Hawaii Five-O - 2 - Terror in the Sun

by Michael Avallone

  Suddenly, a DC-8 throbbed above him, roaring on toward the coast of California. He looked up and for one long rueful moment, he wished he was on board, watching the coral and colorful magnificence of Oahu from the height of three thousand feet. He knew it was the one fifteen flight out of Honolulu, nonstop to San Francisco. The Golden Gate Bridge in less than five hours’ flying time.

  He shook off a feeling of sudden fatigue and restlessness and clambered into the car. He had borrowed one of the Five-O departmental cars to come down all by his lonesome as the Governor had suggested.

  He had expected his Honor the Governor to toss something in his lap but he hadn’t expected anything of the size and magnitude of the Endore assignment. You just never knew when you woke up in your Waikiki apartment just exactly what the new day would bring. The cobalt blue and golden sky was the limit at all times in sunny, orange-splashed Oahu. The peculiar needs and problems of Hawaii Five-O were never dormant or permanently fixed. Crime and its extensions never remained in a stationary orbit. Wheels of vice, evil and wrongs always spun off on revolutionary, brand-new tangents.

  McGarrett eased behind the wheel, flicked on the two-way radio which maintained contact with Headquarters. He drew a hand mike up to his mouth as he put the car in gear. The motor hummed, turning over. McGarrett kept his eyes on the studio buildings and vicinity and spoke into the mike.

  “Give me a time signal.”

  “Just going to contact you. Thirteen eighteen hundred hours and all quiet.” It was Chin Ho Kelly’s voice, on duty at the office. The husky Hawaiian with the Irish strain completely invisible in his tanned face sounded bored. “Need anything?”

  “Negative. Where’s Williams and Kono?”

  “Danny’s checking that stolen property beef down on Lalemuno Road. You remember—the missing station wagon. Kono went down to the Attorney General’s office to pick up a batch of fresh files on the very latest in crime detection equipment. Me I’m getting a sore fanny from holding down the fort.”

  “Keep holding. Listen. If you hear from either of them, tell them to drop everything and report back to base. I’m on my way in now. We have to coordinate on a new assignment. Straight from the top. The Governor. May back from lunch, yet?”

  “Sitting here looking as overworked as ever. Put her on?”

  “No. Just tell her to prepare anything and everything she can find on Rogers Endore, the diplomat currently in residence at the Kahala Hilton. Tell her to be as discretionary as if she belonged to a secret service. It’s hush-hush.”

  “Check.” Chin Ho Kelly’s voice lost its bored sound and gained an octave of enthusiasm. “Fresh fish, Steve?”

  “Fresh fish,” McGarrett agreed grimly. “See you in about a half hour. Over and out.” He clicked the mike button and dropped it on the seat cushion next to his right thigh.

  He backed the Five-O car out of the gravel driveway onto the macadamized road. He checked the rearview and side mirrors to see how the traffic was, found the lane deserted, and stepped down on the accelerator. The car shot forward, thrusting, nosing powerfully toward the highway. He kept his eyes on the road and somberly put his thoughts in order as his trained and fluid reflexes responded almost mechanically to the imposed conditions of driving a car at better than fifty miles an hour. Once again, as placid as his face was, his mind was a seething volcano of possibilities, reflections and questions evoked by the Governor’s highly unusual request.

  McGarrett drove on, thinking, against the hot, bathing glare of the sun moving west in the Honolulu sky.

  Even as he raced back toward Headquarters, the six assassins in the lavish suite at the Kahala Hilton were readying their instruments of execution, the tools of their terrible trade.

  Angelo Bellini regarded, almost lovingly, a thin looping wire, made of the finest Toledo steel, which he carried collapsed in a very special belt that he wore under his fancy silk shirt. A garrote of incredible tensile strength with which he had dispatched so many victims to their particular Maker.

  In another corner of the suite, Mark Tillingham, the Briton, hefted the compact, dark blue automatic pistol of .32 caliber. It rode very easily—in a specially constructed belt holster attached to his waistband—toward the small of his back where it could not be detected or even expected to be found.

  Tornier of France was on one of the beds in an adjoining room studying his collection of knives. Dirks, daggers and stilettos, as slim and nearly as delicate as surgical instruments, gleamed from the counterpane. Tornier selected the stiletto, balanced it on the ball of one huge thumb and nodded to himself. He had chosen the weapon he wanted to work with this time.

  At the wide window, Igor Dorkin examined a fountain pen of familiar and commercial make and decided it would serve admirably to conceal a clever bomb-device of sufficient explosive force to kill the man who pressed down on the point to write.

  Von Litz, brush-haired bullet of a head shining with the dew of concentration and motivation, was at the informal bar-table, studying a handful of round, magenta-colored pellets, no larger than marbles. L-pills, L for Lethal, containing enough poison to kill the healthiest of men. He grunted to himself, holding the pellets to the light, wondering about the proper time, place and location for them.

  Benjamin Bygraves was in one of the two tiled, expansive bathrooms that accommodated the suite of rooms. He was washing his hands. His thin cadaverous face shone like a death’s head in the mirror before him. When he had rinsed the soap suds from his palms, he turned to reach for a towel.

  His hands were large, taloned, almost hideous in their grotesquely long and rigid musculature. The fingertips were like the remorseless tips of a a claw hammer.

  Bygraves could rip any telephone directory in the world in half and neatly compress a large enough coin into a semi-circle of folded defeat. He could also break fifteen slats of wood down the middle with one formidable karate slice of his right hand.

  He could do all of those things.

  As well as strangle manually anybody in the world.

  3. THE TAN TARGETS

  Room service had sent up a cut-glass pitcher of ice water, a shining chrome decanter of tea ringed with six slices of lemon and the afternoon Star-Bulletin. Fortified with these comforts provided by the streamlined, soft-footed, attractively uniformed personnel of the Kahala Hilton, Rogers Endore settled down for a moment of relaxation from the customary rigors of being a celebrity.

  For once, he was alone in the excessively large and grand suite of rooms. The security people provided by the Home Office for his travels from Berlin to America had vanished into the woodwork. On duty at the doors, keeping vigil on the smoothly carpeted corridor with its banks of elevators and perhaps, even loitering on adjoining terraces and things, he supposed. It was all so childish and futile sometimes. Grown men playing games of espionage. But necessary. Very necessary. Rogers Endore had not been involved in the business of peace, war and mankind for more than two decades without knowing the very pesky status he held. An ambassadorial sash and a diplomatic immunity were not like a bulletproof vest. Diplomats were killed in the line of duty, too, you know. Even as the most unfortunate foot soldier in France or Dunkirk or Korea. Or Vietnam.

  Sticky business all around.

  Endore wore nothing but a bath towel wrapped about his lean, hard body. It was a terrycloth delight with a hibiscus pattern appliquéd onto its fuzzy, pleasurable whole. He had just showered in the enormous porcelain bathroom and now with slippers comforting his feet and the prospects of a cuppa and a brief plunge into a newspaper, he was ready to face the world. And the hardships of the coming evening where he would have to have a closed-session talk with the Governor of Hawaii and several other top people behind the Hawaiian scene.

  Rogers Endore did not look like a diplomat.

  He was small and wiry, flat-bellied and leanly muscular, and not until he opened his mouth did anybody ever know that he was British and in the Foreign Service. His flesh was uncommonly tanned for someone
born within the sound of Bow Bells; he was bordering on fifty years of age and only the silver streaks in his thick thatch of loosely worn hair could have told you that. His nose was as prominent as the spout of an old-fashioned coffee pot if you upended it. His mouth was wide and full, closing over small, chiseled teeth that had to be his own. His ears were set close to his head seeming to bracket a forehead of amazingly lofty height. He was as brown as a lifeguard, thanks to years of India, Africa and South America. Thanks to that and a rigid self-discipline of voracious reading and public speaking, Rogers Endore had successfully stamped out all traces of his Cockney accent and ancestry. He was one of the modern world’s most illustrious men and the Kahala Hilton was basking in reflected glory. Stanching the flood of newspaper people, interviewers, TV and radio rabids out to milk a Mauria Kea of copy from Endore’s presence in Honolulu.

  Endore made himself comfortable on a lounge of staggering size and resplendent rainbow hues and picked up the newspaper. It was a large daily, the size of the Times, and Endore was at home with the crisp feel of it. The bath towel tightly knotted about his middle clung to him like a pair of bathing trunks. The wide, high-ceilinged air-conditioned suite was hushed. There was scarcely a sound from within or without. Endore had drawn the colorful drapes on the wide windows facing Waikiki Beach. The lighting of the suite was sufficient for him. He preferred to read by artificial electric light. Not even the intermittent thunder of the jet planes trafficking above or the mournful blasts of craft out on the water pierced the tranquillity of his reading time. He had propped a pair of rimless glasses on his huge nose and these, plus his general appearance made him seem all the more like a studious lifeguard.

  He paid special attention to the departure and arrival sections of the shipping news. For local news he had absolutely no interest. In the short space of ten minutes, he had digested all that the Star-Bulletin had to offer. He had found nothing of a suspicious nature. He folded the paper neatly, plopped it on a rounded mosaic end table by the lounge and then reached for the chrome decanter of tea. A brief smile warmed his face. The Englishman and his eternal cuppa. The habits of a lifetime were hard to break, were they not?

  It was only after he had had the tea, liberally cutting the acidity with several slices of lemon, that he sighed laboriously and lifted himself from the lounge almost ruefully. He knew himself all too well. He had stalled, dawdled, put off the moment of truth, as it were. High time he got down to basics. The game at hand.

  He padded into the adjoining bedroom and returned, bringing with him the thin, elegant looking attaché case which he had carried with him since the day that Churchill had given it to him for his fortieth birthday. That had been at the country home in Dover, the summer of ’59. When the world and Rogers Endore were much younger. The gold-tooled monogram ROE showed from the top grain Moroccan leather side of the thing, up near the zipper track. Endore had been so proud. Prouder than a peacock on the mall in Mayfair and then Winnie had died . . .

  Closing his mind against the pain of nostalgia, Endore opened the attaché case and drew forth a thin packet of papers. He sat down again at a writing table in one corner of the room, flicked on a hooded night lamp and undid the paper clip which fastened the sheaf of papers together. He studied them soberly for a second before fanning them out in a wide circle for maximum survey effect.

  The light revealed five slips of paper, exactly three and one-quarter inches square, with a blue border at the top and bottom of each one. The trademark of Western Electric was on the lower left hand corner of each slip of paper, signifying the Bell Telephone System. Endore reflected only a second, recalling the elaborate display booth at one of the business exhibits in Berlin which the Bell people used to convince the public of the benefits of the computer system. Its magic, its speed. One pressed a button asking any question relating to anything in the universe and within one minute the answer came ferrying out to you on one of these slips of paper. Highly effective, convincing, almost a feat of legerdemain. Rogers Endore had attended the exhibit with explicit orders from London to press the question buttons numbered 21, 25, 60, 73 and 77. The results were the five slips now before him.

  He was to deliver them to the Home Office on his return from Washington, D.C. but not before presenting them to the Yanks for preliminary inspection. Obviously, the States and the Queen Mother were working hand in glove on some mutual project. But not even Rogers Endore knew what that project was.

  A very careful reading of the harmless answers to the numbered questions revealed nothing that would attract an innocent eye. Even now, studying them very carefully, Endore decided he had never seen a more overly innocuous set of facts:

  21.

  What was probably the first school in New Jersey was built in the village of Bergen (New Jersey City) in 1662. The first teacher received an annual salary of 250 guilders, payable in wampum.

  25.

  A laser beam is a ray of light that is ordered, intense, highly directional, and very nearly of one frequency. LASER is an acronym for Light Amplication by Stimulated Emission of Radiation.

  60.

  Examine the string of pearls for signs of wear and have restrung at least once a year. Wash in mild warm soap suds, using soft brush. Rub them occasionally with dry chamois. Replace flat in case. Never twist pearls while wearing them.

  Jersey schools? Laser beams? Pearl-care? Endore shook his head, completely baffled. The last two responses were as incredibly direct and unrelated as the previous ones had been.

  73.

  The Major League record for the most hits in succession is 12, held jointly by Mike Higgins (Boston, AL) in 4 games in 1938, and Walt Dropo (Detroit, AL) in 3 games in 1952.

  77.

  The first organized baseball game was played in N.J. on June 19, 1846 at Elysian Fields, Hoboken, N.J., between the Knickerbockers and N.Y. Nine.

  There it was. The lot. All five. No more or less than you might well find in an almanac, guide or reference book. Baseball! And New Jersey again—Endore was convinced it was a hidden code of some kind, perhaps in the numbers or possibly the proper names or places, but he was dashed if he could know or say just where. Espionage. Spying. Tricks. Children at their games. Rubbish!

  Endore snorted, riffled the slips like a deck of cards, clipped them together again and replaced them in the attaché case. Kipling had said it all when the subject matter was the English and Duty. Your’s not to reason why, your’s just to do and die—dear old empirical Rudyard, rest his hallowed bones, or was that Tennyson.

  Still, it would make damn finer sense if there was less buttoning down at the Home Office and a bit more of cards on the table. Why must a man go stumbling about in the dark, not knowing the nature of the game being played? Blindman’s buff—indeed!

  Endore stalked about the room. Restless, feverish for some activity. He strode to the windows, parted the drapes and stared out down toward the sandy, curving shoreline of the beach. Waikiki. He could see the surfboarders weaving, riding high on the incoming breakers. Pleasure ships, yachts, skiffs and sloops moved along the blue horizon, their sails shining creamy-white in the blaze of sunlight. Along the beach itself, a veritable horde of bathers, sun-worshipers, men, women and children choked the dunes with their blankets, umbrellas and beach paraphernalia. Endore sighed wistfully. The bronze of his body was no mockery. He was a fine swimmer, once having won a trophy in his senior year at Cambridge. Regretfully, Endore let the drapes fall. A swim would pose an enormous security problem. All those strangers down there and his own phalanx of protective agents—the “ring of flesh” Winnie had called it once—would be hard put to guarantee his safety and well-being.

  The room was air-conditioned, at any rate. One had to be thankful for small favors. Even of an undiplomatic nature.

  The phone in the suite rang. Almost grateful for the interruption, Endore fairly pounced on the instrument. It was Carraway, his secretary. The title was a misnomer of whopping proportions. Oh, Carraway could take dictation
, receive callers and all that, but he was also a dead shot with a pistol and had served with Monty in Africa as a tank commander, winning honors at El Alamein.

  “Bad news I’m afraid, sir.”

  “Go on.”

  “Miss Endore is in the lobby downstairs. Here, sir.”

  Rogers Endore was speechless for a historic moment in his career as a public servant.

  “Your daughter, sir. She won’t take no for an answer—”

  Endore swore. Lustily and loudly. Even his mild distaste and apathy for his current expedition of intrigue had not brought him to utter an indelicate Cockney oath.

  “Right, sir,” Carraway said blankly, waiting patiently for instructions.

  “Dammit, how did she get here? What fool in London let her come? The last thing I need is Myra on my hands—”

  “Quite, sir. I’ll ring up and see if I can find out anything pertinent. Meanwhile—”

  “Yes, yes. Send her on up, Carraway. Is she all right?” At last, a deeply buried parental concern came surging to the crest of Endore’s feelings. “Nothing wrong?”

  Carraway took a beat before answering.

  “If you’ll forgive my saying so, sir, if all the women of this beknighted universe looked like Myra Endore, there’d be very little to tell the judge.”

  Rogers Endore chuckled. Carraway was right, of course. Dead on target. Myra, bless her, was one of the reigning beauties of Europe. The spit and image of her dead mother.

  “Send the hellcat up,” he barked into the transmitter. “She’ll be in the way certainly but I can’t send her packing without at least a stern word or two, eh?”