The Mammoth Book of Short Spy Novels (Mammoth Books) Read online

  “I’m so glad!” Peter Baron looked directly into Chadwick’s eyes. Neither man spoke.

  “Peter,” the Princess said. “I can never thank you enough.” She leaned over and pecked him briefly and impersonally on the cheek. She turned to her brother. “Mario, I must go to Blake right away. Come!”

  Mario and she hurried off.

  Chadwick sucked on his pipe. Peter Baron leaned on the other side of the wire mesh fence and looked after the Princess as she hurried into the wind across the macadam toward the main building.

  “That good-bye wasn’t much,” Chadwick said succinctly. “Apparently you didn’t impress the Princess.”

  Peter Baron shrugged philosophically. “A little too rich for my blood, possibly.”

  “My dear fellow, she’s only a Princess – not a Queen!”

  “Yes, of course. But I’ve been trying to taper off. At the present moment I am down to Countess level.” Peter Baron vaulted the fence, heading for the main building.

  “Where the devil are you going, Peter?” Chadwick called after him.

  “To a pink palazzo and a matinee engagement.” Baron waved a hand airily at Chadwick. “I’ll be in touch. Duke, will you take care of the Air Commissioner?”

  Chadwick frowned and stared at Duke Farinese, who had sauntered up carrying his precious black suitcase. “The man’s mad, isn’t he?”

  “Just the reverse, I’d say,” Duke observed sagely. “Just the reverse.”

  EDWARD D. HOCH

  The People of the Peacock

  The man who called himself Tony Wilder had traveled three days by camel to reach the valley oasis not far from where the Euphrates River crossed the arid border between Syria and Iraq. It had been an uninteresting journey for the most part broken only by the nightly chore of putting up the little tent that sheltered him against the uncommon chill of the desert dark. The Syrian guide who accompanied him knew only a few words of basic English, just enough to make any attempt at conversation a frustrating and inconclusive experience. And the camel ride itself was anything but pleasant.

  But at last, just after noon on the third day, the bronze-skinned guide called a halt and dismounted from his grunting beast. “There,” he pointed, indicating a cluster of low white buildings nestled in the green of the oasis. “Peacock.”

  Wilder nodded, passing over a few gold coins in final payment. For just twice the price he could have hired a private plane to fly him out from Baghdad in a matter of hours, but his instructions had been exact. Venice did not want to attract attention to the place in the desert. He hated attention almost as much as disobedience.

  Tony Wilder had met Venice only once before, in a dim Paris hotel room. But now he recognized the face at once, and even the handshake had a disturbingly familiar pressure to it. Venice was not the sort of person one ever forgot, even after three years.

  “I trust you had a good journey,” he remarked, releasing Tony Wilder’s limp hand.

  “Camels aren’t my animal, I guess. How are things going here?”

  Venice turned and walked over to the wide arabesque window overlooking the green of the oasis. “It is a peaceful place, and these days I ask little more. I think the war for me is over, Tony.”

  “What?” Wilder could not really believe the words.

  “Oh, I’ve already told Moscow, never fear. I was never really one of them anyway, you know. No more than I was a Nazi twenty years ago. I worked for the side that paid me best, and the color of money is the only political philosophy you need in this game.”

  Tony Wilder nodded, because the words might have been his own. “What are you going to do? One doesn’t just retire, not with agents from a dozen countries after your head.”

  Venice turned from the window, a thin smile on his lips. “This is the eternal problem, my friend. The British – and the American CIA – will hardly call a halt to the chase simply because I choose to spend the rest of my life lounging beside a swimming pool. It is the fate of the spy to end his life violently and alone.” He paused a moment. “But I intend to change the pattern. I intend to live out my days in the peaceful security of the United States of America.”

  “Under their very noses? But how?”

  “I have been working on it for some time,” Venice said, hurrying on now with a gleam of excitement in his eyes. “I have a cover identity all planned, an identity so foolproof that no one will ever penetrate it.”

  Tony Wilder had caught the feeling of excitement. “Could you tell me?”

  But Venice only smiled that same thin smile. “I have told you too much already. You can join me in a glass of champagne, though. A sort of toast, if you will, to the past and to the future.”

  They drank their champagne, and then they shook hands for one last time.

  Exactly fourteen months after the meeting in the desert, a tall slim man with a boyishly handsome face sat across the desk from Captain Leopold in a dingy office at the rear of police headquarters. The city was a small one, an hour’s drive north from New York, and the man had come all the way up from Washington on the morning plane. He didn’t look like a spy to Leopold. He didn’t look like much of anything, in fact.

  “The name is Jim Saunter,” he said, “Here are my credentials.”

  Leopold looked them over with interest. “Central Intelligence Agency. I never met one of you fellows before.”

  The slim man smiled without humor. “We’re working closely with the FBI in this matter,” he said. “But they’ve been a bit handicapped until now because there’s no evidence of a violation of federal law.”

  Leopold started to reach for a cigarette and then remembered he was trying to cut down. “You have the advantage of me Mr. Saunter. I have no idea what matter you have in mind.”

  “I think I can speak frankly, Captain. The FBI people have a very high opinion of you. They tell me you’re one of the best local cops in the northeast.”

  “There was a kidnap case a year or so back,” Leopold said. “I guess I helped them a little on it. Most of the things are pretty routine up here, though.”

  “I don’t think you’ll find this routine. One of our agents was murdered in your city yesterday morning.”

  “Yesterday?” Leopold’s mind was suddenly alive. “Walter Moon? The poisoning case? He gave his address as New York.”

  “He operated out of Washington. He was in my office three days ago. And it wasn’t suicide, in case you’re wondering.”

  Leopold scratched his jaw. “What was he doing up here?”

  “Looking for a man named Venice.”

  “Venice? He’s not known up here.”

  “He wouldn’t be. Let me tell you about Venice, Captain Leopold. I’ll try not to be too melodramatic.”

  “Go ahead.” Leopold was beginning to like the man.

  “Well, Venice is the only name he’s ever had in our records. He turned up in Europe during the early days of World War II, working for the Nazi cause.”

  “Any description, age?”

  “Nothing, except that he was still a fairly young man during the war. Probably under thirty.”

  “Which would make him around fifty today.”

  Saunter nodded. “Give or take five years.”

  “Nationality?”

  “Perhaps Yugoslavian, but we’re not even sure of that. In any event, he passed for an English citizen during the war, so we must assume he’s equally able to pass for an American.”

  “And you think he’s here?”

  The government man unzipped his bulging briefcase. “Let me give you the whole story, if a bit quickly. Venice was working for the Germans, who apparently found him in an Italian black market operation. The story goes that he showed a flair for espionage from the very beginning, and before long he turned up in London, sending out information as to the damage done by the German V-1 rocket, and later the V-2. The British didn’t let many spies escape, and they almost had our man Venice. But he killed a Scotland Yard man and escaped to France
disguised as a woman.”

  “How did he kill the man?” Leopold asked, because that was his end of the business.

  “With a dagger he was carrying up his sleeve. He was a bit melodramatic in those days. Anyway, next time we heard from him was in ’47, and he was working for the Russians in the Middle East. At about that time he became somehow involved with a secret society called the Order of the Peacock Angel.”

  “The what?”

  Jim Saunter smiled a bit. “The mysterious East, you know. The society had an uncertain origin in the area that is now Syria and Iraq, some hundreds of years ago. It was imported into England by a mysterious Syrian back in 1913, and has enjoyed some success there. The peacock, of course, has always been a symbol of power to some people. The rites of the Peacock Angel consist mainly of white-robed worshippers dancing madly before an eight-foot ebony statue of a peacock.”

  “Sure you haven’t been reading Fu Manchu?”

  “I wish it were as simple as that. Our man Venice apparently has been using certain members of the order for his own devious purposes, both in London and the Middle East. One of his favorite hide-outs between assignments was a sort of mission out in the middle of the desert.”

  “Maybe that’s where he is now,” Leopold ventured.

  “No,” Saunter answered abruptly.

  “You seem quite certain.”

  “He left the place more than a year ago. He retired from the espionage game and said he was planning to start a new life in the United States. My man was on his trail when he was murdered here yesterday.”

  Captain Leopold frowned down at the occasional notes he’d been taking. “Why were you on his trail if he’d retired?”

  “You never retire from the game. He killed at least three people personally in his lifetime, and perhaps indirectly caused the deaths of a million more with his activities.”

  “So you must kill him in return.”

  The younger man stared at Leopold. “I hardly said that. I thought I could be frank with you, Captain. They said I could. But perhaps I’ve been too frank.”

  “Venice committed no crimes in this country.”

  “Not until yesterday.”

  “You’re so sure he killed your man?”

  “I’m sure. Walter Moon came here to investigate the formation of the first Peacock Angel group in this country.”

  “In this city?” Leopold had been taken by surprise.

  “In this city. I believe Venice is one of the members.”

  “It’s a long way from Iraq and London.”

  “The world is getting smaller every day.”

  “True.” Leopold got up and began to pace back and forth in the tiny office. “What do you want me to do?” he asked finally.

  “Just conduct your murder investigation in the usual manner. Question the Peacock Angel people – I’ll give you the address. But keep in mind whom you’re looking for.”

  “And when I find him? How will we know for sure, when there’s no description?”

  For a long time Saunter didn’t reply. Then, apparently deciding to show all his cards, he said, “There’s a witness under guard in Washington, perhaps the only man in the world who can identify Venice. His name is Tony Wilder.”

  For a time after the CIA man left, Captain Leopold busied himself with the morning’s routine paperwork. There were other crimes to be investigated, some more violent than the poison death of a man in a hotel room. He issued a few brisk commands over the intercom, read the morning report through carefully, and finally paused to study the spring-like weather beyond his dirty office window. Winter was ending early, and that was something to be pleased about.

  “Fletcher!” he barked into the intercom. Presently the tall sergeant appeared as he always did, and Leopold asked, “What do you know about this poisoning case? Walter Moon, found yesterday morning in his hotel room.”

  Fletcher scratched his head. “Not much. Looks a bit like suicide. The poison was prussic acid – hydrocyanic acid – and it must have killed him instantly, within about thirty seconds. Despite the detective stories, it’s never been much of a murder weapon. But it’s a good way to commit suicide.”

  “This one wasn’t suicide. He was a counter-intelligence agent on an assignment.”

  Fletcher whistled. “We got the federal boys in on this?”

  “It seems so. But they want to keep the thing quiet for now. Why do you say that prussic acid is more of a suicide’s weapon?”

  Fletcher slid down in the worn wooden chair that Saunter had occupied such a short time before. “Well, the odor, for one thing – bitter almonds, you know. And then it kills so fast. Nobody gave it to Moon. He took it himself.”

  “You’d catch the odor in liquid form, but what if it was a salt, in a capsule?”

  “He did have a bottle of capsules with him. Allergy pills of some sort. But there was no prussic acid or cyanide crystals in any of them.”

  “It would only have had to be in one,” Leopold observed. “He probably took these allergy capsules every morning, didn’t he?”

  Fletcher nodded. “Twice a day, according to the instructions on the bottle. I didn’t know spies had allergies.”

  “He’d probably have resented you calling him a spy, at least while he was working in this country. They have so-called black agents and white agents. The white agents, like Saunter and Moon, admit they work for the CIA.”

  “What was this Moon’s assignment?” Fletcher asked.

  “He was trying to locate a Russian spy named Venice who retired from the game and slipped into this country to live out his days in luxury.”

  “Isn’t that an FBI job?”

  Leopold gave in to temptation and took a cigarette. “They were working on it too, but apparently until yesterday this man Venice had committed no crime in the United States. And they had no reason to suspect that he would. I have the distinct, if unpleasant, impression that the CIA planned to take unofficial action against the man.”

  “Is he that important?”

  “He was, when he was active. I gather they credit him with engineering much of Russia’s success in the Middle East, as well as carrying on espionage in London and Paris. I had quite a long talk with this fellow Saunter.”

  “He was the one who was in here before? Looked sort of young.”

  “Young, yes, but there’s no age for this sort of thing. I suspect he’d rather handle the whole thing himself, but he couldn’t avoid asking our help. If the federal people took over the investigation they’d tip their hand.”

  “Did he give you any leads?”

  “The address here of a secret society called the Order of the Peacock Angel. Ever hear of them?”

  “I think one of the boys mentioned it a few months back, but I didn’t pay any attention. Some nutty religion. Harmless, I guess.”

  “Maybe,” Leopold said. “Anyway, I’m going out to see them.”

  “You think this guy Venice is hiding out there?”

  “Saunter says Walter Moon visited them the night before he died, so I guess it’s a good enough place to start.”

  But it was still a long way from Iraq, and nobody knew it better than Leopold. He really didn’t expect to find the man named Venice in his city, though he was willing to look.

  The Order of the Peacock Angel had taken over a decaying old mansion in the Third Ward, a section of the city once noted for its fabulous homes and dinner parties that went on long into the night. Most of the houses, abandoned by their original owners, had long ago fallen into disrepair and been cut up into hundred dollar-a-month apartments, to be shared by working girls with nothing more in common than their quest for a man. This one, though, was different. The aging widow who’d lived there alone for so many years, watching the neighborhood she remembered so well crumble and change before her eyes, had only recently died. The mansion now, for all its need of a paint job and plumbing, was still in one piece.

  Leopold was greeted at the door by one Jerome Farn
good, an impressively white-haired man who might have been a lawyer but wasn’t. As he showed Leopold into the plush living room, he readily admitted that he was the high priest of the Peacock cult in America. “We have nothing to hide,” he said simply, spreading his hands before in a gesture of submission to authority.

  “The Peacock Angel is a secret society, is it not?” Leopold asked.

  “True, in a sense. But like the Rosicrucians and the Masons, you can learn all of our secrets from a number of readily available texts. They tell you more than many of our members know.”

  Leopold took out his cigarettes. “Mind if I smoke?”

  “Not at all, Captain.”

  “I understand a man named Walter Moon visited you two evenings ago.”

  “Yes, he did. He represented himself as a reporter for a weekly news magazine, but I must admit I had my suspicions. His death was a tragedy, though.”

  “He was murdered, of course,” Leopold said, making it a statement.

  The white-haired man showed no emotion. “Better, certainly, than the taking of one’s own life.”

  “You speak with a bit of an accent,” Leopold observed. “Have you been in this country long?”

  “I came over with my daughter nearly a year ago.”

  “From England?”

  “From England. It is the only civilized nation left in this shrinking world.”

  “Then why did you leave?”

  Jerome Farngood shrugged his broad shoulders. “Perhaps to spread the word.”

  “Do you know a man named Venice?”

  “Not personally, no. Walter Moon asked the same question.”

  “Venice is a Russian spy who often used your society as a cover and a hiding place between missions. Did you know that?”

  The man’s forehead wrinkled suddenly as if in that instant he were pondering the fate of nations. Perhaps he was. Then he said, very carefully, “Let me tell you what I know of Venice. It may not agree with your version, but then who is to say what truth is, these days. Venice was a professional spy who worked for the highest bidder. Since the war he happened to be working for the Russians. He often came to our settlement on the Syrian-Iraq border, though I never met him there myself. More than a year ago he retired from espionage, and joined our order as a full member.”