I thanked him and headed for the door. Just as I was about to close it behind me, I heard Hawk say:
"And, Carter…" I turned. He smiled and his voice softened a trace. "If you can't be careful, be good."
I grinned. It was a private joke between us. Only a careful agent had a chance to survive. Only a good agent did survive. In his day, Hawk had been more than good. He'd been the best. He didn't come right out with it, because it wasn't his style, but he knew what was in front of me. And he cared.
"Right, sir," I said simply, and closed the door.
I found Michelle sitting — slumping, to be more accurate — in a chair outside the drab little room used by McLaughlin, an N5, for debriefing her. He already would have put everything she said onto tape, and now that tape would be gone over meticulously by several other agents, then fed into a computer for any information I might have missed. But I didn't have time to hang around for the results. I leaned over and blew into her ear. She came awake with a jolt.
"Travel time again," I said. "Time for a nice plane ride."
"Oh
non
," she moaned. "Do we have to?"
"We do," T said, helping her to her feet.
"Where are we going now? To the North Pole."
"No," I said. "First we're going upstairs to Special Effects for our new covers, including some passports and I.D.'s. Then we're going to Puerto Rico."
"Puerto Rico? At least it's warm and sunny there."
I nodded, leading her down the hall toward the elevator.
"But why?"
"Because," I said, tapping the button for the elevator and pulling a fresh pack of cigarettes out of my pocket, "I've figured out the meaning of those last words of Akhmed's."
She looked at me questioningly. I put a cigarette into my mouth.
"I thought Akhmed said 'leopard. He didn't. What he said was 'leper. As in leprosy."
She shuddered. "But how can you be sure?"
"Because of the next word. 1 thought he said 'pearl. But it was actually 'La Perla. »
I lit a match and held it to my cigarette.
"I don't understand," said Michelle.
"The two go together," I said. "La Perla is a slum section in Old San Juan, Puerto Rico. There's a leper colony in La Perla. Your father must have been taken from Tangier and hidden in the leper colony."
Michelle's eyes widened with horror.
"My father — in a leper colony?"
I puffed on my cigarette. It had gone out. I lit another match and held it to the tip.
"An ideal place to hide him, I'd say."
Michelle was white.
"And we are going to this leper colony?"
I nodded, then frowned in irritation. The cigarette just wouldn't light. I looked idly at the tip.
"If we're lucky, and he's still there, we can…"
I stopped dead in mid-sentence. A cold shiver went through me. With thumb and forefinger I pinched off the tip of my cigarette and shredded off the paper and tobacco.
"What is it?" asked Michelle.
"It's this," I said flatly, holding out the palm of my hand. In it was a small metallic object. It was shaped like a rod, no more than a half-inch long, and smaller in diameter than the cigarette it had been hidden in.
Michelle bent closer to examine it.
"A bug, to use the popular terminology," I said, and the self-disgust I felt at my carelessness must have shown in my voice. "A surveillance device. And this is one of the most advanced. A Corbon-Dodds 438-U Trans-ceiver. It not only picks up and transmits our voices over a range of more than a mile, but it also emits an electronic signal which anyone with the proper receiving equipment can use to determine our position to within a few feet."
"You mean," Michelle straightened up, looking startled, "whoever planted that not only knows where we are, but heard everything we've been saying?"
"Exactly," I replied. And that, I knew, was why the Chinese girl hadn't bothered to tail us. Not within sight, anyway. She could do it at her leisure, from a half-mile or so away, all the while getting an earful of our conversation.
Including my detailed statement to Michelle as to where we were going and why.
Michelle looked at me.
"OAS," she half-whispered.
"No." I shook my head. "I don't think so. We were tailed all the way from Tangier to New York by a very good-looking Chinese girl. She bumped into me on the plane from Paris. I had a half-empty pack of cigarettes in my shirt pocket, and an unopened one in the pocket of my jacket. She managed to substitute her pack for my full one."
And, considering that I smoke only my own custom-made cigarettes, with the initial NC printed on the filter, she had gone to a lot of trouble to do so. And had the use of some pretty extensive facilities.
"What do we do now?" Michelle asked.
I examined the bug closely. The front half had melted from the heat of my match. The complex micro-circuits were destroyed, and the bug had obviously stopped transmitting. The question was, which match had done it, the first or the second? If it had been the first, there was a good chance the Chinese girl hadn't gotten enough information to know where we were going. If it had been the second…
I grimaced, then sighed and ground the bug to a deformed metal mess beneath my heel. It gave me a certain amount of emotional satisfaction, but didn't accomplish much else.
"What we do now," I informed Michelle, as the elevator door opened and we stepped inside, "is to get down to Puerto Rico. Fast."
There wasn't much else I could do. Again I returned the Chinese girl to her own particular compartment in my mind. Again.
It was getting to be a pretty big compartment.
I wished to God she'd stay inside it.
Six
Mr. Thomas C. Dobbs, of Dobbs Plumbing Supplies, Inc., Grand Rapids, Michigan, and his French-Canadian born wife, Marie, emerged from the. main terminal at San Juan airport; they were laden down with cameras, snorkel gear, all the other equipment necessary for their Caribbean vacation, including a floppy straw hat with
Puerto Rico
woven across it which Mr. Dobbs had purchased in the terminal immediately upon arrival. They were going to have, as Mr. Dobbs put it to anybody who would listen, a "roaring time." They were going to "paint this little old island red." They were going to "turn little old San Juan inside out, and that includes those casinos."
They were, as anybody could tell, a pair of typical, moderately obnoxious, American tourists.
"Cab! Cab!" bellowed Mr. Dobbs, waving his arms madly.
Mrs. Dobbs was quieter. She looked a little tired. But she was obviously enjoying the sun and warmth.
"Ummm," she remarked to her husband, turning her attractive face upward. "Isn't that sun beautiful? And you can smell so many flowers. Oh, Nick…"
I grabbed her arm, as if to usher her into the cab which had pulled up in front of us.
"Tom," I muttered, without moving my lips. "Not Nick. Tom."
"Tom," she repeated dutifully. "Isn't it beautiful, though? I just want to put on my bathing suit and lie on a beach somewhere in the sun and listen to the ocean." Then she grimaced. "Except, I suppose you have other things to do, and you need me to go with you."
"Hell yes, sweetie," I bellowed. "That's exactly what we're gonna do. Flop ourselves down on that beach and get one hell of a tan. We're paying enough for it."
The porter finished loading our bags into the trunk of the cab. I under-tipped him outrageously, making up for it with a brutally hearty slap on the back and a shouted "Don't spend it all in one place, pal!" and jumped into the cab beside Michelle, slamming the door hard enough to make the cab's body rattle. The driver looked at me with irritation.
"San Geronimo Hotel, buddy. That's where were going. Only the best for Thomas C. Dobbs and his little wife," I said. Then, sharply, a shade suspiciously: "That is the best, isn't it? Sometimes these travel agents…"
"Sí, Señor," the driver said tonelessly, "that is the best. You will like it there."
I was certain that if I'd directed him to a public toilet he'd have said that was the best too.
"Okay, buddy. You get us there fast and there's a good tip in it for you," I said expansively.
"Si," the driver replied. "I get you there fast."
I settled back against the seat cushions, extracting from my jacket pocket a cigar only a little less obnoxious than those favored by Hawk. I could see the driver gag slightly as I lit it.
I was overdoing it, of course. Putting on too much of an act. Making sure I'd be remembered.
And that was the point. A good agent wasn't supposed to overdo it and put on too much of an act and be remembered. Which made me either a very bad agent, or a very smart good agent, who wouldn't be thought of as an agent at all.
"Tom," said Michelle, in a low voice, "did you really mean what you said about going to the beach?"
"1 sure did, sweetie," I said, in moderate tones. "First, we hit the old beach. Then we get dressed, have us a few of those Peeny Colazza's, or whatever they are, then we sink our teeth into the biggest damn steak this island can find, then we hit those casinos and clean a few of them out. How's that sound for the first day and night, hunh?"
"Really?" said Michelle, in the same low voice. "But I thought you…"
"You thought your old hubby didn't know how to have a good time. Thought he couldn't think about anything but plumbing supplies. Well, hang on to your hat, sweetie. Beach and booze, dinner and dice, here we come!"
And there we went, to Michelle's delighted surprise. For one thing, that's what Mr. Thomas C. Dobbs and wife would have done. And for another thing, it would have been suicide to approach my serious business in San Juan before late night anyway. Lying on a white sand beach, with the sun hot on my body, the crashing of Caribbean surf soothing in my ears, was a pretty good way to pass the waiting time.
"Tom."
I rolled over on my side and glanced at Michelle. And decided this wasn't just
pretty
good, it was — well, name your superlative. Any or all could apply, with Michelle's lush breasts more than filling out the tiny, almost sheer bikini bra she wore, the silken skin of her belly tapering to a bikini bottom which was little more than two little triangles and a piece of string, the long, shapely legs stirring voluptuously against the sand.
"Tom," she purred, eyes closed, face upturned to the sun, "put some suntan oil on me, please."
"With pleasure."
I spread the warm oil over her neck, down her sleek shoulders, across her belly, and down her thighs. Her flesh stirred gently under my hands. Her skin grew warmer, softer. She rolled over onto her belly, and I spread the oil over shoulders again, unhooked her bra, and spread it over her back, my hands sliding down along her sides, brushing her breasts. She sighed, with a sound closer to a moan than a sigh. When I finished, we lay side by side, our bodies touching. We both had our eyes closed, and the aura of sex between us was thick, hot, and growing. The blazing sun seemed to be pulling us together like magnet and iron, inexorably.
"Tom," she whispered finally, "I can't stand it anymore. Let's go back to our room."
Her voice was soft but urgent. I felt the same urgency. Without a word I hooked her bra again, pulled her to her feet and led her back to the hotel. When we got into the room she pulled slightly away from me.
"Slowly, Nick," she said, her voice low, husky, her dark eyes burning into mine. "This time I want it slowly. Make it last forever."
My hand reached out toward her. She caught it and held it cupped against her fullest curve.
"Make it
be
forever, darling. I want all of you, now, everything."
Under my hand, her sun-hot flesh stiffened. I could feel the blood pulse. The pulse quickened. I pulled her to me and my open mouth covered hers, my tongue exploring, hard and demanding. She writhed erotically, but slowly, as if to an unheard drumbeat whose tempo was increasing at an unbearably controlled rate.
"Can water put out that fire?" I whispered harshly.
"Only increase the flames, darling," she said, immediately realizing what I had in mind.
With one rapid movement I slipped her bra from her, then her bikini bottom. A sensual smile curled her lips. Her hand pushed off my trunks, and her eyes riveted on me in pride and admiration.
I felt my own instincts take over completely as I picked her up and carried her into the bathroom. An instant later we were standing under the scalding water of the shower, our sopping, steaming bodies clasped to each other and feeding furiously on each other. It was still slow, but with the blood-heat tempo of pure sensual ecstasy, increasing to the unbearable, the absolute and utter possession of male by female and female by male.
When it finally happened, we both screamed, wordless as the pure instincts we had briefly become.
"Satisfactory?" she murmured, when we had both recovered a little.
"Absolutely," I said, still trying to focus my eyes and catch my breath.
* * *
The rest of the evening was complete and satisfactory, too — or would have been if
Yd
really been Thomas C. Dobbs. We drank Pina Coladas on an open terrace, manned by an army of scurrying waiters, while the Caribbean sunset put on a Technicolor spectacular as if on demand. When we went inside to eat, the army of waiters became a regiment, the menu was three feet long, and the whole place reeked of money being spent like water. Whatever money could buy was available and being bought, in quantity.
Unfortunately, tropical drink concoctions are my idea of the best way to spoil good rum, and I heartily agree with Albert Einstein that a twenty-four-ounce steak is ideal food for lions, and lions alone. Under more normal circumstances — which I sometimes find hard to imagine — I'd have enjoyed a just-caught "conk," or sea urchins fried in garlic and Caribbean spices. But Thomas C. Dobbs would have turned green at the thought of either one, and for the moment I was Dobbs. So I doggedly Dobbsed it through the evening, consoling myself with the sight of Michelle in a see-through gown which gave every male in the place 20–20 vision on the spot.