Authors: Edward D. Hoch
“It’s possible, I suppose,” Rand admitted. “He couldn’t write the name of the killer, in case they searched his body, but he could leave me a coded message of some sort. The trouble is, how do we know he wrote it just before he died? It could have been crumpled in his pocket for days.”
“Then it probably means nothing.” The N.S.A. man frowned. “So where do we stand?”
“If nothing else, his murder proves that Peter was right all along. Someone does have another Lavender Machine and is trying to get it out of the country. Someone got to George Sine and convinced him to deliver one to the enemy.”
“Russia?”
Rand thought about Taz, his old enemy in Moscow. “I don’t think so. China, more likely.”
“China’s awfully far away.”
“Yes.” Rand was thinking again about Peter Smith, who’d given up his wife because intelligence work was the only life he knew. Peter Smith, who should have lived out his last years in a quiet country village, but who died instead along a highway in a city far from home. Rand had lost people on assignments before, and he would lose them again, but the knowledge didn’t make any loss more bearable. They were all his fault, in a way—every one of them. Last year it had been Harry Truce in Paris, and now it was Peter Smith along a highway in Delaware.
“We’re questioning George Sine,” the N.S.A. man said. “We’ll get it out of him.”
Rand nodded. He was very tired, as if he hadn’t slept in weeks.
Sine wasn’t the type to keep secrets. If he himself hadn’t killed Peter, he’d tell who did. And where the second Lavender was now.
But as it turned out, George Sine excused himself from his questioners, went into his private bathroom, and used a broken water tumbler to slash his wrists and throat. He was not quite dead when they broke down the door.
The first person Rand saw when he entered the hospital lobby was Echo Rogers. She was wearing pale green slacks and a fur-lined jacket, and was pacing the floor with an unlit cigarette held nervously in one hand. “Did you drive him to this?” she asked, her eyes angry.
“I had nothing to do with it,” Rand answered. “How is he?”
“They think he’ll pull through, but he’s lost a lot of blood.”
Then Rand saw that she was not alone. Tom Parker was also there. “I never knew I was getting him into anything like this,” Parker said. “I should never have told you anything.”
“Look,” Rand said tightly, his own anger beginning to build. “It’s too bad that George Sine tried to kill himself, and I’m sorry about it. But I lost a close friend myself last night. Peter Smith was murdered in Wilmington, and maybe Sine had something to do with Smith’s death. I don’t have any tears for Sine.”
He left them and went on upstairs, already sorry he’d spoken the words. What had started as a routine assignment was turning into more and more of a nightmare by the hour.
The deputy director was just coming out of Sine’s guarded hospital room. “He’s sleeping now. They think he’ll live.”
Rand nodded. “Did he say anything?”
“Cuba. He said Cuba a few times, but he might have been delirious.”
“They didn’t get anything out of him before he cut Himself?”
“Not a thing.” The man from Washington shook his head. “Sine isn’t the one we really want. He was just being used by the people who want the Lavender Machine.”
Rand had to agree with that. “Any idea who’s behind him?”
“We’re checking all his contacts now. Of course there’s the girl Echo Rogers. And that fellow who’s downstairs, Parker.”
“It was Parker who gave Peter some important evidence on the missing machine,” Rand recalled. “I hardly think …”
Rand walked down the hall to the solarium and stood for a time gazing out at the hospital parking lot. Cuba. Cuba and Sine and … And what? Waldo Craig?
Rand had taken the crumpled paper found on Peter’s body and now he spread it out on the window sill. The paper itself was soft—like part of a paper napkin—and there was a bit of colored printing on one ragged edge. He was almost certain it was from the nightclub where they’d talked with Craig.
Joke.
Just one word.
Joke.
Peter Smith had spent his lifetime in intelligence work. He knew codes and ciphers of every sort. With death staring him in the face he would have used a code to get a final message to Rand. But what?
“The joke’s on me,” Rand said softly. Joke meant Waldo Craig. Where was Craig now? He’d said something about—
Then Rand knew. As simple as that. He knew where the second Lavender Machine was, and he only hoped it wasn’t too late to save it.
The N.S.A. man listened as Rand talked, nodding his head occasionally. Finally he said, “You want us to intercept a plane on a charter flight and force it to land?”
Rand nodded. “I’m certain the missing Lavender Machine is aboard. The machine was shipped to Wilmington, and the trail ended there. But Waldo Craig told Peter and me that he still did business with Sine’s company. He obviously didn’t mean the manufacturing concern that made computer parts. He meant Sine’s small private airline. In fact, his next comment was that he was flying to Miami today. Peter caught it too, and headed for the airport. That’s when he met the murderer. He had to be killed so the machine could start its flight today in Waldo Craig’s chartered plane. His body was found near the airport, remember?”
“They’re taking it to Miami?”
“The flight is bound for Miami, but remember Sine’s mumblings about Cuba. The plane will be hijacked on the way and landed in Havana. Nothing too unusual—it happens a few times every year. The hijacker will remain in Cuba and the plane and passengers will be released after the usual few hours of questioning. During those few hours the Lavender Machine will be secretly removed from the plane. From Cuba it’ll probably be shipped to China.”
The N.S.A. man was on the telephone to Washington. For the next hour they merely waited, and Rand prayed that he had made his deductions in time. Finally the phone in the hospital office rang, and the N.S.A. man smiled. “They intercepted it off the Florida coast,” he told Rand. “Bound for Cuba, just as you said. Copilot was hijacking it. Had to threaten to shoot him down before he’d turn back.”
Rand sighed. “That means the machine is on board.”
One of the N.S.A. men joined them, and Rand recognized him as the guard from Sine’s room. “We’ve relaxed the surveillance,” the deputy director explained. “Sine’s not going anywhere, and they’ve got Craig with the plane.”
“Craig?” Rand stood up suddenly. “Waldo Craig’s not the man behind Sine. He wouldn’t risk using his own flight for the smuggling, when any flight would have done as well.”
“Then who …?”
“Sine’s alone?”
“Of course. He’s all doped up.”
“Then his life may be in danger.” Rand was already halfway out the door. “Don’t you see, the spy can’t let Sine live, can’t let him tell everything now.”
“But how do you know who it is?”
Rand was running now, almost knocking aside a startled nurse. “Peter’s dying word told me.
Joke.
”
He pushed open the door of George Sine’s room, and there was Echo, standing over his bed with a pillow pressed hard over the sleeping man’s face.
“Just in time,” the deputy director sighed. “Just in time again. That Sine must lead a charmed life. But Rand, how did you know it was Echo Rogers?”
“Who else was in a better position to corrupt him? It’s not the first time a man has betrayed his country for a woman.”
“But the word.
Joke.
”
“Peter was telling me the other day about a code made up of flag signals. Three-letter combinations in the International Code of Signals stand for any word or phrase you might need at sea. He thought of it because Echo had the alphabet flag for E painted on her car door. While we were waiting for the Washington call earlier, I confirmed the meaning of his message by phoning the local library. Peter figured I’d remember our conversation about the flag code, and he used that to tell me who murdered him. He’d been studying it, and he knew how to say what he needed.”
“But three-letter combinations! There are four letters in
joke.”
“The letters JOK in the International Code of Signals stand for the single word
murderer.
His dying message—JOKE—meant
murderer E,
or in the more specific language of the flag code,
murderer Echo.
”
O
N THE MORNING AFTER
the dead whale was washed ashore, Rand and Fowler got up early to take a look at it. They were dressed for warmth, because even in May the mornings were chilly along the beaches of Cornwall.
The whale itself was a gigantic sprawl that rested on its back half in and half out of the water. The spectacle had already attracted a number of townspeople, including three small boys who were running and climbing over the great carcass. It was almost white on the bottom, contrasting sharply with the dark gray of its back, and a number of deep ridges ran back from its gaping mouth along the creature’s underside.
“Big!” Fowler exclaimed as they came up to it.
“That it is,” Rand agreed. There was something majestic about the creature, even in death.
“You know, Rand, the Germans could have beached dead whales during the war with whole broadcasting transmitters inside them. Even rooms full of enemy agents—like in the Bible.”
“The Bible?”
“Jonah in the whale—remember?”
A bearded fisherman from the town came up to stand next to them. “Beautiful sight, isn’t she? You don’t often see them that big any more. I measured her this morning and she goes for thirty-seven feet.”
“What kind is it?” Rand asked.
“A humpback, female. Don’t often see them beached like this anymore. Probably a hundred barrels of oil inside her.”
Rand smiled slightly. “More valuable than a radio transmitter.”
“What?” the bearded man asked.
“Nothing. Just thinking out loud.”
“Goin’ to get my grandson to come down and look at it. Don’t often see them—”
Rand and Fowler moved away, avoiding the water where the children were splashing. “Look,” Fowler pointed out. “Barnacles on his bottom.”
“Her bottom,” Rand corrected. “Female.”
“Her bottom. But barnacles! She must be a hundred years old.”
“Barnacles can form fairly quickly, even on whales,” Rand observed! “And most whales never reach the age of forty.”
Fowler patted the damp, dead fur. “You know the oddest things, don’t you?”
“It’s my business now.”
They turned from the whale and retraced their footsteps through the damp sand. “How are things in Double-C, Rand? Anything like the old days?”
“Nothing like the old days, really. I have my own department now. “Concealed Communications is one of the more important arms of the intelligence establishment.”
Fowler grunted dejectedly. “And I’m wasting my life selling life insurance.”
“You had your moment of glory,” Rand reminded him.
Fowler kicked at a piece of driftwood. “Yes, we all did that, didn’t we? Our moment of glory.” They walked along in silence for a bit and then Fowler asked, “Do you think it was a mistake, Rand? Our holding this twentieth reunion?”
Rand looked at the short, balding man at his side. Fowler was ten years older and forty pounds heavier than Rand—a man now past fifty who would never know the excitement of the service again. A man living in the past—a past that hovered between insurance policies and visits with grandchildren. He was, in his own dull way, not much different from the bearded fisherman who had measured the whale. “No. No. I don’t think it was a mistake at all.”
Fowler squinted at the morning sun, watching a seagull’s progress as it skimmed over the crests of the waves. “You know, Rand, there are a lot of auks down this way. In the coves, mainly. A whole colony of them, I hear tell. It’s beautiful here along the beach, isn’t it? Golden sand—really golden!” Then, as if he hadn’t changed the subject at all, he said, “The Calendar Network. Twelve of us, Rand. And you’re the only one who stayed in intelligence work.”
“Well,” Rand began, and then stopped. Ahead, someone was running toward them from the hotel. Running, tripping, along the beach. “It’s Amy,” he said, puzzled.
Amy Sargent was almost 40, but she still ran like a girl in her teens. It had been well worth the trip to Cornwall for Rand to see her again after all these years. “Come quickly!” she shouted when she was close enough.
“What is it?” Rand called back, but his voice barely carried above the surf. “What is it?” he yelled again.
She reached them finally, out of breath. “Mr. Maass—something’s happened to him!”
Karl Maass—the only German among them. Rand sucked in his breath. “What do you mean?”
“He’s dead!”
Rand and Fowler followed her at a trot, reaching the big old beachfront hotel seconds ahead of her. The others were upstairs, standing in the doorway of Karl’s room. They seemed confused and uncertain, as if waiting for Rand to take the lead. He went in, bent briefly over the body, then straightened up somberly.
“He’s dead, all right. Murdered.”
It had all started in Berlin a long time ago, during those days of airlifts and increasing tensions when networks of agents operated almost insolently in high places both in the Russian and Western sectors of the divided city. Berlin was different in those days before the wall had scarred it forever. Movement between sectors was accomplished with a minimum of difficulty, and the intrigues of the late 1940s were everywhere in evidence.
It was the late Colonel Brantly-Stowe of British Intelligence who had put together the Calendar Network in those dangerous years. Its function was complex, but its mission was simple—to learn as much as possible about German scientists working for the Russians, especially those Germans who had been active under Hitler in the development of chemical and biological weapons.
There were nine persons recruited for the network, functioning in West Berlin and points east. With Brantly-Stowe and his two young clerks back in London, that brought the total number to twelve. The two young clerks were Rand and Miss Sargent.