In Enemy Hands td-26

  In Enemy Hands

  ( The Destroyer - 26 )

  Warren Murphy

  Richard Sapir

  A congressional committee investigates abuses by America's spy network and winds up gutting our nation's intelligence system. Suddenly the Russians are having a field day; their special killer teams roam Europe at will. American spies turn up dead. In capitals around the world, meetings are held to plan the next anti-American escapade. American is defenseless before the rest of the world . . . Well, not quite defenseless. America's two secret weapons, Remo Williams, the Destroyer, and his incredible Korean teacher, Chiun, a master assassin, are being thrown into the breach. They are being sent overseas to start restoring some sense of safety and sanity to the world's balance of power. But the Soviets don't give up that easily. They have a secret weapon too, and when they unleash it, Remo and Chiun find themselves poised for a battle to the death . . . With each other!

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  * Title : #026 : IN ENEMY HANDS *

  * Series : The Destroyer *

  * Author(s) : Warren Murphy and Richard Sapir *

  * Location : Gillian Archives *

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  CHAPTER ONE

  Walter Forbier surrendered his .25 caliber Beretta to the owner of a small bookstore on Boulevard Raspail in Paris, France, just as the first buds appeared under the fresh spring sun that early April day, and four hours before, laughing men beat his rib cage into the muscles of his heart.

  "You have no knives?" said the scrawny old man with a gray sweater and a two-day-old beard. His teeth were black from a gummy thing he chewed and rolled over his lips.

  "No," said Forbier.

  "No brass knuckles?"

  "No," said Forbier.

  "No explosives?"

  "No," said Forbier.

  "Any other weapons?"

  "I know karate. Do you want me to cut off my hands?" Forbier asked.

  "Please, please, we must get this over with," the man said. "Now sign this." He unsealed a plastic case and took out a three by five card. Forbier could see his own signature on the back. The man placed the white card on the counter, unlined side up.

  "Why don't you have one with photograph and height and weight?"

  "Please, please," said the man.

  "They're more afraid of my killing someone than of my getting killed."

  "You are expendable, Walter Forbier. Is that the correct pronunciation?" He had pronounced it Foebeeyay.

  "That's the French way. It's four like in the number and beer like in the drink. Fourbeer."

  He watched his little pistol go under the counter. Forbier wanted to grab it and run. He felt as if he had lost his bathing suit while swimming, and that now, while thousands lined the shore, he would have to walk through all of them back to his clothes.

  "That's all," said the man after Forbier signed the card. "Leave."

  "What are you going to do with it?" asked Forbier, nodding to where the pistol had gone under the counter.

  "You can get another when you're allowed."

  "I've had that one for five years," said Forbier. "It's never failed me."

  "Please, please," said the man. "I don't want you spending too much time here. There are others."

  "I don't know why they didn't just call us home," Forbier said.

  "Shhhh," said the man. "Get out of here."

  Walter Forbier was twenty-nine years old and he was wise enough that spring morning not to expect to live to thirty. He had a knack for bad timing.

  Five years before, just out of the Marines with a degree in mechanical engineering, he had discovered that almost everything he had learned before doing his military hitch was now useless.

  "But I graduated summa cum laude," Forbier had said.

  "Which means that you're one of the foremost experts in outdated systems," said the employment agency.

  "Well, what am I going to do?"

  "What have you been doing recently?"

  "Wading in mud up to my neck, avoiding booby traps, and trying to stay alive in situations that did not lend themselves to longevity," Forbier said.

  "Have you thought of politics?" said the employment agency.

  Forbier had gotten married, just in time to find out that others were enjoying the same pleasures without the legal complications. On the honeymoon, his wife invited several pretty young things to their hotel dining table. He was amazed that she showed no fear of his being attracted to them. Then he discovered it was he who should be jealous. They were for her.

  "Why didn't you tell me you were a lesbian?" he had asked.

  "You were the first really nice man I ever met. I didn't want to hurt your feelings."

  "But why did you marry me?"

  "I thought we could work it out."

  "How?"

  "I didn't know."

  Thus, without a wife and without a job and with a useless technical degree, Walter Forbier vowed he would not mistime his future again. He would get into something that was going to last. He looked around, and the one profession that looked healthiest was fighting the cold war. Even if America lost, there would be even better employment under the Communists.

  And so Walter Forbier joined the Central Intelligence Agency, and, for $427.83 a month extra, a hazard mission called Sunflower.

  "It's beautiful. You see the world. You travel singly or in groups. You get your extra pay and all you have to do is stay in shape."

  "Sunflower won't be disbanded?" Forbier asked cautiously.

  "Can't be," said the officer in charge.

  "Why not?"

  "Because it's not up to us to disband it."

  "Who is it up to?" Forbier asked.

  "The Russians."

  It was the Russians, the officer had explained, who had started the whole thing. At the end of World War II, the Soviet Union had had an excess of highly trained killer teams in Eastern Europe. They were not mass combat troops, but specialists in eliminating specific people. Most soldiers just fired away and advanced. These men could be given a name and could guarantee that the person, whoever he was or wherever he was, would be dead within a week. The Russian group was called Treska which meant cod.

  The officer didn't know why the Russians had named their unit Treska any more than he knew why the CIA had named its counterunit Sunflower. The Treska had been crucial in the Russian takeover of Czechoslovakia, and even more crucial when the country had rebelled briefly. Their job was to make sure key leaders died just as the Russian tanks moved in.

  "They're beautiful. Not one peep out of the Czechs. The tanks were only window dressing, sort of like a show of force. The Czechs lost because they had no leaders left living, nobody to tell the people to go to the hills."

  "Why didn't we use Sunflower in Vietnam?" asked Walter Forbier.

  "That's just it. We don't have to."

  And the officer explained that the real purpose of Sunflower was to keep a counterkiller team floating in Western Europe, just so that the Russians knew that if they used Treska, America would use Sunflower. "Like an atomic arsenal neither side wants to use." America had it, so Russia wouldn't use it.

  And it worked, he said. Except for an occasional body here and there, the two squads floated through Western Europe in relative luxury, each letting the other know it was around. But neither acted.

  The only thing that could terminate Sunflower would be the KGB's decision to terminate Treska.

  Forbier said he was looking forward to joining Sunflower, and he planned privately on being with the team in Rome in time for Christmas. He was off by 4 1/2 years and that was reduced training time, allowing him si
x months credit for his Marine experience.

  Five years of training.

  He learned French and Russian so well he could dream in them. He learned energy control, to be able to function for a week with only a half-hour's sleep. Parachuting for Sunflower was jumping out of the plane with your chute in your hands and putting it on in midair.

  He learned the feel system of firearms. You didn't use sights, you used feel. Sights were mechanical, and fine to teach thousands of people how to get a bullet flying in the general direction of their target. But the feel system required working with a weapon so that the flight path of the bullet was an extension of your arm. You imagined a yardlong rod behind the barrel of the gun and the curving drop of your bullet, and, after four hundred rounds a day for four years, you just knew what was in your flight path. This had to be done with one weapon only, and the weapon became part of you. For Walter Forbier, it was his .25 caliber Beretta.

  Forbier arrived for his first day's duty with Sunflower after five years of training, and got the instruction that he had to surrender his Beretta at a bookshop. He didn't even have time to exchange his American dollars for francs. His contact stuffed crisp hundred-franc notes into Forbier's pocket. The ride to the bookstore cost forty-two francs on the meter, roughly equivalent to ten American dollars. When Forbier entered the bookstore, he was a deadly instrument of foreign policy. When he left, without his gun and without even an explanation, he was a target waiting to be hit.

  Once again, his timing had been awful.

  But if he were going to die, at least he was going to have one good Parisian meal. Not a great one, but a good one. He somehow felt that if he headed himself toward a great meal, his luck would not allow it. But he might be able to sneak a good meal past his luck.

  On Boulevard St. Germaine, he chose Le Vagabond, an adequate two-star restaurant. He began with Fruits de Merraw clams, raw shrimp, and raw oysters.

  "Walter. Walter Forbier," said a man in an elegant Pierre Cardin suit. "I'm so glad I found you. You're really wasting a meal with Fruits de Mer. Please let me order."

  The man deposited his black homburg on a chair next to Walter and sat down across from him. In perfect French, he ordered a different meal for Forbier. The man was in his early fifties, with an immaculate tan, the elegant smile of a Wall Street board room.

  "Who are you? What's happening?" asked Walter.

  "What's happening is Sunflower is surrendering its weapons. This is an order from the Security Council to the top of the CIA. The government is terrified of any more CIA incidents. They figure with no weapons, you can do no damage."

  "I don't mean to be rude, sir," said Forbier, "but I don't know what you're talking about."

  "That's right. The contact word. Let's see. This is the first day of spring. Subtract two letters from G, which gives us E and we have Early End, Ethel's Earrings. All right?"

  "Fine Friends," said Walter using the following letter of the alphabet half the number of times the previous letter had been used to him.

  "I know who you are. No one uses the contact words any more. Everyone knows everyone else. Don't eat the bread."

  "Am I glad to see you," Forbier said. "When can I make contact with the rest of the team?"

  "Let's see. Cassidy is in London and retiring, Navroki is out, Rothafel, Meyers, John, Sawyer, Bensen, and Kanter were out yesterday and Wilson this morning. So that leaves seven more, but they're in Italy and they should be out by tonight and tomorrow."

  "Out? Out where?"

  "Out dead. I told you not to eat the bread here." The man snatched the crust from Walter's hands.

  "Who are you?"

  "I'm sorry," said the man. "I'm so used to everyone in Sunflower knowing me. Didn't they tell you who I was in the States? I guess they don't bother any more with photographs. I'm Vassily."

  "Who?"

  "Vassily Vassilivich. Deputy commander of Treska. You would have gotten to know me better if your government hadn't gone bananas. I'm sorry things worked out this way. Here comes the food."

  Forbier noticed the man was armed. He had a trim shoulder holster tailored to the lines of the impeccable suit. Almost invisible, but armed he was. So were the two men looking at Forbier from the back of the restaurant. One was a giant. He was laughing.

  Vassilivich said to ignore the laughter.

  "He's a stupid brute. A sadist. The problem with long-term operations like these is that you live like a family with your group. That laughing man is Mikhailov. If it weren't for the Treska, he would be hospitalized as criminally insane. Like your Gassidy."

  Forbier decided to change his order. He wanted a filet. When that came he complained the knife was too dull. The waiter, white apron swinging before him, disappeared into the kitchen to get a sharper one.

  "Am I the last of the Sunflower?"

  "In Northern Europe? Just about."

  "I guess you're pretty happy with your success," said Forbier.

  "What success?" said Vassilivich, swirling a piece of veal in wine sauce and carefully balancing it up to his mouth so the dripping sauce would not mar his shirt.

  "Destroying Sunflower," Forbier said. He knew what he would do. He had been trained for five years to do something and if he were the last of the weaponless Sunflower team, they would at least go out with something on the Scoreboard. He forced himself to avoid looking at Vassilivich's throat and looked toward the kitchen on the left rear of Le Vagabond, from which the waiter would be returning with his sharper knife. He took a bite of the bread. Vassilivich had been right. The crust was a bit too cardboardy.

  "When Sunflower is destroyed, we will have our way in Western Europe and England, and then, if we are not stopped, we will be sucked into America. And then, if we are not stopped, we will ultimately all find ourselves in a nice little nuclear war. So what have we won by destroying you? A battle in Europe? A battle in America? We had a nice balance of terror going here and your idiot Congress decided to live by kindergarten rules that never applied anywhere in the world. Your country is insane."

  "Nobody's forcing you to work over Western Europe," said Forbier.

  "Son, you don't know how vacuums works. They suck you in. Already there are people back home plotting brilliant moves for us. And it will all look so good. Until we kill ourselves. If you had lived, you would see. Just as we must take advantage of your being weaponless, so we will take advantage of Western Europe being weaponless, so to speak."

  "Your English is very good," said Forbier.

  "You shouldn't have eaten the bread," said Vassilivich.

  When the sharper knife came, the laughing giant, not the waiter, delivered it, and, still laughing, cut Forbier's filet for him. Forbier declined dessert.

  In an alley, off a side street near St. Germaine, behind a shoe store featuring high glossy boots, the laughing man and three others beat in the rib cage of Walter Forbier.

  Vassilivich watched in gloom.

  "Now it begins," he said in his native Russian, gloom on his face like the coming of a winter storm. "Now it begins."

  "Victory," said the laughing giant, wiping his huge hands. "A great victory."

  "We have won nothing," said Vassilivich. A sudden shower came upon the city that spring day, feeding the roots of the trees for the new buds and washing the blood of Walter Forbier from his young face.

  In Washington, a messenger arrived from Langley, Virginia, with orders to interrupt a National Security Council meeting at which the President was presiding.

  The messenger got a signature from the Secretary of State to whom he was assigned to deliver the small sealed package. Under the first wrapping was a white envelope, chemically treated so that if anyone touched it, a black mark from his body oils appeared. The Secretary of State, wheezing from his paunchy weight, left a trail of black marks across the envelope as his pudgy fingers tore it open. The President looked on, occasionally sucking at the pain in his right forefinger. Someone had passed a document marked "Single, Lone" around th
e large polished oak table in the sealed room behind the Oval Office. It had been fastened with a paper clip. It went from the Secretary of State to the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, the Secretaries of the Army, Air Force, and Navy, the Secretary of Defense, and the director of the National Defense Agency. When it got to the President, he grabbed it in such a way that the clip plunged into his index finger, drawing blood.

  "It's a good thing the Secret Service isn't in the room," the President said, laughing, "or they would have wrestled that paper clip to the ground."

  Everyone laughed politely. It was no accident that the three water pitchers always ended up, bunched at the far end of the long table. Whoever sat next to the President somehow found himself nudging any close pitcher away. The Security Council had accidentally discovered that some classified documents were water soluble when someone had left a water pitcher near the President's elbow. The Secretary of State read the document he had been handed, and in solemn tones, reflecting the guttural accents of his German youth, he said, "It was to be expected. We should have known."

  He removed the single paper clip from the document and handed three loose sheets of gray paper to the President of the United States, who cut his thumb on their edges.

  Everyone agreed that paper could be very sharp. The President asked for water for the cut. The Secretary of Defense filled one glass half full. He passed it up the table.

  "Thank you," said the President, knocking the glass into the lap of the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, whose turn it was to sit next to the President, but who complained that somehow the Secretary of the Army always missed his turn.

  The Secretary of Defense poured another glass and hand-delivered it up to the head of the table where the President put his bleeding thumb into the glass.

  "Be careful, sir," said the Secretary of State. "That document is water soluble also."

  "What?" said the President, taking his thumb out of the glass and holding the papers in both hands. The right thumb went through the document like a spoon through fresh, warm oatmeal. The pages suddenly had a long thumb hole in them. "Oh," said the President of the United States.