It's Getting Harder All The Time

by Troy Conway

  But where to get the clues?

  Superman?

  The treasury vault?

  The seven femme physicists—Olga and Tania excluded—whom I hadn’t yet questioned?

  Douzi himself? Did I dare risk telling him point-blank what Red China had up its sleeve, then let the chips fall where they may?

  I recalled the old adage: any port in a storm.

  I amended it to: every port in a storm.

  Well, not quite every port.

  I wouldn’t open up with Douzi. At least not yet.

  But I’d sure as hell chase down all the other possibilities. The time had come to stop playing my cards so close to my vest. I needed action, and I needed it fast.

  The seven femme physicists wouldn’t be hard to get to. I could count on at least three a four of them visiting me after dinner, and I was pretty sure that the others would make the scene at least once during the next couple of days. Caution be damned, I was going to lay my cards on the table with every last one of them, just as I had with Tania.

  I’d also tackle Superman. Maybe my abundantly endowed competitor would be completely in the dark about what was happening. Or maybe he wouldn’t tell me what he knew. But I owed it to myself—and to my mission—to find out whatever I could from him.

  Also, I’d try to get into the treasury vault. It wouldn’t be easy, but then, nothing in this whole deal was easy. To quote my buddies in the old United States Army Air Force “The difficult we do immediately; the impossible will take a little longer.”

  Finally, I’d grill Olga. There was a language barrier, to be sure. But as I lay in the bed which she left, supremely satisfied, just a short while before, I suddenly realized a sure-fire way to bridge that barrier.

  Yes, I told myself, I really was going to swing into action. Time was wasting and I couldn’t afford to waste another minute of it.

  I looked at my watch.

  It was nine forty-five.

  I was exhausted after my night of nonstop sexual hijinks, and I wanted nothing more than to sleep.

  But my ever-present Mazimba was racked out on his bunk, and I saw the opportunity to get in a few uninterrupted hours of work.

  Dragging myself out of bed, I tugged on a pair of slacks and a sportshirt. Then I took Lin Saong’s miniature transmitter from the false bottom of my suitcase, and hightailed it to the top of the hill I had dubbed Melody Mountain.

  My broadcast was virtually identical to the one I had beamed out the previous afternoon—except that I sang eight hillbilly songs instead of two and repeated my spiel about why PUF shouldn’t attack Douzi’s palace five times instead of once. All told, I was on the air for more than an hour. If Walrus-moustache’s radioman was in Belgravia, he had ample opportunity to zero in on my beacon. And if he zeroed in he had a damned good idea of what I was facing.

  The broadcast over, I hurried to the Third Court of the palace and mingled with the bureaucrats in the offices of the Belgravia treasury. I knew I’d need a lulu of a story to con them into letting me into the vault, and I couldn’t think of one. But while I was trying, I spotted a pile of bulky sacks being unloaded from an armored truck parked outside the back door.

  The guys who were unloading the sacks were blackskinned natives wearing khaki uniforms and pith helmets. There were four of them, and they carried their cargo through a bustling office area and into the vault, which was wide open. No one seemed to be paying any attention to them except an armed guard, who was leaning lazily against the truck.

  I got an idea. It was risky in the extreme. But this was my day to take chances.

  Slipping around to the rear of the building, I tiptoed through a narrow alley and into the courtyard where the truck was parked. The courtyard was deserted, and the position of the truck was such that the guard leaning against it couldn’t be seen from any of the windows in the bordering buildings. I moved silently into place behind him.

  He was just about my size, and he was toying with his billy club. The pistol in his holster glistened brightly in the morning sun. Glancing around to make sure I was unobserved, I moved closer to him. I waited until the sack carrier at the rear of the truck had vanished into the treasury building. Then, with one quick motion, I whipped the pistol from its holster and jabbed it into the guard’s back.

  “Don’t say a word,” I hissed. “Just keep your hands where they are and back up toward me.”

  He didn’t budge. I wasn’t sure whether he was dumbstruck by the suddenness of my move or whether he just couldn’t speak English.

  I took a step backward. “Come on,” I growled. “Back up.”

  He said something in a Belgravian tribal tongue. I didn’t comprehend a word of it, but nonetheless I had a pretty good idea of what he was trying to say: he didn’t speak English.

  I smiled. One thing was certain. He was a pro, and pros never play hero.

  He might not have understood my instructions, but he knew that I meant business.

  His billy dangled impotently from its strap, which hung loosely from his outstretched fingers. His other hand inched into hammer lock position behind his back, the fingers open. In his own professional way, he was letting me know that he planned to be a cooperative prisoner—cooperative even to the point of not doing anything which would look suspicious to passersby, like raising his hands over his head.

  I confiscated his billy, then took hold of his arm and slowly turned him around. His sweat-beaded black face wore an expression of just-mild concern. His small brown eyes fixed to mine, seemingly pleading with me to be the same kind of no-heroics pro that he was being.

  I gestured with the gun toward the cab or the truck.

  He dutifully climbed inside.

  I pantomimed undressing.

  He promptly stripped to his shorts.

  I motioned for him to turn around.

  He did.

  I used his belt to tie his arms behind hi back. Then I used my handkerchief to gag him. This accomplished, I took off my clothes and put on his uniform. Then, tugging the pith helmet over my eyes, I picked up a sack from the rear of the truck and carried it into the building.

  I don’t know how I got to the vault without anyone noticing my Caucasian face or the Caucasian arms that were sticking out of the short sleeves of his khaki shirt. But nobody stopped me. I entered the vault, put down my sack and began looking around.

  What I found was exactly what you might expect to find in a vault—money, banknotes, stock certificates and a whole mess of official-looking papers.

  But I didn’t find anything even remotely resembling a bomb. And a detailed inspection of the vault’s walls and floors failed to produce any evidence of a trapdoor or panel which might lead to a secret underground passage.

  I couldn’t figure out why Douzi had declared the vault off-limits to me. But it was painfully apparent that I had taken one hell of a crazy risk—and all for nothing.

  I slipped out of the vault and headed back to the truck. This time I didn’t even have a sack to shield me from the observation of the bureaucrats who were working there. But still none of them noticed me.

  I wondered if maybe my luck, which had been just fair for nearly three days now, was suddenly going to take a turn for the better.

  For a while it seemed like it was.

  At the truck, I changed back into my own clothes, tucked the guard’s pistol inside my slacks, tossed his uniform across the front seat, and took off for Melody Mountain—all without being seen by anyone.

  Then I beamed another hour-long transmission at Lin Saong—again without creating any noticeable stir.

  Then, as I ambled back to my room, the bad luck started.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Mazimba wasn’t waiting there for me. Another eunuch was.

  “I have been sent to replace Mazimba,” he said in labored English. “My name is Lumombe. I will do your bidding, and I will stay with you at all times.”

  I groaned. Bad Break Number One: I evidently had outsmarted myself by
giving Mazimba the slip once too many times. Now I had a new tail, and this one was in a lot better physical condition than his predecessor. I might walk my legs off before I got him weary enough to fall out. Worse still, if Douzi questioned Mazimba, the pint-sized president might suddenly get the idea that I wasn’t quite so harmless as I at first might have seemed.

  After Lumombe and I had taken a lunch break, I hunted down Superman. I finally found him at the outdoor pool, basking in the sun while he glanced through an American girlie magazine full of nude and seminude photos.

  I exchanged a few banalities with him, speaking very rapidly so that I could test Lumombe’s English comprehension. It took less than a minute for me to realize that my new castrated companion didn’t have the vaguest idea of what I was saying.

  I sighed with relief. It seemed as though my luck was turning good again.

  Ha! Bad Break Number Two!

  Lumombe might not have understood me when I started pumping Superman for details about the nine femme physicists and about Douzi’s comings and goings. But while Superman understood me perfectly, he refused to believe that I was trying to foil a plot involving Red China.

  “I’m on to your game, Damon,” he snarled. “You want to get something on me so you can have all the chicks in the harem for yourself.”

  “Don’t be an idiot,” I told him. “I can’t even handle the chicks I have now.”

  “Well, I can. So if you get tired, just pack up and go home. Meanwhile, stop bugging me.”

  And that was that. I’d been operating on the theory of every-port-in-a-storm. But all the damned ports were closed—at least to my ship.

  I did a quick walking tour of the palace grounds with Lumombe, hoping against hope that, appearances to the contrary, he’d prove to be as out-of-shape as Mazimba. I might just as well have tried growing wings. He finished the tour looking like he was ready to run the mile in less than four minutes. Meanwhile, my butt was dragging so low that I was sure it’d scrape the ground any second.

  I thought of trying to bribe Lumombe to leave me alone. But I was pretty sure that Mazimba had taken a few lumps for dereliction of duty, and the odds were good that Lumombe would be afraid to accept a bribe. Worse yet, even if all the eunuchs hated Douzi, as Tania had said, fear might impel Lumombe to report the bribe offer, in which event I’d really be in hot water.

  Nope, bribery was out of the question. And so, it seemed, was every other stratagem I had in mind.

  Resigned to having him tag along after me, I abandoned my plan to beam another hour-long radio transmission at Lin Saong, and instead returned to my room. It was four fifteen, and I was dog-tired. With luck, I told myself, I’d be able to knock off a three-hour nap before showing up for dinner and the new night’s round of sexercises.

  But I’d forgotten that luck had turned against me. Bad Break Number Three: No sooner had I closed my eyes than there was a knock on my door and Lumombe opened it to admit Su Wing. She said something to him in Belgravian, and he stepped outside. Then she turned to me. “Damon,” she said, “you’re to discontinue your radio transmissions to Lin Saong. From now on, I’ll come to your room every afternoon. You can tell me what you’ve learned from the nine girls, and I’ll convey your messages to Lin Saong.” She held out her hand. “Now give me your transmitter.”

  I gulped. Without the transmitter, I’d really be high and dry. I truned on my sexiest smile. “What’s wrong?” I asked. “Doesn’t your boss like my broadcasts?”

  Her expression told me that the smile hadn’t, moved her a bit. “You know damned well that she doesn’t like your broadcasts. You were told to use the radio only when you had something important to report, and to keep your transmissions as brief as possible. Instead, you’ve been on the air almost constantly, and you’ve managed to say enough about PUF’s plans that BELSO, if it intercepted your transmissions, would be able to thwart the intended attack.

  “Well.” I replied pointedly, “if PUF attacks, you’ll die along with me. Maybe it wouldn’t be such a bad idea it the attack is thwarted.”

  She sat wearily on the edge of the bed. “I don’t want to die, Damon. Not any more that you do. But I have a job to do for my country, and I intend to do it … even if I get killed in the process.”

  I smirked. “Come off it, baby. I might believe that sort of idealistic crap from Lin Saong. But from you I expect a better story. you’re no wild-eyed Communist ideologue. You said yourself that the only reason you joined CHILLER was because your beloved country would’ve executed you as a prostitute if you didn’t. Now you expect me to believe that you’re ready to give your life for that country?”

  She started at me evenly. “It’s not as implausible as it may seem, Damon. Didn’t you say that you were coerced into becoming a spy for reasons very similar to the reasons that I was? And haven’t you risked your life for your country not just once, but many times?”

  Risked, yes,” I asmitted. “But if PUF attacks the palace, you won’t be just risking your life, you’ll be surrendering it. There’s a difference between bravery and suicide.”

  “Maybe so. And maybe not. In any case, PUF won’t attack if you learn where the bombs are being stored.”

  “Okay. But they’ll still try to dismantle the bombs. And if they fail, you and I’ll still go up in the same mushroom cloud.”

  “That’s the chance we’ve got to take, Damon. Now give me the transmitter.”

  I shook my head. “That’s the chance you’ve got to take, baby. I’m playing this game for myself—and by my own rules.”

  Her expression darkened. “I was hoping it wouldn’t come to this, Damon, but you leave me no alternative. I must now order you to hand over your radio.”

  I smirked. “And if I refuse?”

  She slowly drew a thirty-eight automatic from under-nether her kimono and leveled it at my head.

  “If you refuse, Damon, I’ll have no choice but to kill you.”

  I forced a laugh. “Come off it, baby. If you kill me, you’ll never find the hidden bombs.”

  “Maybe not. But at least you won’t be able to make any more broadcasts which BELSO can intercept.”

  I abandoned the laugh, and reverted to my smirk. “You’re not worried about BELSO. If you were, you’d never take all the chances you’ve taken on this caper.”

  Her eyebrows arched. “What chances, Damon?”

  “Like bringing me into the harem under the patently transparent ruse that I’d defected to Red China because the United States wouldn’t give me freedom to conduct my sexual experiments. Honey, if sexual freedom was what I was looking for, Red China’d be the last place in the world I’d go looking for it. Do you think Douzi and BELSO don’t know this?”

  “I think,” she replied softly, “that Douzi and BELSO won’t suspect your cover story unless you give them reason to suspect it. For example, by sending out transmissions which detail precisely what PUF plans to do and precisely when they plan to do it.” Brandishing the gun with one hand, she extended the other toward me. “Now give me the radio, Damon. I’m in no mood to play games.”

  “No, you’re not. At least not now,” I said nastily. “But when you and I were together in the car, you were in the mood. Maybe that’s why you want radio. you’re afraid I’ll tell Su Wing about our hanky-panky together. Your comrades back in Peking would really be happy to hear how you risked detection just so you could get a taste of what you knew I’d be giving to the nine physicists once the show here got on the road.”

  “The radio, Damon,” she repeated softly, tugging back the hammer of the pistol. “I’m going to count to ten. If the radio isn’t in my hand by the time I’m finished, you’ll be a dead man.”

  I forced another laugh. “You’re bluffing, baby. If you kill me, you not only blow your only chance to find the hidden bombs, you also blow your scene with Douzi. you’re his mistress. remember? How would you explain to him that you happened to be in my room?”

  She smiled. “I could say that
I came here bacause your euncuh told me it was a matter of life and death, and that when you got me inside, you tried to rape me.” Her smile broadened. “Or I could just leave you dead on the floor. Douzi would never have to know I killed you. Lumombe would cover for me. He dislikes Douzi, and he likes me very much.” She took aim with the pistol.”Now I’m going to start counting. You have until ten. One … two … three …”

  I suddenly believed that she wasn’t bluffing. I wasn’t convinced that Douzi would buy either of the explanations she had said she’d give him. But I was convinced that she was convinced, and that was conviction enough for me.

  Somewhere in the back of my brain a line from a popular American magazine ad flashed into being.

  The ad read: “Promise her anything, but give her Arpège.”

  I didn’t have any Arpège to give her, but I suddenly could think of a million and one promises.

  “Wait, Su Wing!” I said urgently. “If you really want the radio, I’ll give it to you. But hear me out first, and see if my idea isn’t a better one. I realized it was foolish of me to say so much in my broadcasts. But if I have to relay my information to Lin Saong through you, we’ll be wasting valuable time—maybe enough time to make a difference between whether she finds out where the bombs are before PUF attacks. Let me keep the radio. I promise that I won’t broadcast anything but essential information, And I promise I won’t try anything else that might jeopardize our mission.”

  “Forget it, Damon,” she snapped, “I want the radio, and I want it now. You have until ten. Four … five … six… seven…”

  I remembered the Arpege ad again, but this time it read a little differently. The wording was: “Promise her anything, but give her a clout.”

  I’d’ve liked to give her a clout. The sexy little cutie in the sexy little kimono, who once had seemed so desirable to me, now had lost all her charm. I looked at her and I saw Lin Saong; I saw all the girls from CHILLER; I saw the human female, whom I saw the adorded, stripped of everything that was good and sexy and desirable, and reduced to a cold, calculating, emotionless cypher, using sex as a weapon to con more and more people into making it easier and easier for the abominable sexless monster that was Communism to spread its ugly tentacles farther and farther around the globe.