Operation Isis. E. Hoffmann Price
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The komissar tried to speak, but he was cut short. “Comrade Igor, I do not give a good goddamn what the book says. Or what the Marxist saints preach. We have a good thing here, and when something is working, do not fool around fixing it.”
The komissar’s dark eyes blackened, but since there were no auditors, he did not balk at the self-evident truth. “You have been a most helpful guest, Comrade Nee-ville. I concede your point.” He grinned good-humoredly. “Neither do I, not in private, make a religion of consistency. But your muttering and mumbling about the missing Imperatrix has become an obsession!”
“Comrade Komissar, you are right! It is my obsession, in the same measure as your passion for indoctrinating these blacks. And it will be that way to the day of my death.”
Igor nodded and gave him a fraternal pat on the shoulder. “While you were in office, you faced so many TV cameras that you had to send Comrade Offendorf to liquidate the Imperatrix. He was loyal to the death!”
“Goddammit, yes!” Ingerman’s voice cracked. He gulped. “I sent him to that death.”
“How many thousands went to their deaths when General Kuropatkin made the mistake of not suspecting that Alexander’s Canadian friends were on the way? To make an omelet, one has to break eggs!”
“That’s different. That was war. This was personal, a thing I cooked up and sold him. How that woman killed two men, stripped the corpses, dragged the bodies to the rimrock, and pushed them over the edge is still beyond me!”
Ingerman paused. “It must have been that son of a bitch Garvin!” he said, fiercely. “He wasn’t acting out of social conscience. It was not even the warped conscience of Imperialism. It was pure hatred of everything we stand for. He vaporized our tank division at the battle of Kashgar and fused kilometer after kilometer of the Silk Road. And told the press that such instant destruction was the ultimate of humanitarianism, that not a man of that armored division had time to feel the atomization! A goddamn monster, do you understand?”
The komissar sighed. “Comrade Nee-ville, it would be more to the point if we learned what those freakish battle cruisers he led had. Imagine what we could do if only we knew!”
“You and your goddamn dialectical materialism! I’ll get his hide if it takes till Judgment Day!”
“I appreciate and respect your zeal,” the komissar cut in. He had to humor a slightly kinked but extremely valuable helper. “Garvin and his broad-tailed girl, one of Lani’s close friends, helped her. Listen, Comrade! Garvin is by no means your age, but he is getting along. You’ve so often told me that the American mass is never interested in merit. That if Lani were young and beautiful, she would have their instant devotion! The Veiled Imperatrix, the so-called onetime glamour girl, is broad-tailed, waddling, sagging, and no longer the heroic siren who was with Alexander when he died and upset your grand work with his banzai charge.”
“Wait till I show you what came in. Just got it from decoding.”
The komissar jerked upright and snatched the paper from the hand that had it half drawn from a jacket pocket. He read:
Garvin proceeding France-ward. Signed, Diane.
“Who the devil is Diane?” he asked.
“Diane is a comrade working in the Basses Pyrendes section of our enterprise. She started in that deluxe whorehouse on Boulevard Rempart Lachepaillet. Never having a pimp, she saved enough to buy the two-story building pointing toward number forty-three, rue des Faures. Yes, this is Bayonne I’m speaking of, and the narrow ancient streets meet at crazy angles, flatiron shaped, hence I said ‘pointing.’ Between her attractiveness and her cutting rates she drew her customers from the parlor house to her apartment above the épicérie she operated during grocery store hours. Next she rented the store to an unattractive wench whose only charms were coffee, spices, bread, canned goods, and delicatessen stuff. For the past couple of years she has been live-in housekeeper for Flora Garvin and Rod Garvin’s son, Felix.”
The komissar’s eyes went wide open. “You mean, the Governor-General of Mars?”
“That is the son of a bitch! Yes. And he is going to see his Number One Wife and meet the son he has never seen. Our comrades in the Basses Pyrenees have been watching her.” He gave a wry grimace. “About the only way we can get around Maritania’s security department.”
“Mmmm...a good many operators have disappeared,” the komissar admitted. “And those who have returned come back with misinformation that’s caused us a lot of trouble.”
“You begin to see that I have more than an obsession?”
“A governor-general who did not ignore every principle of justice, legal procedure, human rights, and democracy would be a great benefit to the cause. You have a plan?”
“I have.”
“How long have you known all this?”
“Ever since it started.”
“And you’re just now telling me!”
“Is it proper to assail the President of Sainte Veronique, a nation, with every scrap of gossip?”
To answer the rhetorical question, the komissar gulped fifty cubic centimeters of sugarcane vodka.
Ingerman reached for a hefty snort of dark, Haitian-style rum. “I thought you’d see it my way. Masravia!”
“And your health!” the komissar said without even wincing at Ingerman’s inevitable mispronunciation. “Now tell me, Comrade Nee-ville, what all this amounts to.”
“Details are not yet available. But we can be sure that Garvin will see his friends, the Warlords, and he’ll visit Nameless Island to see Madame Broadtail, the late Dr. Brandon’s girl. Count on them to see the Imperatrix wherever she is hiding.”
Comrade Igor frowned. “Quite a few years ago, her death, with the publicity you and Harry Offendorf planned, would have been a triumph. You two would have been Red heroes. But now you should take no such risks. She’s not a glamour figure.”
“Quite right. But wherever she is, he would go privately, secretly. Without the publicity of a formal visit. Whatever her reasons for not having found a safe spot in Maritania, Garvin will humor her notions. Out of respect to Alexander and to her. You see, he’ll be concerned about her security, and so he’s likely to neglect his own. Concerned and careless.”
“Very good,” the komissar agreed. “But your work here with me is more important. You’ve told me that you are running out of time. So is Garvin. I cannot have you jeopardize your very real value to carry on with this personal vendetta. While he is getting acquainted with the son he has never seen, an accident could be arranged. Run down by a drunken driver, for instance.”
“Logical, a good idea! But not in France. The guillotine is working again. The French Sûreté is a nasty outfit, and French legal procedure is different. A criminal resisting arrest and foolishly killing or even wounding a peace officer is never brought to trial. He is beaten and kicked to death, trampled to pulp at the police station.
“Comrade Igor, you do not understand the American system. Martial law is effective: execution before arrest. But once civil law gets a criminal—with the jury, of course, favoring the underdog—the penalty for a bit of income tax fraud is more severe than for rape with torture and murder for trimmings. Over the years, my appearance has changed. The old-time “WANTED” posters make that clear. And I have learned some tricks meanwhile. North America is the place to get rid of Garvin. And that will finish the security that is keeping us out of Maritania.”
The komissar sighed. “Our counterfeit document and money department will miss you. And your message analyses. But if you succeed, I’ll see that you get our highest decoration.”
“The Red Star of Sainte Veronique? If I wanted one, I’d make a counterfeit better than the genuine. It’s that damned Garvin I am after.”
Chapter