The Ecstasy Connection Page 9

  "Waste the son of a bitch!" someone yelled. Skytop recognized the voice of the blond Cherub who had escorted him here.

  The motorcycle lights came full on, pinning him in their beams. He stood in the center, his legs wide, the chain dangling from his fist.

  The first motorcycle leaped toward him. There was a glittering halo above it. Skytop knew immediately what it was: a length of chain being twirled above the rider's head like a lasso.

  He sidestepped as the bike roared past. The chain missed. If it had connected, it would have smashed bone to fragments.

  There was no time to think. The second bike surged toward him. Skytop kept his eyes peeled for the swinging chain. It was a mistake. Too late, he saw the leg extended straight out from the bike. The sharp spur attached to the boot ripped his thigh. He could feel warm blood trickling down.

  The next bike was coming after him. They wanted him to break and run. He knew it would be fatal. But if he stood where he was, he was finished. Sooner or later they'd wear him down with slashes of the spurs, hits with the chain. A couple more strikes and he'd be helpless. They were playing with him.

  The bike shot past him. This time he stepped inside the chain. He punched the rider's arm to give him something to worry about.

  It gave him an idea. By the time the next headlamp was coming at him, he had his leather jacket off. He held it in front of him like a bullfighter's cape. It confused the biker enough so that he went wide.

  Shouts and whistles went up from the surrounding bikers. They liked the idea. It was going to be great sport wearing him down, slashing him to pieces.

  Skytop gave them their money's worth. He clowned it up for them, doing an exaggerated veronica next time. "Ole!" someone shouted. There were laughs and jeers.

  The chain was balled up in his fist. He held the jacket out and stamped his foot like a matador. The biker tried to outsmart him, refusing to be misled by the jacket and coming straight at his body.

  The jacket slipped from his grasp. He caught the cuff of one sleeve as it slid past his hand. The biker was expecting capework. He wasn't expecting what came next.

  He whipped the jacket around by the sleeve, giving it a couple more feet of reach than it was supposed to have. The heavy leather slapped into the biker's face. He wobbled out of control. There were yells as he crunched into another bike, knocking its rider out of the saddle.

  It threw them off. Bikers weren't supposed to get hurt. It was against the rules.

  There was a motor buzzing angrily behind him. Skytop knew the rider would have lost his cool, would be careless. He didn't turn around, pretending not to know it was coming at him. When he could tell by the sound and the headlight beam that it was almost upon him, he made a great leap to one side, twisting in midair as he jumped. His chain caught the biker across the throat, whipping around like a snake. The biker, dead from a broken neck, was snatched from the saddle. The motorcycle fell over, rear wheel spinning.

  Skytop wrestled the bike upright and climbed aboard. It was a powerful machine, the kind bikers call a chopped hog — an ex-police job stripped of chrome and modified for speed. He recognized it. It had belonged to the blond kid. He hadn't noticed whose neck he'd broken.

  He put his head down and accelerated full throttle at the ring that surrounded him. They scrambled out of his way. For good measure he snatched one of the Cherubs out of the saddle as he sped past, bending over to grab an ankle. He dragged the Cherub forty feet over sand and jagged rocks before he let go. Give 'em something else to think about, he thought.

  Then he was free, bouncing over the desert, the brilliant Colorado stars above him. Let them chase if they wanted; he'd been riding motorcycles before they were old enough to pin on their first swastika.

  But nobody chased him. He covered the ninety miles to Denver in less than an hour. There was a half-empty flight just about to take off for New York. He had plenty of money left for the ticket.

  * * *

  They were hassled twice by the cops after they crossed the Vermont border. It was the psychedelic designs painted on the old VW bus that did it. That, and Wharton's long blond wig and beaded vest.

  "Groovy!" Nancy said. "Will you look at all the grass and trees!" She was wearing her army fatigues over a man's T-shirt. It had a platter-sized peace symbol embroidered on the front. That hadn't helped with the cops either.

  Wharton pushed the old VW down the winding dirt road. The farmhouses were few and far between this far off the highway. A hundred yards ahead there was a tree with something painted on it — a fat O with a bar across the middle, the ecology emblem.

  "This looks like it," Wharton said, slowing down.

  A winding, rutted track went off from the right. He put the bus in first and jounced along until they came to the commune. Somebody had been rich a hundred and fifty years ago. Instead of the usual Cape Cod, the old farmhouse was a gothic mansion with gables and turrets. A half-dozen weathered outbuildings, barn and sheds, clustered around it. The usual vegetable garden, wire enclosed, was out back. A couple of goats grazed peacefully on the front lawn.

  There were no people in sight.

  "It looks too quiet," Wharton said, pulling to a stop.

  They climbed out of the bus. "Peter…" Nancy called, starting for the porch.

  Wharton grabbed her by the arm. "Wait a minute," he said.

  He wished that he'd brought a gun. But he hadn't dared, in his hippie disguise. Cops frisked longhairs. The last one had even unscrewed the inner panels of the VW, looking for dope. He got the jack handle and walked warily toward the house, the girl following.

  There was a peculiar odor as he approached. It wasn't the goats. Wharton gripped the jack handle tighter. He'd smelled it before — in Vietnam.

  He turned the knob quietly. The door wasn't locked. Stepping to one side, he jerked the door open and hurled himself through the entrance.

  Behind him the girl screamed. There was plenty to scream about. There were half a dozen bodies in the entrance hall. They were stacked in a pile, like cordwood.

  Wharton looked them over. They were all men and women in their twenties, dressed mostly in denim, with beaded or brocaded accessories. One girl was naked, except for a headband. The man on top was dressed rich-hippie style, with London flares and a hand-tailored work shirt.

  "That's Peter," Nancy said.

  They'd been killed by a machine gun, probably .45 caliber. It had made hamburger of them as it stitched across the bodies. The woodwork on the far wall was splintered.

  Bloody scraps of bone and flesh were spattered all over the floor and walls. It looked like a slaughterhouse.

  Wharton went through the house and outbuildings. He counted twenty-three bodies. They were in small groups, as if they'd been rounded up before the shooting started. One of the executioners had used a shotgun. The bodies in the milkshed had frayed, bloody stems instead of heads.

  It was all very professional. From the softness of the bodies, and from the greenish tinge on the bellies of those who were naked, Wharton estimated that the killings had taken place about forty-eight hours earlier.

  "Who'd want to kill Peter?" Wharton said.

  The girl was almost in shock. "Nobody, I swear. He was a saint. Everybody loved him. He used to give out dope like it was penny candy."

  "Where would Peter keep his stash?"

  "In his guitar. He carried it around with him everywhere. He couldn't play."

  Somebody else had had the same idea. Wharton found a dozen guitars and lutes around the place. All of them had been smashed.

  "That one was Peter's," Nancy said. There was mother-of-pearl inlaid around the sound hole. It was surrounded by scattered pills, glassine bags, a spoon-and-needle outfit.

  "Somebody was looking for something," Wharton said. "But they didn't bother to take the goofballs or the smack."

  "There's a blue angel!" Nancy squealed. "God, do I need that!" She snatched a blue tablet and popped it into her mouth before Wharton could stop h
er.

  "Whatever they were after, it isn't this stuff. They must have found it."

  Nancy laughed.

  "What's funny?"

  "This was Peter's public stash. He kept his personal stash somewhere else."

  Wharton shook her shoulders. Her eyes were beginning to glaze already. "Where?"

  "In a little silver music box he brought back from Hong Kong."

  They found it in plain sight on the dresser of one of the bedrooms, surrounded by toilet articles. It was tiny, exquisite. The initials P. S. were engraved in florid script on the lid.

  Wharton lifted the lid. The music box began to tinkle "Puff, The Magic Dragon." Inside was an emerald-green lozenge about the size of a cough drop.

  "That's it," Wharton said. He slipped the music box into his jeans.

  "Can I have it?" the girl said.

  "Not on your life, I'm giving it to someone else."

  She pouted. "Whoever she is, she must be a princess."

  He nodded. "Something like that."

  "Did you run a chemical analysis of the green lozenge, Dan?" the Baroness said.

  Wharton nodded. "It's an extremely complex molecule with a serotonin backbone similar to the one you can find in the LSD molecule. But it's hooked into a long nucleotide chain with paired purines and pyrimidines, like DNA."

  The Baroness gave him an alert glance. "Serotonin will pass the blood-brain barrier. That's what causes the sensory dislocation of LSD. What about the nucleotide chain? Could it be a chemical messenger?"

  "Could be."

  "Where does it go?"

  "I shaved off about a millionth of an ounce and gave it to some laboratory rats. It…"

  "What did it do?"

  "It made them happy. They wouldn't move. Lost all interest in food, water, sex. Wouldn't even try to avoid an electric shock. Then I took tissue samples."

  The Baroness leaned forward. "And you found that the chemical had ended up in the hypothalamus, right?"

  Wharton gave her a surprised look. "That's right. It caused cellular changes there."

  Skytop fidgeted in his chair. "What's it all about, Baroness?"

  The Baroness looked around at the eight members of her team. They were gathered around the twelve-foot glass coffee table Steuben had made for her for thirty thousand dollars. She traced designs in the engraved surface with a long finger that was still a little red and puffy from the karate thrust that had disabled the Cremona driver.

  "The hypothalamus is perched at the top of your brainstem, Joe," she said. "It's about the size of a grape. It controls your emotions — hunger, thirst, sex. It also contains something called the pleasure center."

  "Pleasure center? I thought that was located below the belt."

  She smiled. "This is supposed to be better than sex. They've performed experiments on rats. Inserted a wire in the pleasure center and let the rat stimulate it electrically by pressing a lever. The rat will keep pressing that lever until it starves to death.

  "My God! I wonder what it feels like!"

  "Like nothing anybody on earth ever felt before. Taste and touch and sex and joy and mystical ecstasy — all mixed together in a giant rush of sensation. It's happened to a few people, during brain surgery."

  Fiona gasped. "What would too much of it do?"

  Wharton said, "The hypothalamus also regulates the rhythms of the body — heartbeat, breathing, blood sugar, body temperature, sleep. Overstimulate it, and I guess your whole body could go berserk."

  "You mean, like, you could die?" Fiona said.

  "Like you could die," the Baroness said.

  Paul whistled. "Die, but like it! Man, what a way to go!"

  The Baroness rapped for attention. "All right, children, let's see what we've got." She ticked off the points, on her fingers. "One, the green lozenge that Dan found seems to be the Big E that I heard about from Monica Firth's friends. Two, its point of origin seems to be Hong Kong. Three, somebody seems to be very, very anxious to recall the drug and wipe out any traces of it in this country. And they've got the cooperation of the mob in helping them cover up."

  Wharton nodded his agreement. "It looked like a gang killing on that commune in Vermont. And you personally witnessed the massacre at the loft party by the Cremona mob. I've never heard of anything on that big a scale before."

  Yvette spoke up. "Paul and I heard about the Big E in Harlem. The local pushers weren't able to get any of the action and they were sore about it. The mob had it all sewn up."

  "All trails seem to lead to Hong Kong," Eric put in. "Reginald Perry, the seaman who was swing man for Charon's Cherubs, Cynthia Rawlings' hippie brother…"

  "We've got a more direct connection," the Baroness said.

  All eyes snapped toward her.

  "Tommy, put on the tape," she said.

  Sumo reached into the side pocket of his jacket and came up with a matchbox-size Uher recorder. He set it down in the center of the glass table.

  "This is a call that was made from Monica Firth's telephone the day she died," the Baroness said. "It was recorded by NSA, as all overseas calls are. We coaxed it out of the big computer at Fort Meade just before it was due for automatic erasure." She wrinkled her nose. "Apparently it never occurred to anyone in NSA to listen to it."

  Sumo thumbed the switch. Happy Malloy's voice filled the room."…Yessir, Mr. Sim, I done it like you said. Please, could I have the numbers now?"

  They listened while a wheezy voice recited something that might have been a Social Security number. Happy said, "Thank you, Mr. Sim. Yessir, I'll get on the next one right away."

  There was a click. Sumo snapped the cover back on the Uher.

  "Who the hell is Mr. Sim?" Skytop said.

  The Baroness rose, her muscles rippling like a panther's under her black leotard. "That's what we're going to Hong Kong to find out," she said.

  8

  It took John Farnsworth less than a day to set up the Baroness's cover. It was a "Fashions in Hong Kong" photo assignment for Il Viaggiatore, the glossy Italian travel magazine. The editors were delighted when Farnsworth called and told them that there was a fortunate hole in the schedule of the Baroness Penelope St. John-Orsini and her head cameraman, the tough-looking American Indian who happened to be the hottest fashion photographer around.

  They were doubly delighted when Farnsworth promised that the Baroness herself would model some of the outfits and that she'd be supported by the three highest-paid female models listed with International Models, Inc. — that marvelous redhead, the elegant black girl, and the big Swede. And yes, he'd have a black man and a fair-haired man for contrast.

  The fashion consultant would be Tom Sumo, who was currently making a name for himself. There'd be a reliable backup photographer, Dan Wharton, to scout locations.

  No, Farnsworth told the editors, don't bother sending the contract and other documents. The Baroness would be gone by the time they arrived in New York. Someone from the Rome office of International Models would pick them up. A messenger would fly them around the world in the opposite direction — with stops in Turkey and India. The Baroness would pick them up in Hong Kong when she arrived.

  "Penelope," Farnsworth had told her, "your mission is to nail Mr. Sim. But for heaven's sake, get some good pictures or the people at Il Viaggiatore will never talk to me again They're planning a whole issue around your fashion spreads."

  She laughed. "Skytop's pictures are always superb. And Tommy and I have been rounding up exclusives from de la Renta and Givenchy. We may make fashion history — in our spare time."

  Now she was facing her team again. It was late afternoon. They were booked for the morning Northwest Orient 747 flight.

  She was dressed for comfort in a soft black turtleneck sweater and pants. Her long hair was swept up in a casual dark mop that emphasized her green eyes and made her prominent cheekbones seem even more pronounced. The little Bernadelli VB automatic was nestled reassuringly against her ribs, under the left armpit. British custo
ms were gentlemen; they never searched a lady's bra.

  "What about it, Tommy?" she said. "You were going to put together a two-way rig for me. One that I don't have to wear in my teeth."

  Sumo grinned, showing the mouthful of gold fillings and platinum braces that were the components of his UHF unit. "I've done better than that, Baroness. First, the transceiver-transmitter."

  He brought out a little pillbox. It was domino size, with an enameled scene of lovers and cupids by Fragonard.

  "The gallery charged me twenty thousand dollars for the box," Sumo said. "I put in an expense chit for it. The idea is that it's expensive enough to keep people thinking about its price, not what else it might be. But it's what's inside that counts."

  He flipped open the lid. Inside was an assortment of pills — green-jacketed uppers, blue dexamyl tablets, black-and-white biphetamines, red-and-green tuinals.

  "Quite a drugstore you have here, Tommy," she said dryly.

  "Rich, beautiful women take pills," he said matter-of-factly. "Nobody will think twice about them."

  "What do they do?"

  "The black beauties are microphones. The black-and-whites are earplugs. The greens send, the red receive. The whites are your batteries. The others are various specialized integrated circuit packages — I left the circuit diagrams in the box for you to study later."

  "How do you hook them together?"

  He gave her several dark strands that matched her own hair. "These are platinum wires, painted over. Inga can weave them into your hair. The ends are stiff enough so that you can poke them right through the ends of the pills — string 'em like beads. You can hook up any combination you need."

  "You said you had something else?"

  He flashed a gold-and-silver grin. "The box itself. It's a two-plate magnetron. You adjust the frequency by sliding the lid. You can generate microwaves — cook an object in the next room like a radar range. Or you can induce a current over a short distance."

  "My personal radar. Thank you, Tommy."

  Sumo looked pleased with himself. The Baroness turned to Wharton. "Do you have my kit?"