“Very astute of you,” said Halstead, not turning. “Except recognize isn’t precisely the word; it’s more a feeling of familiarity. If I could only—good grief!” he exclaimed, snapping his fingers. “Dr. Lee Tsung Howell!”
“I beg your pardon?” faltered Mrs. Pollifax.
“Considerably thinner, of course, that’s what fooled me. Good heavens, and it was exactly two years ago that he disappeared—that ties in—and a memorial service really was held for him. Every bit of evidence pointed to his murder by the Red Chinese. There were even two reputable witnesses to testify he was killed and his body carried off by his assassins.”
Mrs. Pollifax and Farrell glanced in astonishment at the Genie. “Who is he?” asked Mrs. Pollifax.
“And what?” asked Farrell.
“Dr. Howell, the scientist. Brilliant man. Born in China; father English, mother Chinese. English citizen. Made the mistake of traveling to Hong Kong two years ago. That’s when they murdered—except they didn’t murder him, did they? Snatched him.”
Farrell said incredulously, “You mean he’s the Dr. Howell? The protein man?”
“Please,” said Mrs. Pollifax despairingly, “please can someone tell me what we’re talking about, and why on earth a protein man would be locked up in a cell in Albania for two years?”
“Food,” said Halstead. “Can you think of anything China needs more desperately for her underfed millions? She needs food more than communism, guns, armies, factories. If I tell you that at the time of his disappearance Dr. Howell was at work on a method for extracting protein from a common weed—a protein that would feed hundreds of people for only a few pennies—does that explain Red China’s interest in him?”
Farrell whistled.
“Except,” added Halstead, glancing at the Genie, “except they did a fantastic job of covering their tracks. We knew they tried to kidnap him but we believed he fought for his life and was killed.”
“Except there was no body,” pointed out Farrell.
“No, two witnesses instead, each highly placed and of impeccable reputation.”
“Not so impeccable now,” said Mrs. Pollifax.
“No indeed.”
“Do you think they tortured him?”
“Possibly at first, but he’d be no good to them dead. They probably settled for solitary confinement, or slow starvation.” He shook his head. “What a break for the world that you found him! The presses will be humming all night long.”
“Will they hum for us, too?” inquired Mrs. Pollifax.
Both men turned to look at her. “Good God, no,” said Farrell. “The Genie—that is, Dr. Howell—will have escaped by himself against impossible odds. As for Emily Pollifax of New Brunswick, New Jersey, who on earth is she?”
“But I feel like such a heroine,” confessed Mrs. Pollifax sadly.
“And so you are, Duchess, so you are. But you have never left Mexico City, remember? As for Albania, where is it? You haven’t even read about it in Time magazine, let alone visited it.”
“Oh,” said Mrs. Pollifax.
Farrell grinned. “Cheer up, Duchess. Do you recall—and it pains me to do so—my suggesting that the Genie was mentally retarded?”
She smiled back. “Yes I do remember, and I believe I said there were flashes of intelligence now and then.”
Halstead laughed. “Just to be charitable I might add that he’s known as quite an eccentric. Would that help?” The stretcher was brought in by two orderlies and they were silent as the Genie was lifted very gently onto it. As he was carried out of the stateroom Mrs. Pollifax said suddenly, “Will I be able to send him get-well cards? I should like to very much if you’ll give me the name of the hospital here.”
Halstead said, “Actually you can learn the hospital’s name simply by reading your newspaper tomorrow morning in Washington, D.C.”
“Washington!” exclaimed Mrs. Pollifax.
“My orders are to fly you at once, nonstop, to Washington.” Seeing their stunned faces he added, “Sorry. You can eat and sleep on the plane, you know, but Carstairs has to see for himself that you’re alive.” He gave them a crooked half-smile. “Apparently he can’t believe it. At any rate immediate questioning is in order. We leave as soon as Bill has taken a look at that arm and pumped Farrell full of anti-infection and anti-pain shots.”
Mrs. Pollifax groaned. “But I’m still wearing the clothes of a goatherder’s wife and I still haven’t had a bath—only a facewash—and the lice are back and I think they’ve multiplied. Is there no rest at all for the weary?”
“Never. Not in this job, anyway.” He added with a grin, “You may never be in the newspapers, but it isn’t everybody who has a jet plane specially commandeered for them.” He glanced at his watch. “It’s seven o’clock now, European time. There’s a car and a plane waiting, you’ll be in the air within the hour and land in America shortly before midnight—losing a few hours on the ocean, of course. Looks like Walter Reed Hospital for you, old chap.”
Farrell nodded. “Afraid so, yes.”
“America,” repeated Mrs. Pollifax nostalgically. “I feel like singing the national anthem.”
“Better not,” suggested Farrell mildly, and visibly braced himself as the doctor joined them.
CHAPTER 23
They sat in Carstairs’ office, each of them facing him across his broad desk. The lights had been turned low and there were cigarettes for Farrell and hot soup and coffee for them both. Farrell’s arm was in a sling and he had been given four injections and seven hours of drugged sleep on the plane, but still he looked white and frail. After one glance at him Carstairs said flatly, “I won’t keep you long. The important thing is to put the frame of this on tape before you forget; it will surprise you how unreal your adventures will seem to you once you reach a fairly normal state of recovery. At the moment it is only too fresh to you. We need that freshness. You’ve seen General Perdido—he’s important to us. You’ve been in Albania—you’ve experienced a country we know too little about.” His face softened. “And may I congratulate you both on rescuing Dr. Lee Tsung Howell?”
“You may,” said Farrell with a grin.
“And on coming back yourselves,” added Carstairs. “I don’t mind telling you that I gave you both up long ago.”
“Did you really!” exclaimed Mrs. Pollifax in a pleased voice.
“I’m going to call in Bishop now,” went on Carstairs. “He’ll take a few notes but the bulk of it will be put on tape tonight, the rest of the picture can be filled in tomorrow. I hope a tape recorder doesn’t make you self-conscious?”
“Too tired,” said Mrs. Pollifax.
He nodded. “I think we might give Johnny the rest he needs by letting you do most of the talking, Mrs. Pollifax. Johnny, you join in when it suits you, agreed?”
Bishop had come in, and Mrs. Pollifax noticed that his nostrils looked pinched during the introductions. “It’s the goats,” she told him forgivingly. “Just don’t sit too near me.” Half a day in the waters of Lake Scutari had subdued the smell but it was obvious that only a complete change of clothes and a vast amount of hot water and soap would ever make her acceptable to society again.
“Goats?” said Carstairs, startled.
She nodded. “Goats. Where would you like me to begin?”
“With your abduction—the rest can be filled in later,” said Carstairs. “Begin with your meeting Johnny. That would be the nineteenth of August?”
She nodded. “They gave us soup and coffee too—the men in the shack.” Awkwardly, and then with increasing absorption, she told of their flight to Albania and their subsequent days there, Farrell joining in occasionally to emphasize a point. Carstairs did not interrupt until Mrs. Pollifax mentioned the missile site.
“Missile site!” he exploded. “Missile site?”
“You didn’t already know about this?” asked Mrs. Pollifax demurely.
“Albania is not a country where the CIA is given much scope,” he said dryly.
“No, we did not know about this, Mrs. Pollifax. Are you sure it was a missile site?”
“No,” she said, “but Colonel Nexdhet was.”
“Who…?”
Farrell grinned. “Let her go on, it gets more and more interesting.”
Mrs. Pollifax continued, eventually concluding, “… and we think the two men were left dead in their boats so we sailed west, straight out to sea, and by that time the Genie—that is, Dr. Howell—was more unconscious than conscious. At first we avoided any boats we saw in the distance but when we finally decided it was safe to be rescued nobody paid the slightest attention to us. We’d wave at them and they’d just wave back.”
“Thought we were out for pleasure,” added Farrell wryly.
Carstairs smiled and flicked off the switch of the tape recorder. “Quite a story.… Let’s let it rest there for the moment. It’s a good place to stop. There’ll be many more details to clear up, more information on General Perdido, for instance, and I’d like that missile site pinpointed on a map if humanly possible. Those stone buildings, too. All this can wait, though. The important item—and after hearing what’s happened to you the most surprising item—is that you’re both alive.”
Farrell said soberly, “You’ve very carefully avoided the beginning of all this, haven’t you? Mexico City, I mean. I take it the whole thing blew up like a bomb and turned into a disaster area for us. They got DeGamez?”
Carstairs sighed. “I’m sorry you ask.” He bent over a cigarette and a lighter, carefully avoiding Farrell’s eye. “One thing lost, one thing found,” he said. “Let’s not underestimate what you accomplished in getting Dr. Lee Tsung Howell back, as well as yourselves.” He put down the lighter and looked directly at Farrell. “Yes, Johnny, DeGamez is dead. He was murdered on the seventeenth of August.”
“Damn,” said Farrell savagely.
Mrs. Pollifax felt a tremor of shock run through her. She said quietly, “I’m terribly, terribly sorry. General Perdido did this?”
Carstairs nodded. “Fortunes of war, Mrs. Pollifax. All our agents know the risk.”
She shivered. “Yes, but he was so kind, he was such a good man, he was such a gentleman.”
Carstairs suddenly became very still. Slowly he turned his head to stare at Mrs. Pollifax and his silence had a stunned quality. He said at last, very softly, “But how could you possibly know that, Mrs. Pollifax, when you never met the real Senor DeGamez?”
“Oh, but you see I did,” she told him eagerly. “Not on the nineteenth, of course, but a few days after arriving in Mexico City—well, I had to be sure I could locate the shop, don’t you see? And after finding it I passed it nearly every day. I really grew to think of it as my shop,” she confessed with a rueful laugh. “And that’s why—well, after passing it so many times and seeing him there I thought I would stop in one morning and browse around a little. I didn’t think it would hurt,” she added anxiously, suddenly noticing the intensity of Carstairs’ gaze.
“Go on,” he said in a stifled voice.
“So I went inside and we had a lovely chat, Senor DeGamez and I.”
“When? What date?” The voice had urgency behind it.
“When? Why, it must have been—let’s see, it was four days before the nineteenth, I believe. That would make it August 15 when I stopped in. Yes, it was definitely the fifteenth.”
“What exactly did you ‘chat’ about?” demanded Carstairs, and so harshly that Farrell gave him a second glance and narrowed his eyes.
“Why, mostly about traveling alone, and the grandchildren we had, and did I play solitaire. He gave me a book called 77 Ways to Play Solitaire, and although at the time I didn’t warm to the idea—”
“Mrs. Pollifax,” interrupted Carstairs in a strangled voice.
“Yes?”
“Mrs. Pollifax, DeGamez was given your photograph on the ninth of August.”
“My what?”
“Mrs. Pollifax, when you walked into the Parrot Bookstore on August 15 DeGamez knew who you were. Do you understand, he knew who you were?”
A small gasp escaped Mrs. Pollifax.
“He must also have had very strong suspicions by that date that he was being closely watched. Mrs. Pollifax, I want you to tell me every word he said, and just where I can find that book.”
“Oh, but there was nothing in the book,” she assured him. “They thought there was, I forgot to tell you that, but General Perdido spent days somewhere having it tested. They found nothing.”
Carstairs sat back and looked at her. He said carefully, “If DeGamez had received the microfilms, Mrs. Pollifax, I know that he would have found some way to give them to you on the fifteenth. I want you to think. I want you to go back and reconstruct that visit as closely as possible.”
Very soberly Mrs. Pollifax sent her thoughts back to that morning.
“Describe it, tell me everything that happened.”
Patiently and carefully Mrs. Pollifax began speaking of the morning when she first entered the shop. The book of memoirs. The parrot’s shout. The conversation about Olé, about traveling alone, about American geese, and the presentation of the book on solitaire. “He wrapped both books together in white paper,” she added, frowning. “But by that time two other customers had come in and so I left.”
“Try again,” said Carstairs.
Again Mrs. Pollifax described her visit, and once again uncovered nothing. “The two other customers had walked in, and he said something to me—in a more public voice, you understand—about wishing me a beautiful visit in his country. And then I—oh,” she cried, “the cards!”
“Cards,” repeated Carstairs, and leaned forward.
“Yes, of course,” she said in a stunned voice. “How on earth could I have forgotten! It was just as I reached the door. He called out, ‘But how can you play solitaire without the cards, senora’—yes, those were his words—and he threw them to me. Just threw them to me across the store. And he said, ‘How do you Americans call it, on the house?’ and I caught them. I held up two hands and caught them like a ball and tucked them into my purse. But surely he wouldn’t throw anything of value like that, so casually, so impulsively, you don’t think…?”
Carstairs’ voice was filled with suppressed excitement. “That is precisely the way a man who is under surveillance would dispose of something dangerous. Mrs. Pollifax, what happened to those playing cards?”
Farrell said incredulously, “Duchess, that deck you played with in Albania, that’s surely not—?”
“But of course,” she told Farrell. To Carstairs she said, “I have them right here in my pocket.”
Carstairs stared at her in astonishment. “You mean you carried them with you? You mean they’re with you now? You still have them?”
Farrell began to laugh. “Have them! Carstairs, the Duchess here played solitaire with those playing cards day in and day out, endlessly, right under the guards’ noses, and in front of General Perdido, too. Have them! She drove everybody nearly crazy with them.”
Mrs. Pollifax gave him a reproachful glance. Reaching down to her second petticoat she brought out the deck of cards and placed them on the desk. For a long moment Carstairs stared at them as if he could not quite believe they were there. Then he reached out and picked them up and ran his fingers over them. “Plasticized,” he said softly. “They’re enclosed in plastic. Bishop,” he said in a strange voice, “Bishop, take these to the lab on the double. On the double, Bishop—it’s microfilms we’re after.”
“Yes sir,” gasped Bishop, and the door closed behind him.
Carstairs sat back and stared at Mrs. Pollifax with a look of incredulity.
“I know just how you feel,” said Farrell, grinning. “She’s full of surprises, what?”
“Rather, yes.” Carstairs shook his head, a little smile tugging at the corner of his lips. “And ten days ago I believed I had sent an innocent lamb into a den of wolves. You seem to have great resources, Mrs. Pollifax.”
“It
’s my age,” said Mrs. Pollifax modestly.
“And if those cards should turn out to be …” Again Carstairs shook his head. “Why, then, nothing would have blown up in Mexico at all. It’s incredible, absolutely incredible.”
“But I simply can’t think why I didn’t remember about those cards,” said Mrs. Pollifax. “In my mind I always identified them with Senor DeGamez, yet I completely overlooked his tossing them to me like that. Is this what’s called a mental block?”
The phone buzzed and Carstairs picked it up. “Carstairs.” He listened and grinned. “Right. Thanks, Bishop.” Hanging up, he smiled at both Farrell and Mrs. Pollifax. “They’ve found the first microfilm. Tirpak used two packs of very thin playing cards. He cemented the back of one card to the front of another, with the film between, and enclosed each in special plastic.” He added fervently, “If that was a mental block, Mrs. Pollifax, then bless it. Perdido would have sensed at once that you were concealing something—if you had consciously recalled how you received those cards. It very definitely saved your life when you were questioned, and it’s certainly recovered for this country a great amount of invaluable information.” He shook his head. “Mrs. Pollifax, we are in your debt.”
She smiled and said gently, “If I could just have a bath and a change of clothes … I can’t think of anything I’d enjoy more.”
Carstairs laughed. “I’ll make certain you have both within the hour. And for you, Johnny—a bevy of beautiful nurses.”
Farrell stumbled to his feet and walked to Mrs. Pollifax. He bent over and kissed her. “I won’t say good-bye, Duchess, I couldn’t. Just don’t you dare leave town without coming to see me on my bed of pain.”
Mrs. Pollifax looked up at him and beamed. “I’ll bring roses, I promise you, my dear Farrell, and just to prove how opinionated and shortsighted you’ve been I’ll also bring a deck of playing cards and teach you one or two games of solitaire.”
He didn’t smile. He said gravely, “A very small price to pay for my life. Duchess.… God bless you and have a wonderful bath.”
Mrs. Pollifax put down her suitcase in front of the door to apartment 4-A and groped in her purse for the key. It seemed a long, long time since she had last stood here, and it filled her with a sense of awe that the externals of life could remain so unchanged when she felt so different. Like a kaleidoscope, she thought, her imagination captured by the simile: one swift turn of the cylinder and all the little bits and pieces of colored glass fell into a different pattern. As she inserted her key into the lock a door across the hall flew open, spilling sunlight across the black and white tiles of the floor. “Mrs. Pollifax, you’re back at last!” cried Miss Hartshorne.
Unexpected Mrs. Pollifax Page 23
