The By-Pass Control (6 page)

“Can I help you with something?”

“Nope, just curious.” I pushed the drawer shut and stood up. “You don’t mind, then, if I take this file along with me?”

Camille Hunt tossed her hair in a vague gesture. “No... but remember that it is confidential information.”

“We’re both working for the same person, remember? I’ll get it back to you.”

Both of us stood up together. I hadn’t realized how tall she was until she faced me, a peculiar expression playing across her face. Her tantalizing little game was still going on, still trying to find a chink in my armor plate. I got a good picture of what everybody else had to go through, and if she couldn’t make a man sweat nobody could.

I turned my head and looked at the picture on the wall. The likeness was amazing. “I’d like to paint you,” I told her.

She followed my glance. “Oh? Do you have the talent?”

“No. None at all. I’d just like to paint
you
.”

“But why?”

I let out a short laugh. “Because it would be fun, kitten. I’d do it with an oiled feather.”

The corners of her eyes crinkled. “It might be an experience at that.”

“They say it can be very exhilarating.”

“I doubt it.”

“Don’t knock it if you haven’t tried it.” I walked to the door and opened it. My armed guard was still waiting in the outside office.

“So long, spider,” I said.

“So long, fly,” she told me. “Come back to the web any time.”

Doug Hamilton had his office on Lexington Avenue, an efficient place staffed by a junior partner named James Miller, two secretaries and a receptionist. An earlier call to Virgil Adams at Newark Control cleared me to see the Belt-Aire employee files as a Martin Grady representative, and although Hamilton’s own secretary was still shaken by what had happened and a little apprehensive about the whole thing, she showed me into his office and pulled out the cabinet drawer and extracted the folder on the company.

I leafed through it, scanning the data quickly, but as far as I could see it was an identical set to the one I already had. “Has anyonr else been here yet?” I asked her.

“Yes... the notice, naturally, and a Mr. Randolph from a Federal bureau. They saw this file too.”

“Anything remov d from it?”

“Nothing. You can see each sheet is numbered and they’re all in sequ nce. I really don’t know what they were looking for and there was nothing I could t ll them.”

I closed the folder and handed it back. “Been here long?”

“Five years, Mr. Mann.”

“Then you remember when Hamilton took on the Belt-Aire assignment.”

“I drew up all the contracts.”

“You type the reports too?”

“Yes, all of them.”

“Then Hamilton kept notes of his research?”

“Of course, but as in all confidential matters of this sort, they were destroyed after the reports were typed. There are none left at all.”

“He never did any of his own at all?”

“Well... a few, I believe. There was a time when we were rushed with other things and he did some personally to get the job done.”

“Remember which ones?”

“I ... I’m afraid not. I wish I could help... but typing reports are such daily routine... and after hundreds...”

“I understand. Just one more thing.... Hamilton moved into a pretty expensive apartment not too long ago. Know where he got the money?”

For a moment she hesitated, then: “Mr. Hamilton was a bachelor. He really never had a need for anything pretentious and consequently saved his money. I know his bank account was substantial. I ... rather think he ... simply wanted a change.”

“It was a pretty drastic one. Did he have a woman in mind?” She blushed, dropping her eyes. “No. I’m afraid not. He wasn’t much... for marriage.”

When she glanced up again I caught that old, old look in her eyes. Office secretary in love with her boss. It was happening all over the city and most of it earmarked ahead of time with tragedy.

“Tough,” I said.

She knew what I was thinking and shrugged. “Life.”

“The office still goes on?”

“Mr. Miller will handle things. The arrangement was provided for when he became a junior partner. Mr. Hamilton has a sister somewhere in the Midwest and she will inherit according to the terms of his will. She’s already been notified by Mr. Hamilton’s lawyer.”

“Well, thanks for the help. If I need anything I’ll contact you.”

“Very well.”

“If you get the time see if you can locate the reports Hamilton did himself.”

“I’ll try. I can’t promise anything.”

“Good enough.”

Dead ends. The big nothing. Four men dead, one missing who held the secret of world calamity and no place to scratch the surface. There was still the probability that Doug Hamilton’s death was an accident that never should have happened, a coincidence that occurred because he inadvertently blundered into Vito Salvi’s world. It was probable too that the empty folder in his apartment had no real meaning at all, and was simply a place to file notes he later had retyped at his office.

I picked up my hat and let myself out of the office into the screaming roar of New York going home. It took ten minutes to find an unoccupied cab and a half hour to cross town to Charlie Corbinet’s apartment. He had the door open for me when the elevator reached his floor and waved me in.

“Drink?”

“A short one,” I said. “The night’s just started.”

He mixed a couple, handed me one and sat down opposite me. “Come up with anything?”

I ran down what I had for him and let him sift the facts for himself. I could see him arrive at the same probabilities I had, then he got up with the nervous impatience he never lost and paced the room deep in thought. Finally he said, “We’ve been backtracking Louis Agrounsky from the time he worked on the ICBM hot-line system. One team’s been going forward, the other back. Since Agrounsky originally had a security check run on him, going back wasn’t difficult. We merely repeated the process looking for flaws in the first investigation.”

“And?”

“Clean as a whistle. No criminal record, no unsavory associations, the best references... not a thing out of the way. Not even a political angle. He registered but didn’t bother voting. The only new fact added was an afterthought by his former college dean who mentioned that in his senior year Agrounsky came near a nervous breakdown that was attributed to overwork. The attending physician had died but his records were still available and showed Agrounsky to have been under his care two weeks before returning to school. Complete rest was prescribed and there were no aftereffects.”

“It could have been the beginning of something,” I suggested.

“Possibly. Had this ever been uncovered earlier it’s doubtful if he would have been put in charge of the project.”

“Any evidence that he covered it up?”

“None. Since it wasn’t a mental illness the dean never thought it important enough to mention. It seemed to be a common complaint of his best hard-working students who get overly dedicated.”

“Where do you lose him then?”

“After the hot-line installation he went into the second space project. If you remember, there were two failures before the technical difficulties were overcome and the shot successful. He was scheduled to begin work on the new booster engine the following week but had to be called off it when he had a minor car accident. The hospital reports stated minor lacerations, a broken thumb and a slight back injury. At that time he was living in a house he had bought in Eau Gallie, Florida, with about twenty thousand dollars in the bank. Apparently the back injury bothered him and he canceled out any future work and lived off his savings. It was here that contact was lost.

“Agrounsky had few friends. He was pretty much of a loner. He was seen occasionally in town making small purchases but it was the bank teller who saw him most often. He made steady and increasingly large withdrawals that were not commensurate with his usual spending habits. However, nobody questioned it. Later he closed out his account entirely, sold his house to an engineer working on the project, and hasn’t been seen since.”

“Woman involved?” I asked him.

“No. We checked that angle out thoroughly. He didn’t gamble or drink, either.”

“Everybody has one bad habit.”

“Agrounsky didn’t. None that we could find.”

“People like him just don’t disappear.”

Charlie turned, stared into his drink, and gulped it down with a quick motion. “He sold his house furnished, packed two suitcases in a five-year-old Ford and drove away. A month later he sold the car to a dealer in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina for a hundred bucks and nothing more is known of him.”

“If he was broke he’d have to work or go on relief.”

“No Social Security has been paid. We’ve gone over all the relief rolls, queried every jail and hospital in the country... and still nothing. No passport was issued him and there’s no record of his having gone into Canada or Mexico.” He paused, mixed himself another drink, and shook his head. “Hal Randolph thinks he’s dead.”

“If he were, Vito Salvi wouldn’t have been looking for him,” I said.

“I know. I don’t think he’s dead either.” Charlie swirled the drink around letting the ice chink against the glass. “What do you think, Tiger?”

“The same thing you do,” I told him. “Someplace he’s holed up trying to make a decision and if we don’t get to him before he does, we’ve had it.”

“And you still think you know how to find him?”

“I have to, old buddy,” I said. “If the Soviets had their best man looking for him they’ll throw in their next best. We can’t cut it off. Vito Salvi had a big jump on us and could have been closing in when he found himself being tracked by your two men and nailed them. How Hamilton got into the act, I don’t know yet. Now... how far did those two agents get in locating Agrounsky?”

“Absolutely nowhere. That’s why they concentrated on finding Salvi... hoping he’d lead them to him. Their last report was that an unusual contact was made by a minor Soviet attaché they had been covering who was suspected of passing funds to their agents here. The general physical description matched that of Salvi except for facial characteristics which could easily have been part of a disguise. They followed him and nothing more was heard about them until you pulled the cork.”

“I suppose Randolph has a team going back on Salvi too.” Charlie nodded. “They’re getting a big zero there too. Salvi was too much of a pro to leave trails. They’ll get to him eventually, detail by detail, but it will probably take weeks.”

“We haven’t got that long,” I reminded him.

“Come up with something then.”

I put my glass down and lit up a cigarette. “There’s a little hook in that picture of Agrounsky I can’t quite put my finger on.”

“Tiger, we haven’t missed a bet on him.”

“Just the same, I have that funny feeling.”

“Play it then... you’re on a fat salary. I don’t think you’ll get anywhere thinking he was employed by Belt-Aire though. He had no reason for falsifying his name or background and if he needed money he could have gone right into any one of the current government projects and made out a lot better.”

“So I’ll work on it until I’m satisfied.”

“Remember the time element.”

“How can I forget it?” I pushed myself out of the chair and reached for my hat. “Reach me at the Salem if you need me. The name is T. Martin. I want the latest photo of Agrounsky you can find.”

“You’ll get it. Good luck, Tiger.”

“Thanks,” I said, “we can all use some.”

 

Ernie Bentley had left an envelope of photostats at the desk for me with a note to contact Newark Control as soon as possible. I picked up my key, found a pay booth in the lobby and gave the operator the Newark number.

Virgil Adams answered and as soon as I coded my ID he said, “London just called, Tiger. Moscow’s assigned a replacement for Vito Salvi.”

“They’re working fast. Who is it?”

“No positive identification yet. Our sources picked it up from the embassy in Paris and passed it on. We’ll keep trying to get a make on him but since they reorganized their operation it may take a while. One thing we know—he isn’t being sent... he’s already here. They’ve surrounded this deal with the utmost security and it won’t be easy to break. Getting that much was just luck.”

“Grady’s money can buy almost anything.”

“If it’s available,” Virgil said. “We do know they’ve been holding a couple of top operatives somewhere in the country for any emergency ever since the Sokolov and Butenko spy trial bit in ’64. Right now there are some interesting developments overseas. The Kremlin’s big strategic planners who were in Bonn were recalled to Moscow for an emergency session with the brass and it had to do with the situation here.”

“You set the feed lines yet?”

“Grady’s authorized twenty-five thousand for a definite lead. He’ll go higher if he has to. We’ve spread the word so anything can break, but we’re not counting on it. Frankly, my friend, it’s up to you.”

“Thanks a bunch.”

“Do you want anybody else in the field with you?”

“Don Lavois is enough right now. Everybody is cooperating at this point and as long as it lasts we’ll be enough.”

“It’s your game, Tiger,” he said, then added, “Oh, one more thing... you might find it interesting.”

“What?”

“Our informant in Prague mentioned that the price on your head has now gone up. You not only top the ‘A’ list, but are a project in itself.”

“How much am I worth?”

Virgil chuckled humorlessly and said, “Enough to buy a villa on the Black Sea, a new Ziv, a dozen servants, endless ration cards and political recognition.”

“How about that? Why don’t you collect?”

“I like my vacations in Florida,” he said before he hung up.