The By-Pass Control (3 page)

“Go on.”

“One came from Poland. He brought the story in.”

“What story?”

“There was a man named Louis Agrounsky, an engineer.”

He looked at me carefully, but I shook my head. “Never heard of him.”

“Very few ever did. He was an electronics engineer employed on our ICBM projects. In fact, the chief technician, in charge of the project. Somehow or other he has disappeared.”

“When?”

“About a year ago.”

“What makes him important?”

“Only one thing.”

I waited. Charlie Corbinet was watching me carefully, the drink in his hand forgotten.

“What?”

“The simple fact that Moscow’s top agent was assigned to locate him.”

“So?”

“Those two men were assigned to find him too, just to uncover why the Soviets wanted him so badly. They were narrowing down the search when they disappeared and you showed up in time to really scramble things.”

Rondine came up with another drink and shook one of the capsules from the bottle and handed them both to me silently. I didn’t really notice it, but my side was hurting like hell.

“Now you tell me,” Charlie said and I knew he had spilled all he knew.

When I swallowed the capsule and washed it down with the Four Roses and ginger ale I said, “Vito Salvi was ready to do anything to stay alive. He tried to make a deal.”

“Oh?”

“I’ll give you something to feed on, Charlie. I want you to go home and think on it hard and you’ll know what I have to do. There can’t be any cross purposes or interference because on this one we’ll need everybody we can get our hands on and have to pull out all the stops.”

“I’m waiting, Tiger.”

“You know how the hot line works?”

Charlie Corbinet nodded, waiting.

“You know about the other one?”

“Suppose you detail it for me,” he said.

“Sure.” I leaned back and closed my eyes, feeling the capsule beginning to take hold. “Moscow has one like it too. All over the country we have ICBM’s buried and waiting to fly off to predesignated enemy targets. All we need is a blip on a radar screen or early warning to alert the right person who is the only one who can push the button and start the retaliation in motion. Of course, we’ll all be dead, but revenge will be sweet and before the enemy birds can hit, our own will be on the way.”

He didn’t argue, he only murmured, “True,” and listened.

“All the birds are tied into an electronic system activated by one push of a single button after the emergencies and fail-safes are off. When they’re gone they’re gone and an enemy is totally washed out.”

“But so are we by then.”

“One man installed the system, or was responsible for it, at least. Let’s take a premise now. Supposing the one man who installed the system wasn’t as clean as you thought he was. Supposing that somewhere along the line his thinking got screwed up and he didn’t want to see all that power and control go into the hands of someone who in his opinion shouldn’t have that control. Supposing that one man, to satisfy his own desires and warped judgment, installed a system that could by-pass the original pushbutton device and could activate the ICBM system any time he chose to.”

The room was so still you could hear the breathing from all three of us. “A by-pass control,” Charlie said quietly. “Louis Agrounsky?”

“That’s your boy.”

“If he touches it the Reds will detect the ICBM’s in flight and let their own birds go. Everybody’s had it.”

“That’s not the worst part,” I told him. I opened my eyes and saw his hands tighten on his glass until the knuckles showed white. “In his circuits he installed a device that can negate our own original system. If the Reds fire first with our system out then we have no comeback at all. And there isn’t time to run down the by-pass control.”

“That leaves them sitting on all the eggs. If they find the by-pass first they can deactivate us in a second and leave them calling all the shots in a hurry... or else.”

“Or else,” I repeated sleepily.

I heard him come out of the chair and knew he was standing close to me now. He said, “Do you know where Louis Agrounsky is?”

After a long while I squeezed my eyes open just a little. Even the dim yellow light from the lamp hurt them. “No.”

Charlie’s soft, “Damn!” was like an explosion.

I knew I was grinning and couldn’t help it. I knew that if I opened my eyes both he and Rondine would be standing there in stunned silence, realizing the wild import of what they had just been told, knowing how close we all stood to the edge of sudden annihilation that would be triggered the minute
they
knew they had the edge.

Slowly, I pulled myself back from the limbo the capsule was sending me into and said, “But I think I know how I can find him.”

The shade was drawn, but it was a bright yellow patch in the room with the sun beating down on it from a high angle and I knew I had been sleeping a long time. I looked at my wrist, but the watch was gone and the rest of me was naked under a single sheet in Rondine’s bed. I glanced around quickly, saw the watch on the nightstand, stopped at five forty-five because it hadn’t been wound. I picked up the extension phone, dialed the time-check number and found out that it was almost four-thirty in the afternoon, then hung up and started to push the covers off me.

Rondine came in then, having heard the sound of my dialing. “Why didn’t you get me up, kid?” My voice sounded hard and cracked.

“Whatever the doctor gave you was supposed to keep you that way.”

“Who put me to bed?”

She gave me a funny smile.

“You could have left my shorts on,” I said.

“That wouldn’t have been any fun.” She sat on the edge of the bed looking at me. “You moan even when you’re unconscious.”

“Oh, shut up.” I grinned at her. “You wouldn’t dare.”

“No? Why not?”

“You’re too prim and proper.”

“But you’ve trained me well.”

I didn’t know whether to believe her or not. “Get my clothes,” I finally said.

“No. I checked with the doctor and you’re to stay in bed.”

“Who else told you that too? Charlie? Hal Randolph?”

Her eyes gave me the answer fast enough and she nodded. “They went through my own superiors. I guess they know what you’d want to do so they put the pressure on me. I had to let you stay there. Tiger... it was for the best.”

“Damn it, they were thinking of themselves.”

“But I was thinking of you.” She wasn’t trying to be cagey about it.

“One day, when we’re married, you’ll get your orders directly from me. Nobody will supersede me and if they try they get clipped, and if you listen, you get your tail burned.”

“When will that be?” she probed.

“I’ll tell you when.”

“You seem to like long engagements, Tiger.” She wasn’t smiling now.

I said, “When it’s over. When we can walk and breathe without smelling death all the time or knowing the world is sitting on the lip of disaster. I don’t want you a widow before you’re married.”

“How do you know what I want, darling?”

“Oh sure, you’ll take me now because you’re a broad and all broads want it now regardless of the consequences, but I’m not letting you stick your neck out in the middle of a mess like this. Crazy broad.”

“I despise that word.”

“You do? Well wear it well, baby. It’s a sign that you’re more than a woman. You’re a doll with everything going for her from a beautiful face to a wild body with a mind to match and I love you like hell. You have capabilities only I can appreciate and I want them all.”

“So I’m a broad,” she said, losing the British accent momentarily and dropping into pure Brooklynese.

“Damn, where’d you pick that up?”

“From you.” She walked to the closet, took my clothes out and laid them down beside me, the gun to one side. “Now get dressed. Want me to watch?”

I gave her a small push. “Get out of here. Some things I can do by myself.”

“But in some things you need help, right?”

I gave her a nasty grin. “Right. Now scram.”

With a slow unwinding motion she eased off the bed, stood there looking at me, then started for the door. Her hesitation was deliberate and she didn’t mind me knowing it. She turned around slowly, her hand on the knob, and asked, “Do you really know where he is?”

“Who?”

“Louis Agrounsky?”

I had my pants on and the holster hooked up, then I shoved the .45 into the speed rig before I even reached for my shirt. “No, but like I said, I think I know how to find him.”

“Can I help?”

“Maybe, but not at this point.”

“The other agencies ... ?” she started hopefully.

“Screw them, I told you. Later I’ll tell you why.”

“Can you tell me where you’re going now?”

“Sure. Downtown to the New York offices of I.A.T.S. and tender Hal Randolph and Company a report, after which they’ll either put up or shut up.”

“Do you always have to be like this?”

I paused in the middle of tucking my shirttail in. “You want me any other way?”

“Sometimes I think so.”

“Then screw you too, baby.”

Her face went flat, the pain of my words knocking the expression from it. “You didn’t have to say that.”

“No? Then keep out of my business. Otherwise you stop being a broad and become a dame. I’ll do what I want to do and sometimes what I have to do. One thing I won’t do is succumb to sentimentality or the wishful thinking of a woman. When I’m working, stay off my back. You know my business so don’t try to steer me clear. The woman isn’t born and her mother’s already dead who can do that trick. I’ll run things my own way and if you don’t give me credit for being an old soldier type with twenty years over your fair head, then regroup your forces, kid, and find another guy who will bow and scrape and do it when you tell him to go potty. Clear, doll?”

Rondine studied me a moment, smiled, and her shoulders moved in a gesture of resignation. But her eyes were hard. In her own way she was a pro too—a young pro, but she had kills behind her and they had to start somewhere. “Clear, Tiger.” She turned the knob, opened the door and glanced over her shoulder. “Still love me?”

“Stick around and you’ll find out the hard way.”

“You and your play on words,” she said.

 

Hal Randolph had arranged the inquisition very neatly. I had gone this route too many times before with him to try intimidation. Now the props were staged to impress me. The head men from three agencies were there, faces I knew well, a pair of immaculately groomed court-reporter types perched behind their machines ready to note every word spoken so that they could be analyzed in detail later, and Randolph at the head of the conference table forcing an amiable smile designed to put me at ease. I caught Charlie Corbinet’s eyes from his corner position at the far end, the half-smile in them and winked in his direction.

I took the only empty chair at the table, pulled it out and sat down crookedly, feeling the bite in my side again. “Well, gentlemen?” I said.

Both stenographers took it down immediately.

Randolph cleared his throat and nodded absently before he gave me a second glance, and this time the almost amiable expression was gone. “I’ll come directly to the point. Mr. Corbinet has repeated your conversation to us. In view of the recent... situation, we would like to hear it firsthand.”

“Sure,” I told him. “In detail?”

“From the beginning.”

It didn’t take more than three minutes to lay it out. In three minutes something heavy seemed to hang over the room like a death shroud and the faces of the assembly were drawn tight. The stenographers had taken it down verbatim and were the only ones who didn’t seem to make much out of it. Maybe they had done it too often or heard too much and the lines were just another paragraph in the book of the fall of mankind.

When I finished Randolph sat there a moment, his breathing audible in the silence, then: “There was one thing you left out, Tiger.”

“Oh?”

“You indicated to Mr. Corbinet that you knew how to locate Louis Agrounsky.”

“Not quite, Randolph,” I said.

“What did you say then?”

“I said I
thought
I knew how to find him.”

“Perhaps you’d better be more explicit.”

“Not just yet buddy.” I twisted around in the chair and leaned back, grinning at him a little. “Like you told me some time ago, I’m walking a thin little line and one slip and over I go. If you can give me a push you’ll even help a little and the end results would be pleasing to a lot of people here and there. You’d like to see Martin Grady fall along with the rest of us and if that ever happens the political stock of a lot of boobs would soar. Right?”

I had all the eyes on me now and Randolph didn’t say a word. “Let me lay it on the line, gentlemen. My neck’s out as far as yours and probably a lot further. We’re in this together whether you like it or not and until this picture is cleared up we’d better start sleeping in the same bed or take the chance of being splashed all over what’s left of the U.S.A.”

The few coughs and quick looks that passed around the table meant that they got the point. The one closest to me, whose seemingly unimportant job in Washington was a cover for his internal security position, held up his hand for attention. “Mr. Mann... you’re suggesting a merger of forces in this case... or a hands-off attitude regarding your rather unique operation?”

“A merger, Mr. Delaney. We can’t afford to be at odds on this.”

“What makes you think we need your organization?”

“Because we can operate at levels you either can’t or won’t,” I told him bluntly. “You know damn well Martin Grady operates on an international basis and isn’t forced to work on a limited budget. Before you can get an appropriation to purchase certain necessities... like information ... we can have it bought. We already have men inside legations and embassies and whatever news flows out of an enemy country filters through our hands as fast as it does yours. But that isn’t the end of it. We’re talking about Louis Agrounsky. He must be found. I think I can find him.”