The Big Bite (2 page)

When the tip Paul Knox was waiting for came in, he was in the Lisbon office of World Circle, the agency more than one government used as its espionage arm or as an adjunct to it, depending on the size and wealth of the government.

Knox looked at Senhor Santos, the head of the large Lisbon office. “Is this another one of your wild-goose chases, Manny?”

“Perhaps. Perhaps not.” Senhor Santos displayed his beautiful white teeth in a wholly pointless smile “You will remember that this all began as a favor to you—a personal favor as World Circle was no longer officially interested in the girl.

“But now,” he went on with a spread of his hands, “it is no longer a favor I am doing you. When I say there is a possibility of something in Tangier, I am transmitting an order.”

“You’re a long-winded so-and-so,” Knox said. “Are you trying to tell me that World Circle is interested in Natalie Tinsley again?”

“Of course. Is that not clear?”

“And I’m supposed to keep on hunting for her like I have been for the past year—but now on company time?”

“I have said as much.”

“Like hell you have.” Knox found his pack of cigarettes and lit one. “What’s this about Tangier?”

Santos put the tips of pudgy fingers together. “There are always rumors from there because of the free gold market. That is all I have, a rumor. Something about Natalie Tinsley’s name in connection with the buying of gold.”

Knox rapped ash from his cigarette. So many of his friends had “heard” rumors and he had made so many trips to talk to them—and he was no further along than when he had started a year ago. Either Natalie Tinsley had disappeared for good or she had built herself a new and very clever organization in the year since he had last seen her and was cautiously hiding behind it.

“Who do I see, Manny?”

“In Tangier? Murello. I will get word to him that you are coming. You can leave soon?”

“Right away,” Knox said. “Or almost. The next plane is at four-fourteen. Sixteen-fourteen your time.”

“You always know such things,” Santos said admiringly. “Go to your hotel and sleep for the three hours. I shall have your ticket waiting for you at the airport. Do you need expense money?” He answered the question himself. “Of course not. Paul Knox is one of the lucky ones who seldom needs money.”

Knox stubbed out his cigarette and stood up. “I live a clean life, Manny.”

Santos held out his hand. “Be careful, Paul. If she has an organization, this may be dangerous. You remember how her father operated.”

When he had known Gerard Tinsley, Knox thought, the man had not been operating very well. Knox had known him only briefly, just long enough to maneuver the man to his death. Not that Tinsley hadn’t deserved that death. But Knox could not help wondering if—despite what Natalie had said at the time—it had not had something to do with his daughter’s refusing to let Knox find her in the year that had followed.

“I’ll be careful,” Knox said. “I suppose John will know where I’ve gone.” John was one of the names for the head man in the States.

“I hope so, or I have misread his order.”

“Ate logo, men amigo”
Knox said in acceptable Portuguese.

He left, wondering how to kill three hours. He was not in the least sleepy and did not feel like taking the nap Santos had suggested. He began to walk, but Lisbon did not seem to have its usual charm, and he turned to his hotel. By the time he arrived there, he was so keyed up that even a three-hour wait looked like a long stretch of time.

Knox had long ago learned to wait and watch and choose the right time to act. Yet where was his patience now? Where had it been this past year? He pushed his way into his room and slammed the door.

For a year now, he had been hunting Natalie Tinsley, seeing the deceptively slender, almost boyish figure, the sleek head with the very dark, short-cropped hair, the large eyes, the small nose, the wide, beautifully curved mouth—seeing each of these a thousand times in a thousand separate women, but never finding them all in one woman—the one woman.

What did a man do with three hours of waiting except to go over for the
nth
time how big a fool he was making of himself?

Knox peeled off his coat and found that his shirt was damp. He called down for two bottles of cold beer and drank them while immersed in a tepid tub. Then he climbed out, dried, and prepared to shave.

He regarded himself sardonically in the mirror. He was in his middle thirties, well built, a man who wore three-hundred-dollar suits easily. His features were good—healthy, taut skin, fine eyes, a mobile, thoughtful mouth. Since high-school days, Knox had had that quality which makes a man attractive to women.

He stopped looking sardonic and glowered at himself. “You utter fool,” he said aloud. It fell flat and he tried cursing himself in Spanish. That was much more satisfactory.

• • •

Airplane trips bored Knox; he had made too many of them. He was relieved to arrive in Tangier, and as his taxi—driven by a man who could have been French or Arab or Spanish, and probably was a bit of all three—dodged and dived and skidded to the hotel, he began to feel better. Perhaps it was the warm, dry air, or the sudden darkening of the African sky, or the incredible mixture of types on the streets—but he felt that something was about to happen.

Tipping the driver enough to keep him in comfort in the native quarter for a month, Knox followed a bellhop into the hotel, registered, and was shown to his room.

He offered the bellboy the naïve look of a wealthy American on his first trip abroad. “What does a man do in this town for amusement?”

The bellboy chewed on the English for a moment and replied, “A woman, perhaps?”

Knox lowered his voice. “Can I bring a woman here?”

“But certainly. What is a hotel for?” A pair of dark, liquid eyes followed Knox’s hand as it went into his pocket and withdrew a billfold. “I know many nice women who like Americans, huh?”

Knox let it pass. “I have an address,” he mumbled, and looked embarrassed.

“Ah, your own woman! I shall tell them at the desk.”

Knox parted with a good-sized bill and added a smaller one. “Some good wine, perhaps?”

When the boy had gone, he sat down to wait for his contact. The name Santos had used—Murello—was not a name at all but a World Circle term for the fact that the contact would be female and would be made clandestinely. Knox had no more idea who Murello would be than he had where he himself would be tomorrow at this time.

The telephone rang. Knox let it peal twice and then answered. The voice was dulcet and spoke a soft, lisping Spanish—a language at which Knox was adept.

“Would you like to take me to dinner?”

Knox grinned. “I’d rather give you dinner here. This is a very nice hotel.”

“With champagne?”

“If you like. I prefer a good Moselle myself.”

“One bottle for each of us,” the voice said. “I would like a steak, please. In one hour?”

“In one hour,” Knox said. “Room eight-fourteen.”

There was a click. Knox hung up, wondering what the owner of the voice would look like. Once he had been particularly taken by a voice and its owner had turned out to be possessed of two hundred muscular pounds, a downy mustache, and contempt for the entire male sex. But he still hoped.

He ordered dinner and had a whisky and water sent up for himself. He studied the plan of the room, rejected the romantic but impractical idea of dining by the French windows that opened onto the balcony, and had the table set opposite the false fireplace. By the time the whisky and water was gone, he decided that the owner of the voice must look as interesting as it had sounded and had flowers sent up. Precisely an hour after the telephone call, there was a knock at his door.

Knox opened the door, looked once, blinked. Before him stood a brassy-haired blonde, teetering on four-inch heels with straps wrapped around slim ankles. She wore a cheap imitation of a gold lamé evening gown into which, obviously, she had girdled herself carefully. She bulged frighteningly at the bosom and at the hips. A pair of heavily mascaraed eyes gazed unwinkingly at him and two very red lips, painted distinctly off center, twisted in an ingratiating smile.

“ ‘Alio.”

Knox let her in. “How do you do, señorita?”

“Bianca corno la nieve,”
she said.

“Is that your name or information as to your purity?” Knox asked. “White as snow, hell!”

She grinned, showing him stained teeth. “The champagne?”

He was reminded that the identification over the phone still had to be carried to its conclusion. He said, “The name is Murello.”

“The champagne?”

“I ordered Moselle.”

“Cheapskate,” she said in clear English.

Knox watched her teeter to the divan and plop herself down. One leg went across another, exposing a lot of quite good-looking leg. He said, “Why so much disguise?”

She was fishing in a gold-net handbag and finally came up with a cigarette. Knox lit it for her. She blew smoke at him. “What makes you think it’s a disguise?”

Knox was staring at the hand holding the cigarette. It was bare of ornamentation—there were no rings, no bracelets, none of the junk a woman of this type would have bedecked herself with. But there was something else—the manner in which she held the cigarette. He let his eyes drop down to the edge of the skirt where a pair of knees showed.

“Well, well. You really did yourself up brown, didn’t you? What the hell’s the idea?”

She threw the cigarette into an ashtray and looked aggrievedly at him. “I didn’t fool you?”

Knox sat down beside her and took her hands. “If your face wasn’t so damned messy, I’d kiss you, you—”

She said softly, “Hello, Paul. Go ahead and kiss me. This is supposed to be an assignation, isn’t it? Give the waiter a thrill; smear some lipstick on you.”

“You couldn’t thrill these waiters with anything but money,” he said, and got up. It hurt to be so close to her. “Damn it, Nat—how did you get here?”

Natalie Tinsley smiled, and it was a beautiful smile to Knox. “I came in a taxi,” she said, “and I argued with the driver over the fare. And don’t look so upset. Isn’t this the way a girl who comes to a man’s hotel room should look?”

“You idiot.”

“I’m hungry.”

Knox sighed. “All right. I’ll have dinner sent up.”

When the dinner was served, he directed the waiter not to return, and as soon as the door shut, he took Nat and steered her into the bedroom.

“This,” he said, indicating a doorway, “is the bath.” He laid his newest silk dressing gown on the bed. “This is to wear. Now go scrub off that face paint and that perfume. Can you do anything about the hair?”

Reaching up, Nat ran her fingers into the hair and pulled it loose. Her own black hair with its boyish cut tumbled into view. “Better?”

“It’s a start,” Knox said. He retreated into the living room and stood looking down at their dinner slowly growing cold.

The dressing gown was much too large, but even so Natalie Tinsley was something to see inside its clinging yellow folds. Finishing the last of his steak, Knox reached for the brandy bottle.

“Yes,” she said. She worked a last piece of asparagus into her mouth, chewed quickly, and sighed. “Lots of brandy.”

“Not tonight,” Knox said. “I’m here for a purpose.”

“Uhm. To find me. Well, I’m found.” She gave him a smile. “Now we can celebrate.”

“I have a lot of questions,” Knox said. He poured the brandy.

“I have a lot of answers,” Nat said. She wiped her mouth and sipped her drink. “I’m going to use them to bargain with.”

Knox’s eyebrows went up, but he made no comment. Nat rose and turned off the lights. She then went to the French windows and threw them wide. The bright lights of the city swam up from below, filling the room with a gentle radiance. Together, they looked down on the wide boulevards with their marble-fronted shops over to the great wall of the old town which rose up from the bay in warrens of narrow streets and tightly packed houses to the Casbah on the top of the slope.

Taking Knox’s arm, Nat put it about her waist. His fingers closed gently on her flesh, vibrant beneath the thin silk. The air coming through the French windows held a warmth and a perfume as though on its way here it had blown gently across the gardens!….

• • •

The breeze coming through the French windows had grown chill. Knox closed them and returned to where Nat lay on the floor, her back propped against a large Moorish pillow.

“Turn on a nice soft light,” she said. “Is there any brandy left?”

“Lots. You forgot to drink your first glass.”

“Now I want it.”

He brought it to her, along with cigarettes. They lay quietly, smoking and sipping brandy in a light so dim that the glowing tips of their cigarettes could be seen.

Nat sighed. “Now,” she said, “for the answers. Who starts?”

“You do—from the beginning.”

“When I left you last year? All right.”

He listened in silence. She had gone from Seattle back to Europe. With her father dead, she was at loose ends for something to do. Despite her father having broken their code by seeking to make money out of the weaknesses of persons other than the rich, she missed him deeply. He had died because of Paul Knox and she should have hated Knox—yet she could not forget him.

“After about three months of it,” Nat said, “I got fed up with myself. I heard that one of Dad’s old gang was here and I came, thinking we might get together and start another organization. Maybe do some smuggling.”

“That would come to your mind,” Knox said.

“Well, I was almost broke. I still am,” she said. She poured herself a little more brandy. “I found my man, all right, but it took him a while to believe I was myself.”

“Were you in that disguise?”

Nat snorted. “No, nor in any other. But the rumor was out that I was in Mexico building up an organization. The call was out for all of Dad’s old-timers. There were two left. One had gone and no report had come back. The other, my man here, was trying to get the money to go.”

Knox said, “What kind of gag was it?”

“No gag,” Nat said. “There is a woman in Mexico who calls herself Natalie Tinsley. She has a couple of hard-cases for playmates. I saw her and them,” she added.

“Here?”

“No. After my friend here told me about her, and told me that she, and later some others, had been doing a lot of buying of gold with various currencies, I decided to go to Mexico with him.”

Her voice dropped, taking on the note that always hurt Knox because it seemed to him like the plaintive cry of a small child. “He was killed. They said it was an Arab fanatic and he was in the old town, down on the street of the money-changers—the street called Siaghins. But he was too old a hand to give an Arab a reason for attacking him. There was someone else behind it, Paul—and even then I felt it was someone big.”

“Big—in what way?”

“Let me tell it my way,” she asked. “I went to Mexico then—in my disguise, as you call it—to see this woman for myself. I had a lucky break on currency and made enough money to last me a while. I saw her, and I recognized her. Dad and I tangled with her once in Budapest. I was pretty young then, but I knew I’d never forget her. She was so beautiful to a teen-aged kid. She still is,” she added. “Beautiful, I mean. She’s tall and dark.. Quite a figure, too. She’s probably eight or ten years older than I am, but she doesn’t show it a bit.”

“You don’t have to hide her name, you know,” Knox said. “You aren’t protecting her.”

Nat grinned. “Sorry. Habit. It’s Nat, all right. Natasha, to be exact. I don’t know what her last name is; she’s had a dozen off and on.”

“Russian?”

“Partly—a sort of mixture. When we met her, she was busy in Hungary helping the Communists come in and at the same time selling them out to all the other sides that were there at the time. She had a good thing going when she crossed Dad, who was trying to get some friends of ours out of the country. To save our friends, he exposed her and she had to run. She swore she would get him, but she never did.”

“Except now—through your name.”

“I suppose,” Nat said. “Anyway, I went to Mexico. She has a place on an island in the Gulf off a small fishing village called La Cruz. It’s between Tampico and Vera Cruz, in a rather unpopulated section. Her two men are an English renegade called Nigel Forrest—whom I swear I’ve seen somewhere before—and an American-German called Tiber.”

“New boys to me,” Knox confessed. “So is she. What’s the game, by the way?”

She grinned at his dry tone. “I wish I knew,” she said, no longer smiling. “But it is something big, Paul. Dad’s man who went there just disappeared. No trace of him. The natives say he went fishing and got too close to Fog Island—a grisly hunk of rock and swamp—and was killed by evil spirits.”

“Obviously,” Knox said, “she was making sure that all your father’s old group who might be able to identify her were eliminated. How does that make it big?”

“Wait,” she said. “I came back here and I started checking around. I learned that after she did some gold buying, a regular run took place. The gold was bought with currencies of all kinds but mostly dollars and Cuban pesos.”

“Oh, oh,” Knox said. He sat up and reached for the brandy bottle.

“I had the same reaction,” she said. “And I’ve come up with this much. Now that Batista, the Cuban strong man, is threatening to retire, there’s bound to be unrest. In fact, last spring it began. Our Iron Curtain friends seem to be trying to take advantage of the situation and, when it breaks, step in and make another Guatemala out of it. In the guise of ‘doing something for the people,’ an old-line puppet government will be set up.”

“But why the gold buying?”

“Because,” Nat argued, “it will be strictly a homegrown revolution to all appearances. That means any obvious financing will have to come from the Cuban revolutionaries themselves. So when the time is ripe they appear—with a treasury full of gold. The fact that the money is Iron Curtain money won’t be apparent.”

“Very neat,” Knox said. “Have you given this ta the authorities?”

Nat looked at him as though he had turned simple. “Hardly, Paul. They’d think I was trying to grind my own axe because the woman has taken my identity.”

It was not only reasonable, it was damned well true, he knew. “How did you make contact with me—as one of our agents?”

“One of your agents,” Nat said sadly, “was a rather greedy young woman here. She didn’t get greedy until she fell in love with a man who had been with Interpol but had succumbed to a pay-off. The two decided to pool the knowledge they’d got while legal—and go into smuggling. She needed ready cash; I supplied it for the code. That’s all.”

“I’m glad we’re rid of her,” Knox said. When anyone defaulted in that fashion it always meant trouble. More than one operative had “disappeared” for the good of the Agency. “Anything else?” he asked.

“Yes,” Nat said. “I saw her before she sailed today. There was a message for you.” She shut her eyes and quoted: “ ‘Get to La Cruz, Mexico. Tinsley raising hell. One of our men, Orvil Curtis, has disappeared down there. Details to be picked up usual place.’

“Apparently,” Nat said, “World Circle heard I was in Mexico recently.”

“And sent down Orvil Curtis—whoever he may be—and he disappeared.” Knox thought of Tinsley’s old crew, one dead here and one disappeared in Mexico—and of Orvil Curtis.

He said, “Where do we go from here?” He poured the last of the brandy into their glasses. “I can go down there openly and claim I’m on a missing person’s case for an insurance company. But what about you?”

Nat tossed off the brandy and let the glass roll across the rug. “Let
me
figure that out,” she said.