The Doomsday Bag

by Michael Avallone

  Rowles put the pen close to his mouth.

  "Rowles, here. Come in, please." He made a connection and I blinked. "You're kidding," I said. "I thought that was something dreamed up by the U.N.C.L.E. TV show—" He glared at me again and I shut up. He had a lot to say and he wanted to say it in a hurry.

  "Picked up Noon out in the woods. Don't know the exact location but you can get a fix on the homer in my Galaxie. Parked outside a barn. I'll need a photographer, a fingerprint man, and all the portable lab you can spare. I found the football but there's no air in it. Got that? Negative. Satchel nowhere in sight. Pass the word on to the S squad. They may want to look for themselves to satisfy their own curiosity. Snap it up if you can. The trail may be hot." He clicked the pen off, collapsed the antenna, and returned the fountain pen to his breast pocket. His normally healthy, tanned face was bleak and solemn now. He very nearly sighed but he caught himself in time.

  "Take them about twenty minutes, Noon. Might as well take it easy. We'll have to hang on to you for a while. Blue pass or no blue pass."

  "What did you have in mind?"

  "Two things. Ever since yesterday a lot of activity has centered around you, that smashed car with the dead cabbie, last night with the Congressman—don't deny it. We have the newspaper story, too, and we put the Carr woman through a grilling this morning. And now this—added to which, when my people show up, we're going to beat the bushes for at least a thousand yards around this barn just in case they dropped Satchel down a well or something. It simply doesn't add up. The empty bag and no Kanin. You can help us with the search. Have any objections?"

  "Yeah, sure I have. I don't have a license to beat bushes. I'm nonunion."

  "We'll overlook it. I don't think even the President would object if you helped us."

  He had me there. What the hell, I wasn't going anywhere and I hadn't accomplished a damned thing, really. Except get underfoot and in the way in every official activity centering on the Bagman.

  He grinned sourly. "By the way, that was nice going on the cabbie there. You moved pretty fast. I'm not sure I could have handled them both." He was being modest and he knew it.

  "Says you. You're a pretty fancy executioner in your own right, Mr. Rowles. But as long as you're in such a good mood, tell me something?"

  "Shoot."

  "What are the chances of this Bagman business leaking out to the country?"

  A cloud fell over his sunny face.

  "Please. Let's not think about it. We don't find Satchel before tomorrow morning, I doubt if even the President will be able to keep the secret much longer. We can set up another man with a dummy bag just to kid everybody but it might not work. People would ask questions, and sooner or later the whole thing is out in the open and the panic is really on. No, Noon. We got to find Kanin in a large hurry and there's no two ways about that."

  I saw his point. I saw something else, too.

  "Why do you think the bag is empty?"

  "Who knows?" he demanded almost belligerently. "We weren't supposed to find it, that's for sure. So it couldn't be deliberate. Which means only one thing. All those secret papers and documents—the whole setup is in the hands of those who can make some use of it. Think that one over and you'll see why we have to show some results and pretty damned quick."

  The big dragonfly came buzzing back, as if emphasizing his point. I couldn't have agreed with him or the fly more. When you're sitting on a time bomb, speed is of the essence.

  Sometimes, nothing else counts but speed.

  Whatever governmental security agencies are, they are efficient. Within the next two hours I got a pretty fair idea just how much. Rowles' science-fiction fountain-pen May Day had set in motion pretty nearly everything the FBI has at its disposal. I didn't ask any questions but I supposed the S squad showed up too at the small clearing in the woods. Nobody asked me anything, even though I got a curious once-over from a lot of grim-faced, serious special operatives. But Rowles must have given everybody the word because they left me alone while they went about their preliminary business.

  For a starter, about three dark touring cars showed up; the kind of vehicle you just know is of an official nature. About twelve men, drivers included, piled out and covered the area and the barn like a blanket. Some of them were carrying boxes of special equipment. I stood around watching them do their stuff. It was like seeing how the better half lives.

  They took police morgue type pictures of the inert pump-gunner, who hadn't moved since Rowles had dropped him, of course. The cab driver had crawled around on the floor and they took his picture, too. All they could do with him was handcuff him and stand him in a corner with one of the men doing the guard routine. My punch had temporarily wrecked the cab driver's larynx so that he couldn't talk beyond a moan. That would have to wait until they got him back to the Justice Building. Meanwhile, Rowles dispatched a pair of his squad to the loft with some cans of fingerprint powder, fluorescent devices, and the like to see if they could find something. At least a trace that Leonard Kanin had once slept there. It was hard to tell if they were successful or not. Rowles conferred with them briefly when they came back down about twenty minutes later and he wasn't telling me anything.

  I'd gone through about four Camels when the searching-party teamwork began. Rowles explained what he wanted and broke us up in four three-man groups. Each group took a direction from the starting point of the barn. North, south, east, and west. I went with the easterners. The idea being to strike out in that direction as far as was decently feasible and see what could be found. I started out with two of the grim-faced characters for company. It wasn't exactly fun work. The sun had warmed up considerably, the bushes and thickets and trees were denser than a left-winger's political speeches. It was sweating time in earnest. One man remained behind with Rowles, and something about his manner and bearing convinced me he was Secret Service rather than FBI. Rowles was treating him as an equal.

  I hadn't beat the bushes looking for anything since we used to hunt for lost softballs in Fireman's Field before the coming of the Cross-Bronx Expressway. Nostalgia assailed me. Along with the mixed scent of foliage, animal excrement, and all those funny smells you find where nature is pretty much in the raw. I even stumbled over the carcass of a dead cat about one hundred feet from the house, and what that poor tom was doing way out here in the woods was beyond me. It might have been a clue of some kind but I didn't bet on it.

  Visibility, for all the blazing sunlight, was dim, thanks to the density of the undergrowth and the shadows of the closely packed trees. I had a feeling I would stumble over Kanin's body before I saw him.

  But we didn't find anything. After about six or seven hundred yards, the forest widened, opening into a plateau of leveled-off earth, and we found ourselves seeing as far as the eye could see. Which included a horizon view of D.C. proper. Something gleamed in the sun. It might have been the Capitol dome. I couldn't tell.

  "Far enough," one of my companion hawkeyes granted. "Let's backtrack and fan out a little more to the west."

  We did.

  Just as fruitlessly, just as sweatily. A half hour later we were back at the barn, puffing like steam engines. I'd even torn a slight gash along one cheek where a sapling had whipped back like a slap in the face, marking me. The rest of Rowles' details came limping in. We all looked at each other. Nobody had found anything more noteworthy than a battered, acid-eaten car battery which had been lying on a rock close to the road that the pump-gunner and the cabbie had used to bring me to the barn.

  There was nothing else.

  Rowles was disappointed. There was no mistaking the bitter mask of his features. He conferred once more with his subordinates and the man I suspected as S squad brass and the party broke up. The boxes of special equipment were restored to their compartments in the dark touring cars. The body of the pump-gunner was carried out to the trunk of the vehicle on the end of the line and placed carefully in the trunk compartment. The cab driver with the out-of-use voi
ce box was led handcuffed to a Ford Galaxie parked just beyond the perimeter of the small clearing, off the road and out of sight. Rowles was carrying the empty black metal bag. He jerked a thumb at me.

  "Noon, you ride with me. You can keep an eye on the suspect. Nothing more we can do here. I'll have a man pick up the cab later."

  I nodded, approving of the man more and more.

  "I'd say you've done just about everything there was to be done down here, Rowles. I'll also say you guys really get things done when you put your minds to it."

  "Maybe so," he growled, squinting back at the big desolate barn one more time as if he was sure he had forgotten something. "But just between me, you, and that barn, we've come up with a big fat zero."

  "That," I said, "remains to be seen."

  He shrugged and I followed him to the Galaxie, walking behind the young cabbie who was still moaning. Suddenly the sounds of birds chattering and chirping away in the trees could be heard. One of them sounded terribly off-key. He shrilled like a drunken sparrow.

  Well, whatever the barn and its environs would eventually prove to be, I had learned one irrevocable, indisputable fact.

  Yes, Edward, there is a bagman and he is missing.

  It took us about five minutes to form a motorcade heading back to the city. Rowles didn't lead the way. He let the three dark touring cars stream out slowly past his parking spot before he shoved the Galaxie into gear and tagged on behind. I sat in the back, next to the wounded cabbie, keeping an eye on him. But he was sullen, scared, and moody, so I didn't think there would be any trouble with him. All the fight, if there had ever been any, had gone out of him.

  If I had thought the excitement was temporarily over, I was in for a rude surprise. It came suddenly, violently, inescapably violent. We had gone about fifty yards down the winding country road, with a high twisting lane of bushes obscuring the barn, when the afternoon stillness was shattered in a way that needed no witnesses. An explosion.

  Behind us, a bursting roar of sound, fire, and smoke echoed and reechoed, and even as Rowles braked the car wildly and we stared back, we could see the flying clapboard splinters, the debris of the barn, and the bits and pieces of shooting shrapnel climb up into the sun-splashed sky. Somebody had put the torch to the barn. Tall trees shuddered in a rush of air.

  The cabbie jerked like a frightened deer and tried to clap his manacled hands to his ears. Rowles looked at me, the blood draining from his face. I shook my head, bewildered as the next guy.

  "Sonofabitch," Rowles whispered in a ragged voice. "One of us works for them."

  He had leaped to that conclusion without thinking it through logically.

  But I went along with him on that.

  Potomac Fever

  I called the Man as soon as Rowles let me leave the Justice Building after a decent delay. The exploding barn had left him in a rotten mood since he was fairly convinced that one of the twelve-man detail which had showed up for housecleaning had planted a timed device to destroy any evidence the barn may have held once we had gotten far enough away from the scene. But Rowles had only suspicions, no proof. And one corpse who just might or might not be from Cuban Intelligence and one bogus cab driver who hadn't been identified yet. He also had that cryptic number on a scrap of paper which could be just about anything. 1417335. So Rowles had an awful lot of checking to do and a lot of paperwork as well as making out his report for Hoover and the Bureau. I intended to beat him to the punch.

  The best place to make the call to the White House was the Carlton. So I headed back there, managing to get into the posh building without running into any reporters or newshounds with cameras and mikes. Last night's ruckus with Congressman Charles Cornell had put me up in the celebrity class, but the hotel had cooperated with me. No one had been allowed to raid the floor my room was on, and the management had sort of let the word drop that I had left the hotel. I also suspected that Felicia Carr, anxious to keep a scoop and a celebrity to herself, had somehow had her finger in that pie. There was no other explanation for our not having been interrupted in the wee small hours when we learned all about each other's beauty marks and sleeping habits.

  With the room door locked and bolted and a preliminary survey of my belongings and the place itself looking undisturbed, I put in my call to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. There had been two messages for me at the desk downstairs: Felicia Carr had phoned twice and Congressman Charles Cornell once. Both had wanted a call-back as soon as I came in. They would have to wait.

  I got an outside line and dialed the special code number the Chief had given me by attaching it to Leonard Kanin's file. I had to wait about ten seconds before a voice asked me who was calling.

  "Money," I said. "I want to talk to Wallet."

  "Hold on," the voice said.

  Another ten seconds and I was talking to the Man.

  His voice was the same familiar authoritative instrument, but some of the vitality had gone out of it. He was worried and concerned, and between both extremes he was a little tapped out.

  "Speak freely, Ed. We're scrambled."

  I told him all that had transpired between yesterday's interview and brought it up to date with my retreat from Rowles and the Justice Building. He must have listened very carefully because his first question was right on target.

  "Rowles. Do you suspect him?"

  "Frankly, no. He had his chance to kill me and he bailed me out. Though I still don't know quite how he did it."

  "Good. Ike pinned a Medal of Honor on him for Korea. It would be unthinkable if he was a double agent. Though stranger things have happened. If there is a spy in his Bureau, he'll find him. So forget that."

  "What do you make of the bag being empty? It doesn't add up somehow."

  I heard his troubled sigh. "That bothers me the most. With the contents removed, now we know the enemy has the secret. What they will do with it I can only guess."

  Funny, it didn't sound melodramatic or corny with him calling them the enemy. When you got right down to specifics, what the hell else could you call them?

  "Sorry I have no leads on the Bagman, Chief. I'm also back where I started. I'm afraid to say, though, that it looks like an inside job more and more. The way I saw Rowles and his men go through the paces lately I don't see how Satchel could have gotten out of Convention Hall without help. The Congressman has told me exactly what the political picture is and he's very afraid for you. He thinks this whole thing was arranged to put you in the worst possible light. To get you impeached or tarred and feathered. Or something like that."

  "Charley could be right." There was a thoughtful pause. "There are a lot more oversoft doves flying around the Capital than we all like to think. And they can be as pesky as the devil."

  "Cornell is afraid of the Vice-President. I have no proofs but I want you to think about it." I'd been thinking a lot about Oatley.

  "Don't worry. I have. But it's beyond belief. Ray has his beliefs but he's an American, too. It's inconceivable he would take part in any kind of conspiracy."

  I changed the subject. "Could you find out for me the position and names of all the men assigned to you yesterday in Convention Hall? Then I'll get back to Rowles. If Commander Markham can remember the physical setup of the platform, just where Satchel was when you spoke and who was near him, maybe we can tie it in with what happened out in the woods today."

  He hadn't become president of a country because he couldn't think. For a moment he argued the point.

  "From what you've told me there was only one S squad man out there today. The rest were Hoover people. Unless, that one man—"

  "That's what I was thinking."

  "You'll have the list. I'll get Markham on it at once." There was another pause. "There's something else, Ed. A meeting today. To be held in the War Room of the Pentagon. At seven tonight. Inconvenient hour I know, but some of the Joint Chiefs are flying in from remote places. Also, it may pay to be a little sub rosa about this. In any case, I want you there. The blue p
ass should get you through any outer cordon of security."

  "I'll be there. I hope I have something else to tell you by then."

  "God help me, I hope you do, too."

  When he hung up, I lit a fresh Camel. Then I phoned Congressman Charles Cornell at his Massachusetts Avenue office address. The time was now nearly three thirty. He should have been back from his committee proceedings. At home on Embassy Row.

  He was.

  "Hi, Congressman. Noon here. You called?"

  His voice crackled in a quick flurry of greeting and then lowered confidentially.

  "Are you alone?"

  "Yes." You don't make too many jokes with people like Charles Cornell. Not when they sound so life and death about it. There was no urgent need to tell him about the located empty bag, the barn, and the capture of the pump-gun assassination team.

  "Ed—" he said wearily, still almost muttering, "this is a blow and I don't quite know how to break it. Frankly, I'm appalled. I still can't believe it. But my source is unimpeachable. The Director, to repay an old favor, called me personally today. He had seen the papers, his men are investigating, but since Felicia Carr has been so close to me lately, he felt I should be warned. Markham reported this to him."

  In the stillness of the room, I stared foolishly at the phone in my hand. With an opening like that, he was saying—

  "So I have to warn you, too. I've rather thought you were taken with her. If I were thirty years younger, I'd be, too. But the truth of it is—oh, blast—Felicia Carr is an agent A Communist agent. She has been for the last five years since she came here from Alexandria to write her infernal columns!"