Mission of Murder, page 1
MISSION OF MURDER
Simon Larren Espionage Series
Book Three
Robert Charles
Table of Contents
CHAPTER 1: THE RED DEATH
CHAPTER 2: ARRIVAL IN ATHENS
CHAPTER 3: CARLA VALEDRI
CHAPTER 4: WILD PARTY
CHAPTER 5: CAUSE FOR REGRET
CHAPTER 6: THE EMPTY BED
CHAPTER 7: DUEL OF SILENCE
CHAPTER 8: KYROS ISLAND
CHAPTER 9: NIGHT CALLERS
CHAPTER 10: DEPORTED
CHAPTER 11: BACK INTO THE STORM
CHAPTER 12: BROTHERS IN BLOOD
CHAPTER 13: ANDROMAVITCH HAS VANISHED
CHAPTER 14: UNDER COVER OF DARKNESS
CHAPTER 15: THE WRAITH THAT KILLED
CHAPTER 16: THE MAN WITH THE BALLET DANCER FIGURE
CHAPTER 17: EVEN ODDS
CHAPTER 18: ALL ROADS LEAD TO KYROS
CHAPTER 19: AT THE SANCTUARY OF POSEIDON
CHAPTER 20: DEATH ON THE AEGEAN
NOTE TO THE READER
ALSO BY ROBERT CHARLES
CHAPTER 1: THE RED DEATH
The child was dying. The two men by her bedside were grim-faced and helpless. The mother cried without noise, silent tears burning down her face and deep sobs moving convulsively in her throat.
It was a small room with a small bed, and the tiny form coughing out her life beneath the white sheets was smaller still. The rabbits and birds on the shadowed wallpaper were dim and subdued and a few bright comics and a large doll lay unheeded by the bed. It was many days since they had last been handled. The curtains were drawn and the light was filtered, but the ugly red blotches still showed up clearly on the little girl’s sunken cheeks. She was paralysed from the chest down but one hand still moved feebly above the counterpane. The vivid red rash was again evident upon the backs of the tiny fingers.
The short, paunchy little man who was known in Whitehall as Mr. Smith laid a steadying hand upon his sister’s arm without taking his eyes from the bed. There was a constriction around his chest, a feeling of bitter frustration, deep pain, and above all a sense of trapped and savage fury.
There was no need for this. He could have stopped it. Give the right order to the right man and he could have stopped it. It was too late now for the child on the bed — but there would soon be others.
He tried to clamp down on his thoughts, for there was nothing to be gained from condemning himself because of what he might have done. They had refused to let him do anything. The official voice had said no and he was forbidden to act. His hands were tied and all he could do was hold his sister’s arm and try to comfort her while her daughter died.
The child burst into another fit of rasping coughing. The woman’s sobs became audible. The doctor moved closer to the bed, his stooped shoulders obscuring their vision.
The coughing became more violent, more heart-rending — and then stopped. There was a long silence while the doctor examined his tiny patient, and then he turned to face them, straightening his shoulders wearily.
He said gently. “It’s all over, Mrs. Taylor. She won’t feel any more pain now.”
Joan Taylor broke down into hysterical weeping. Her husband had died in a road accident six months before, and the still form on the bed had been her only child. Smith did his clumsy best to comfort her but only once in the next few hours did her words take any coherent form.
“Somebody must be able to do something,” she said dully. “There’ll be other little girls. Somebody must be able to do something.”
It was mid-afternoon when Smith was finally able to leave his grief-stricken sister sleeping under a sedative and in the capable hands of a trained nurse. He stepped down into the London street and turned left along the pavement towards his car. He was thinking of Joan’s last words and cursing his own helplessness.
Farther up the road a newsboy was shouting, and almost automatically Smith bought a paper. The headlines screamed at him.
EIGHT MORE VICTIMS OF THE KILLER DRUG
TOP CHEMISTS WORK DAY AND NIGHT TO PERFECT AN ANTIDOTE
There was no need to read any further, for the headlines said everything. Smith turned away as the newsboy began to shout again.
“…Red Death kills five more… Read all about it… Latest football news… Pay snatch in Chelsea… Red Death kills five more… Red Death—”
Smith slammed the door of his car and shut the words out. Starting the engine he turned out into the street. The car began to gather speed and his thoughts moved faster to keep pace.
The tension built up in his chest again and he could still hear the echoes of the newsboy’s shouts ringing in his ears. He had to stop for a traffic light and the red halt sign seemed to burn into his brain. The red light was the symbol of the red death.
The amber flashed and mercifully the red light went out. Then it was green and he was moving again. The newsboy’s shouts still tormented him. His chest was constricted and Joan was sobbing helplessly “Somebody must be able to do something!”
Then abruptly the tension snapped. And without making any conscious decision the little man knew that for the first time in his life he had lost a battle to his conscience. He was going to ignore an order that came direct from the Prime Minister of Great Britain.
He pulled up at the next telephone booth and went inside. Deliberately he dialled a Mayfair number. The number of a flat in Rushlake Terrace, and of a man named Simon Larren.
CHAPTER 2: ARRIVAL IN ATHENS
Simon Larren was a natural killer. He had been very thoroughly trained during the grim days of 1939–45, and his favourite allies were silence, darkness and a knife. Once he had experienced love and marriage and it had almost changed his life, but then his beloved Andrea had been murdered and it had taken him a long time to track down her killers. When the blood-stained path of death and violence came to an end there was only one place left in civilized society for a man of his kind — and that was in an organization such as the one run by the unassuming Mr. Smith.
He sat on a wooden seat as though idly watching the ducks by the Serpentine in Hyde Park. He was a tall, unsmiling man, with a strange brooding quality about his grey-green eyes. He was bare-headed and the evening breeze was stirring his dark hair. At the moment he was puzzled.
His speculations were terminated by the appearance of the short little man in the dark suit and the bowler hat. As usual Smith carried a cheap briefcase and a rolled umbrella. He was the prototype of all the insignificant, clerkish little men in the city; a nonentity who would be lost with a million duplicates in the underground or the rush hour buses. No one except Larren gave him a second glance.
Smith reached the park bench and sat down.
“Hello, Larren,” he said shortly. “Thanks for coming.”
The note of gratitude was out of place and Larren knew that whatever Smith wanted of him it was no ordinary job. He probed with his answer.
“I had to come, my curiosity got the better of me. I couldn’t reason out why you wanted to come out here instead of calling me into the office.”
Smith gave him a hard look. “My office is strictly for business — official business. I don’t invite people round there for half an hour’s idle conversation.” He stressed the words deliberately and for a moment his grey eyes revealed a glimpse of the man behind the façade.
Larren waited.
Smith said abruptly, “You’ve heard of Ameytheline — the nerve drug that was passed as perfectly safe and then found to cause delayed paralysis and ultimately death among regular takers?”
The question was merely a technicality, an opening line for what was to follow, for no one could have failed to have heard of the red death.
Larren nodded. “When the thalidomide drug prescribed to pregnant women to relieve nausea was marketed and then found to cause serious birth defects there was a public outcry. A watchdog committee was set up by the Government to ensure that from then onwards all new drugs would be properly tested by their makers before being prescribed to the public. But Ameytheline had slipped the screening before the committee was set up. The creeping paralysis was such a long-delayed reaction that at first the doctors failed to see any connection, but the vivid red rash that accompanied the closing stages provided the unexplained link which they finally traced back to the drug.”
“That’s right.” Smith’s voice was harsh. “Ameytheline was a sleep-inducing tranquillizer. It was considered so safe that it was even prescribed in rare cases for children. My five-year-old niece was one of those rare cases. She suffered from recurring nightmares and the doctor couldn’t find the cause. So, he prescribed small doses of Ameytheline to help her sleep. She’s sleeping now. I’ve just watched her die.”
Again Larren waited.
Smith went on quietly. “She was just five years old, Larren. A pretty little kid — or at least she was before that red rash covered her face.” His voice hardened again. “And there are going to be others, Larren. A hell of a lot more people are going to die before this is stopped.”
Larren said. “Every top research chemist in the country is working to find an antidote. Maybe they’ll break through.”
Smith’s grey eyes bored into Larren’s face. For a moment he fought his inner battle a second time, and then he said softly, “There already is an antidote, Larren. The antidote for Ameytheline was discovered eight days ago.”
There was a taut silence. Then Larren said flatly, “Go on.”
“Ameythe
Smith’s voice was curt and factual now. “We only know that Castel had been successful because of a couple of notes he left behind. The actual formulae and his samples were missing when his home was examined. We think that Castel was probably rushing into Milan to report his success personally to the firm that marketed the drug, and in his haste he killed himself.”
“Or was killed,” Larren interjected softly.
Smith shook his head. “The fact that someone was close at hand to remove the antidote doesn’t necessarily mean that Castel was murdered. I know it looks that way, but there are a couple of facts that don’t agree. One is that although the Italian police can’t rule out the possibility that Castel’s car was tampered with, they have examined the wreckage thoroughly and failed to find anything to suggest sabotage. And two is that the man behind the theft of the antidote is most probably Castel’s own father, and although he’s an ex-racketeer and hired killer I think he’d draw the line at murdering his own son.”
Smith paused to draw an angry breath for the tension was building up inside him as he talked. Larren remained silent, knowing that the little man would continue.
Smith said, “Castel’s father was a man named Angelo Valedri. He was born in a remote village in the deep south of Italy in 1901, and seventeen years later he emigrated alone to the United States to look for work. He did a few wild things like robbing gas stations, beating up shopkeepers for a small-time protection racket, and knifing his mistress’s husband; then he finally found himself a nice steady job with good pay and short hours. The firm he worked for was called Murder Incorporated and all he had to do was a spot of corpse making now and again. The job suited him perfectly, and at nineteen he was one of the ablest killers in the organization. He was smart too. Smart enough to get out of the paid killer bracket and into the racketeering class where the big money was. He was a rich man by the time Murder Incorporated began to lose its grip, and one of the few to get away scot-free without anyone being able to actually prove anything about him. The States were getting too hot for him and in 1931 he took a ship back to Italy.
“There he almost immediately married a hard-working little waitress — who must have been some woman to have had the taming effect on him that she did. She gave him two children; a daughter named Carla nine months after their wedding, and the son Paolo a few years later in 1935. She even kept him going straight for a bit but it couldn’t last. Valedri was born rotten and she could only reform him until the novelty had worn off. A year after the boy was born Valedri was shot down by the Italian police while trying to rob a bank in Verona. He lived despite a smashed thigh bone, and was sentenced to thirty years in prison.
“His wife brought up the two children for the next few years, and then she caught pneumonia and died. Carla was then placed in a convent and Paolo was sent to one of the most expensive private schools in Italy. For Valedri still had a king-sized bank account left over from his profitable stay in the U.S. and he could well afford the best of everything for them. In fact the solicitors who handled his affairs invested his money so carefully for him that it continued to grow all the time he was in prison.
“Valedri was an unusual man, he hated society and all that it stood for, yet at the same time he was determined that his son was going to have all the advantages that the society could provide. Paolo had the best education that money could buy, and he was registered at the school under his mother’s maiden name of Castel to avoid anyone knowing that his father was a convict. Even the boy himself did not know his father was alive, and like everyone else he believed that the money that paid for his keep came from his mother’s will.
“Valedri eventually came out of prison four years ago with a seven-year remission for good behaviour. At that time Paolo Castel had just finished university and was taking up his position as a research chemist in Rome. Valedri still wanted the boy to have every chance and made no attempt to contact him. He was afraid that the stigma of a convict’s son, if it once got out, would ruin all Castel’s hopes for advancement.”
Smith broke off and breathed heavily for a few moments. Then he began again.
“Obviously Valedri kept an interested eye on his son’s progress, and he must have received some satisfaction from reading of his success in discovering Ameytheline. But I think he was probably more interested when Ameytheline proved to be a killer, especially as his son was now the best hope for providing a quick antidote. Valedri could see the possibilities in that antidote, and he was callous enough not to care how many people died while he hunted around for the highest bidder.
“However, I don’t think he would have willingly jeopardized his son’s career. The boy meant too much to him. I think it was more likely that he was afraid of somebody else thinking along the same lines as himself, and so he had the boy watched for his own protection. But he couldn’t protect him against the sheer bad luck of a genuine accident. Whoever was watching him in Milan probably jumped to the same conclusion that you did — namely that Castel’s car had been fixed. And so he ransacked the chemist’s laboratory, located his notes and the antidote samples, and then packed them off to Valedri.”
Smith paused again and Larren said grimly, “And now Valedri is using them to blackmail the British Government — is that it?”
Smith nodded. “That’s it. We can have it at a price.”
Larren said harshly, “If that’s the only way why isn’t it paid? The red death is killing off the population at the rate of a score per day. Surely no price is too high to stop it.”
Smith said bitterly, “But the price is too high. Valedri has not only asked for the nice round sum of eighty million pounds — he also wants us to hand over Andromavitch.”
Larren was puzzled. “You mean the Russian? The scientist?”
“That’s right, Larren. Professor Eugene Vladomir Andromavitch, the finest scientific brain of the century. He knows more about nuclear fission than any other two people alive put together. If we lost him to the other side and they made him talk it could ultimately cost us more lives than the red death ever will. We cannot afford to hand him over at any price.”
“But what does a man like Valedri want with a scientist?”
“I don’t know. That’s the one big hole in the jigsaw. As far as we know Valedri has shown no previous interest in politics. His hatred includes all forms of civilized society. Maybe he hopes to auction Andromavitch to the highest bidder but I can’t see him really expecting to accomplish that. And besides, if it was more money he wanted, he could simply put up the cash price on the antidote. Quite frankly I just don’t know what his game is. At the moment it’s stalemate, and all we can do is pray that one of our research chemists can come up with a new answer to Ameytheline before anything leaks to the Press.”
Larren said softly, “Can’t something be done about Valedri? It must be possible to bring him out into the open somehow.”
Smith’s voice became more bitter than Larren had ever heard it before. “We don’t have to find him,” the little man rasped. “We know exactly where he is. But I can’t touch him.”
Larren said. “I don’t understand.”
“It’s quite simple. When Valedri came out of prison he was still a rich man, and as he had no desire for any social life he leased a small, useless island in the Aegean and built himself a villa. The island is called Kyros and barely covers half a square mile. It was uninhabited before Valedri arrived and I think he leased it pretty cheaply from the Greek government.
“The point is that although we are one hundred per cent certain that Valedri must have the antidote, we have no actual proof. The Andromavitch angle made it my business and I had some of my best people on the job before I was told to lay off; and their reports show that unless somebody is being fantastically brilliant in covering his tracks then Valedri is the only man in the picture. But we can’t prove it. And even if we could Valedri is still Castel’s nearest living relative, and as the boy made no will he is legally entitled to claim all the boy’s effects. And as Castel was working privately that includes his notes and samples. So you see, legally we have no grounds for asking the Greeks to hand Valedri over, and to land on Kyros and take him would be invading Greek soil and literally an act of war.”
