Flicker of Doom Page 4

  "That wouldn't bother some of the Arab splinter groups," NSA said. "They're fanatics. They hate the Arab moderates. And they consider all of the OAPEC nations and the present government of Morocco to be moderates."

  "That's right," said the Admiral. "My God, the extremists have turned King Hassan into a target! The assassination attempt by army cadets, when they slaughtered a hundred people at the summer palace. And his own air force fighters tried to shoot down his plane!"

  CIA slapped his hand on the table top. "For Christ's sake!" he said. "We have enough real security problems to handle without worrying about imaginary ones! Look, Hassan has his army and air force under control now. He's been very cooperative about security. My boys are breathing down the necks of Black September, the Palestine Liberation Organization and every other terrorist group you care to mention!"

  "Except PAFF," the NSA director said mildly.

  CIA glared at him. "We're trying to get a line on PAFF, too," he said. "If it exists."

  The President's Man looked over his horn-rimmed glasses at NSA. "What are you suggesting, Sam?" he said.

  "We asked the big computer to check its memories about anything unusual that's happened in the Western Mediterranean recently. Just as a precaution. And there just seem to have been too many things…"

  "Your three-million-dollar electronic idiot?" CIA said sardonically. "I know it holds a lot of information…"

  "Three hundred pieces of data a second," NSA said. "Every radio message, wire service transmission, overseas phone call, coded military broadcast that our Feranine antennas pick up from all over the world…"

  "But," CIA went on, "how does it sort out the garbage?"

  "It's still sifting," NSA said. "So far, we've got that NATO raid. Arabs, from the sound of what went over their walkie-talkies. The incident on our aircraft carrier in the straits of Gibraltar — uncomfortably close to Tangier. The air crashes in Rome and Barcelona. Accidents, maybe, except for those blackmail notes…"

  "Yes, but does your precious computer find any correlation?"

  "No," NSA admitted, "but we're talking about the President's safety. The flow of oil to the United States. And maybe even the threat of war. We can't afford to overlook anything. Anything."

  The President's Man rapped on the table. Five heads swiveled toward him.

  "I'm going to toss Coin into the game," he said.

  CIA's face went red. "Just a minute! If there's going to be another agent interfering in my operation, I want him under my control."

  "Coin isn't under anyone's control," the President's Man said. "Not even the NSA's control. That's the whole idea."

  "That's right," NSA said. "I don't even want to know who Coin is. All I want is results."

  "You're going to tell us that fairy story about not knowing your own agent's identity?" CIA said.

  "That's the way it was set up. We reach Coin through Key. And nobody knows who Key is, except the 7090 computer. Correction. The computer knows how to get in touch with Key. It doesn't know who he is or where he is."

  The President's Man said, "You'd better ask your computer to give Key a turn, then."

  The NSA director walked over to the door and pushed the buzzer. The Marine sentry outside unlocked the door and let him out. He hurried down the vast corridor, a tall man in civilian clothes, wearing the same security badge as the thousands of other people in the building. The badge wasn't enough to get him into the computer room, but a holographic identity card, a voiceprint and a fingerprint and retina check were.

  The chief programmer got up and left without a word when he entered, leaving him alone in the shielded booth. He sat down at the console and showed his face to the scanner. The computer looked him over for a millionth of a second. A confirmation flashed on the screen:

  IDENTITY VERIFIED. PLEASE PROCEED.

  "Find Key," he said.

  * * *

  John Farnsworth said, "You want the Baroness?"

  Farnsworth was an urbane, civilized man in his fifties, with an expensive tan and an impeccably clipped gray mustache. His grooming was faultless. But he gave the impression of being trim and tidy rather than fussy, and the steel-gray eyes that looked out of his fine patrician face were clear and steady.

  "We won't take anyone else," said the jowly young man sitting opposite him in the leather booth. His name was Harvey Amberson III, and he was worth four hundred million dollars. He'd made it all by selling cosmetics.

  "If the price is right, that is," the third man in the booth said hastily. He was Errol Dutton, president of Amberson's advertising agency, Daley and Dutton. He had a weak, handsome face, with a red complexion and eyes to match.

  "The Baroness is booked rather heavily," Farnsworth said. "Won't someone else do? How about Fiona Maxwell? She's got a beautiful complexion, and she's never been identified with any line of cosmetics."

  Farnsworth was business manager for International Models, Inc. The owner, president and chief asset of the company was the Baroness Penelope St. John-Orsini. Farnsworth ran the agency for her with a ruthless competence that brought in three million dollars a year in profits.

  "Fiona's a beautiful girl," Harvey lisped, "but for the new AngelFace campaign, we need the Baroness."

  Farnsworth took a sip of his martini. He made a face, fished out the lemon peel, twisted it and dropped it back in his glass.

  "The Baroness picks and chooses her assignments, you know," he said. "And her fee is quite a bit higher than the other models."

  "Harvey's willing to spend some money," Dutton said. "But we want a two-year exclusive on the Baroness."

  "Out of the question," Farnsworth said. "I can't tie her up that long on an exclusive."

  Harvey and the ad man exchanged glances. "All right," Dutton said. "How about if the contract leaves her free to do any other ads or commercials as long as they're not for rival cosmetic products?"

  "Of course," Farnsworth said.

  Harvey and Dutton looked cautiously pleased.

  "The price will be a million dollars," Farnsworth said.

  Dutton almost choked on his Scotch. "A million dollars? Without even having an exclusive on her?"

  "We were thinking in the neighborhood of two hundred and fifty thousand dollars," Harvey said.

  "And that was with an exclusive," Dutton said. "With total identification of the Baroness with AngelFace makeup."

  Farnsworth stood up. "I'll tell you what. I'm going to pay a visit to the John. I'll give you two fellows a chance to talk it over alone. Perhaps when I come back you can come up with a realistic offer."

  He took a sip of his martini, standing, and put his glass back on the table. He turned to leave.

  "I'm glad you like a lemon peel in your martini instead of an olive, John," Dutton said with an attempt at a smile. "You're a devious bastard. If that were an olive in your glass, I'd suspect it of being bugged."

  Farnsworth laughed. "Watch out for the lemon peel. That's the latest twist."

  Dutton groaned. "Oh, no! That one cost you a hundred thou."

  "At least," Harvey said.

  Farnsworth laughed again and left the table. When he got to the men's room he locked himself in a booth and flushed a lemon peel down the toilet. It was a real lemon peel, the one he'd palmed when he dropped the other one into his martini.

  He took a pair of thick horn-rimmed glasses out of his breast pocket and put them on. He pressed a screw to activate the micro-circuitry embedded in the frame.

  "What do you think Farnsworth's bottom price is?" Harvey's voice said in his ear.

  The bone-conduction device in the earpiece transmitted the sound perfectly. And nobody but he could hear it.

  "Four, maybe five hundred thousand," Dutton's voice said. It was a faint insect buzz in Farnsworth's head, and lacked overtones, but the words were very distinct.

  "Let's try for four," Harvey said.

  "How high are you willing to go?" Dutton asked.

  "Seven hundred and fifty thousand
, if I have to. It's worth it, if we can get the Baroness."

  Farnsworth grinned.

  "Jesus!" said Dutton. "I'm glad he isn't here to hear you say that. By God, I wouldn't put it past the son-of-a-bitch to bug his olive — with a toothpick for the antenna."

  Farnsworth grinned again. Plastic olives were obsolete. Plastic lemon peels were in. He'd just received a supply of them from Fort Meade's Special Effects department. What made it possible was the new techniques of ion implantation in semiconductors. You could implant more than a million microscopic specks that did the same job as transistors on a one-inch surface, sandwich it inside an imitation lemon peel and still have enough room left over for a tiny flexible microphone, a pinhead power source and a miniscule FM transmitter that would carry to the nearest men's room.

  You could even twist the phony lemon peel. It would still work.

  He'd better get back to the table. He reached up to take off his glasses.

  And everything went black.

  Farnsworth stood there, blind, and waited.

  "Hello, Key," a voice said in his ear.

  He tapped the frame of his eyeglasses to acknowledge. His vision cleared. He was looking at a stereoptic, black-and-white image of the director of the National Security Agency sitting in front of a computer console.

  The resolution wasn't bad, considering. It was a 525-line TV picture, formed of hundreds of thousands of transparent polycrystalline phosphors that coated his eyeglass lenses in a thin, invisible film. Millions of microscopic electrodes, embedded in the glass by ion-beam implantation, stimulated the phosphors so they emitted light.

  "The computer had a hell of a time tracking you down," the NSA director said. "It took almost three seconds. Where the hell were you hiding?"

  Farnsworth grinned. The NSA head was looking at a blank TV screen. He didn't have the faintest notion of where the electronic ghost called Key was. Neither did the computer. All the computer could do was to bounce scrambled signals off a half-dozen orbiting satellites, trying one of his electronic "addresses" after another, until it reached him.

  "We've got a job for Coin," the image in his eyeglasses said.

  Farnsworth listened. His face grew sober when he heard about the OAPEC conference in Tangier, and the President's plans to attend. His expression became grim when he heard about the stolen atom bomb, and turned thoughtful when he heard about the PAFF blackmail threats and the two planes that had crashed.

  "Maybe there's no connection," the NSA chief finished. "The IBM 7090 computer can't find any. But perhaps Coin can."

  Farnsworth's eyeglasses went opaque, then cleared. He took them off and put them back in his pocket.

  Harvey Amberson and Dutton looked up as he approached the table.

  "What took you so long, John?" Dutton said. "Did you fall in?"

  "Did you decide on an offer?" Farnsworth said.

  "Four hundred thousand. That's our top figure."

  "Seven hundred and fifty thousand," Farnsworth said. "That's firm."

  Dutton and Harvey looked at one another. Dutton took a long gulp of his drink. Finally, Harvey shook his head in admiration, and smiled at Farnsworth.

  "All right, John," he said. "Seven hundred and fifty thousand it is. When can we have the Baroness, and where do we start with the backgrounds?"

  "You can have her right away," Farnsworth said, "if you send her to Tangier."

  3

  "I'm a working girl, darling," the Baroness said. "I can't stay in bed all day."

  "Have a heart," Morgan Manley said.

  He sat up and threw a pillow across the room at her. She snatched it out of the air and threw it back at him.

  "And you should be working, too," she said severely. "With Gaston Leclerc dead, the whole political situation in France is changed. The Gaulists are waiting to see who the Centrists put up in Leclerc's place before they swing their support over. You ought to be out there interviewing candidates."

  She sat down, nude, at the vanity mirror and began brushing her hair. Morgan lay down again, his hands clasped behind his head, and watched the rise and fall of her breasts appreciatively.

  "I'd rather research you," he said.

  "I enjoy being probed, darling," she said, "but not this afternoon. I'm doing a special on the new Paris fashions for Vogue."

  "Why do you do it, Penny? You don't need the money."

  "I like keeping busy, Morgan, dear."

  The Baroness never thought about money if she could help it. It was there, that was all. She was determined not to let it become the embarrassment and burden that it was to so many of the people in her set. There was the trust fund her father had set up for her. And the enormous inheritance she'd received when her first husband, John Stanton Marlowe, had died in the crash of his private jet. And the fortune and the title and the villas in Florence and Venice that had come to her at the death of her second husband, the dashing young Baron Reynaldo St. John-Orsini. And, of course, her pin money: the three million a year that International Models, Inc., brought in.

  She finished brushing her hair and stepped into a simple mint-green crepe de chine dress with a zip front that would be easy to get in and out of. She'd be taking it off fifty times today. She didn't bother with a bra; she wouldn't be wearing one for most of the shots anyhow. This year's fabrics were gossamer-thin, and lingerie showed through.

  She examined herself in the mirror. She'd have to wear a cardigan to get through the lobby of the Ritz, but the general effect was smashing. Penelope was a tall, supple-bodied beauty in her thirties, with splendid shoulders, generous breasts, sinuous hips and a pair of long, streamlined legs. Her proportions were so perfect that you forgot how tall she was, and her contours were so cleanly flowing that you didn't think about the superb musculature underneath.

  "Morgan, darling," she said, "would you press the button for Inga? No, not the yellow one. That's for the Ritz's maid. The blue one is for private servants."

  He pushed the bedside call button. "The rich have no sense of privacy," he grumbled.

  She shot him a cool, amused glance. "If you're so concerned about your privacy, you'd better cover up before Inga gets here."

  He sprawled on the quilt in naked defiance. "Inga can take her chances," he said sulkily.

  The Baroness put on a pair of shoes, and fastened her only accessory: a stunning gold watch with a liquid-crystal display face. The dial was blank at the moment. When you wanted the time, you pressed the stem, and numbers appeared.

  "Darling, I'd love to stay, but I really can't," she said. "I'll tell you what, pick me up after the session and you can take me to dinner at Laperouse. We'll be finishing up the shooting about six at the Eiffel Tower."

  She picked up a pair of sunglasses and put them on.

  There was a discreet knock from the door leading to the servants' quarters, and a girl in a white uniform stepped through. She was a big, stunning blonde with blue china eyes and a baby's complexion.

  She glanced briefly and disinterestedly at the naked man on the bed, and said: "You rang, Baroness?"

  "Will you ring up Skytop's room and tell him I'm ready?" Penelope said.

  "He's waiting downstairs in the station wagon with Fiona and Eric," Inga said. "Dan Wharton's already at the Sacre Coeur, taking the preliminary shots with Yvette."

  Morgan was scowling. The Baroness smiled indulgently.

  "For heaven's sake, will you say something to Mr. Manley, Inga?" she said. "He's beginning to feel silly, lying there without any clothes on."

  Inga turned her china-doll face toward Morgan. "How do you do, Mr. Manley?" she said gravely.

  "I think Mr. Manley expects something more," the Baroness said.

  Inga smiled politely. "It's a beautiful day," she said. "Are you enjoying your stay in Paris?"

  Morgan's face was growing red.

  "What I mean," the Baroness said, "is that Mr. Manley is disappointed that he isn't shocking you."

  Inga looked puzzled. "Shocked? But w
hy should I be shocked?"

  "At the sight of a male body."

  Inga studied Morgan with a slight frown. "But there is nothing shocking. Perhaps a little softness in the belly; that is not good in a man who is otherwise in good condition, but a little exercise will fix that. And perhaps not so much of the rich food."

  Morgan was starting to look embarrassed. Penelope never had seen anything embarrass him before.

  "Look again," the Baroness said. "Don't you see anything to be shocked about?"

  "Ah, now I understand," Inga said with a straight face. "Mr. Manley has not shaved this morning."

  Morgan suddenly burst into laughter. "All right," he said, "you win." He swung his legs to the floor and padded barefoot to the chair where he'd thrown his clothes the night before. He stepped into a pair of shorts and looked around at them. "lust wait a few minutes for me, will you, Penny? I'll go along and watch the shooting. Maybe I can take you to lunch if you have time for a break."

  Penelope pressed the stem of her wristwatch and read the glowing numbers that appeared. "It's getting late, darling," she said. "Meet me at the Sacre Coeur when you get dressed."

  She emerged from the Ritz into the Place Vendome, Inga following at her heels. Napoleon's column towered over the square, pointing a long bronze finger at the sky. Skytop had managed to find a parking place among the Cadillacs crowding the hotel entrance. He was having an argument with one of the chauffeurs.

  "But you cannot park here!" the chauffeur was complaining. "This space is reserved for Monsieur Charcot."

  "Foin de Monsieur Charcot," Skytop rumbled dangerously.

  The chauffeur recoiled. "Do you not know who Monsieur Charcot is?" he said, his nostrils quivering.

  "I know he's the fella whose chauffeur is gonna have a busted nose in about one minute," Skytop said.

  He opened the door of the station wagon and got out. The chauffeur gulped. Skytop was a mountainous figure, with a chest like a beer keg. The arms bursting out of the sleeves of his T-shirt might have been another man's thighs. He had a face that looked as if it had been carved out of a cliff, with its thick shelf of brow and the hooked Cherokee nose.