The Doomsday Bag Read online

  Even as the floor rushed up to meet me, I could hear her saying how sorry she was, how foolish it was for me to think I could have gotten away with such a sick lover's ploy like telling her I knew she was a Russian agent and did she expect me not to expect her to do anything about it? Silly man.

  The damnedest, stupidest, silliest thing about the whole sappy business of me being cold-cocked in my own room was that she really sounded sorry about the whole thing.

  After that, I didn't see or hear a thing more.

  And once again, I had forgotten to ask Rowles about Thomas Miflow, hero cab driver.

  The War Lovers

  I woke up in a deep, dank, dark basement somewhere. Talk about Poe. My prison, or temporary confinement, was something out of a Gothic mansion. I had been so finely finessed that when I came awake, I had nothing more than a king-sized lump on my cranium. But it was just that dull, headachey feeling, like they say in all the ads. I've been bopped on the sconce before. I know the feeling. What was brand-new and acutely uncomfortable were the after-effects of the goo that Felicia Carr had shot into my eyes. I kept my mind off the subject of Miss Carr while I tried to reorient myself. It wasn't easy. My eyes still stung, though I could see well enough, and my nostrils felt like a sneeze coming on that didn't quite mature. Also, my throat had a dry raspy sensation like a cough. I was slightly hoarse.

  Before you can come up from enforced blackout, jigsaws and kaleidoscopes of mental reflex go to work on you, and as you gradually emerge from the darkness, tiny little lights scattered in your brain try to make themselves seen and understood.

  I saw the Chief, worried lines on his face, instructing me about the importance of finding the Bagman.

  I heard Markham snapping and barking at me something about Nervous Nellies and the panic being on and did I really think I could get in a shot at the President while he was around?

  I watched Congressman Charles Cornell signing the dinner tab with a switched golden ball-point.

  I listened as Emil's thin voice wailed and moaned about the harmlessness of a little trick.

  I saw the pump-gunner and his young crony herding me into a taxi. No, that wasn't right. The pump-gunner had already been in the cab, lying on the floor.

  I saw and heard the big dull barn explode in a terrible roar. Subconsciously, I winced. My ears hurt with the echo of the roaring blast.

  I saw Leonard Kanin's 5 X 8 photo attached to the dossier. A nothing face on a something man.

  Then the dreams really took over. Felicia Carr, soft-voiced and velvet-lined, mist and lightning all rolled into one, and she was holding something up and squirting it into my defenseless eyes—

  Then I was really awake and checking myself out.

  But I wasn't blind. Mercifully, she hadn't lied about that, at least. Sometimes you have to be thankful for small favors.

  I examined my body before I studied my prison. That, too, is sheer reflex, and almost by the book when you come to. As I say, I've been rocked to sleep the hard way many times in the past and this was one of the better times. The sap-wielder had known how to use his T.O. weapon. He'd given me just enough to put me under without damaging me. I didn't feel any blood on my forehead or ear. Just the lump.

  I was still dressed the way I had been in the Carlton. The dark blue suit and tie and shoes, but I could tell I was lighter by one .45, my wallet, assorted personal items, and God knows what else. They had even removed my tiepin, watch, and ring. As well as the packet of chewing gum that was high explosive in disguise. But again there was a small favor. I wasn't bound in any way. When I came to, I'd found myself lying on a stone floor, cramped and sore with my left arm asleep because I had been lying across it. When I finally stood up and walked it off, swinging my dead arm, I cased my prison.

  It couldn't be anything else. It was a small storehouse room of some kind, all stone, with no window and nothing to sit on, stand on, or use as a weapon. There was a door but it was about four inches of heavy wooden panels, studded with old-fashioned brass heads, and it was securely locked from the outside. There wasn't even a doorknob or handle on my side of the room. Also it was cold. Dank and chilly. My body started to shiver and then my teeth felt like chattering. There were no pipes overhead or along the walls. No vents or outlets of any kind. For a wild moment I wondered if it was one of those old Karloff torture chambers where the walls come together with a rumble of hidden machinery. Or the stone floor suddenly splits in half and you drop down into the den of a starving lion or a pool of hungry sharks. I shook off the notion and tried to think. It was impossible. I didn't know what time it was, where I was, or what was going on in the outside world. For all I knew, the all-important Pentagon meeting was over and done with.

  I walked around the stone room, measuring it silently. It came out about eight feet wide, ten feet long, and if I stretched on my toes, both my hands could just about touch the ceiling. There was no hope in that, either. The roof of the place was a crisscross of beams as thick as the door. I doubted escape very much. It was their show, whoever they were. I sat down on the floor with my back to the wall and faced the door, such as it was. All I missed right then was a cigarette. But they had taken those, too.

  You see, people in the spy racket know so much about secret weapons and compartments in shoe heels and trick belts and ties that can ignite into explosives, they strip you of everything these days. I had no doubts that my clothes had probably been diligently fluoresced or Geiger-countered to make sure I had nothing foreign on me. Well, I didn't. I'd come to Washington to give testimony at a hearing. The gum had been a demonstrable device to show how some businessmen can destroy their double sets of bookkeeping records on a moment's notice with a phony fire to block investigation. Or collect on their fire insurance.

  My mind raced on, trying to think of something, when there was a click of sound at the heavy door, it opened just enough, and the tall heavy figure of a man came hurtling in from the outside, propelled by unseen hands. I tried to twist out of the way.

  The man, snarling defiance and cursing, slammed up against the wall beside me and then just stayed there. He stopped cursing and placed his head between his outstretched arms and closed his eyes. I got to my feet and stepped back a pace.

  "Hello, Kanin," I said. "I didn't find you but I guess you found me."

  He didn't turn to look at me right away, but he had come as advertised in the dossier. Tall, a two-hundred-pounder and even the horn-rimmed glasses which I could see were minus one pane. The big man shook his head, muttering, and then slowly turned from the wall. His face would have been hard to recognize, even from the clear picture on the files. It looked like raw hamburger. He'd been worked over but good. But it wasn't that recent a job. There were dried cuts and gashes, a set of scabs at least a day old. The new punches and gouges were drying a bit more slowly. His face was that of the steady drinker's who bangs himself up accidentally and blearily stumbles into a Third Avenue greasy spoon to order coffee and scrambled eggs.

  "Who are you, chum?" he boomed hollowly. "A plant?"

  "No. I'm Noon. Ed Noon. I've been looking for you since yesterday—"

  "And the Army and the Navy and the Marines." He stood to his full height now, ignoring his cuts and bruises, and jeered at me. His fists were balled and he was mad. "Don't snow me, chum. It's bad enough I walked into this with my eyes open, but so help me God, I'm not going out that way!"

  "Okay—you need proof—just give me a chance to talk. Then you can swing away." He was in a dangerous mood, and come what may, I didn't fancy a toe-to-toe slugging match with a guy his size. The gut on him was showing through the rips and tears in his coat jacket and shirt, but he still looked formidable. And he had justifiable anger on his side. That's a hard combination to beat. "I'm not FBI, Secret Service, or CIA. I work with the Man."

  He blinked at that. "What man?"

  "The President. He asked me personally to look into this."

  He studied me as if I were crazy and then threw b
ack his head and laughed. For a long moment, he forgot his troubles.

  "Jeezis, that's sweet!" he jeered again. "Little old you was asked by the President to find me—"

  "And the football," I interrupted quietly. "You took a bum steer, Satchel. Let me talk—" So, regardless of the possibility of bugging devices or gimmicks, I told him the whole marathon story of the last two nutty days in D.C. Omitting nothing but Felicia Carr. She didn't fit into it somehow. I even told him about the Congressman and his suspicions. Leonard Kanin quieted down and when I saw I had him on the ropes, almost to the point of belief, I added the crusher. I was that sure I was right. "So I think I know why you've been worked over. You walked out on your own power, changed your mind, and when they pressured you for the combination to the bag which you wouldn't open, they tortured you. So you gave Manuel de Rojas the first set of numbers you could think of—that life-insurance policy for the orphanage in Ishpeming. The one that means so much to you. You were only stalling, of course, but they went ahead and jimmied open the bag anyway. Tell me—were you out at that barn in the woods at all?"

  "Jeezis," he said again. "How do you know all that?"

  "I told you. I was with Rowles of the Bureau. We've been comparing notes."

  "Rowles," he growled. "He don't know everything. But that Cornell, the old owl. He put his finger on it all the way. It's them all right. Oatley and his crowd. Wanting to put the squeeze on the White House. The bastards. And I fell for it. Hook, line, and sinker."

  "And black bag," I reminded him. "Where are we?"

  His bloody, battered face was almost glorious. The shine of his eyes wasn't quite normal. Or sane, even.

  "Take a guess," he challenged. "You're the big-city detective. You ought to know about things like this. A Washington caper. Right in the heart of the place where they make all the laws, set all the rules, and tell the rest of us how we should live. It's rich, Noon. Real rich. I think you'll die laughing." There was almost a sob in his throat.

  "I don't want to guess. I don't want to die," I said. "Where are we?"

  He showed me his teeth. One of them was missing now where a battering fist or weapon had knocked it out, leaving a jagged edge of enamel close to the gum line.

  "We," Leonard Kanin said harshly, "are the house guests of one Walter Ardway, Vice-President Raymond Oatley's right-hand man. A moneybags who pulls the party strings for whatever they're planning. Nice, huh?"

  "Oatley upstairs, too?"

  He grimaced at me as if surprised I was so stupid.

  "You crazy? Oatley wouldn't be seen dead here. No, he stays in the EOB, pretending how sorry he is all this is going on. When the President gets it in the neck, Oatley will step right in to lend a hand. You know how these deals operate. There's nothing on paper or record to implicate the Veep in this."

  "Who else is in the house?"

  "Ardway, a few strong arms from the Republican party. Real goon-squad types. And a real beautiful broad who I don't know. Probably one of their vice dolls. Who the hell knows?" Wearily, he rubbed his hands into his eyes. My own felt 50 percent better. "Anyway, they're setting something up. Don't know what. But they got to get rid of me, that's for sure. I know too much now." He certainly did.

  "The doll. A brunette with a leopard-skin coat. Black turtleneck?"

  He grunted. "Didn't see the coat but she's wearing a turtleneck, all right. Who is she?"

  "A heartbreaker. Forget her. Tell me how you got out of Convention Hall and why in hell you wanted to in the first place."

  He told me the whole story. What there was of it up until now. The man I had found in the lines of the dossier swung into sharp focus. All his actions and moves, seen in that light, would make sense. There was no other logical explanation for the sad, stupid cupidity and vulnerability of the Bagman called Leonard Kanin.

  Detwhiler of the S squad had fed him a can of pork and beans. The pork was that the men of the Secret Service wanted to prove to the President that one bagman wasn't enough, that all the security measures in the world wouldn't stop the enemy from hijacking a bagman. So Kanin, already gloomy and lonely and feeling left out of things with his Secret Service pals, went along with the gag. This was a chance to make good, show a maximum effort, and maybe get some governmental approval. The beans were that Detwhiler was lying, that he was turning Kanin over to a political enemy of the President who wanted to make rich, worthwhile copy of the shortcomings of the party in power who were entrusted with the safety of more than two hundred million American citizens.

  So Detwhiler, whom I'd already seen out at the barn conferring with Rowles, had engineered the departure of Kanin the Bagman. He had led him off stage right, seemingly for a brief conference, only to ship him out through a space under the platform to a side door where a car was waiting. They didn't take Kanin to the barn. They brought him here to Ardway's and the masquerade was over. Kanin knew he had fallen into a snare. So the goons worked him over—with him in the house and the bag at the barn. Nobody was taking too many chances. The pump-gunner, sent out with the phony combination numbers, had angrily jimmied the bag anyway. Kanin's stall had gained nothing. Only another beating. The explosively important nuclear patterns and codes and hot line info was now probably safely locked away in an office safe somewhere. The plan was to keep Kanin out for a whole week while the stratagems of laying pitfalls and traps for a president who couldn't produce his all-vital Bagman would call the wrath of the military, the House, the Senate, Congress, and probably even the people down on his futile, defenseless head. It would work, too. Especially if the Vice-President and his minions played their cards right. And they would, too.

  Detwhiler had covered tracks a little by rigging a device to blow up the barn after Rowles and his FBI men left Rowles must have been getting too close for comfort. The attempt on Cornell and the ones on me simply meant that we had been picked as potential spoilers by the master planners. What other reason could there be?

  Someone had divined that Noon, specially asked for by the Chief, represented a possible threat. Just like Cornell who they knew had an inkling of their plans. Felicia Carr was just the inserted special agent needed to add some two cents of spice and loveliness and deception to the whole mess. Like leading lusting private operators to bed.

  When Kanin finished his story, he spit against the opposite wall distastefully. He almost glared at me again, his big hands clenched.

  "I must be the prize chump of America. Falling for Detwhiler's gag like that."

  "You aren't but you helped. Do you feel sorry for what you did? Putting the Man in the hot seat like this?"

  "What do you think, chum?"

  "I think you're all right, and if we put our heads together and do some constructive thinking, maybe we can crash out of this Bastille."

  He wagged his head. "No dice, Noon. This dump is high on a hill, surrounded by an electrically rigged iron fence to keep out trespassers, and that door is maybe a foot thick on the outside. We'd have to slug our way past an army of goons. We're here for the duration. Or until they dump us into the Potomac."

  "Ouch," I said. "And no cigarettes."

  He liked that. He grinned. And winked, digging a paw into the side pocket of his tattered coat. The blood he had spilled from his going-over had dried in ugly brownish splotches all over the nice gray material. But he drew something out of the pocket and held it up.

  For a long moment I couldn't think straight.

  He chuckled.

  "That damned dame upstairs. Say this much for her. There's some humanity and decency even in the worst of them. She gave me this as they were hustling me outa the room. Damned decent of her, I think."

  Decent? It was a lot of things but decency was the least of them. A bell went off in my head, cannons roared, and the bugles trumpeted. I heard Custer's cavalry come rushing over the nearest hill. The wagon train was saved.

  Leonard Kanin was blinking comically at my reaction, but his big mitt was extending to me a pack of chewing gum. Five slice
s of what was supposed to be resin and sugar with spearmint flavor.

  That pack of chewing gum.

  The same pack I'd been carrying since I came to Washington, D.C.

  The one with TNT wrapped up in every explosive stick.

  Washington House Party

  We got out of that cold bin they had stuck us in. Me and the Bagman both. Felicia Carr had slipped him my pack of detonation chewing gum either through charity or knowledge, and I didn't stop to figure out which. Leonard Kanin's big face came apart with surprise when I took the gum from him, divvied up the five slices between us, and told him to chew like mad.

  I explained to him while our jaws chomped busily that the gum was an offshoot of a plastic explosive which had been called Aunt Jemima in World War II. Saboteurs, the OSS, and U.S. Army demolitions teams had found it a godsend. Looking like pancake flour, it could be carried, rolled up, kneaded into any shape you wanted, like Silly Putty, and was perfectly harmless until you fitted it with a blasting cap or ignited it in some way. If you didn't have matches, it would go off if you hurled it hard enough against something solid. Like a thick door to an eight by ten cell.

  We were down in a dungeon where we could hear nothing and we just might be jumping from the frying pan into the fire but there was no alternative. We had to move while our arms and legs were still free. Nobody would want us alive to answer questions sooner or later.

  Wordlessly, Kanin handed me his wad of gum and I added it to my own. Now I had a fairly sizable lump of plastic dynamite. Certainly, enough to do the job.

  "Make yourself scarce," I said. "We're going to have to do this the hard way."

  He nodded jerkily, moved to the extreme corner of the room, and lay down parallel to the wall. He huddled his head between his shoulders. A pretty sound notion. Wood and metal would be flying all around the cell if the force of the blast didn't knock the door outward rather than inward.