“Hi!”
“Yeah,” grunted Willie. The secretary pouted and walked on.
Willie passed through Sheba’s office and knocked quietly on Jumbo’s door.
“Come in, Willie,” roared Jumbo’s voice. Willie gulped and stuck his head round the door. “Yeah?” asked Jumbo, hiding another wink at Boots.
“Er, Boss,” stammered Willie. “I’ve been thinking . . “
“And about goddammed time,” roared Jumbo. “Come back in here, sit down, and shut up.”
Jumbo’s entire team sat in the seats in front of his desk. It was their late evening conference. He surveyed them. Willie felt himself blushing again, and was glad when Jumbo’s eyes moved on along the row.
“You start, Adam,” said Jumbo.
“The hooks are in,” replied Adam. “I’ve checked the Central Park patrolmen. You know, the cop-on-the-beat stuff. Often works. They’ve seen these dames hundreds of times. Seems they’re always there together. Always in the same seat at the same time of day. Known to the horse patrolmen and the scooter boys. Got something useful from one guy. Says he noticed a couple of times recently that the dames weren’t on their usual bench. Seems they’re so regular in the fine weather he can check his circulating time by their arrival.”
“It’s still pretty thin,” said Jumbo.
“Not quite so thin. I got wool fibers from the seat they use. Same type, brand and color, as the stuff Boots got in the museum.”
“Ahhhh,” breathed Jumbo. “That’s more like it.”
“As I say, Jumbo. The hooks are in.”
Jumbo Hooligan whistled through his teeth. “Right,” he said. “I want these broads tailed and checked every minute of the day.” He looked at his watch. “You may not score tonight. But tomorrow make like you’re their shadows.”
Simone was sitting up in her carriage--and hating it. She preferred lurching about in the grass of the park, and sitting, examining bits of dirt, some of which she found edible. She reached over the side of the carriage and grasped her neighbour’s feed bottle. The neighbour objected. Simone belted him between the eyes with his own lunch. Then, with sudden cunning, screamed agonizingly, even before her pained and surprised enemy had time to react to the violence. Almost immediately, she regretted her outburst She was heaved into the air, swung around and dropped, breathless, on to her tummy. A heavy adult hand whopped her rear. “Old soldiers never die,” croaked the Scots voice. Simone kept quiet. She’d learned that the sooner she relaxed the quicker she’d be back in the safety of her carriage.
Una folded her airmail edition of the
Daily Telegraph
and stuffed it under the pillow of her baby-carriage. She turned to the other nannies sitting alongside her on the park bench.
“Whoever it was who borrowed that dino ... Sassenach thing has caused quaite a dreadful commotion,” she said. “All that simply frightful newspaper publicity.”
“Randy says the thieves’ll get thirty years’ jail when they catch them,” added Melissa.
Emily’s knitting needles clicked to a lower gear. She held up the latest of Tarzan’s waistcoats and examined it. “Nobody will arrest them,” she announced. “All they’ve got to do is to keep calm, and act normally. Remember, no one’s going to suspect THEM.” She shook the knitting, then tucked her elbows into her waist as the needles gathered speed again.
Una sat primly, her hands clasped on her lap, her ankles neatly crossed. She watched the passers-by. “There are a lot of people around in the park today.”
Fifty yards away, sitting on one of the smooth heaps of rock, was Ivor. He was watching Melissa, and was playing Scrabble with the Russian agent delegated to shadow him. The Russian agent was cheating.
“Hey, are you sure there’s such a word as . . .” Ivor scowled and tried to pronounce CKZWG.
“Certains, mine ver goot fren,” replied the Russian. “Mine aunt caughted it.”
Willie Halfinch was wearing a park-keeper’s uniform. He was carrying a pointed cane and had been spiking bits of paper. He was embarrassed. He’d accidentally impaled a French letter and was trying to remove it without any of the nannies noticing. A yard and a half behind Willie trundled the stout figure of Pi Wun Tun, disguised as a Haitian immigrant, wearing dark glasses and a flowered shirt, and studying a copy of the Quotations of Mao Tse-tung. He was so engrossed with his reading that Willie twice had to ask him to stop bumping into him.
Susanne was watching Ulysses Pilgrim. He lounged at the foot of an elm tree, wearing a poncho and a pair of tatty jeans frayed around his ankles. His feet were bare. He was softly playing a guitar and humming to himself. Through half-shut eyes he was watching Susanne. She was a pretty little girl, the sort of girl, he thought, he’d be happy to shack-up with. He’d read about English roses--and this was a real English bloom.
Ulysses was also being watched by Pierre, the French agent. He watched Ulysses, Susanne, and the Chinese agent. The French agent was disguised--as a British agent. He liked to think this subterfuge caused confusion. It would have done, but the Frenchman always blew his own cover. He couldn’t resist patting, petting or pinching every girl’s bottom. No Englishman would behave so indiscriminately. He was commonly known to Hooligan’s mob as the French Tickler. They always knew how to find him. They just listened for the sound of a face being slapped. The French Tickler’s complexion always seems to glow with rude health.
The German agent wasn’t even there. He was in hospital. On the previous day, he’d been ordered to make contact with his boss in the middle of a public swimming pool. With true Prussian phlegm he’d plunged into the ten feet deep water to make the rendezvous. He hadn’t heard a word of his briefing. He’d spent the entire interview underwater, drowning. Adolf Krautbukket couldn’t swim.
Krautbukket wasn’t worried. For, the next day, he’d just bribe one of the others to fill him in on the latest details.
Hettie was being watched by Huw. And Huw, in turn, by a freelance Italian who worked on spec for the Japanese. The Italian had a personal vendetta with the Russian agent and was wearing a bullet-proof vest. It weighed twenty-seven pounds. His face was puffy and mottled. He was wondering if he were about to get heat stroke. He was praying that he wouldn’t have to move.
“A clean pair of heels,” Emily waved her knitting, on her needles, like a psychedelic banner. “That’s what they’ve shown them. I told you they would. Nothing to worry about. It’s finished. Just the packaging and posting to do.”
Emily noticed the military-looking man with the ginger hair. He looked like a retired officer. He was sitting on one of the seats a few yards away, reading the business section of the
New York Times
. Boots McGraw had punched a pinhole in it, and watched Emily with infinite attention and a squint. On the base of the Alice Memorial opposite sat a Greek. He watched McGraw. Boots knew he was there, even without looking. The Greek was always there. Boots McGraw and the Greek had an understanding. They weren’t sure what the understanding was, but it had been that way ever since the Greek had sent McGraw a bottle of Ouzo on St Valentine’s Day. Boots’d had it analysed. He’d felt cheated to find that it wasn’t poisoned. It made the Greek spy seem unprofessional.
It was six in the evening, and Jumbo Hooligan was angry. He wasn’t in the park. He was in his office bathroom. Until today he’d believed that this was the only room in his suite where he could find privacy. Now, he was removing a small bugging device from the lavatory pan.
“That bloody French Tickler,” he growled. “It must be. Nobody else would bug the john.”
He thought of the bugging attempts of the past few years. The English had probably been the most gentlemanly. They’d inserted a transmitter into the spine of a book of etiquette, and in turn slipped the book, beside the hundred or so other training manuals, on Hooligan’s bookshelves. Jumbo had been insulted at the time. Not so much by the bugging device, more by the unsubtle hint
The Italians had blundered. A new agent made the mistake of bugging Hooligan’s wastepaper bin. The next day, three of the Italian spy team were sent home, suffering from perforated eardrums.
The Cuban attempt was artistic--and very nearly a success. They had Hooligan’s office portrait of a nude repainted on a copper printed circuit. Miniature batteries were hidden in the picture frame. Unfortunately, their artist used plastic paints, and the gentle warmth of the printed circuit caused the picture’s breasts to droop and grow in length. As the picture was the first thing Jumbo Hooligan’s team looked at when they entered his office, it was soon spotted.
Petrov, the Russian, had bugged one of the small knobs on the television receiver. Hooligan found it at once. With sadistic glee, he’s spent a joyful afternoon playing back, through the device, the confessions of a Soviet defector.
The team of Chinese spies had been the most annoying. They’d bugged everything. It had taken Jumbo and his team two days to clear the office of a hundred and thirty-five transmitters. They were in everything.
Jumbo had been furious and hadn’t spoken to the Chinese since.
Jumbo Hooligan knelt in front of the lavatory pan, trying to ease the small cartridge out of the lip of the porcelain. A voice boomed close to his ear. He jumped.
“Hey, boss.” It was Willie Halfinch. “Gee, oh, gosh. Er, you want a help out, Mr. Hooligan? Hey, fellas, come and give a hand. Mr. Hooligan, he’s fell down the pan.”
“Get out,” screamed Hooligan. “Get out while I’m working. Wait in the office. And damn well knock in future.” He pulled his fist out of the pan, shook it free of water, and stuck it under the tap on the washbasin.
“Now you’ve done it, Willie. He’ll be mad as hell for hours.” Huw Schwartz drew his finger across his throat. “He’ll have your head. One thing about Jumbo ... he don’t like to be disturbed in the john.”
Hooligan stamped into the room, rolling down his shirtsleeve.
“Right . . who got anything?”
Huw looked tired. He shook his head.
“Nothing?” blazed Hooligan.
Huw was silent.
“But they must have done something!”
“We picked up the four whose names we’ve got as they left home this morning. They led us to the Alice Memorial. They met the fifth one there, a young blonde chick, called Susanne. That’s all that happened.”
“All?”
“Sure. Just the normal nurse-type behavior. They sat on a bench. Took the kids to the playground, came back and sat again. Went to their apartments at lunchtime, and returned to the same park bench afterwards. Scolded the kids a bit, played a few games with them, went to their apartments again at around five o’clock.”
“They didn’t speak to each other while they were in the park?” asked Hooligan.
“Yeah, they chatted,” replied Huw. “But we couldn’t close in on them. Those dames have got hawk eyes. You should see how quickly they notice when their small fry get out of line.”
“Okay,” said Jumbo Hooligan. “Now we know some of their routine, let’s try again. This time we’ll use a directional microphone. Not everybody. Just you, Willie. You try one. Get one fitted into your cane--ask the technical boys.”
New Yorkers wanting to make a telephone call from the three phone boxes outside the Plaza had been avoiding the centre booth for several days. It stank. Complaints to the telephone company brought the usual quick action. They cleansed, disinfected and fumigated--to no avail. It still smelt like a charnel house. The manager of the Plaza even considered having his hotel jacked up and rolled a few yards further away.
In the Tse Eih Aei headquarters below, the stench was even worse.
“Another one,” panted Nicky Po, staggering in from the sewer tunnel and hurling a limp, three-foot alligator on to the floor. Fat Choy sighed through his surgical mask. He reached over, grabbed the dead reptile by the tail and dunked it in a bucket of salt water. Then he expertly skinned it. “We’ve got enough meat to last us two months,” he said, tossing the carcass back into the sewer. He hung the new skin alongside the others on the damp wall.
“Here’s the alum.” Sam Ling tossed him a round container. Fat Choy caught it, and rubbed the powder into the hide. “How many’s that?”
“Forty-seven, Comrade Ling,” answered Fat Choy, tears from his smarting eyes soaking the gauze of the mask.
“And when will the skins be sufficiently cured?” asked Pi Wun Tim.
“By November,” said Fat Choy, balefully.
“Then we’ll have them all ready for the Capitalist mid-winter gift-giving festival?” said Chou-Tan.
Sam Ling sighed. It would take a lot of time to replace the money lost in the fire engine incident. He didn’t think Lui Ho’s scheme to manufacture hundreds of wallets for Christmas out of the alligator skins was the quickest way.
The door of the sewer headquarters was pushed open, and Lui Ho walked into the room. He held his nose and waited as the steam condensed on his glasses. He wiped them dry, then turned to the wall photograph of Mao Tse-tung, and saluted.
“Where id de fake dragon?” he demanded, nasally.
“We tailed the nanny-ladies all day,” Sam Ling told him. “They didn’t go to the resting place of the fake dragon. What is even stranger, they didn’t even mention the hiding place.”
“Den we will capture one, brig her here, and extract the idforbation. Todight!” snarled Lui Ho. “You, Fat Choy, you will brig id one ob de naddy-ladies, de youg one.” Lui Ho smirked and took a new hold on his nostrils. “Her figger dails are do doubt of adbirable legth to be gripped by a pair of pidcers. And,” he added by way of encouragement to his team. “We shall find out afterwards if what dey say about Occidental women id correct.”
“Hooligan,” said Sam Ling, quietly.
Lui Ho’s face bleached to a paler shade of yellow as his hand dropped from his nose. “Hooligan?”
“Hooligan,” repeated Sam Ling, “he knows. The park was crawling with those running dogs of his.”
“He is protecting the nanny-ladies?” asked Lui Ho.
“Watching them.”
“Watching them? Then it would seem there may be things happening between the British and the Americans that we do not know about,” said Lui Ho. “Possibly the Western powers are in great disagreement. It may even be possible that the British and the Americans are planning to declare war on each other.”