Flashpoint (7 page)

    So at least there was a Hawk, genus unknown.

    "Do you have any speed?" the girl on the next stool asked me.

    I took another look at her. New York permits eighteen-year-old drinkers, but this girl didn't look eighteen. Glancing down, I could see her feet under the soiled hem of her orange sari. They were bare and dirty. Her small features had an almost angelic expression, but I could see dirt smudges on her face, too. "No," I said.

    "Too bad. I'd like to get high."

    There was no particular inflection in the childish voice. A half-empty beer glass reposed on the bar, but she didn't sound drunk. She didn't sound sober, either. I haven't had much contact with marijuana, but the dilated eyes and dreamy-sounding voice had me thinking marijuana. "What's your name?" I asked.

    "Chryssie," she said gravely. "C-H-R-Y-S-S-I-E. Short for Chrysanthemum."

    "I see. You're a flower child?"

    She smiled, a sweet, untroubled smile. "Nobody ever corrupted a flower, did they?"

    "You've been corrupted?"

    The dilated eyes removed themselves from the introspective examination of her beer glass and fastened upon me. "I corrupt."

    "Now that I find hard to believe."

    But the blonde girl's gaze had withdrawn itself to her glass again. She said nothing. I tried a few more questions, but she seemed to have stepped into a private room, closed the door, and turned the key. I let it go and resumed my examination of the other occupants of the smoke-hazed room.

    Finally I glanced at my watch. It was getting close to the time Erikson had set for my appearance at his office. I drained my Jim Beam and set down my glass. Swiveling on my bar stool before sliding from it, I became aware that the blonde was back in the land of the living. She was watching my face. "So long," she said.

    "So long?" I echoed.

    "You're leaving, aren't you?"

    "That's right." She gave me another of her otherworldly smiles. "So long, Chryssie."

    I went out to the street and hailed a cab.

    

    

    
FIVE-O-FIVE
Fifth Avenue wasn't one of the newer buildings in the area. I studied the wall directory in the rundown lobby. Employment agencies dominated the second and third floors, after which the emphasis shifted to publishing companies. I recognized none of the names.

    The slow-moving self-service elevator took me to the sixteenth floor. I emerged into a dimly lighted corridor with frosted glass doors stretching away in precisioned monotony on either side. Following Erikson's instructions, I passed doors lettered Magazine Bureau, Inc., M & M Publications, Inc., before I came to Intercontinental Plastics Company.

    I knocked and waited. Erikson opened the door and stood aside to let me enter. We walked through a tiny office, large enough to contain a desk and a switchboard, into an inner office four times as large but hardly the lap of luxury. There was linoleum instead of carpeting on the floor, and there were no draperies over the Venetian blinds. A metal desk was piled elbow-deep with carelessly strewn papers. Funeral-home-type chairs lined two sides of the room. A topographic map of the world covered most of one wall space, a fair-sized painting of Emmett Kelley in clown costume another, and a detailed chart whose composition and purpose I couldn't fathom a third.

    "You cut it fine," Erikson said as he closed the door between the two offices. "I'm expecting them."

    "What's with the plastics company label when everyone else is in the publishing game?" I asked.

    "I didn't want people trooping in and out of here trying to exchange shop talk." Erikson crossed the office to the clown picture and pressed its upper right corner. The section of the wall on which the picture rested pivoted at right angles as a hidden door opened, disclosing another small room beyond it. The joining was so cunningly fashioned as to be invisible except to the closest inspection.

    I followed Erikson into a narrow room lined with shelves of equipment and benches loaded with gadgetry. It seemed almost an electronic arsenal with miniature recorders, cameras, microphones, and other exotic devices for eavesdropping, recording, and monitoring. I saw some more practical hardware items as well, including weapons camouflaged as fountain pens, cigarette lighters, and wallets.

    I sat down on a padded stool that Erikson indicated. I was facing a benchlike counter on which three shoe-box-sized television monitors confronted me. "I want to explain how these operate first," Erikson said, "then if we have time you can tell me what you found at the Alhambra. I don't want-"

    "I can cover that in one sentence," I interposed. "There's a Hawk who comes and goes, but who's to say if it's the right one?"

    "At least it's not a complete dead end. Be sure you get a good look at my visitors."

    "You don't think Israelis did the hijacking?" I said in surprise.

    "No, but these types really get around. Look at them carefully in these TV screens. Each screen is connected to separate, wide-angle lenses in the office. Two-way mirrors are passe in today's intelligence work, and any observant agent would spot an observation window or peephole the moment he entered a room. Television has replaced the direct-view system."

    He flipped a switch, and suddenly I was looking at sharp details of the tiny outer office. Erikson hit another switch and his paper-strewn desk and the office space around it floated into view on a second screen. He pointed to one of the recorders. "This is set to monitor as well as record, and it's already running. You'll be able to hear everything that takes place. I have it running because some of these sharp intelligence men now carry a meter which shows an added electrical impulse inside a room. A buzzer will sound in here when anyone enters the outer office."

    I waved a hand at some of the items on the benches. "I recognize the snooperscopes on that shelf, but what's some of the rest of this junk?"

    "We keep two laboratories busy turning out this 'junk' as you call it," Erikson said. "The majority of which isn't for public sale." He pointed to a bench piled high with gadgets. "Those are bumper beepers that operate from a triple-antenna switch."

    "Bumper beepers?"

    "Magnetized boxes attached to the underside of cars so that beeps from the box permit a following car with a receiver to trail them. The better ones have a range up to three miles, with an audio-homing device that makes the pings louder as the distance lessens. Those big discs next to the beepers are parabolic reflectors for gathering up sound waves and channeling them to a receiver. Next to those are suction-cup wall listeners. Some have their own transistor amplifiers."

    "Whatever happened to freedom of speech and all the rest of that jazz?"

    "That's not a concern of ours in the areas in which we work."

    I pointed to several microphones with extremely long snouts, almost like rifle barrels. "What about those?"

    "Two-directional long-range mikes. Aim one of those at a fly on the roof of a barn three hundred yards away and you can hear the shingles crackling under his feet. Now let's see you operate the monitors."

    I turned the screens off, then turned on all three of them. The third screen offered another view of Erikson's office from a different angle. Satisfied with my performance, Erikson went back into his office and closed the wall panel.

    I sat down again on the padded stool. There was a faint whispering sound from the monitor, and it took me a second to realize it was the slurring noise of Erikson shuffling papers on his desk. The microphone inside must really be as sensitive as he claimed, I decided. I fit a cigarette and settled down to wait.

    Then a girl's voice sounded faintly. "I won't do it!" she said in a high-pitched voice. "It's not like you said!"

    I leaned toward the tape-recorder monitor expectantly before I realized the voice hadn't come from it. The television screens showed no one in Erikson's office except him at his desk.

    "Cut the stalling and unwrap the merchandise, baby," a man's voice said. Like the girl's, the voice was faint but clear.

    I looked around the room. There was a door at the opposite end of the room from the hidden entrance. When I approached it, I saw the door was steel. It had a powerful spring-bolt lock. I eased the lock back, half-expecting to find the door locked on the other side. It wasn't. I inserted a hand and explored the other side of the door. It was paneled wood, concealing the steel, and it didn't have a keyhole. I opened the door wider.

    Glaring light dazzled my eyes. I blinked and tried to focus. It was another moment before I could make out three women and two men in a room that looked like a photographer's studio. Cameras on tripods and high-intensity lights on standards with wires trailing from them were deployed seemingly at random. Along one wall was a backdrop depicting a beach scene. In front of the flat was a metal beach chair in a sandbox.

    "When you said photos in the nude, you didn't say it was a gang job!" the girl's voice spoke up again. I could see her now. She was a frosted blonde with flippy curls and tight waves that made up a short, bouncy hairdo topped with short bangs.

    "Look, Marcia," the younger-looking of the two men said. "We're paying you forty an hour and we thought we were buying a pro. Now either strip or bug off. The door is right over there."

    The frosted blonde bit her lip. Her companions, a cynical-looking brunette and a chubby brownette, were already removing skirts and blouses. By the time the brunette peeled down a girdle and stood there rubbing at the red pressure marks on her slim flanks, the blonde was pulling her dress off over her head.

    "That's better," the man said.

    The brownette stripped to garter belt and stockings, the blonde to canary-yellow bikini panties. The second man, the photographer, held a light meter against each of the girls' bare bodies in turn. "That's a real nice piece of meat you've got there, Ginger," he said to the brownette as he removed the meter from the vicinity of her broad, nude buttocks. "Okay, Edna," he addressed the brunette, "get into the beach chair. I can't shoot your tail till those girdle marks fade out."

    The brunette sauntered to the sandbox with an exaggerated hip flourish, tested the sand delicately with a toe, then sank down into the chair. Immediately she bridged with shoulders and heels, thrusting her stomach upward. "Goddammit, that's
cold!"
she cried out.

    "Here's a blanket," the younger man said soothingly. He arranged it beneath her arched form and the brunette relaxed again. The man patted her bare belly. "That's the girl, Edna."

    "Pants off, baby," the photographer said to the blonde. "We're all girls together here." He waited while the canary-yellow panties were removed. "A real blonde, hmm? When we do the black-and-whites, we'll have to touch up your bush with a little lampblack or there won't be enough contrast. That pale fleece of yours'll come through good in color, though. Now-"

    "You're not going to put any dirty old lampblack on my-on me," the girl said indignantly. "I didn't come here to-"

    "Oh, shut up, will you?" the younger man said wearily. "Get them posed, Ted. This is running into money."

    "Stand behind the beach chair so your tits are aimed right at the camera over the top of Edna's head, Marcia," the photographer instructed the blonde. "Ginger, you squat down at the dividing line-no, make it at the foot of the chair with your butt aimed right at me and your-"

    The sound of a warning buzzer jerked me to attention. I closed the door reluctantly and threw the bolt over quietly. When I turned around to look at the television monitors, a green light on the side of them had turned red. I went to the padded stool and sat down.

    Erikson was admitting two men into the outer office. As they crossed the threshold into the larger office, one of the fluorescent tubes above my head flickered momentarily. At first glance both men looked more like insurance agents than Israeli counter-intelligence agents. The older man was stocky, with a dignified bearing and thinning gray hair. He had a wide mouth but thin lips, and his deep-set eyes appeared to lack warmth.

    His companion was younger, taller, and muscularly lean. His small eyes were close set, like two rivets holding in place an elongated nose that was almost sharp at its end. His sandy hair had a reddish tint which was more pronounced in his thin, straight eyebrows. His entire face had a foxy, streamlined appearance.

    Erikson thrust out his huge hand in welcome. The older man took it, but the younger one merely nodded. He turned and walked into the outer office again. When he disappeared from the left-hand television screen, I knew he was reconnoitering the corridor outside Erikson's office. He came into view again on the monitor almost at once.

    "Sit down, gentlemen," Erikson invited the pair. The gray-haired man nodded and sat down so erectly his back didn't touch the metal of the chair. The younger man folded his arms and remained standing. "What can I do for you, Mr. Bergman?" Erikson continued.

    "What I have to say, Mr. Erikson," Bergman began in a resonant voice, "will take as little of your time as possible because I'm convinced you have little time left. We appreciate that you are forced to work under what we consider to be unnecessary restrictions, and we will curb our impatience a little longer. We have, after all, agreed to cooperate to the fullest degree. We sacrifice this important element of time, however, only to urge you to act without delay."

    Bergman spoke with a clipped, British accent which reminded me of Ronald Colman in his heyday on the screen.

    "Act?" Erikson responded blandly. "I'm not sure I know what you mean."