She reached over and began to caress him. She whispered, "Have you rested long enough?" Although he was already proving that he had.
She said, "How would you like to do it this time? Do you have some special way you like?" Her voice was a sensuous whisper. "Do you want me to go into the bath and wash myself so that you can do what you wanted to do before?"
His voice was so thick he could hardly talk. "Yes," he croaked. "We both will."
Chapter XII
Mike saw her off in the morning, on the tourist plane, kissing her thoroughly before she boarded. The other Russkies cheered sympathetically, but there were tears in Catherina's eyes, and his own face held desperation. Mike Edwards realized he had never been in love before; and now it was already over.
He said his goodbyes to Nick, Ana, and various of the others he had learned to know fairly well during their two weeks in Torremolinos.
Vovo Chemozov, cold sober, for once, was the last. He shook hands. "Mike," he said, very sincerely, "if Page 43
you ever come to the Soviet Complex you must look me up. We will have a fine time together and I will take you to a match so that you can see me wrestle Turkoman style. My exhibition last night was not so good, as you will remember."
Mike laughed as best he could. "It's a date," he said.
He looked up at the plane. Catherina was waving through a window. He waved back, but then had to retreat as the plane readied for taxiing off.
He met the incoming plane of the new batch of tourists and went through his routine of giving them a short rundown on their two weeks vacation. It was a standard affair and amounted to a little speech that he delivered in the waiting room. They were the usual, typical, Russkies, some of them already drunk from the booze they'd had on the airplane. Then, in the buses hired for the occasion, he had them driven into Torremolinos and distributed to the various hotels where they had their reservations.
After he had them all settled in, he went to the Hotel Espadon, where Frank Jones was staying, and looked the American up. It was almost noon by now and Jones was to be found in the bar, nursing his first bottle of beer of the day.
Mike said, "Let's go on up to your room. We have some preliminary plans to make, and this is a bit too public."
"That we have, laddy-buck, that we have," Jones said, finishing his beer. "Let's go."
They took the elevator to the NATO man's floor and entered his room. Mike immediately crossed over to the TV phone and dialed his London offices. Frank Jones, looking at him quizzically, sat in one of the more comfortable chairs, if any Spanish chairs are comfortable.
When his immediate boss's face faded in, Mike came immediately to the point. He said, "Mr. Fremont, I have to resign, as of right now. You'll have to send another man down soonest to take over Torremolinos."
"What!" the other sputtered. "You can't do that. You're signed up for at least the balance of the season.
Nobody else knows Torremolinos."
T can't help it. I've been drafted," Mike told him. "Get a man in here immediately who speaks Spanish and Russian. I'll wait around until he arrives and tell him some of the local ropes. So long."
The other began a wail of protest, but Mike simply flicked the phone off. He turned back to Frank Jones.
Jones said, "Okay. We're underway, eh? We'd better get on up to London and check in with my NATO supervisors."
Mike looked at him. "Are you crazy?"
"What's the matter?"
Mike was impatient. "Did you think we were going to tell everybody and his brother about this?" he said sarcastically. "It would leak back to the Russkies before the week was out. They've undoubtedly got agents ass deep all through NATO."
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Jones said indignantly, "Well, we can't do it all by ourselves. This is going to involve hundreds of people, the way you describe it. Possibly thousands. They're all going to have to be in on it."
"Like hell they are," Mike said, his voice grim. "Now, you say you're from NATO, just who is your boss?"
"I'm not really NATO myself, just on assignment to them temporarily. I'm an operative of the Bureau of International Investigation, working directly under Lawrence Bigelow."
"Bigelow, eh?" Mike said thoughtfully, running a thumb nail along the bottom of his chin. "I've heard about him, of course. Cloak and dagger. All right. We'll go see him. Him and the President. Otherwise, we stay mum until they've* okayed it."
"The President," Jones said sourly. "It's about as easy to see him as it is to get an interview with Andrei Zorin, Number One, in the Kremlin."
"If this project is as important as you say it is," Mike Edwards told him, "he'll see us all right, all right.
Otherwise he can stick the whole thing up his butt."
His Horizonal Holidays relief turned up on the morning plane the next day, and Mike Edwards spent the balance of the day checking the man out. The other was aghast at the short time involved in his instructions. He wanted Mike to stay at least the week out. He had never been in Torremolinos before, though he had worked with the Russkies in Sicily and in the Canary Islands, and spoke Spanish as well as Russian. Mike told him it was impossible and did what he could to lighten the other's load.
The following morning, he and Frank Jones took plane for Greater Washington. There had been no difficulty in getting in to see Lawrence Bigelow, for long years head of the biggest hush-hush bureau in Greater Washington. Jones had put a call through to him while still on the trans-Atlantic plane and the appointment had been arranged. Mike Edwards began to suspect that the somewhat colorless appearing Frank Jones carried more clout than had at first been indicated. Bigelow was in the higher echelons of government, but due to the nature of his department was seldom heard about, seldom in the news, and the usual story was that it was practically impossible to get through to him.
At the international airport at which their supersonic landed, they rent an aircushion car and drove on into Greater Washington.
Mike Edwards wasn't acquainted with the city and Jones gave him a running commentary as they progressed. The Lincoln Memorial, the Washington Monument, the White House, the Capitol Building, so on and so forth. He informed his companion that even the building in which the Bureau of International Investigation was housed was largely unknown. Jones estimated that nine-tenths of American citizens weren't even aware that such a bureau existed.
They pulled into a ramp which led to the underground parking area of the building, and came up to the checkout officers guarding it. They 'were a tough looking squad with enough in the way of firearms to have stopped a company.
Frank Jones said dourly, "I've known the sergeant here for at least ten years, but that doesn't make any difference. We're still treated like complete strangers."
The sergeant, a gun in his hand, said, "Your identifications, please."
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Frank and Mike both handed over their identification cards. Frank Jones said, "We have appointments with the Chief."
The sergeant checked, then handed back the cards and said, "Fingerprints, please," presenting a portable screen, of a type that Mike Edwards had never seen before. They put their fingers of the right hand on the screen.
Mike said to the sergeant, mildly, "You wouldn't have a record of me. I was a professor in a university the last time I was in the States."
The sergeant said flatly, "We have the prints of every citizen of the United States, and several million people who aren't citizens, including those of Number One, in the Kremlin."
He flicked some burtons and stared into another device with which Mike was completely unfamiliar and then said, "Yes, gentlemen. Please pass. Mr. Jones, how are things going?"
"Fine, Pete," Frank said. "It's nice to be back home. The beer's lousy in Spain."
They drove on into the maw of the office building, parked and headed for the elevator bank. The elevator identity screen checked them and they proceeded to the thirteenth floor, the sanctum sanctorum of the Bureau of International Investigation, and were checked out only once more before being able to go on.