Hood of Death (6 page)

Nick examined it "They're getting better and better. Another suppository type?"

"Can be used that way. But the real idea is to swallow it A search reveals nothing. Of course if they have a monitor they know it's in you..."

"And they have up to six hours to cut you open and silence it," Nick added dryly. He put the device in his pocket "Thanks."

Hawk reached down behind his chair and brought up two bottles of scotch whisky, an expensive brand in rich-looking, dark-brown glass. He handed one to Nick. "Look that over."

Nick examined the seal, read the label, inspected the cap and base. "If it was a cork," he mused, "there could be almost anything hidden in it but this looks absolutely kosher. Is it really scotch in there?"

"If you ever pour yourself a drink of it, enjoy it. One of the finest blends." Hawk tipped the bottle he was holding up and down, watching the liquid form tiny bubbles with its own trapped air.

"See anything?" Hawk asked.

"Let me try." Nick watchfully turned his bottle over and over, and he got it. If your eyes were extremely sharp and you looked at the bottom of the bottle, you'd discover that the oily bubbles did not appear there when the bottle was upside down. "The bottom is wrong somehow."

"Right. There's a glass partition. Top half scotch. Bottom half one of Stuart's super-explosives that looks like scotch. You activate it by breaking the bottle and exposing it to air for two minutes. Then any flame will set it off. As it is now, under compression and airless, it is relatively safe, Stuart says."

Nick set his bottle down carefully. "They may come in handy."

"Yes," Hawk agreed, standing up and carefully brushing an ash from his jacket "In a tight spot you can always offer to buy a last drink."

At precisely 4:12 p.m. on Friday afternoon Nick's telephone rang. A girl said, "This is Miss Rice of the telephone company. Did you place a call to..." She quoted a number ending in seven, eight.

"Sorry, no," Nick answered. She excused the call sweetly and hung up.

Nick turned over his telephone, removed the two base screws and attached three wires from a small brown box to three terminals, including the 24-volt power input. Then he dialed a number. When Hawk answered he said, "Scrambler on code seventy-eight."

"Correct and clear. Report?"

"Nothing. I've been to three more boring parties. You know which girls were there. Very friendly. They had escorts and I couldn't pry them loose."

"Very well. Carry on at Cushing's tonight. We're in deep trouble. There are big leaks in the top company."

"Will do."

"Report please ten-o-nine a.m. via number six."

"Will do. Good-bye."

"Good-bye and good luck."

Nick hung up, removed the wires and replaced the phone base. The little brown portable scramblers were one of Stuart's most ingenious devices. Scrambler patterns are infinite. He designed the little brown boxes, with transistorized circuits packed into a package smaller than a pack of regular-size cigarettes, with a ten-contact switch. Unless both were set on "78" the audio modulation was gibberish. Just in case — every two months the boxes were exchanged for new ones with new scrambler patterns and ten new selections. Nick donned his dinner jacket and departed in the Bird to pick up Ruth.

The Cushing gathering — the annual
All Friends
party with cocktails, dinner, entertainment and dancing — was held at their two-hundred-acre estate in Virginia. The setting was magnificent.

As they drove up the long drive, colored lights sparkled in the dusk, music sounded from the conservatory to the left, and they had a short wait while substantial-looking people got out of their cars and the attendants took them away. Shiny limousines were popular — Cadillacs prominent.

Nick said, "I suppose you've been here before?"

"Many times. Alice and I used to play tennis all the time. Now I come down occasionally for a weekend."

"How many tennis courts?"

"Three, counting the one indoors."

"The good life. Spell it money."

"My father says that since most people are so stupid, there is no excuse for a person with brains not being rich."

"The Cushings have been rich for seven generations. All brains?"

"Daddy means that people are foolish to work for so much an hour. Selling themselves in hunks of time, he calls it. They love their slavery because freedom is terrifying. You
must
work for yourself. Grab opportunities."

"I'm never in the right place at the right time." Nick sighed. "I'm sent places ten years
after
the oil starts coming up."

He smiled at her as they ascended three broad steps. The lovely black eyes were studying him. As they followed the tunnel-like pathway of colored lights across the lawn she asked, "Would you like me to speak to Father?"

"I'm wide open. Especially when I see a bash like this. Just don't cause me to lose the job I've got."

"Jerry — you act conservative. That's not the way to get rich."

"It's the way they try to stay rich," he murmured, but she was greeting a tall blonde girl in the line of beautifully dressed people at the entrance to a giant tent. He was introduced to Alice Cushing and fourteen other people in the receiving line, six of them named Gushing. He memorized every name and face.

Past the line they strolled to the long bar — sixty feet of table covered with snowy linen. They exchanged greetings with a few people who knew Ruth or "that nice young oil man, Jerry Deming." Nick received two brandies on the rocks from a bartender who looked surprised at the order — but he had it. They drifted back from the bar a few feet and paused to sip their drinks.

The big tent could hold a two-ring circus, with room left over for two
bocce
games, and it handled just the overflow from the cut-stone conservatory which it adjoined. Through tall windows Nick saw another long bar inside the building and people dancing on the polished floors.

He noted that the hors d'oeuvres on the long tables opposite the bar in the tent were made on the spot. The roasts, fowl and bowls of caviar behind which the white-coated attendants deftly prepared your requested snack would have fed a Chinese village for a week. Among the guests he saw four American generals that he knew and six from other countries that he did not.

They paused to speak to Congressman Andrews and his niece — he introduced her everywhere as his niece but she had that haughty carriage of the dull girl who has it made-in-the-shade — and while Nick was being polite Ruth exchanged glances behind his back with a Chinese girl in another group. Their looks were swift, and because they were absolutely without expression, they were furtive.

We tend to classify Chinese as small, gentle, even obsequious. The girl who swapped quick recognition signals with Ruth was big, imperious, and the bold glance from her intelligent black eyes was shocking because it came from under brows deliberately plucked to accent the slants. "Oriental?" they seemed to issue a challenge. "You're damned right. Take ahold if you dare."

This was precisely Nick's impression a moment later as Ruth introduced him to Jeanyee Ahling. He had seen her at other parties, checked her name carefully into his mental list, but this was the first lime he had felt the impact of her glance — the almost molten heat from those sparkling eyes above the round cheeks whose softness was challenged by the clean, sharp planes of her face and the impudent curve of her red lips.

He said, "I'm especially pleased to meet you, Miss Ahling."

The glossy black brows rose a fraction of an inch. Nick thought,
She's striking
—
beauty like that belongs on TV or in the movies.
"Yes — because I saw you at the Pan American party two weeks ago. I hoped to meet you then."

"You're interested in the Orient? Or China itself? Or girls?"

"All three."

"Are you a diplomat, Mr. Deming?"

"No. Just a minor oil man."

"Like Mr. Murchison and Mr. Hunt?"

"No. There's about three billion dollars' difference. I work for Official."

She chuckled. Her tones were mellow and deep and her English was excellent, with just the trace of "too-perfection," as if she had learned it carefully, or spoke several languages and had been taught to round all vowels. "You're very honest. Most men one meets give themselves a little promotion. You could have just said, 'I'm with Official.'"

"You would have found out and my honesty rating would have dropped."

"You're an honest man?"

"I want to be known as an honest man."

"Why?"

"Because I promised my mother. And when I lie to you you'll believe it."

She laughed. He felt a pleasant tingle along his spine. They didn't make many like this one. Ruth had been chatting with Jeanyee's escort, a tall, slim, Latin-American type. She turned and said, "Jerry — have you met Patrick Valdez?"

"No."

Ruth moved and drew the quartet together, away from the group which Nick cataloged as politics, munitions and four nationalities. Congressman Creeks, already high as usual, was telling a story — his hearers pretended interest because he was old devil Creeks, with seniority, committees and the control of about thirty billion dollars in appropriations.

"Pat, this is Jerry Deming," Ruth said. "Pat is O.A.S. Jerry is oil. That's so you'll know you're not competitors."

Valdez showed handsome white teeth and shook hands. "We might be where beautiful girls are concerned," he said. "You two know that."

"What a nice way to slip in a compliment," Ruth said. "Jeanyee — Jerry — will you excuse us a second? Bob Quitlock wanted to meet Pat We'll join you in the conservatory in ten minutes. Near the band."

"Certainly," Nick answered, and watched the couple work their way through the increasing crowd. Ruth had a breathtaking figure, he mused, until you got a look at Jeanyee. He turned to her. "And you? A princess on leave?"

"Hardly, but thank you. I work for the Ling-Taiwan Export Company."

"I thought you might be a model. Frankly, Jeanyee, I've never seen a Chinese girl in the movies as pretty as you. Or as tall."

"Thank you. We're not all little flowers. My family came from north China. They grow big there. It's a lot like Sweden. Mountains and sea. Plenty of good food."

"How are they doing under Mao?"

He thought her eyes flickered, but the emotion was unreadable. "We came out with Chiang. I haven't heard much."

He guided her into the conservatory, brought her a drink, tried a few more gentle questions. He got gentle, uninformative answers. In her pale green gown, a perfect contrast for her sleek black hair and brilliant eyes, she was a standout. He watched other men stare.

She knew a lot of people who smiled and nodded or paused for a few remarks. She fended off some of the men who wanted to stay attached with a change of pace which set up a wall of frost until they wandered on. She never offend-

ed, she just went into a deep-freeze locker and came out the instant they departed.

He discovered that she danced expertly and they stayed on the floor because it was fun — and because Nick heartily enjoyed the feel of her in his arms and the aroma of her perfume and body. When Ruth and Valdez returned they exchanged dances, drank fairly steadily and gathered into a group in one corner of the big room comprised of some people Nick had met and some he hadn't.

During one pause Ruth said, standing beside Jeanyee, "Will you excuse us for a few moments? Dinner should be announced about now and we want to freshen up."

Nick was left with Pat They picked up fresh drinks and toasted each other with the usual cheers. He learned nothing new from the South American.

Alone together in the ladies' lounge Ruth said to Jeanyee, "What do you think of him after a close look?"

"I think you got the best of it this time. Isn't he a dream? Much more interesting than Pat."

"The Leader says if Deming joins, forget Pat."

"I know." Ruth sighed. "I'll take him off your hands as agreed. Anyway he's a good dancer. But you'll find Deming is really something else. So much charm to waste on the oil business. And he's all man. He nearly turned the tables on Leader. You'd have laughed. Of course Leader switched them right back — and he's not mad about it. I think he admires Deming for it. He recommended him to Command."

The girls were in one of the innumerable lounges available for ladies — complete dressing rooms and baths. Jeanyee looked at the expensive furnishings. "Should we talk here?"

"Safe," Ruth answered as she retouched her exquisite lips at one of the giant mirrors. "You know the military and political only spy on the outs. These are the ins. You can snoop on individuals and double-cross each other, but if you're caught spying on the group you're finished."

Jeanyee sighed. "You know so much more about politics than 1 do. But I know men. There's something about this Deming that bothers me. He's too — too
strong.
Have you ever noticed how the generals are made of brass, especially their heads? And the steel men are steel and the oil men oily? Well, Deming is hard and quick and you and Leader discovered he has courage. He doesn't fit the oil man pattern."

"I'll say you know men. I never thought of it that way. But those are the reasons Command is interested in Deming, I suppose. He's more than just a businessman. He's interested in money, like all of them. I checked that tonight. Offer him whatever you think will work. I suggested my father might have something for him, but he didn't snap at the bait."

"Cautious, too..."

"Sure. That's a plus. He likes girls, in case you were afraid you were getting another one like Karl Comstock."

"No. I told you I know Deming is all man. It's just — well maybe he's such a valuable type I'm not used to it. I felt he was wearing a mask some of the time, just as we are."