as well as a passport for her in another name. It lacks a photograph, of course, and this she will have to supply but it has all the necessary stampings proving that she entered Turkey legally a week ago, and as an American citizen. Here are your plane tickets,” he added, “as well as an especially gaudy edition of
Gone with the Wind
. A reservation has been made for you at the Hotel Itep—there wasn’t time to be devious—and Henry Miles will have a room there too, but you are to avoid Henry, you understand? I don’t want you linked with a professional under any circumstances—we’ve already lost one. And on Saturday morning you are to fly back whether you have made contact or not.”