The Kremlin Letter Read online

  “I would like to see Mr. Berry.”

  “Are you a driver?” Her voice was soft and hesitant.

  “Not that I know of,” answered Rone.

  “Pit crew?”

  “Pedestrian,” Rone said in good humor. The girl remained expressionless and distant. “I’m a friend of an old friend of Mr. Berry’s. I have a personal message.”

  The girl hesitated. She tossed her long gold-brown hair from her face with a short self-conscious turn of the head. “You’ll find him downstairs at the track. Please take the second door to your left.” Her eyes avoided Rone’s. Nervously she reached for a catalogue. She began thumbing through it.

  The stairs led down to a hallway that connected to an adjoining building. Rone walked through and came out into a large, long room lined on three sides by a single row of empty folding chairs. In the middle of the floor, stretching almost forty feet, stood a miniature auto racing track. A fourteen-inch model of a Ferrari 250 GTO ’64 sped along one of the eight lanes. Right behind it came a prototype Lotus 30. The two replicas hit the turn in front of where Rone was standing, skidded around it and zoomed off down a straightaway.

  Rone looked up to the control booth at the far end of the room. A gaunt, red-faced man who looked more like an Irish cop than a man named Berry sat guiding the models with manual thumb controls clasped in each hand. His concentration was completely on the cars. He did not notice his visitor. Rone made his way along the miniature race course as the Lotus began gaining on the Ferrari.

  “Mr. Berry?” Rone called out.

  “Himself,” came the slightly Irish accent. He still did not look at Rone. His attention remained with the replicas.

  “The Tillinger Fund is forming an expedition,” Rone told him as he approached.

  The pressure on the thumb controls was relaxed. The Ferrari and Lotus rolled to a stop.

  The man looked up at Rone.

  “We’re looking for an Erector Set,” Rone said.

  “An Erector Set, is it?”

  “I have a nephew who reads a lot. I think it’s time he did something with his hands.”

  “And what kind of reading would a little-fellow like that be about doing?”

  “He prefers poetry. ‘The Highwayman’ is his favorite.”

  Berry studied Rone with a troubled gaze. “He’s a wee bit young to be knowing of such things, wouldn’t you think?”

  “We all outgrow our scooters sooner or later. Sometimes they break,” answered Rone.

  “And what are the things we don’t outgrow?”

  “Puppet making.”

  “Where, for instance, would a fellow like myself learn to build a puppet?”

  “In Minneapolis.”

  Berry began slowly to open and close his hands. He moved his fingers much as a pianist might exercise before beginning to play.

  “And this fellow,” began Berry, “has he been working on any puppets that you can speak of?”

  “He’s just completed a whore.”

  Berry looked down and picked up a hand control. He toyed with it a moment or so and then gave it a fast, hard squeeze. The model Ferrari shot ahead and rolled to a stop.

  “And how much did you have in mind paying for this here Erector Set you’ve been talking of?” he asked Rone.

  “One hundred and twenty-five thousand, whether you go in or not. If you get what they’re after, another one and a quarter—or more.”

  Berry grew sullen and stared into his open hands. “When would you want delivery?”

  “I’ll take it with me,” answered Rone.

  Berry reached behind him and pressed the wall intercom speaker button. “B.A.,” he called into the speaker, “get everything ready. The man I told you about is here.”

  Berry led Rone into a spacious, modern workshop on the second floor over the store.

  “I want you to look at some of the devices I’ve come up with since I was last over the line,” he told Rone.

  It took Rone almost half an hour to examine all the equipment. The workmanship was excellent. Every conceivable type of sound-taping, forcible-entry and photographic device was displayed. Rone had seen most of them before, but some were new.

  Rone was particularly fascinated with two new inventions. One was a tiny square of transparent plastic tape which had been treated with radioactive crystals. It could be slapped into the back or shoulder of an unsuspecting person with little chance of detection. The crystals generated enough energy to emit a signal that could be picked up a hundred and fifty yards away.

  The second device was a typewriter tap. Berry produced a thin metal grid and explained it was to be placed under the arms of the typewriter keys. The grid had a series of electrically sensitive contact nodes on it. Each node touched one individual arm of the machine. Berry demonstrated. He placed the grid under the arms of an electric IBM machine and led the wires out through the electric power cord. He explained that the device could be transistorized to work on nonelectric equipment. Berry led the connecting line to another IBM machine at the far end of the room. This, he explained, was the control typewriter, the one the tappers would watch. It could be planted in the next room, the basement, an adjoining building or, with the use of special equipment, a parked car. He placed the grid under the arms of the control machine. The grid on the target typewriter was an output device. The one on the control was input. Every time a key was pressed on the target machine the arm raised off the node, breaking the circuit and thereby releasing exactly the same key on the control typewriter.

  Rone watched the control machine as Berry typed on the other. The message read, “B.A. invented and built this machine.”

  “Who is B.A.?” asked Rone.

  “You’ll see in a minute,” answered Berry. “B.A. built everything in here. Knows every splice and cross circuit better than I do. Come along, I’ll introduce you.”

  Berry threw open a door and Rone stepped into an adjoining room. The girl he had met at the counter was sitting with her hands folded in her lap. She was wearing black leotards.

  “This is B.A., my daughter,” Berry announced.

  “We met upstairs,” said Rone with a nod.

  “As I told you before, B.A. built every one of the things you just saw.”

  “You’re very skillful,” Rone told the girl.

  “B.A. will be going in my place.”

  Rone’s head jerked toward Berry.

  “My hands are gone,” said the Erector Set, holding his arms out in display. “Rheumatism. I’m worthless as an oyster for what you need. But I’ve trained B.A. She can do everything I ever could.”

  “My orders are to bring you back,” Rone stated.

  “Then bring back a fingerless gorilla,” Berry snapped. He turned to B.A. “Show him the magician trick,” he ordered.

  “That won’t be necessary,” Rone tried to protest, but B.A. was already sitting on the desk. She kicked her slippers off. Long fragile toes stuck through the cut leotards. Berry threw a piece of string on the tile floor in front of her. B.A. picked it up with her toes and proceeded to tie and untie knots in it.

  “She can do it underwater as well,” said Berry, stating a fact rather than boasting.

  “It’s still you I’ll bring back,” said Rone.

  Berry waved his hand. B.A. wheeled a framed glass window to the center of the room and braced it with floor screws. She buckled a leather mechanic’s belt around her waist, stood on a chair, jumped up, grabbed hold of an overhead crossbar and started moving herself toward the window. B.A. took one hand from the bar, reached to her belt, detached a suction cup and glass cutter and passed them down to her toes. She regripped the bar with both hands and moved along to the window. With her left foot she pressed the suction cup against the pane until it stuck. Holding the glass cutter firmly in her right toes, she expertly cut the glass along the edges of the lower part of the frame. She finished cutting and cautiously pulled the suction cup toward her. The bottom half of the window came out easily,
leaving a three-foot-square opening. She freed one hand, reached down, picked up the glass, suction cup and cutter and placed them on top of the beam. She began swinging back and forth to gain momentum.

  With one last swing, she brought her body as far back as she could, shot forward, released her grip and sailed through the opening in the window. Even if she hadn’t landed on her feet Rone still would have been impressed.

  “Well?” asked Berry.

  “No women,” Rone said flatly.

  “And why not if that woman can do what no man can do?”

  “My orders are to bring you back.”

  “Orders, is it? Since when has this lot gone back to the givin’ and takin’ of orders? Join yourself up in the Army if you wish to live by orders.”

  “It’s you who goes back.”

  “Now listen to me, Mr. Young and Smart Fellow, your friends owe me many a favor. I’ve waited a long time for the big job to come along—I knew it would. When my hands went out I got B.A. ready to take my place. That share of the money’s mine. I risked my skin on many a day for their pennies. Now it’s dollars and I’m staking my claim with the girl. Even if you could find someone else in short order to do my job—which I know you can’t—even then, no one is as good as she is. I trained her, I trained her well. She’s more man than woman when it comes to working, but as a woman—” Berry hesitated and bit his lip—“as a woman, I’ve prepared her for what she may have to do.”

  Rone looked at B.A. She was standing near the portable window. He caught the profile of high firm breasts and long, lithe legs.

  “How do you feel about this?” he asked her.

  B.A. looked down at the floor.

  “Tell the man what’s on your mind,” ordered Berry.

  “I promised father,” she began softly, “that I would do one big job in his place if it ever came up. I would like to get it over with.”

  “I’ll make a bargain with you,” Berry said arrogantly. “I’ll let the girl do one last thing to convince you. If you still don’t want her, I’ll go along back with you.”

  Berry pointed to a series of floor safes lining the wall.

  “Choose one,” he told Rone.

  Rone indicated one in the middle.

  “These are all new boxes. The girl hasn’t had a chance to see any of them.” Berry crossed the room and returned with a small metal device with three dials on it. “This little darling, in case you’re curious, is a time bomb capable of blowing the sides out of any of them beauties. How much time shall we give the lass? Half an hour? Twenty minutes? I’ll tell you. Why make it easy? Fifteen minutes is what she has.”

  Berry adjusted the timer and placed the mechanism inside the safe Rone had chosen. He locked the door and spun the combination dial.

  “Just so you don’t start thinking we’re pulling a windy-do, we’ll have the girl work with only one hand. What’s your pleasure, right or left?”

  “Either one will do.”

  B.A. picked up a tool case and moved in front of the safe. Rone and Berry sat at the far end of the room.

  “We’ll not be hurt at this distance in case it goes off,” he told Rone. “It’s only the girl that could lose an arm or two.”

  Rone watched B.A. begin skillfully to manipulate the dial with only one hand. Why not? he began to tell himself. Why the hell not?

  Thirty minutes later Rone and B.A. left the shop, carrying the tap typewriter.

  “What’s your name?” he asked her.

  “B.A.,” she answered in confusion.

  “But what does B.A. stand for?”

  “Barbara Arlene.”

  “Well, Barbara—” Rone began.

  “Arlene,” she interrupted. “I’ve always wanted to be called Arlene” Then she thought better of it “No,” she told him. “B.A. will do.”

  It was only after they were on the plane to New York that Rone wondered if it was actually a bomb Berry had placed in the safe. And if it was, he wondered, had he really set the fuse?

  10

  The Tillinger Fund

  Rone and B.A. walked up the steps to the Tillinger mansion, rang and entered.

  “I do believe it’s Doctor Nephew,” said an effeminate man with long blond hair sitting behind a Louis XIV reception desk. “But what is this?” He motioned to B.A.

  “A surprise,” said Rone.

  “The founding fathers aren’t partial to surprises. None of us is.”

  Rone and B.A. climbed the marble staircase to the elegant woodpaneled study on the second floor. Ward and the Highwayman, resplendent in double-breasted pinstripes with vests and key chains, looked at the pair in disbelief.

  “A girl?” the Highwayman said, trembling. “You brought back a girl?”

  “It’s Berry’s daughter. He’s trained her,” Rone tried to explain, setting the typewriter on the floor.

  “Your orders were for Berry himself,” he shouted.

  “He has rheumatism. He can’t use his hands.”

  “Are you a doctor?” snapped Ward.

  “A girl,” the Highwayman repeated with mounting anger. “You brought a girl back here?”

  “She’s the best I’ve seen. She can do anything,” Rone said defensively.

  The Highwayman’s face flushed bright purple. “You’ve seen? And how much have you seen in your long and busy career?”

  “Give her a chance. See what she can do,” Rone demanded.

  The Highwayman gasped with rage and turned to Ward. “I told you all along he was the wrong choice. He’s irresponsible, just as the reports said. This is what you get for picking him. This is Jehovah’s vengeance for taking on a wet-eared pup. Didn’t I warn you that none of these modern day schoolboys was capable?”

  “Capable of what?” snapped Rone. “Pushing back the clock to the dark ages of intelligence? Or taking a reel out of some third-rate cloak-and-dagger movie of the forties and calling it the Holy Gospel? All I’ve seen around here so far looks like a rummage sale of outmoded espionage artifacts—with one exception, this girl.”

  “Get him out of here,” the Highwayman shrieked to Ward. “Get him out.”

  “Wait across the hall,” Ward ordered.

  As Rone reached the door he turned to the Highwayman. “Look at that goddam typewriter sitting there. The girl built it herself. See if any of your obsolete henchmen can do as well.”

  Rone waited in the room for almost two hours before Ward came in “Well, Nephew, are you pleased with yourself?”

  “No, but he didn’t have to lay into me,” answered Rone.

  “Lay into you in front of a pretty young lady?”

  “That wasn’t it.”

  “Then what was? You’ve taken worse abuse than that in the Navy. You weren’t striking back, you were giving a speech. Speeches usually take a little time to prepare.”

  “I saw Berry’s hands and I saw what the girl can do. I felt it was worth the risk bringing her. Have you seen what she can do?”

  “We’ve seen.”

  “Well?”

  “She’s impressive, but you’ve put us in a rather awkward position, Nephew. First off, you brought her here, so she knows who and where we are. Secondly, you more or less forced her on us. I have a hunch your motives weren’t necessarily charitable.”

  “Don’t fool yourself, I have no interest in her.”

  “I didn’t say you did. I just wonder how much interest you have in us—or against us.”

  “You’d better watch it or they’ll be coding you out as Mr. Freud.”

  Rone hardly saw Ward’s arm move, but he felt the stiffened fingers drive into his stomach. Pain surged through his body. His knees weakened, he doubled over and dropped to the floor. Ward sat down in a large overstuffed chair and waited.

  It took Rone longer than he had expected to regain his strength.

  “Stand up,” ordered Ward. Rone got unsteadily to his feet. Ward reached into his pocket and threw him a switchblade. “There comes a time, Nephew, when every smart
-assed little boy must get his comeuppance. You’re seventeen years my junior, and according to that record of yours you’re a pretty good street brawler. Now I haven’t had any high-priced training in all those fancy Oriental styles you got such good grades in, but I’m going to take you. I may even kill you in the bargain. So when I come at you, just use that shiv well.”

  Rone shook his head in disgust and tossed the knife on the couch.

  “You still sound like a third-rate movie,” were the last words Rone got out before Ward threw a left.

  Rone ducked the punch and reached up for Ward’s arm only to have his feet kicked out from under him. As he fell forward Ward’s knee crashed into his face and the side of his hand slammed into the back of his neck. He remembered nothing else. Charles Rone had never been knocked unconscious before. When he came to, Ward was sitting in the overstuffed chair tenting his fingers.

  “Let me know when you’re ready again.”

  Rone tried to rise to one knee. It took two attempts.

  “While we’re waiting for the rematch,” said Ward, “I think it’s your turn to answer some questions.”

  “You’ve earned the right to ask,” said Rone, easing himself onto the couch.

  “Something’s bugging you, Nephew, and it’s certainly not that old man in there. Let’s get it out in the open.”

  Rone spoke before he could edit himself. “This is easily the most disorganized, archaic, inefficient operation I’ve ever seen.”

  “Is that all that’s upsetting you?”

  “It’s enough. Look at the people involved. The Whore. The Highwayman. The Professor, who begins examining the wrong man. And now that drag queen at the desk. They’re like a bunch of comic-book characters.”

  “Is that why you brought in the girl? To get even with my bad casting?”

  “No. I brought her because she was good and I had no other choice. I was under the impression that I could do some thinking for myself.”

  “No one said you couldn’t.”

  “Well, at this mad tea party, eccentricity seems to have priority over intellect.”

  “Now look here, Nephew. I don’t know what they taught you in the classroom about intelligence and espionage. I learned what I know on the street, and I can tell you one thing for certain: It has no form or size or rules. At best it turns out to be what you least expect. So you learn to expect anything. You don’t put your own private rules and evaluation on people, places or events. If you want order in the universe take up mathematics. Where we’re going the world will most likely be upside down and sideways.”