The Paper Pistol Contract, page 5
Nice wasn’t the word. The black-hulled yacht ahead was a two-masted schooner, Bermuda-rigged and stay-sailed, and she had a racing rake to her. As we went pounding close, I thought she must be at least a hundred feet long, with her main-mast going ninety. My God, I thought, what must she look like under full sail, about 5,000 feet of it, with a fair wind putting a bone in her teeth. The launch came about smartly at the gangplank, and I stepped up it and onto the deck of Warlock.
Alan Blanchard was waiting for me, and we shook hands. Alan is a muscular boy of twenty-eight who has a bad case of acne; but it doesn’t show much because he keeps it so tanned. He is a third-generation multimillionaire West Texan, of rancher stock, and has tried all the action in the world. He was a dipsomaniac when he was fifteen, whipped the noxious sauce at nineteen, and was a seven-handicap polo player internationally when he was twenty-two. That got boring, so he bought a competition Maserati, and knocked off several Grand Prix road races against top-drawer talent.
When I say that he whipped the drinking problem, I don’t mean that he quit. He searched out all the available information, developed a clock in his head, and learned how to fit heavy drinking into his life. After touring the Alcoholics Anonymous chapters, he shook his head at the quivering cures who were cradling cups of cooling coffee, and took off for Geneva. There, at the World Health Organization headquarters, he offered himself as an unpaid assistant on national alcoholic problems, and worked with WHO experts, studying nutrition and all the various facets involved. For two years, he didn’t have even a beer. Then, when he had it all sorted out, he rejoined the Dionysian ranks.
I had met him first while spearfishing off Caracol Reef, in Haiti. And had recommended him to Howard Shale, then head of the action division of the agency as a hell of a prospect who only needed an interest in life to be valuable. After that, Blanchard began to show up occasionally on the edges of the world’s spook parade. I had never worked with him, and I presumed that because of his great personal wealth, he was under outside contract, as I was.
“Joséf!” he cried, and I instinctively glanced around as I took his hand. He laughed and jarred my shoulder with a stiff-arm. “Every living body aboard is cleared, sport. Let’s go down and have a light libation.”
Midships, I stepped over the low bulkhead behind Blanchard and followed him down to a large rosewood-paneled main cabin. He went to the bar, poured out two double Black Daniels, and I sank on a stool and had mine. He filled my glass again as I glanced around.
“Is this thing yours, or did the agency tap for it?” I asked. Alan smiled.
“No such luck. She’s registered in my name. Built in Japan; took three years. Down below she carries twin Napier-Deltic diesels, 2400 horsepower apiece. Man, you ought to see her under full canvas.”
I could imagine it. And I wasn’t engineer enough to know what 4800 horsepower would do to a vessel of her length and design, but I thought it would either shake her to pieces or make a sled out of her. Alan took our glasses and the bottle across the cabin, and I sank down in the leather cushions and regarded him.
“And your love life?”
“Lousy, as usual, pappy-san.” Blanchard used the tail of his T-shirt to mop sweat from his brow. “Just divorced my third wife, and I’m thinking of going back to masturbation. A lot more private, sanitary, and convenient, with no back talk.”
I laughed, and Alan got up and opened one of the rosewood panels, dialed at a combination wall safe, and took out some papers.
“This is a five-week report on Engineer Etienne Gerard’s movements. Around the clock. His history, habits, and friends, what is known of his future movements. When you’ve figured out where you want to put him on ice—on board here or someplace else—just whistle.”
“Who does the snatching?”
“A team of six Chinese. Two of them are working in Government House, where Gerard lives and has an office suite. One in the kitchen, one in housekeeping.”
“Okay. What do you know about Mr. T. C. Dingle, alias the T-Bird?”
Blanchard shook his head and rolled his eyes. “He’s wild, ain’t he? But you got the title wrong. He’s Doctor Dingle, both medical and Ph. D. in Chemistry.”
I looked up, startled. “You’re joking!”
“No.” Blanchard was insistent. “That’s what they told me in New York while I was being briefed on this caper. How does he fit into the action?”
“I don’t know, exactly. He’s not involved in the Gerard kidnapping … comes into the other side of it. I’m supposed to meet Neal Pearsall in Suva to get the details. Look, I want a full make out of Washington on Odile Gebhardt and T. C. Dingle. That last one will probably make them sore, calling for a rerun on one of our own agents, but do it anyway. Indirectly, get his prints and forward them for comparison. They’re probably on file in Inspector Waksand’s office, but if that seems too risky, have somebody lift them off a glass.”
“Right.” Alan had written the names down. “I know what you mean about the T-Bird. Guess they told him to live colorfully, but he’s downright gaudy. Did you know he’s got a pet pig? Strolls around Papeete with the thing on a leash.”
“Unhunh. I met the pig.”
I poured another drink, put it down, and got up to stare out a porthole at the blinding glare of sunlight off pitching waves. “Has that comic-opera gunboat, La Capricieuse, checked you yet?”
“Yesterday. Nothing to it. Gave them a drink, showed them we’re doing research, with Paris permission, for the Howard Institute.”
“Okay, now listen to me. We’re not pilfering from wastebaskets. We abduct this wheelhorse engineer, especially with a team of Chinese, and Bonnie Prince Charlie deGaulle starts revolving like a Catherine wheel. In case you haven’t heard, he’s the big man now. If there’s one slip here, just one, I’ll be in a French brig for about a thousand years because the U S of A will never have heard of me. Understand?”
“Yeah, sure.” Blanchard was unhappy. “I’ve got some more news, but you’re not going to like it.”
“Why not?”
“Washington thinks they have spotted the Peking agent.”
“So?”
Alan spread his broad hands and looked at them. “When I came through Suva ten days ago, I got a report and some film clips from Washington. By safe hand, State Department special courier. They think they know who the Peking agent is.”
“Oh?”
“Yes. An old friend of yours from the China War.”
“Go on,” I said.
“His name is Georgie Huang.”
I stood staring down at him. “China, and Formosa, the whole Pacific, are full of Huangs, Wongs, Wangs …”
“No, this is the one who flew senior pilot when you were operations manager for the Himalayan route. In charge of the mountain stations in India, China, and Burma.”
I took a deep breath, and was gone from that tropic sea. I was over an infinity of snowy peaks, stretching from Tibet to Burma, with the wild wind flourishing up white banners on the roof of the world. I had dropped back more than two decades, to 1942, 1943. I was back in a forgotten adventure, charting the movements of the last real group of all-weather pilots aviation knew before the brisk rocket and jet boys took over. …
“But that man’s dead,” I said slowly. “I ordered the body bags sent up Mount Likiang myself.”
Alan Blanchard got up and went to a wall locker. “They told me you wouldn’t believe it. That Huang, officially, was supposed to have plowed into Likiang on a U.S. Navy charter flight. So they asked me to have you look at this.”
He pulled out a tripod movie screen, erected it at the far end of the cabin, got a projector, and plugged it in. When he had closed the doors to the stairway and the galley, and snapped the curtains over the portholes, he switched the projector on.
“These films,” he said, “were taken in Peking, Hong Kong, and Montreal. None of them is over a year old.”
First on the screen was a shaky street scene; the camera must have been hand-held. “Peking,” said Alan. The focus was on a busy street, shooting across it at a slight angle toward the entrance of the Peace Café. The sign said just that, in English. Chinese in ill-fitting clothes were hurrying by the café. A boxy car, no trim, stopped in front of the place, and a man stepped out of the back door. It was Georgie Huang.
He was older, still handsome, but had thickened in the gut. And his clothes were unusual in that drab street because they were straight Poole cut, from London. After ducking to speak to the driver, Huang entered the Peace Café.
Blanchard stopped the film. “This place is a hangout for some of the American defectors still living in mainland China. Huang is a frequent visitor there.” He flipped the switch again, and I saw a pan shot across the lobby of the Peninsular Hotel in Hong Kong. It must have been taken at about five in the afternoon because the full freight of international types was there, ringing the bar and crowding the tables. Blimpish British officialdom in tweeds, military types from all nations, and full-bloused Eurasian girls, not quite understanding what their escorts were saying. No matter—their tilted breasts made understanding picayune.
It was like going back in time. As the film unrolled, I saw all the hustle-and-con guys, the smash-and-grab boys, the memsahibs faded from the sun. The gabby American pilots who had grown so used to good living that they would fly your brocaded wall hangings anywhere, knowing that narcotics were hidden in the silken folds.
They were all there, all the captains and the would-be kings. The sharpie entrepreneurs, who bought fine fabrics and worked it with slave—almost starvation—labor for the American market.
The Hong Kong scene ran on, several people turned away from the crowded bar, and George Huang stepped into the opening, laughing and steering a stunning Eurasian girl. I had slept with her, and taught her to play tennis. Her name was Ugette, and she was half-French and half-Hanoi-whatever. She was a flame of mixed bloods and had the black nipples to prove it. Her presence made the scene even more curious, because I had known her, too, in the old days, and she was also supposed to be dead.
The projector whirred on. After a splice, we had a snow scene, and Blanchard said, “Montreal.” I watched a ski lift, but could not recognize anybody. Then there was a jump-cut, and the angle shifted to the bottom of a ski run. Georgie Huang came rushing straight at me, crouching, and stemmed expertly to a halt in a shower of snow. Blanchard cut the switch and the image faded.
“Is that the man?” he asked.
“Yes.”
The captain sank down beside me on the leather couch. “He’s also been to London twice in the last year. He goes in and out of Red China at will.” I didn’t say anything, and he turned toward me. “Would you like to talk to him?”
“What do you mean?”
While I watched he crossed to the bar and reached for the radio-telephone. “Get that Suva number for me. Yes, the one at the Victoria Hotel.” Then he beckoned, and I walked over beside the bar.
Shielding the mouthpiece of the receiver with one hand, he said, “You have interesting friends. Yesterday, during our transmission to San Francisco, through Honolulu, a voice broke in on the clear and asked us to have Joe Gall call Georgie Huang at this number in a Suva hotel room. I checked it out, and Huang is registered in that room.”
I took the telephone and listened to the relay. The Bora Bora station came in and was shut out. Suva answered, and the operator at the Victoria Hotel answered with a clipped British accent. I asked to speak to George Huang. There was a burr on the line, and a voice caught in mid-laughter answered.
“Georgie?” I inquired, and heard a full shout.
“Joe, you capitalist rat! How are you?”
“I understood you were dead, and had mourned you properly. Was it all wasted?” I asked.
“No, sir. Jam for the cat. I will die some day, and you’ll already have done your penance.” A laughing woman tried to take the phone away from him, and George said, “No, dear, this is business.” She fell away, shouting, and George’s voice was strong again in my ear. “Look, old friend, this is a matter of business, purely and simply. My family owned a hell of a lot of things in China before Mao, and I thought it was stupid just to let them go by default. You understand?”
“Yes, George.”
“All right. I’ve bailed out about four million dollars worth so far, for services rendered, so forth. I act as liaison between Taipeh and Peking, other places …” His voice faded and I heard him say, “Here, hand me that,” and then he came on strong again. “I won’t ever forget that you used to call it by the ancient name, Pekin. But pappy, you’ve got to fold your hand on this one.”
“I can’t do that, George,” I said as I motioned for Alan to pour me a drink.
“Look,”—a trace of laughter was in his voice—“I’m trying to salvage what I can of my family’s fortune, no more than that. I’ve checked you out, Joe, and I know you’re a contract man. They seem to remember you as the executioner in about nineteen countries. For money, like me. Back off from this one, Joe. Don’t get in the way.”
“George, I am in the way.”
“All right.” There was honest regret in his voice. “I could pay you twice as much as they will, and I know how much that is, in your Swiss bank account. You could turn your hillbilly mountain into a paradise.”
“No, George.”
“Oh, Christ, I thought not.” He sighed, and it was a real sigh.
I was remembering the half-Scottish, half-Chinese boy sitting beside me in the British-American Club in Calcutta at the head of a long table. Around the table sat a motley crew: laughing pilots from all over the world, technical representatives, Dutch officers with six stars on their shoulders, willing Eurasian girls, and assorted pimps and connivers.
One night, at that table, a fight broke out, and Huang only lifted the enormous star-ruby ring on his left little finger. The brawlers were hustled out with dispatch, the drinks were renewed, and Georgie kept on telling jokes.
Later that night, because Calcutta was blacked out after the Japanese air raids on the Kittapore docks, Georgie and I went riding in a horse-drawn gharri. Through the dark streets toward Kariah Road, the whore district of Calcutta. As our open conveyance wound through the narrow streets, through Acre Lane, George glanced at me and said, “After this, it’s all good; but dangerous. After this, we have to have it.”
A few minutes later, inside the huge, festive whorehouse, we bought and distributed buckets of hard-boiled eggs, as a form of reverse lend-lease. Handing them out like oversized pearls to the thirty-seven different nationalities of whores, and the grinning row of bushy-haired youths who sat waiting primly for the marine trade …
“Don’t come in here, George,” I said.
“I have to, pappy,” he answered quietly. “And if you’re in the way, I’ll take you out.”
There was no answer to that. “Good-bye, George,” I said, and handed the phone to Blanchard. He hung it up and was silent as I got off the stool.
“Kid,” I said, “the lotus days in the South Seas are over. Keep this scow and all its crew at General Quarters around the clock because you may have to move on very short notice.”
“Tik hai, sahib,” he said, jerking his head to one side.
“Things are about to get rough,” I added.
“Right,” said Blanchard, and I turned and walked up and out of the luxurious cabin to the deck. The crewmen were waiting, and when I had dropped lightly into the back cockpit, the launch went swerving away from Warlock and whipped around to the north.
Chapter 6
The rented boy was waiting in his canoe by the cove pier. He had speared about thirty pounds of fish, and I admired them dutifully as we went around the point toward our own inlet. We beached the boat, and when we got to the bungalow, I asked Maeva if she would pick out what fish we needed and take the rest around to St. Francis Hospital. Her broad face broke into a smile as she nodded. Then Richard asked if he could take her on his Vespa.
I looked at them both. “All right with me if it’s all right with Maeva.” She nodded, got a big jute sack from the kitchen, and the two of them went running down toward the beach. Watching them from the terrace, I wondered if the boy was playing his cards just right and frigging our cook. It was quite possible because most people in Tahiti who were ambulant seemed to be having carnal knowledge of each other. Still, I had a certain responsibility for him.
The boy was an irritation. He was at the gangly, pimply age, when he felt like scratching the itch but didn’t know where to find it. As part of my cover, he was necessary. And because he had to be able to keep his mouth shut for sixty days, he had been recruited from the School For Professional Children, in New York. But this also meant that he was sophisticated for sixteen, and in the past few days I had caught him viewing me with a reflective air, as if he might be getting wise to me.
I watched them cross the road from the beach, get on the motor scooter, and swerve toward Papeete, with Maeva holding the bulging bag of fish. In an hour they were back, and at eight Maeva served us a bouillabaise that was as good as any chef in Marseilles could make. When she had cleaned up and gone, Richard and I listened to the radio for an hour; then he went to bed. We had our usual argument beforehand because he never wanted to take a fresh-water shower. But I mowed him down and saw him brush his teeth and clean his nails. When he was in his bedroom with the light off, I took the brandy bottle out to the terrace and sat watching the traffic.
The jagged pinnacles of Moorea were blotted out by clouds, and I stared across the bay. I was hearing again Georgie Huang’s voice, and thinking of the time I had known Huang—on the big rock-candy mountains. He had been the king of those mountains, and had made more round trips across them than any other man alive. He had been educated in Scotland and England, and was heir to a railroad fortune in the China that had been rapidly coming apart, not because of Japanese bravery but because of Chinese corruption. Georgie had approached the problem like a laughing hedonist.
