Seek and Destroy Page 6

  “Is that it?” asked Vandrio.

  Carradine nodded. “Valudrine,” he said quietly. “Now, perhaps we shall get the answers to some of our questions.”

  “I hope, for your sakes, that everything goes all right.” murmured the other dubiously.

  Carradine’s laugh was disarming. “The trouble with you, doctor, is that you have lived with a conservative outlook on things for so long that you refuse to accept even the need for change and advancement.”

  “On the contrary,” declared the other stiffly, as he led the way out of the office, “I’m quite prepared to accept any changes, so long as they have been tested thoroughly by clinical trials over a long enough period to detect any possible, harmful effects.”

  “Sometimes circumstances can alter means.” Carradine slipped the phial back on to its bed of cotton wool, closed the lid of the box and carried it gently in his hands. They took the lift to the top floor. Inside the ward they were taken to the bed in the corner. Carradine stood at the foot of the bed and looked down at the girl who lay in it, her rich, blonde hair glistening in the sunlight. Her face was pale, high-lighted by the wide bandage, swathing around her forehead.

  “Gerda,” said Vandrio softly.

  The girl’s eyes flicked open. She stirred under the blankets, tried to lift her head.

  “Lie still,” said Vandrio. “We are —” He paused, then went on quickly, “We are going to give you a small injection which will help to restore your memory. You would like that, wouldn’t you?”

  The girl moistened her lips with the tip of her tongue, nodded a little. Turning, Vandrio held out his hand for the box in Carradine’s hands. The other handed it over to him. Taking out the phial, Vandrio broke off the top, then went around to the side of the bed where a tray of instruments had been prepared and laid out ready for use. Ticking up the slender hypodermic, he thrust the needle into the phial, pulled out the plunger slowly, watching with an impassive face as the yellow liquid was sucked up into the glass barrel of the hypodermic. Squirting a little into the air, he nodded to the nurse. Deftly she swabbed the girl’s upper arm with a pad soaked in alcohol, then stood on one side as Vandrio advanced. He hesitated for a long moment, holding the hypodermic in his right hand. For a second, Carradine had the impression that he would not go through with it. Then he leaned forward over the girl, thrust the needle into the flesh of her arm and pressed home the plunger, injecting the stream of fluid into her bloodstream. Carradine waited tensely. In spite of his earlier assurances, he felt taut and apprehensive himself, although he did not intend to show it in front of the others. He watched for the girl’s first reactions. At first there was nothing. The look on her face did not change. Her eyes remained expressionless.

  Then he saw the slim brows draw together, the nose wrinkle across the bridge as if memory was stirring somewhere deep within her mind, breaking through the barrier which had been imposed by her subconscious, blocking off all memory of the incidents prior to the crash. He saw her lips move, saw her struggle once more to rise in the bed, her eyes widening a little.

  “Gerda,” said Carradine softly. “Do you remember who you are?”

  “Gerda Henkel,” she said in a soft voice. For a moment it was as if she were merely reciting lines which she had learned parrot-fashion. Then a new quality came into her tone, a crowding fear which threatened to blot out everything else. Her voice was lifted in volume and pitch as she went on: “My father! What have they done with my father?”

  “Don’t worry about that. Gerda, for the moment,” said Carradine, his voice reassuring. “We need you to help us get him back. Those two men you saw. Can you describe them to us, as closely as you can.”

  “I saw them in the light of the headlights,” she said tonelessly. “One man had a gun. They must have had my father in the rear seat, either tied up or unconscious. If only I had known then what had happened, I might have been able to follow them, to have done something. But even after I got back to the house, even after I discovered he was not there, I thought nothing about it until I found the two dogs. They had been killed by some kind of poison.”

  “The two men,” said Carradine insistently. “What of them?”

  “One man was huge. He was driving the car. His face was like that of an animal, almost. The other, the man with the gun was thinner, his face pinched, a long nose, eyes set close together.”

  “Could you recognize them if you saw either of them again. Or a photograph of them?”

  “Yes, I think so.”

  “Good. This has been a great help to us. If there is anything else you may think is important —”

  The girl was silent for a long moment, her eyes staring up at the ceiling, her lips twisted. She looked terrified of something. “The other car,” she said in a halting tone. “The man who tried to kill me, who forced me off the road.”

  “Yes,” said Carradine quietly.

  “He was the man I saw in that first car, the man with the gun.”

  *****

  Steve Carradine woke early the next morning in his room at the Hotel Uruguayo, absently, he reached out and checked the gun under his pillow, then rolled over and swung his legs to the floor. Going over to the window, he glanced down into the street, half expecting to see the black limousine there again at the corner of the plaza, but it was not in sight. Had they decided to call off their watchdogs after last night? If so, then their actions were, to say the least of it, premature. Somehow, he did not think that men as methodical as those of the M.G B. would be content with simply believing they might have killed him in that attack outside the gambling club. It was more likely they would send someone to make certain.

  He was not disappointed. Less than five minutes after he had dressed and shaved, there was a soft knock on the door of his room. It opened before he called out.

  “I was hoping that you were awake.” Valentina Vero-nova came into the room, closing the door behind her. She pouted at him as she seated herself on the edge of the sofa, one nylon-sheathed leg swinging idly. “I have, as you say in England, a bone to pick with you.”

  Carradine lifted his brows a little, said nothing, waiting for her to go on. He had scarcely expected to see the girl again after what had happened the previous night, but he was quite prepared to play along with this, just so long as he was doing it with his eyes open, forewarned.

  “When you left me at the Club, I expected you to come back with the car to pick me up. But you never returned. I waited for perhaps fifteen minutes and then went out to look for you. The car was there all right, but there was no sign of you. What happened?”

  “Don’t you know?” Carradine said tightly.

  “But of course I don’t know How could I? I was in the Club waiting for you to pick me up, clutching the best part of a small fortune in my hands. I suppose anyone could have come along.”

  “Now listen to me, Valentina,” Carradine’s tone was low and deadly. “Quite a lot happened last night after I left you to pick up the car. A good deal of it seemed too much of a coincidence to be anything less than a well-prepared plan to have me put out of the way permanently.”

  Her eyes widened at his words. For a moment her lips were parted in obvious surprise. Was it just a little too obvious? Or did she really not understand?

  She said indifferently. “I wish I knew what you are talking about, Steve. If this is an excuse for your actions last night, then I’d like to hear it.” Turning, she lowered herself gracefully on to the couch, one leg crossed over the other. There was no expression on her face now.

  “Very well. I’ll explain. I got your car from the parking lot outside the restaurant, but there was a visitor there already, a Russian agent with a gun. He forced me to drive here, then to get out. He said that he would be waiting for someone and implied that when this person arrived, I would be taken for a drive, out into the country where I could be murdered without any witnesses. Unfortunately for him, and his companion, I also had an accomplice waiting, although I di
dn’t know it at the time.”

  She regarded him steadily, unblinkingly, for several moments. Then she said tautly, through her teeth. “You’re not saying that I had anything to do with what happened to you, are you? I was in the Club all of that time. I knew nothing about any attempt that was to be made on your life. Or is it just that because I am Russian you —"

  “Caucasian,” said Carradine softly, a grin on his lips. There were tears showing in the girl’s eyes, but no trace of guilt on her face. Had he misjudged her? It certainly looked that way.

  “Is that what you think? That I’m one of them” Deliberately, she stressed the last word, made it sound like an unclean taste in her mouth

  “I’m sorry, Valentina. At the moment, I don’t know what to think. But somehow, they knew that it was your car, and they were waiting for me to go back for it. Too many events seemed to have combined to make it seem like a coincidence.”

  Valentina seemed to make up her mind. Nodding his head quickly, she wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. There was no ultra-feminine dabbing of her eyes with a wispy handkerchief, Carradine noticed. Then she looked straight at him her jaw thrust forward a little. “You’ve got to believe me,” she said with a forced quietness “I had nothing to do with these people. Nothing at all.”

  Carradine nodded easily. “Then we will forget it.” he said, his voice calm and casual. “Now, have you had breakfast yet?”

  “No, I was hoping that you would join me.”

  "I’d be delighted.”

  Breakfast was excellent. Carradine, having been in this country once before knew beforehand what to expect, and by the lime the hot coffee arrived, was feeling pleasantly full. Relaxing his body, he glanced up, saw Merton standing just inside the doorway of the dining room. The other’s gaze fell on him and he walked over, paused at Carradine's side, looking across the table at the girl. “I can see that you have already availed yourself of one of the delights of this city, Carradine,” he said, bowing slightly in Valentina's direction.

  "This is Valentina Veronova,” Carradine said, introducing the girl. “Paul Merton.”

  “How do you do, Señor Merton.” The girl watched the American’s thoughtful face.

  Merton bowed again from the waist, then flickered his gaze at Carradine. “I hate to drag you away from so charming and beautiful companion,” he said urgently, “but I’m afraid I must. This business is of extreme importance. I’m sure that Miss Veronova will excuse you.”

  “Of course” The girl seemed to turn something over in her mind, then pushed back her chair and rose to her feet. “I must change my dress if I am to go into the city to do some shopping.”

  Merton waited until she had gone, then slipped into the chair she had just vacated, looked about him to ensure that they could not be overheard, lowered his voice as he said softly: “That girl. She was the one you were with last night?”

  “Yes. I told her most of what happened when I went to collect her car. She denied having any part in it, of course.”

  “But you said nothing about our visit to the hospital, or about the drug and what we learned from Gerda Henkel.”

  “Of course not. There’s always the chance that she is one of them.”

  “A very good chance, I would say,” murmured the other. “But to get to the point of my visit here, I’ve checked though most of the files we have on known Russian agents in this part of the world, took a few with me to the hospital. Gerda picked out one of them right away as the man who had been driving that car.”

  “Go on,” said Carradine flatly. His voice was casual.

  “His name is Jenko Kronovitch, one of the top men in the M.G.B. He hasn’t been in Uruguay long. I think he must have been sent here direct from Moscow a short while ago, possibly to superintend operations here.”

  “But you’ve got no lead on the other man?”

  “None at all. We’re still checking through the files, if that doesn’t produce results quickly, I’ll try to get the girl out of that hospital and into our Headquarters here where she can have a go with the Identigraph.”

  “That ought to help.” Carradine nodded. It had been used successfully on several occasions in London, and was now standard equipment at Secret Service Headquarters as well as at New Scotland Yard. Basically, it was a device for recording the major items of a person’s features, skull, hair, nose, eyes and mouth, each item being taken from a stock of items and superimposed on the basic characteristics already chosen. In the end, a sort of composite picture was built up which was almost invariably found to give a reasonable likeness to the person in question. From a fleeting glimpse, seen in a dark street, a good likeness could often be built up.

  “I’ve got men looking for Kronovitch right now. If he’s around here anywhere I reckon it won’t be long before they get a lead on him.”

  “But we’re no further forward with finding out where they’ve taken Henkel.”

  “Afraid not. We’ve got to work this out. At the moment our chances are not good. They’ve got this site so well hidden that so far, we haven’t even been able to get a smell at it.”

  “Yet you’re pretty sure that it’s somewhere to the west of here, possibly not in Uruguay.”

  “Almost certainly, it’s not in Uruguay. I doubt if the Uruguayan Government would allow it. They’re too friendly with the United States. This would finish them completely and they know it. I think we can take it that they are as anti-Communist as we are.”

  “Then there’s only one way to do this as I see it. One of us must get into that site, find out everything possible. It’s only there, I’m sure, that we can get any information on how they propose to bring those nuclear warheads into the country.”

  “Well, I think that’s crazy,” said the other, shaking his head dubiously. “It won’t be easy getting inside. They must have it so well guarded that an army would be needed to break in.”

  “Not if we got in as workmen. They must have men working on the site. That way, we should be able to discover something.”

  Merton smiled mirthlessly. “They are not fools, you know, Carradine. We’ve been on to them for some time now and believe me, they’re as cunning as they come. I think we can take it that every man who works there will have been thoroughly screened before he gets within a hundred miles of the place. Even then, he’ll be watched every second of the day, probably locked inside some sleeping quarters at night, paraded to work in the morning, and returned to what is virtually a prison when the work is finished.”

  “That’s a risk which will have to be taken. Besides, it’s certain that they have taken Henkel there. He’ll probably be used to help them in the assembly of the rocket warheads. When his usefulness is finished, they’ll kill him to make certain that he doesn’t talk.”

  “All right.” The other was still obviously unconvinced. He added harshly: “They warned me before I met you that you were a man who always met trouble more than halfway. Now I know they were right. I suppose you’ve reckoned on the danger there is the fact that if Henkel is there, so is our friend Kronovitch and he knows you by sight.”

  Carradine looked composed. He said softly: “You have no faith, Paul. In this business it is essential to have faith, otherwise you would get nowhere.”

  “Is there anything I can do to help?”

  Carradine looked casually up. He said: “You seem to have a good organization here in Montevideo. Can you get your men to find out whether anyone here is hiring labour for work outside the city. Whoever it is, it will be someone looking for a large force of men. I doubt if you’ll mistake the agency once you locate it.”

  Merton scraped back his chair. He nodded. “I’ll get somebody on to that right away. I figure it ought to be possible to have some kind of an answer by tonight at the latest. Maybe you’d better come to my place. They may have this hotel watched.” He paused, then said thinly: “I’d also check that room of yours if you haven’t already done so. They may not be content simply to rely on the girl.�
�

  Carradine tightened his lips, nodded. “I’ll do that,” he promised. “Thanks for reminding me. In the meantime, do your best to get that information.” He fingered the white card which the other handed to him, glanced down at the neatly primed address. “And I’ll contact you tonight, say at nine o’clock. That should give you twelve hours to find this agency.”

  “Will do,” said the other calmly.

  Going back to his room, Carradine found that the bed had been made, the ashtrays cleared, in his absence. Everything about this hotel seemed remarkably efficient, carried out unobtrusively. One scarcely ever saw the servants who cleaned the rooms. He recollected that he had seen a chambermaid once in his travels along the maze of corridors in the hotel, during the short period he had spent discovering the lay-out of the place It was something he always did when first going into a new hotel. It was so easy to lose one’s way, wander for fifteen minutes or so along the corridors before getting back to one’s room. He had already discovered that Valentina Veronova had booked into the hotel the day before he had arrived.

  Inside the room, he looked about him with a more than casual interest, his keen gaze taking in everything, eyeing it with a second look. The flowers on the table close to the bed. A swift check assured him there was no small button microphone hidden there, no thin, almost invisible wires leading down from the vase, along the leg of the table and into one of the room on either side of him. The bed was innocent of anything suspicious. So, too, were the table and the chairs placed with a meticulous care around the room. He went into the adjoining bathroom, found nothing out of place. The small cupboard on the wall above the bath with the glass doors revealed nothing. Shrugging his shoulders, he went back into the room. There seemed to be absolutely nothing. Yet as Merton had reminded him, these people usually left nothing to chance, always tried to back up one of their methods of keeping tabs on someone, with another. He sharpened his senses abruptly, tried to recall all of the methods he had known to be used in the past.