THE MAN IN THE black raincoat was an assassin. He was, actually, quite skilled at his job, and he was employed only by the most important governments. He liked the work, especially the frequent travel that went with it. This day he was even enjoying Tokyo in the rain.
Harumi-Dori is a street that runs up from Tokyo Harbor to the grounds of the Imperial Palace. Crossed at two points by the new expressway, it perhaps symbolizes modern Japan as well as any other street in the capital. At least that was what the man in the black raincoat was thinking as he walked along it, past the Nishi Honganji Temple and the famous Kabuki-Za Theatre. The old Japan and the new—Kabuki and expressways.
He paused at the corner, decided that the rain had almost stopped, and turned down the collar of his raincoat. Then he crossed the busy street and entered the offices of the Japan News Agency. The newsroom was on the third floor, and he found it without difficulty. It was a crowded, bustling place of clattering teletype machines and chattering Japanese voices. Very much like a newsroom anywhere else.
But then he paused. The desks were set in neat rows, and there was no identification on any of them. Thirty-six men occupied the room, seated at thirty-six desks, and he had no way of identifying the man he sought. He pondered a moment, deciding on the best tactic. His knowledge of Japanese was limited, and he could not simply ask for the man he sought without attracting attention to himself and warning his prey.
There was a pay telephone in the hallway outside the newsroom. He dropped in the necessary coins and dialed the number of the news agency itself. When the operator answered, he spoke the name of the man he sought.
“Shoju Etan.”
She made the connection and he heard a phone in the newsroom begin to ring. One among many, but the only one to start ringing at exactly that instant. He let the receiver hang free and stepped back into the newsroom. The man was at the head of the center row of desks, as befitted his position. A dull, middle-aged Japanese speaking now into the silent phone, questioning, waiting.
The man in the black raincoat stepped quickly to the desk and fired one shot from the Llama .32 in his hand. He needed only one shot. The man at the desk slumped over dead, and the phone receiver clattered to the floor.
Then there were screaming and shouting, the turmoil so familiar to his way of life, and death. The man in the raincoat twisted his lip in a sort of smile as he backed through the door and headed for the fire stairs. A copy boy was blocking his path, and the man swung the Llama automatic in a wide arc, catching the youth on the temple. Then he was through the door, running quickly down the stairs to the safety of the street…
When Rand stepped off the big jet airliner at Tokyo Airport two days later, the sun was shining brightly. The time change during the flight from London had tired him, and he should have been sleeping, but the sights of the strange and exotic city freshened his mind.
“Your first visit to Tokyo, Mr. Rand?” a voice asked. It belonged to a dark-haired American with fashionable sideburns and badly capped front teeth.
“Yes, it is,” Rand replied. “But not my first to the Orient. I visited Hong Kong some years back.” He moved into line at the Customs counter. “You must be Lanning.”
“That’s right,” the American said. “My car is outside.”
Ten minutes later, seated in the back of an American limousine far too large to pass unnoticed on Tokyo’s crowded streets, Samuel Lanning produced his identification. Rand inspected the plastic-sealed I.D. card from the Central Intelligence Agency. He’d seen them before, and if they weren’t quite as colorfully printed as the Americans’ Secret Service identification, they were still impressive.
“You fellows should get your Treasury to print these,” Rand commented. “The Secret Service ones look like miniature money.”
Sam Lanning blinked and slipped the wallet back in his pocket. “You’ve been to America? The Secret Service rarely gets to London, I know.”
“Oh, yes, New York, Washington, other places. I spent some months there just last year.”
Lanning nodded. He spoke a few words in Japanese to the driver and then settled back. “Your department is Concealed Communications, isn’t it?” he asked. “Codes and things?”
Rand smiled. “Codes and things. I must say I’m impressed with your car. I didn’t realize the CIA paid so well.”
The American snorted. “The car belongs to the Embassy, and they don’t pay that well. I started at $8000 a year, about what I could have made as a high-school teacher, and a good deal less than I might have earned as an actor.”
Rand nodded. The man was interesting, even by the usual standards of the trade. “You were an actor?”
“I did a little Shakespeare after college.”
“Hamlet?”
“No, but I did Iago once in a semiprofessional production of Othello. That’s the longest role Shakespeare ever wrote.”
The sedan took an expressway that looped around the Imperial Palace and then left it to wind through the narrow streets of the city. Lanning explained that they were in the Bunkyo-Ku section in the northern part of the city. The car passed the Kodokan Judo Hall and slowed to a stop before a middle-class apartment house. The streets here were filled with young people, and Rand asked about them.
“Tokyo University is only a few blocks away,” Lanning said. “Things are normal there now. It’s almost time for the summer vacation.”
“Who will we be seeing here?” Rand gestured toward the apartment house. “Mrs. Belgrave?”
“Yes. And the other.”
Rand frowned at the CIA man. “A replacement for Shoju? I assume someone replaced him after the killing on Monday.”
Lanning smiled, as if proud of his little secret. “No one could replace Shoju in this operation, but happily we don’t have to. Shoju Etan is alive.”
“Alive?” Rand could not conceal his surprise. “But the papers said—”
“Someone else was sitting at his desk. We decided to play along and throw the assassin off the track temporarily.” He opened the door. “Shall we go up now?”
Shoju Etan was a short balding Japanese of indeterminate age, with twinkling eyes that seemed always friendly. Rand had met him in London some years earlier, when he was once honored by a journalism group.
“Shoju! I’m so glad to see you alive!” Rand hurried to shake his hand.
“Ah, the Double-C man!” The slanted eyes took on their familiar twinkle. “I am indeed alive. I could hardly depart this earth without having written that interview we talked of in London.”
“The reports in the paper—”
“Ah! We never believe what we read, do we, Mr. Rand? I was writing a series on the Tokyo zoo, and went out for further information. Another man was using my desk, and unfortunately he was mistaken for me.”
Rand became aware of the woman who sat in one corner of the pleasant room, her face hidden in shadow. “You must be Mrs. Belgrave.”
She stood up and offered her hand. Seeing her face, he was a bit surprised by its obvious youthful beauty. Somehow he’d expected Gordon Belgrave’s wife to be close to his age—a woman in her fifties. But Mrs. Belgrave could have been no more than 35, and her flashing red hair contrasted strikingly with the pale skin of her face.
“How do you do, Mr. Rand,” she said, speaking with a slight British accent, as of one who has lived most of her life far from her homeland. “I do hope you can help free my husband.”
“I’ll do what I can, of course,” Rand assured her. Then, to Lanning, “Suppose you run over the situation for me. I must admit this attempt to kill Shoju here was more than I’d bargained for.”
Lanning cleared his throat, a little like a lecturer. “Sure. Glad to, Rand. As you know, Gordon Belgrave is the American representative of a book publishers’ council who was sent to Moscow to negotiate an agreement with the Russians on book royalties. The Reds had been pirating American books for years without paying anything, and lately there’s been some reverse pirating by U.S. publishers. Mrs. Belgrave accompanied her husband, and perhaps she should take up the story at this point.”
They turned toward the redhaired woman, and in that moment her pale drawn face revealed more of her ordeal than any words she might utter. Finally she pulled herself together and began. “We’d been there about two weeks, and Gordon had met with various minor government officials, when one night without any warning we were arrested as we were leaving the hotel for dinner. They said my husband was an American spy, and the—they took us away to jail. I was questioned several times and so was my husband. Finally this man Taz said that I was being released because I was British. He said Gordon had confessed to being an American spy, and would have to stand trial.”
Rand interrupted. “Taz is my opposite number in Moscow. His field is codes and ciphers. He wouldn’t be involved in a routine espionage case.”
“We know about Taz,” Lanning said. “That’s why you’re here, Rand. I understand you’ve met the man.”
“We’ve met twice, in East Berlin and in Paris, and I think we respect each other’s work. It goes no further than that.”
“But you’re the man to talk to him, to reason with him. He has some coded messages that Gordon Belgrave is supposed to have sent.”
“Did Belgrave really confess?”
Lanning motioned to the Japanese reporter. “Shoju can best answer that. He was there.”
“I was,” Shoju Etan admitted. “I was in Moscow on this series of articles I mentioned, and when I heard of the arrest I hurried to the Kremlin. After some time I managed to see Taz, and he took me with him while he interviewed the prisoner. He said he wanted to avoid the sort of publicity that spy arrests usually received in the Western press. He wanted to show me that Belgrave had not been tortured or brainwashed or otherwise coerced into making a confession.”
“And Belgrave did actually confess?”
“He did,” the Japanese reporter confirmed. “He said he had sent telegraphic messages to Allied agents in London using something called a SYKO cipher. Taz had the evidence of the messages themselves.”
“What information was he supposed to have sent?”
Shoju stirred uneasily. “I did not include this in my published articles on the matter, but the Russians are working on a new form of SUM missile—surface to underwater missile—for use against America’s Polaris submarines. I believe Taz suspects that Mrs. Belgrave’s husband was spying on this activity.”
“I see,” Rand commented. “But how can I help?”
Mrs. Belgrave stood up. “My husband is innocent, Mr. Rand. Completely innocent. He’s—not well. He had a nervous breakdown about a year ago, and has been under treatment since then. I believe the Russians have done something to his mind.”
“I’m sure the book publishers’ council wouldn’t have sent him to Moscow if he were seriously ill.”
“Oh, it wasn’t anything he couldn’t control,” she insisted. “In fact, he’d been much better since the shock treatments at the hospital. But I can’t help feeling that his confession was the result somehow of his mental condition.”
Rand turned to Lanning. “What about it, Lanning? Was he working for you?” He knew it was a foolish question, which could only bring a negative reply.
“Absolutely not,” the CIA man insisted. “Belgrave was an Army Air Corps Intelligence officer during the Second World War, but he’d been completely separated from any sort of government service ever since. He has absolutely no connection with the CIA, NSA, or any other agency.”
“I’m inclined to believe you,” Rand said with a smile. Then, to Shoju, “You’re returning to Moscow?”
The Japanese nodded. “I said in my last article that I would return this week with Mrs. Belgrave to try and free her husband.”
“You think that’s why they tried to kill you?”
Shoju shrugged. “I do not know.”
“All right,” Rand decided. “I’ll go with you to Moscow. Since the British government sent me all this distance to help, I hardly think they’d want me to quit now. When is the next plane?”
“There is only one flight each week from Tokyo to Moscow,” Shoju informed them. “Every Thursday on Japan Air Lines.”
“Tomorrow.” Rand considered for a moment. “All right, tomorrow it is.”
On the way back to his hotel, alone with Lanning in the back of the limousine, Rand asked the question again. “Is he one of your men, Lanning?”
“No. That’s the truth, Rand.”
“All right. Next question. Who tried to kill Shoju at his office?”
“We believe it was a Turkish assassin named Sivas. He arrived in Tokyo three days ago and promptly dropped out of sight.”
“Who’s he working for?”
Lanning spread his hands. “That we don’t know. He generally takes assignments from governments rather than from individuals. In recent years he’s been quite active in the Middle East and the Balkans.”
“Albania?”
“Perhaps.”
“Would he work for Moscow?”
“Certainly, if they paid him.”
“What does he look like?”
“Medium, dark. His appearance has a way of changing.”
“I see,” Rand said. He saw, but he didn’t like it.
They gathered at the airport the following day—Rand, Lanning, Mrs. Belgrave, and Shoju Etan. An oddly mixed group, by any standard. Rand looked over his fellow passengers and wondered for the first time what he was doing there. Would he really have any influence with Taz on the Russian’s home ground?
The flight was only about half full, with the rest of the passenger list consisting of an assortment of Oriental businessmen and traveling diplomats. There were only two women on board—Mrs. Belgrave and the lady with the coffin.
Rand noticed her at once, but he could hardly credit that to acute powers of observation. She was a striking brunette of perhaps 35—about Mrs. Belgrave’s age—and her vaguely Oriental features seemed a perfect blending of the East and West that the flight itself symbolized. Her dress was Oriental, but when she spoke to her traveling companion it was in an English that could only have been learned in India or Hong Kong or some other outpost of the faded Empire.
Her companion was a grumbling man with a sinister face that seemed perpetually twisted into a frown. Lanning took one look at him and whispered to Rand, “Now that fellow could pass for a Turkish assassin any day of the week!”
But it was the coffin more than anything else which attracted attention to the odd pair. A series of adjoining seats had been removed from the rear of the plane’s passenger compartment, and six stocky baggage handlers helped carry a full-sized coffin on board. There was a noticeable stir among the passengers, and one man was even about to leave the plane. The pert young stewardess moved up and down the aisle, assuring everyone that the coffin did not really contain a body.
Rand glanced out the window at the morning mists that drifted across the field. Then, as he watched, the big jet engines came to life and the plane began to move. He glanced at his watch. It was 8:20 a.m., Japan time. They were right on schedule.
When they had reached their cruising altitude, Rand unbuckled his seatbelt and moved across the aisle to speak to the handsome brunette with the coffin.
“Excuse me,” he said, “but I must admit that my curiosity has the better of me. If there’s no body inside, what is in it?”
She smiled up at him. “Sit down. Join us. It’s been so long since I’ve heard a real British accent.”
“Thank you.”
She introduced the sinister, grumbly man by the window. “This is Dr. Hardan, my associate. I am Yota Twain.”
“My name is Rand. This is my first trip in the Far East, and I’m not accustomed to coffins sharing the passenger quarters on an airline.”
She laughed, a musical blending of two cultures. “It is rare, and we had to obtain special permission.”
“You still haven’t told me what’s inside that couldn’t be trusted to the baggage compartment.”
“And I’m afraid I can’t.” She made a pretty face. “It’s secret!”
“Classified material,” the frowning Dr. Hardan said. “Can’t talk.”
“I think it’s a body after all,” Rand said, smiling.
“Perhaps it is,” she agreed. “Perhaps I’m a witch, Mr. Rand, and it is the body of something very old, very dangerous. A monster of sorts.” She was smiling as she spoke, but somehow her words were not humorous. Rand felt a chill down his spine.
“You’re British?” he asked, changing the subject.
“Half, on my father’s side. The other side—well, a mixture of things. The dark ways of the Orient. I’ve never been to England. Is it damp and dreary?”
“Not really. Though there’s usually a time every winter when all your friends have colds. I’m used to it, I suppose. I like it.”
“What are you doing on a flight to Moscow?”
“Asking questions of ladies with coffins.”
“A journalist?”
“Of sorts.” He motioned toward the back of Shoju’s head. “My friend over there is a real one. I’ll bet he could find out what’s in your coffin.”
She smiled again. “You can see for yourself at Customs. We’ll have to open it then.”
“The great unveiling.”
“Yes.” She glanced at her watch, an expensive timepiece with a jeweled face. “This is a very long flight.”
“Exactly four thousand six hundred and sixty-three airline miles.” Rand liked to impress smiling ladies with his knowledge. “Even nonstop like this it takes over ten hours. It’ll be one o’clock this afternoon when we land in Moscow, counting the six hours we gain.”
“A walking timetable!”
“A sitting one right now, but I do have to get back to my own seat. I’ll talk to you later. Nice to have met you, and Dr. Hardan.” The frowning man nodded slightly.
Rand resumed his seat next to Mrs. Belgrave. Lanning and Shoju were in the seats behind them. “Did you have an interesting chat, Mr. Rand?” asked Mrs. Belgrave.
“Didn’t learn a thing,” he reported. “She says there’s a monster in the coffin, and that she’s a witch.”
“She said that?”
“More or less. Why?”
Mrs. Belgrave pursed her lips. “I was watching that coffin when we took off. I could have sworn it moved.”
“Vibrations.”
“No. More than that. And six men to carry it on! It must weigh three hundred pounds!”
“Maybe it’s a body after all.”
“A live body, Mr. Rand. Do you suppose they’re Russian agents, kidnaping someone and taking him back to Moscow against his will?”
“I doubt that.”
“I would have doubted that Gordon could be arrested as a spy.”
“That’s a bit different.”
“Do we really know these Russians, Mr. Rand? Do we know what they want, what they’re up to?”
“Perhaps they’re only afraid,” he said. “Like us.”
It was a long trip, without even the time-killing relaxation of the in-flight movies provided on trans-Atlantic flights. By the time nine hours had passed, Rand and the others had pulled down the window shades against the noonday sun and were dozing fitfully. Rand was aware of Mrs. Belgrave leaving her seat at one point, making her way toward the rest rooms at the rear of the aircraft.
It was a sound like a cough that awakened him finally, and even then he did not know what had caused it. He glanced around, saw Mrs. Belgrave making her way back down the aisle, saw Shoju and Lanning both dozing in the seats behind him. He got up to stretch his legs and speak to Yota Twain again, but she was not in her seat. Dr. Hardan was alone, his face buried in a Russian-language newspaper.
He found Yota in the rear of the plane, bent over the coffin like some daytime vampire, and once more he felt the chill on his spine. “Checking body temperature?” he asked.
“It would be quite low,” she replied, smiling. Then, standing up, she added, “Our journey is almost over.”
“None too soon.”
“Have you looked out the window? At the snow? It’s quite a sight with the sun on it.”
“Even in the summer Siberia holds little interest for me.”
“This is the Urals. We’re passing over them now.”
“I’ll look,” he promised.
“Rand!” He turned and saw that Lanning was motioning to him. Something was wrong—Lanning had lost his coolness.
“What is it?” Rand asked, hurrying up the aisle.
Lanning turned open the jacket of Shoju’s suit, showing the widening circle of blood. “Rand—he’s been wounded somehow! I think—”
Rand bent to feel Shoju’s pulse, then lifted one eyelid. “He’s dead,” he said simply. “He’s been murdered.”
Lanning stared hard at the body in the seat next to him, as if unable to comprehend Rand’s words. “But—I was right here all the time! How could he have been murdered?”
Rand avoided the most obvious answer and examined the wound more closely. “It looks like a bullet,” he said. “Did you hear a shot?”
“Nothing! I was dozing, but a shot would certainly have awakened me.”
“Maybe not,” Rand said, remembering now the quiet cough which had awakened him. A silenced pistol, perhaps further muffled by a pillow. With the passengers dozing and the stewardesses busy, no one had noticed. “Have a stewardess report it to the pilot. He should radio ahead and have police waiting at Moscow airport. The gun must still be on the plane.”
“What is it?” Mrs. Belgrave wanted to know. She had returned to her seat without realizing anything was amiss.
“There’s been some trouble. Shoju is dead.”
“No!” Her hand flew to her mouth. “What will happen to Gordon now?”
“I don’t think it will make his situation worse,” Rand told her.
“But why kill Shoju just because he heard Gordon’s confession?”
“I don’t know. But somebody was certainly intent on getting Shoju out of the way. When the killer failed at the office, he followed Shoju aboard the plane.”
Lanning glanced up and down the rows of seats at their fellow passengers. “The Turkish assassin—Sivas?”
“Maybe,” Rand agreed. “Mrs. Belgrave, did you notice anyone else in the aisle when you went to the rest room?”
“Only that woman, back there with her coffin.”
Some of the other passengers were beginning to group around them now, and a stewardess had arrived. Dr. Hardan came across the aisle to look, and Rand asked him, “Are you a medical doctor?”
“I—no. What has happened?”
“A man’s been killed.” He saw Yota hurrying up to join them, and he moved down the aisle past her. While they were busy looking at the body he’d have a few minutes alone with the mysterious coffin.
Rand dropped to his knees beside the polished wooden box and pressed his ear against it. There might have been a sound from inside, but he couldn’t be sure. He took a deep breath and began to unscrew the bolts that held the lid in place.
“No! Keep away from there!” Yota Twain flew down the aisle at him, her little fists clenched. “Don’t open that!”
“I’m sorry,” Rand said, trying to fight her off. “I have to open it. A man’s been murdered. The weapon may have been hidden in here.”
“There’s no weapon! Don’t open it!”
“Lanning! Keep her off me, will you?”
The CIA man had appeared behind Yota, and now he grabbed her arms, pinning them to her side. “Calm down, Miss.”
“You don’t understand! If you lift that lid—”
Rand twirled the last bolt free and began to raise the lid, slowly, mindful of a bomb or booby trap.
But the thing that faced him as he lifted the lid was much older than a bomb, and perhaps more dangerous. Their eyes met for just an instant, and then the ancient scaly jaws began to open slowly.
The thing in the coffin was a crocodile.
“I wish you’d listened to me,” Yota told him when the lid had been screwed down again. “It upsets him to have it opened like that.”
“It upset me a bit too,” Rand agreed. “Suppose you explain.”
“It’s not at all that unusual, Mr. Rand. Crocodiles are sometimes shipped between zoos in coffins, simply because it’s such a perfect container for them. This particular specimen is a Philippine crocodile, almost fully grown. We’re transferring him from the Tokyo zoo to the Moscow zoo, for mating with a female they have there.”
“You couldn’t tell us this before, Miss Twain?”
She smiled. “My real name is Dr. Yota Nobea, professor of zoology at Tokyo University. I have close ties with the zoo. And no, we couldn’t tell you this, Mr. Rand. Passengers would have been just as disturbed flying with a live crocodile as with a dead body, I’m afraid.”
Rand glanced back at Shoju’s seat. “Now they have both, I’m afraid. I suppose Dr. Hardan is a zoologist too.”
“That’s correct. He’s worked closely with me on the crocodile-mating project.”
“Why would anyone want to mate crocodiles?”
She shrugged. “It is an occupation much preferred to the killing of people, Mr. Rand.”
Lanning came up from the front of the plane, carrying a Llama automatic wrapped in a handkerchief. “We found the murder weapon, Rand. It was stuffed into an empty seat. Anyone could have put it there during the excitement just now. Here’s the silencer, too.”
“Could this be the gun that killed the man in Shoju’s office?”
“Same caliber. Yes, it could be.”
“Then Sivas is on this plane?”
“Sivas or someone else.” Lanning tried to grin. “I don’t go much for mysterious Turkish assassins myself. Sometimes life is a lot simpler.”
Rand stepped away so that Yota could not hear his answer. “Someone doesn’t want Belgrave freed. Could it be his wife?”
“I’ll buy anything at this point, Rand, if you can come up with a motive and evidence.”
The plane was beginning its descent. A voice on the intercom instructed the passengers to fasten their seat-belts. In a few moments they would be on the ground at Moscow airport.
Rand had been waiting for the better part of two hours in the high-ceilinged Kremlin office before Taz made his appearance. He was as Rand remembered him from Paris—middle-aged, with a thin face, pointed jaw, and deep blue eyes. His graying hair swept back from his forehead, and his thin fingers played nervously with the metal buttons of his jacket.
“Ah, my friend Rand!” He extended his hand in greeting, speaking the same accented English that Rand remembered from their previous meetings. “I am so sorry to keep you waiting like this, but your flight from Tokyo has complicated our lives. The murder of a news reporter is not to be taken lightly.”
“I’m glad to hear that.” Rand wished he had a cigarette.
“But the killing is out of my hands. You come to discuss the arrest of the spy Belgrave, no?”
“No. Belgrave’s no spy and you know it, Taz.”
“I do not know it, my friend. He has confessed, and we have the evidence.”
“I’d like to see that evidence.”
Taz smiled slightly and untied a folder he’d been carrying. “I like to anticipate you. I especially like it when we are deciphering your messages.”
Rand frowned. This was, in some ways, a new Taz—a man supremely confident. “We’re pretty good at anticipating too,” he countered lamely. “Now, let’s see this evidence.”
Taz spread the telegraph forms on the desk between them. There were six in all, made up of familiar five-character cipher groups. Rand scanned one at random: 3H9J4 WBRD1 SQ25F MILT7 6G8RP. “You’ve deciphered it?” he asked Taz.
“In essence. After he confessed, Belgrave read the rest for us. A SYKO cipher, of course. I suspected as much when I saw the mixture of numerals and letters.”
“Were these actually sent?”
“Of course not!” Taz chuckled at the very thought of it. “Russian telegraph offices could hardly be expected to transmit enciphered messages.”
“Exactly!” Rand pointed out. “So what did Belgrave hope to gain by trying to send them? If he’d discovered any secrets it would have been much safer to carry them back to America inside his head.”
“The fact remains that he confessed. And without torture.”
“The only witness to that is dead now.”
“The Japanese?” Taz dismissed him with a wave of the hand. “I was a witness to it. Do you not accept my word?”
Rand looked into the deep blue eyes. “I do,” he said at last.
“Then what else is there to discuss? The man was caught trying to send enciphered messages, and he confessed to being an American spy.”
“Spying on what? On your new SUM missile?”
“The particular nature of his espionage is not important.”
“I think it’s damned important,” Rand barked, leaning forward until his face was only inches from Taz’s. “There’s nothing in these messages about the SUM and you know it!”
“Do I?”
“Because if there was you wouldn’t be so free in showing them to me. I could have them memorized already, for all you know. It’s not too difficult a feat.”
“All right.” Taz leaned back, breaking the contact of their eyes. “The messages did not mention SUM. They seemed to be about aircraft reconnaissance. They did not, admittedly, make a great deal of sense.”
“I wouldn’t think so.”
Taz frowned at him now. “Why not?”
“Because the SYKO cipher was a widely used Allied air-ground system during World War II. It hasn’t been used since then. Gordon Belgrave was an Air Corps Intelligence officer during the war. He was confessing to acts of espionage committed twenty-five years ago.”
Taz turned from the desk and walked over to the high broad window that reached almost to the ceiling. He stood for a moment gazing out at the lights of the Moscow evening; then at last he turned to face Rand.
“You can prove what you say?”
“Belgrave had a nervous breakdown last year. He received shock treatments. Your medical men will tell you that such shock treatments sometimes cause age regression. Belgrave came here to meet with Russian publishers, but suddenly imagined himself in the world of twenty-five years ago. He tried to send messages in the old SYKO cipher, and when you arrested him he confessed to espionage.”
“It’s possible,” Taz admitted somewhat reluctantly. “It would explain the oddness of the message.”
“It’s more than possible—it happened. I want the man released at once, Taz.”
“That is beyond my authority.”
“Like hell it is! What do you hope to gain by holding him?”
Taz motioned him to the window. “Forget about the American for a moment and look down on all this. We are in one of Moscow’s tallest buildings—not tall by American standards, but it compares favorably with London, no?”
“Get to the point, Taz. The American is innocent. What do you want in exchange for him?”
The blue eyes blinked. “What do I want? Why, I want you, my friend. And it appears that I have you.”
“What new game is this?” Rand felt his blood run cold. Had he been outwitted somehow?
“I could press that button on the desk and have you arrested for murder, Mr. Rand.”
“Murder!”
“The murder of one Shoju Etan on a Japanese airliner over Russian territory.”
“You’re crazy, my friend.”
“I could produce three witnesses who would swear they saw you shoot him.”
“You had Shoju killed just to frame me for his murder?”
“Hardly. But it is convenient, is it not? I could keep you here, remove you forever from the Department of Concealed Communications.”
“If that’s what you want you could have me killed back in London any day of the week. I’m really quite vulnerable, as I told you once before.”
Taz shook his head. “I do not want you dead, my friend. I want only to make you an offer.”
“In return for my freedom?”
“In return for the freedom of Gordon Belgrave.”
“He means nothing to me.”
Taz shrugged. “Very well, then. Who else must I seize? The American CIA man—Lanning?”
“Leave him out of it.” Rand realized that his palms were sweating. He’d come here as the cat and now suddenly he felt like the mouse. “What is your offer?”
Taz smiled, motioning toward the walls with their proletarian adornment. “I can assure you there are no listening devices in this room.”
“I accept your assurance.”
“Very well. Let us get to business. My offer is simply this—that we, you and I, join forces for our own betterment. That we, shall I say, exchange certain key pieces of information regarding our codes and ciphers.”
Rand leaned forward, not certain that he’d heard correctly. “You can’t be serious!”
“I’m deadly serious, my friend. Neither of us grows younger. The espionage business is a dying one, replaced by satellites in the sky and old men around a conference table. Would it not be to our advantage to work together, to try and gather a—what is it called?—yes, a nest egg for the days of our enforced retirement. What I am suggesting, after all, is no more than Major Batjuschin suggested to Captain Redl in 1902.”
This brought a smile from Rand. “You mean Captain Redl, the archtraitor?”
“Yes or no, my friend?”
“I suppose, Taz, that what you’re suggesting is the only sensible course for practical men to follow. And I suppose I’m both foolish and old-fashioned in turning you down.”
“What is it—patriotism?”
“Nothing so nebulous as that. I suppose, quite simply, it’s just that I don’t quite trust you, my friend.”
The Russian’s face froze. “Very well. Then Gordon Belgrave remains with us.”
Rand held up a hand. “Not so fast. Now it’s my turn to propose a deal. Do I have your word that the Russians are not responsible for Shoju Etan’s murder?”
“You have it.”
“What about a man named Sivas?”
“A hired killer, employed by the Albanians, and sometimes by their friends the Chinese.”
“I suspected as much.”
“Is Sivas here, in Moscow?” asked Taz curiously.
“If you’ll release Belgrave, I’ll deliver Sivas—and more besides.”
“More?”
“Now it’s your turn to trust me.”
Taz nodded slowly. “Show me Sivas. Where is he?”
“Let’s look for him together. At the Moscow zoo.”
Dr. Yota Nobea glanced up as they entered, neglecting for a moment the languid crocodile in its shallow pool of water. “The zoo is closed till morning,” she said automatically. “It’s almost eleven o’clock.”
“You’ve forgotten me already?” Rand asked. “After only ten hours?”
“Mr. Rand! What brings you to the zoo at night? And who is that with you?”
“My name is Taz,” the Russian said softly.
“You really must excuse me. I’m getting my crocodile settled in his new quarters.”
“We don’t want the crocodile,” Rand said. “We want the coffin he came in.”
“The coffin! It’s out on the truck. But why do you want it?”
“Because, Dr. Nobea, six big men had to struggle to get that coffin on board. A full-grown Philippine crocodile weighs less than an average person, and you said this one wasn’t yet fullgrown. I want what’s hidden in the bottom of that coffin.”
“There’s nothing,” she said, but her eyes darted with fright.
“No Customs man would search further after you showed him the crocodile, would he? And no Customs man would question the total weight of the coffin, at least not when it arrived in the care of Professor Nobea of Tokyo University. Which brings us to the question: what happened to the real Professor Nobea?”
Yota’s mouth twisted. “I am Nobea.”
Rand shook his head. “Shoju Etan was doing a series of articles on the Tokyo zoo, which included research in Moscow. He must have known about the crocodile-mating project. He must have met the real Nobea. That was why Shoju Etan had to die, wasn’t it? Not because of Gordon Belgrave’s confession, but because of Shoju’s zoo articles. Not because the newspaperman might recognize you on the plane, but because he wouldn’t recognize you! When that coffin was opened at Customs and you identified yourself as Dr. Nobea, Shoju would have been there to call you a liar.”
“The first attempt on Shoju was made at his office,” Taz objected. “How would they know that soon whether he would be on the same flight?”
“Shoju wrote in his Belgrave story that he’d be returning to Moscow this week, and there’s only one flight from Tokyo to Moscow each week. Yota knew he’d be on that plane, and so he had to die. When they failed to kill him earlier, they had to do it before the plane landed. I had a tip when Yota admitted using a false name early in the flight. There was no reason for it—except to keep her assumed identity a secret from Shoju till he was dead.”
There was a sound behind them, and Rand saw Dr. Hardan in the doorway. He was wearing a black raincoat and he held a Llama automatic in his hand. A spare in his baggage, of course. All experienced assassins carry two.
Yota screamed something in Chinese and leaped to the side of the crocodile pond. Taz turned, his reactions just a bit too slow, and saw the assassin’s gun trained on him. Rand had only a second to consider the alternatives. Then he fired through the pocket of his jacket and caught Hardan in the chest.
“You were armed,” Taz muttered, recovering himself enough to get a firm grip on the woman.
“No one searched me,” Rand replied with a smile. “I always visit Russians with a gun in my pocket.” He walked over and nudged the body on the concrete floor. “This is Dr. Hardan, or if you prefer, Sivas, late Turkish assassin. Funny, Lanning said he even looked like one. The CIA can’t be all bad.”
“What is in the bottom of the coffin?” Taz asked.
“Something Chinese agents were anxious to smuggle into Moscow. You take it from there.”
“I will, my friend,” Taz said.
The following morning a Russian military transport was waiting at Moscow airport. Rand and Taz watched while Mrs. Belgrave led her husband to the plane, and then Rand said, “Thanks for the transportation. It saves us a wait.”
“Thank you, Mr. Rand.” The Russian seemed in good spirits.
“The coffin?”
“It’s not my department, but I understand it’s very critical. Pieces of metal, and much wiring. The more melodramatic of our people suspect they may be components of a small Chinese atomic bomb.”
Rand whistled. “You’d better watch out for the rest of it.”
“We will.” Taz paused. “And Rand, if you ever decide to accept my offer—”
“Don’t count on it. In this business we all end up poor. There’s no beating the system, Taz.” He remembered Lanning’s complaint about his low pay, and saw the CIA man walking toward them. “I’d better go now.”
The Russian nodded and waved as they parted. Then Rand fell into step with Lanning and they walked to the waiting jet. “You did a good job, Rand,” the American observed. “We just heard from Tokyo that they’ve located the real Dr. Nobea. She was drugged but unharmed.”
“It was a good job,” Rand agreed. “I helped Taz and I freed Belgrave. Sorry you couldn’t get the plan for the SUM missile while we were at it.”
Lanning started up the steps of the plane, then turned back toward Rand with a little smile. “What makes you think we didn’t get it?” he whispered.