The Paper Pistol Contract, page 7
“May I kiss you?” he asked, teasingly. “Not the nose kiss, a real one.”
“You want?” she asked in a small voice.
“I don’t kiss girls I don’t want,” Huang said. He kissed her slowly and thoroughly. Then he held her away and asked, “Was it the manureva that frightened you?”
Hina looked at him straight for the first time, astonished. He had used the Tahitian word for “airplane,” which meant “the bird of heaven.”
“Yes,” she admitted. “It was my first time so high.”
“But no trouble, eh?” He spanked her on the tail and sat back down in his throne. “Now why did you come here?”
“I was in Bar Vaima, feeling sad because the rich American did not want me, and a man bought me Hinano and offered me $200 to come. American dollars. I thought he was fou, but when I said yes, he went out and bought me manureva ticket and gave me $200.” She reached for her champagne glass and drained it; then her brow clouded. “He said ticket will take me back to Papeete in the morning. Is it so?”
“Absolutely.” Huang nodded and sat staring at his huge ruby ring. “All you have to do is relax, take a few drinks with me, and tomorrow deliver something to Mr. Durden, the rich American.”
“No contraband?” she asked. “Very strict now in Papeete douane. Because of big bomb frappe, everybody searched.”
“No contraband,” said Georgie Huang, smiling at her.
“Only a short message to an old friend. You like the champagne?”
“No!” Hina Rapa shook her head emphatically. “Taste like vinegar.”
“What else?” he asked, and when she said rum, he twitched the star-ruby finger again. Ordered rum and lime. When the servant had gone pattering off the veranda, he smiled at her again and said, “We watch the sun go down over the burra sahib’s harbor, have a big dinner, and then go to bed together. Okay?”
“Okay!” answered Hina Rapa promptly. “Sound great.”
“Maybe even,” added Georgie Huang, his perfect teeth showing, “we’ll go downstairs after we get drunk and make ‘long pig’ out of that head desk clerk, the snotty one.”
“Oh, I like that!” said Hina Rapa, laughing out loud and clapping her hands. (“Long pig” was what the Melanesian cannibals called a cooked human being.) “But he be tough, I bet.” Then, still laughing, she stood up, took her cheap store dress off swiftly, and kicked it away. Going to the tall man in the black silk gown, she kissed him on the mouth. “Too goddamned hot,” she explained. “Can’t breathe in that dress.”
The handsome mandarin who looked half like a papaa nodded and caressed her breasts in complete understanding.
Chapter 9
The next afternoon, I was walking from the seashore toward the road, carrying a bucket of fish, when someone whistled at me. It was Hina Rapa. I put the bucket down and called back for Richard or Maeva to take it up to the house. They were beaching the narrow outrigger canoe, and looked up and nodded.
Hina was sitting sideways on her scooter seat, and when I approached, she said, “Hi.”
“Hi, yourself,” I said. “Park your chevaux in the driveway and come up for a drink.”
“No time,” she said, and handed me a small leather folder wrapped in oilskin. “This for you.”
“Thanks.” I took the leather folder, thinking that it was probably another of the T-Bird’s incredible communiqués. “Sure you won’t come in for a drink, Hinano, or coke?”
“No time,” she repeated. “Must have an answer, so you read it now.”
I glanced at her unsmiling face and unwrapped the oilskin. The leather folder held only a crudely printed label and a note addressed to me. The label was on rice paper, and the crude lettering was in red and black:
DURGWELL
PHARMACEUTIC LABORATORY
LIONS GLOBE
Luck Street, Tientsin
“Pappy-san,” said the note, “I’m coming into Tahiti day after tomorrow. The bearer of this can lead you to me. If you do come, and we can make a little kumshaw deal, like $200,000 deposited to your account in a numbered Swiss bank account, we’ll have a drink and say good-bye again. If you don’t come, I will set you up with about 10 kilos of this special merchandise and make sure Waksand knows where to find it. Cheers!” And the note was signed, “Faithfully, Georgie”.
I knew what the “LIONS GLOBE” label was used on because I had received a copy of it in the dossier Washington had forwarded me on George Huang. It was used on the sacks of heroin exported from the People’s Republic of China as “special merchandise” by the Special Trade Bureau. The heroin was refined from opium grown in Yunnan Province, and in a statement included in the dossier, the U. S. Treasury Department claimed that Red China raised 6,000 tons of opium annually, as against only 700 tons for the rest of the world.
The dossier also stated, without qualification, that George Huang was the official international ambassador and salesman for the Special Trade Bureau. Since all 6,000 tons were processed into morphine or heroin and sold abroad, except for that used for legal medical requirements within mainland China, it was obvious that George would be able to plant a hundred pounds of heroin, or a thousand, on me.
It was plain enough. I had to go with him or that Chef de La Sûrété, Georges Waksand, would bottle me up in a hurry. And once I was brigged, the people who employed me would say “Who? I don’t believe we know him.” And that would be it. Inside the local bastille, I was sure to get the shock treatment, and other French spécialités.
“Tell him yes, I accept,” I said. Hina Rapa said she would meet me at the Tiki place on Thursday. At eleven o’clock in the morning. Kicking her Vespa off its parking mount, she warned me not to be late, that where we had to go took a long time.
“Okay,” I said.
She kicked her scooter into life and went swerving around expertly toward Papeete. I walked across the highway and up the bungalow steps. Richard and Maeva were waiting on the terrace, and I told Maeva to carry the hurricane lamp down to the cove and hang it on the pole there. She looked at me in astonishment and asked who could see the lamp in broad daylight.
“Just take the position that I’m crazy and do what I tell you,” I ordered, and she nodded and turned toward the kitchen. Richard got me a drink and asked if I had problems. I assured him that a man who could plan ahead never had problems. Disasters, maybe, but never problems. Then I went to the terrace and watched Maeva go hurrying across the lawn with the hurricane lamp.
The launch from Warlock did not come into the cove until an hour after dark. After it had swung around and tied up, I motioned for Alan Blanchard to climb up to the pier. There had been a prearrangement that if I got in sudden trouble and was afraid to use the transmitter, the hurricane light would bring him in with the launch. While the crewmen lounged in the gently rolling boat, we walked out of earshot. I took the portfolio from him. Snapped on my lighter, and let him read the note and look at the label.
He whistled with incredulity. “He plans to take you all the way out.”
“Worse than that, Alan. He’s in British territory and doesn’t have to come into French Oceania at all. He can bust me out this way, and somebody we don’t suspect can grab the marbles. He’s done a very neat job of entrapment.”
“So?”
“So where is your old friend T-Bird?”
“On board.” Blanchard hesitated. “He told me about sending you the note in the open, about the leprosarium, and I chewed him out. I think he understands it was a goof.”
“A goof, for Christ’s sake! What is this operation, amateur night in the South Pacific? You tell the dumb bastard not to do one other thing unless I order it.”
“Okay, okay.” Alan waited.
“Send him in on the launch tomorrow morning, and have him check into Les Tropiques. Before noon. To wait for word from me. And I want Warlock to move in after dark tomorrow toward Port Phaeton. Stay outside the international limit and send the launch in to wait for me. At nine o’clock. All right?”
“Yes.” He said it slowly. “Hell of a swell out there, pappy.”
“You’ll be able to hold it,” I said tersely, “because you will have both your big diesels turning. I want to be aboard by 10 P.M. After the launch puts me on, we want to clear these waters fast.”
“Oh?” He had brightened up. “Somebody chasing us?”
“Could be. My butt is in a sling, and I’m trying to unsling it, so be ready to apply full power.”
“Right,” said Blanchard, and his broad, acned face peered at me reflectively over the flame of his cigarette lighter. “You’re planning to jump the gun on the whole operation, ain’t you, pappy?”
“I’m always trying to jump the gun, kid, when my butt is in a sling,” I said. “Now shove off.”
He laughed, moved to the end of the pier, and dropped down the ladder into the launch. It went moving away smoothly under reduced power, without any running lights.
Chapter 10
When I walked back to the bungalow, I found Dr. Toy on the terrace talking to Richard. The little doctor was wearing his usual gleaming sharkskin suit, and he politely refused a drink or coffee. Saying that he had only dropped by to report on the tests.
“Please, a moment, Doctor,” I interrupted. I turned to Richard. “Go see if Maeva is nearly cleaned up in the kitchen, and ask if she’d like to go into town with you to the ciné.”
“I’ll just do that, big daddio,” he said, and he left us with the spade-handed Jackie Gleason get-off. I shook my head in wonder and Toy laughed.
“An energetic lad,” he said.
“An energetic idiot. It’s important that I talk to you for a few minutes, Doctor. I realize that you’re busy, but the matter is urgent. That’s why I’m sending the boy and the servant to town. Can you stay for fifteen minutes?”
“Yes.” He nodded, and unbuttoned his gleaming white coat. Richard came back to say that Marvelous was just about ready, and I told him to go put on a clean shirt and some socks. He made his spastic exit again, crying “I hear and will obey, master!” Toy, grinning, sat down and I tried him on the drink again.
“A cognac and coffee, perhaps,” he said, and I got one for both of us. We were talking idly when Richard and Maeva came out on the terrace, and I handed the boy the car keys. He had never driven the Rover before and was about to go Gleason again when I reached for the keys. That sobered him up, and after I had cautioned Maeva to keep him under fifty miles an hour, they went down the terrace steps two at a time. The little Chinese doctor and I watched the car turn onto the highway toward Papeete.
“Mrs. Gebhardt? Is she all right?” I asked.
“She is fine, Mr. Durden.”
I poured us another pony of cognac. “Okay. You know who I am because the agency reported you as fully cleared on all local contacts.” He nodded, and I went on. “Then we have no mystery. But Doctor, if you keep on with this Mr. Moto jazz, like you one fine jumped-up hand-laundry man, we’ll get nowhere. At Antioch, Southern Cal, and Johns Hopkins, you were in the top five. You have passed your specialty boards in orthopedics and neuro-psychiatry, and you interned under Smithwick in Boston. So I wonder, can we forget this crap about you chopping kindling by the small sack?” Leon Toy smiled slightly and nodded. “Mr. Gall,” he said, and even his voice had changed, deepened. “You may be a fine … whatever it is you are, but you are a poor student of doctor-patient psychology. Didn’t you ever hear Dr. Will Mayo’s prescription for the successful physician? Dr. Will said that a doctor had to wear glasses in order to have a look of dignity, and be constipated in order to have a look of concern. That way, everybody would trust him.”
I laughed and tapped my pony glass on the table. “I knew it, I knew you were a lousy charlatan. Just out of curiosity, what happened to you with the gymnastics at Cal? In your dossier, it says you were Olympic caliber, and then no other mention of it.”
“Quite simple. I did have the Olympic team made, barring one last meet, and then I slipped and cracked my lower spine. A ribbon fracture—spondylolisthesis.” “Oh? One last invasion of your privacy. Why, being so well qualified all around and a specialist in two fields, are you here in French Oceania?”
Toy smiled faintly again, and turned his coffee cup. “I’m not sure you want to hear the answer to that one, Mr. Gall. As you have noted, my medical education has been good. But when I reached a certain stage of proficiency, there had to be a choice. I had no scholarships, no one helped me, and so it was a free choice. Where would I practice? New York, Boston, Chicago, Beverly Hills—I had offers from all of them. But the complete physician, who is becoming obsolete, I fear, is just as much what he does away from his office as what he does in surgery or diagnostics, or the rest of it. He must be a complete man, or he becomes insular and ignorant. Am I boring you?”
I poured him another cognac.
“I decided against America because your overwhelming materialistic culture there would not let me breathe. You have evolved a society dominated by the businessman, and he, very often, should not be allowed in the front door of your house. He is bad, stupid company. Your writer, Miss Ayn Rand, who must be a very odd person, has stated the American case frankly. Jesus, Buddha, Mahomet, Jehovah, all the older Gods, have been preempted by the God of Profit. The cross on the altar is twisted into a dollar sign. Only that. I hoped for the amenities, and less money. I wanted to practice in metropolitan France, but in spite of my qualifications I had to come out here for four years before I could do it.”
I did not answer, and we sat listening to the breakers crash and plume against the reef. The fragrances of Tahiti, iodine and brackish coast … Untended sewer ditches fighting the bland promise of the tiare Tahiti, an unspoken question. Do the lovers here wash well enough? And as if in answer, the harsh clattering of the palm fronds … Truth is a chancey thing, and very seldom come by.
“Doctor,” I said abruptly, “I’m going to kidnap Engineer Etienne Gerard tomorrow night.”
“You’re a bold man,” answered Dr. Toy without hesitation.
“I need to be more than bold. I cannot tell you why it is necessary because I have not been told. But I am instructed to do it. This much I can say. He will not be harmed, and he will not be removed from French Oceania. He will, however, be held incommunicado for several days.”
Dr. Toy poured himself a cognac. “I am compromising myself by even sitting here with you. Compromising my professional future. It is true that I have been cleared by American intelligence for several research projects, but I am not an agent. And Gerard is the engineer in charge of the nuclear test. What you propose will cause an international incident bigger than the U2 business.”
“Yes. All I want from you is a simple disabling liquid, to be introduced into Engineer Gerard’s evening meal tomorrow night. It must be potent enough to warrant calling an ambulance, and removing him to the hospital. And with sedative effect strong enough to keep him well under for two hours. No more.”
Toy looked at me curiously. “What do you gain by that, making the man sleepy and sick?”
“All we need, Doctor. We have several plants in his offices and his apartment. I want one of them, a Chinese who works in the kitchens, to come by your office early in the morning and pick up this elixir that is to be put into his soup, dessert, whatever you advise. To be served to him in the evening. He eats regularly at eight.”
Toy stared at me. “So the man is incapacitated. He collapses and needs hospitalization. How does that help you?”
“It helps me, Doctor, because I will be driving the ambulance, and will have faultless credentials to be doing that job.”
Dr. Toy shook his head slowly. “You are flat crazy,” he stated; then he scratched his cheek. “And you cannot possibly get out of the grounds at Government House.” He sighed again. “The soup, I think, would be best. A Frenchman of that age and background would always take soup with his evening meal…”
“Good, Now one last thing, Doctor.” I handed him a small sheet of notepaper, folded twice. “I am going to give you the name of the location where Gerard will be held after I have bagged him. Somehow, after two days have passed, I want you to see that news of this location gets to the proper parties in Peking.”
Dr. Toy stared at the folded square of paper, and then at me. “Mr. Gall,” he said slowly, “the French Government was case-hardened in Algeria and Indochina. If I do this seemingly simple thing, I must have a promise from you. That you will never again in your life, you or any of your associates, speak to me, notice me, or consult me professionally. Or for any other reason.”
All the bland joviality was gone; the dark eyes were probing mine, and his tone was curt.
“A deal,” I said. “My promise.”
With his left hand, Toy reached for and unwrapped the square of paper. Read the name on it, and burned the slip in the ashtray. Then, getting up, he bowed slightly to me and walked across the terrace and down to his car.
Chapter 11
After the initial check at the gates to Government House, the drive wound around through the tree-shaded lawn and forked. One graveled drive led to the front of the colonnaded building’s entrance, and the other wound around the back to the tradesman’s entrance. When the ambulance came wheeling up to the front gates with its two-tone Klaxon honking and was admitted, I stayed back in the shrubbery at the far turn, which was shielded from both the gates and the building itself.
The ambulance, having cleared the gates, came whining toward me in low gear, its Klaxon silenced, and I stepped out in its path, flashing the beam of my torch irritably. The vehicle stopped, and I moved forward into the glare of its headlights, imperious in my red-tabbed uniform of a French coronel. I motioned the Tahitian driver and the junior French officer out. They both began jabbering at me in patois and French while I reached for their papers.
