"No thanks. Never use them," I told him. "I've got a cast-iron stomach."
"I beg your pardon?"
"That's quite all right. Go right ahead. Never squelch a belch. That's my motto."
"Mr. Victor, I seem to have lost the thread of this discussion. T.U.M.S. -"
"- for the tummy. I know all about it," I told him. "It's very popular back in the States. Pregnant women live on them."
"Somehow, Mr. Victor, I begin to suspect that we are talking about two different things. The T.U.M.S. to which I refer has nothing to do with abdominal complaints."
"Not Tums for the tummy?"
"No. Whatever that is, no."
"Oh." I puzzled over it for a moment. "Then what -?"
"T.U.M.S. – T-U-M-S," Lagula spelled it out, "are the initials of the organization which I believe sent this man to kill you. They stand for Tactical Underground Masters' Society."
"Ours is an age of initials," I observed. "They permeate our whole society and wreak havoc with conversation. It's a master agent indeed who can keep them all straight. But in any case, I never heard of this outfit. What's their game?"
"It's complicated. T.U.M.S. is a group of white men who banded together to try to restore a sort of company rule to Rhodesia. You see, from 1889 through 1923, the country was ruled by the British South Africa Company. Cecil Rhodes, for whom Rhodesia is named, was general manager of that company, and the stockholders gave him a free hand in ruling the country. It was very profitable for them, and under his rule the native population was completely enslaved. T.U.M.S. wants to set up a similar corporation along the same lines. Only this one wouldn't be subject to English control. It would be run from right here in Salisbury."
"But why should they want to kill me? I have nothing to do with Rhodesian politics."
"They are a peculiar organization – somewhat like your Ku Klux Klan back in America, only far more influential."
"Not my Ku Klux Klan!" I assured him.
"Your pardon. The implication was unintentional. I only meant to say that they are not only political terrorists, but that they also set themselves up as violent enforcers of a strict morality of their own devising. They have been known to whip a man for drinking too much. They have tarred and feathered certain "loose women" who may or may not have been actual prostitutes. They burned down a book store because it was selling copies of Lady Chatterly's Lover."
"I begin to see a connection," I said. "T.U.M.S. spelled backwards is -"
"S.M.U.T. Exactly! British Intelligence has indeed traced an undercover relationship between the two. We can't prove it, but we believe that T.U.M.S. has been smuggling gold out of Rhodesia to help finance S.M.U.T.'s operations around the world."
"And S.M.U.T. wants me killed. It figures," I mused. "Is this what you meant when you said I was in danger?" I asked Lagula. "Is this what you were protecting me against?"
"Yes. This and the Russians. And anybody else you may have antagonized."
"Well, thanks. But I'm afraid you've bitten off quite a hunk of trouble."
"Perhaps even more than you realize, Mr. Victor. T.U.M.S. has powerful connections in the Rhodesian government established yesterday. It is at odds with that government because it wishes it to go further than even Ian Smith dares. Still, it will support Smith until the British are completely out of the picture. After that, nobody knows. But there's always the chance they may try to seize control themselves. Meanwhile, they engage in terrorist activities – mainly against blacks, but also against whites – which the government can't condone, but finds it convenient not to stop."
"It's a hodgepodge all right," I yawned. "But I'm too tired to think about it now. I'd like to get back to bed. I'm damned if I'll sleep with a strange stiff, though. Any ideas about what we can do with him?"
"If you'll give me a hand, I suggest we just drop him out of the window to the gutter below."
"Isn't that likely to cause a fuss?"
"Not if we make sure nobody observes his descent. The way things are in Salisbury tonight, one more corpse should cause little concern."
After first making sure the street was clear of patrols, we did as Lagula suggested. The corpse didn't make too much noise when it hit the pavement; just a sort of soft squish. We drew the window curtains on its exit.
"I shall have to be leaving now, Mr. Victor," Lagula told me. "I think you will be relatively out of danger for a little while."
"Thanks for saving my life," I answered sincerely. "Thanks for everything."
"What are your plans for the afternoon?" he asked.
I told him I intended to contact Ilona Tabori.
"Don't do it by phone," he cautioned. "Your wire may be tapped, or hers, or both."
"I won't," I promised. "I'll go to her hotel."
"When you are through there, come and see me."
He handed me a card. "I may have further information for you."
I looked at the card. It identified Lagula as a tourist guide and gave his address. "Business can't be very good," I remarked.
"It's at a standstill," he admitted. "Good night, Mr. Victor. I will see you tomorrow."
"Good night."
I went back to bed. The machete was still stuck in the pillow. I shrugged, removed it, tossed it out the window, turned the pillow over, and went back to sleep. It was past noon when I awoke.
A half-hour or so later, I left my hotel. As I walked onto the street, I noticed three things. The first was that the corpse had been removed. The second was the thermometer on the wall just outside the hotel entrance. It read 102 degrees. I could well believe it. The sun hit my bare head like a sizzling mallet.
The third thing I noticed was the man following me. A quick look over my shoulder identified him as Vlankov, the Russian. On general principles, I decided to lose him.
It was easier decided than done. Vlankov had the tenacity of a Siberian bulldog. What his tailing technique lacked in subtlety, he more than made up for in stick-to- it-iveness. He stuck like glue.
I hopped in one end of a tram-car and out the other, and he was right behind me. I hailed a cab and took a sightseeing tour of the city, doubling and redoubling back on my route, and still when I hopped out of the cab at a traffic light, he was right behind me. I tried a tall office building, took an elevator up ten floors, a second one down eight, walked three flights of stairs to the basement, exited through the service entrance – and found Vlankov waiting for me. He trailed idly behind me by half a block as I sauntered up the street and tried to figure what to do next.
Inspiration came from a large truck parked at the curb of a side street down which I aimlessly turned. The truck was unloading some gook via a mechanical chute, a sort of a metallic conveyor belt running down into the cellar of a large building. On the spur of the moment, I hopped on the belt and was propelled downward. I landed on something that felt like soft, gooey mud. More of the same poured over me from the chute.
It was pitch black as I crawled away from the icky cascade. I couldn't feel any floor under me as I tried to lose myself in the darkness. It was like trying to move over toasted marshmallows, only the stuff was more powdery than that. Just about the time I settled into a squishy corner, as I'd expected, Vlankov came sliding down the chute. He wasn't taking any chances. There was a big, fat gun in his hand as his eyes tried to pierce the darkness.
Like me, he crawled out of the path of the torrent behind him. Fortunately for me, he crawled in the opposite direction. Once he was out of the beam of daylight coming through the delivery hole, I lost him in the blackness of the cellar.
I bided my time. There seemed no end to the stuff pouring down the chute. The bin – or whatever it was we were in – really began filling up. As it did, the chute retracted automatically so that it wouldn't be submerged by its cargo. I kept brushing the stuff off me climbing higher as it mounted around me. I presumed Vlankov was doing the same.
Finally the avalanche petered out, and the conveyor belt of the chute ground to a halt. I watched as the chute itself began retracting through the delivery hole. I waited until it had only a few more feet to go, and then I dived for it. The sockets of my arms strained as it pulled me back to the surface with it.
I stayed aboard right back into the van itself. At the last minute Vlankov grabbed the tail end of the chute and was also pulled to the surface. I let him claw his way to the open truck door and then brought my heel down hard on his fingers. I couldn't resist laughing in his face as he let go and fell to the gutter. He was clawing at the gun in his belt, his face red with rage as the van pulled away.
I rode the truck for about twenty minutes, then hopped out when it stopped for a traffic light. I noticed the lettering on the back of it for the first time as it pulled away. It said ACME FERTILIZER COMPANY. Just under that, in smaller print, was their slogan: The Finest Processed Cow Dung in the Land!
My nose confirmed it. James Bond smelled like this. The way the driver of the cab I hailed wrinkled up his faced seconded the motion. I waved enough money at him to make him stop sniffing, and he hauled me to Ilona Tabori's hotel.
She was sunning herself on the balcony outside her room, and she spotted me as I got out of the cab. "Hello there," she called. "I'd just about given up on you. Come on up."
I went up.
"What happened to you?" She stepped back in astonishment as I came through the door.
"It's a long story."
"And a dirty one, from the looks of you," she opined. "What that dreadful odor?"
"What does it smell like?"
"Not roses, that's for sure."
"Answer the question."
"I'm too polite. I'd hate to tell you what it smells like."
"You guessed it. That's what it is, too."
"It makes me nostalgic. I used to be a farm girl." But the look on her face was more kittenish than nostalgic.
"Is that so? And where was that, Ilona?" I fished.
"When I was a kid."
"Not when. Where?"
"Do you like to ask questions, Mr. Victor?"
"I like to get answers."
"Later. I'll tell you the story of my life later. For now why don't you get out of those smelly clothes and take advantage of my shower in there." She pointed at the bathroom.
I took her up on the offer. While I was scalding the offal aroma off my hide in the stall shower, I thought about Ilona. She was a puzzle, all right. In the short- shorts and halter she'd been wearing to sun herself, she looked like a sexy volcano ready to erupt. And if I wasn't mistaken, I'd detected traces of bubbling lava in the throaty way she'd swapped dialogue with me. There was a certain steaminess in the way those near-black eyes had raked me over too.
She was a long drink of vodka, only two or three inches shorter than my six-foot- one. With that wild, long black hair and those ball-bearing hips, she looked more like a leggy invitation to love than a dedicated and anti-sex member of S.M.U.T. And if she was that anti-sex, how come she'd volunteered for the brothel bit in the first place?
I turned off the shower, dried myself, wrapped the bath-towel around me and rejoined Ilona. She raised an eyebrow at my appearance. "What the well-dressed man will wear," she commented.
"I'll get dressed if you want," I offered.
"You're kidding." She waved towards the balcony where she'd put my clothes to air out.
"So I won't get dressed." I sat down opposite her.
We looked at each other in silence for a long moment. It was the look of wrestlers sizing each other up just before they come to grips. The way I sized Ilona up, it was going to be quite a clinch.
The straps of her halter hung loosed in front of it, grazing the tips of her breasts. The tips were outlined clearly under the white material hugging them. Her shorts were of the same material, and just as tight. The way she was sitting, they creased into an erotic V bisected revealingly at the base. I sensed more than saw the faint, hungry pulsation there. She moved uncomfortably under my gaze and the flesh of her thighs quivered slightly.
"Why are you staring at me so?" Ilona finally broke the silence.
"No reason." I shrugged.
"Your towel says differently."
She was right. Her sexiness had affected me. There was a terrycloth tent rising from my lap. I felt like a schoolboy caught short without any textbooks behind which to hide the naughtiness of his aroused puberty.
"Why, Mr. Victor, you're blushing!"
"Sorry."
"Don't be. It's sweet. But very unexpected from a man of your experience. After all, you are the man from O.R.G.Y."
"Even Casanova was capable of being embarrassed in a specific situation. But how come you know about O.R.G.Y.?"
"Oh, word gets around," she said evasively.
"And," I added, "your frankness isn't really very consistent with your membership in S.M.U.T."
"Let's forget about S.M.U.T.," she cooed. "Let's just stick with the situation at hand." She unfolded her charms and sauntered over to me. "You're putting an awful strain on that towel," she murmured, standing over me. "The hotel isn't going to like it if you rip through." Her hand hung directly over the top of the tent, the fingers dangling loosely with a nervous sort of plucking motion.
I don't have to be hit over the head. The handiest portion of her anatomy as she stood in front of me was the derriere quivering under the white shorts. I encircled her with my arms and took a firm grip with both hands.
She plucked. The towel was tossed over her shoulder, and she knelt in front of me. Her hand stroked for a moment, and then she converted it into a fist. My own hands slid around the front of her body and dipped into the white halter, sliding past where her suntan ended and squeezing the hot, creamy whiteness of her breasts.
Ilona slip onto my lap then, grasping my manhood with the fast-fluttering muscles of her thighs. She was facing me with her eyes shining brightly, her lips moistly parted. The heat of her desire burned against me through the shorts with a steady, insistent pressure.
We kissed. Her mouth was a suction valve, the lips alive and hungry, the sharp, even teeth playing a teasing game of pleasure-pain, the tongue probing and retreating with a sensuality that was maddening. Throughout the kiss, I clawed at the waistband of her shorts, trying vainly to pull them down over the fleshiness of her writhing hips.
"No." Ilona stayed my hands. "First I want to -" She left the sentence unfinished as she slid back to the floor and once again knelt in front of me. Her black hair swept over my naked thighs as her mouth swooped down to capture the target she had selected.
She was no novice. She didn't rush things. Quick, exciting kisses covered the are and then her tongue darted at random, making me squirm. After a few moments of this, she slowed down, her lips fastening for longer periods here and there, her tongue laving me with slow, thorough relish. Her head came up for a moment, and her face was flushed with wantonness. Her hand grasped the base of my manhood and she bent her head once again. This time she seized the target directly.
My body arched like a strung bow and shook uncontrollably. My hands tangled in her hair and forced her head down farther and farther. Her tongue churned wildly. Her cheeks were taut hollows formed by the vacuum-like sipping of her lips. I could feel her very throat contract in preparation for the nectar she had brewed in me, the nectar at the boiling point and set to erupt. And then -
And then there was a sudden loud pounding at the door. For a moment my passion-fogged mind played tricks on me and I was back in London again with Gladys. But the passion subsided and I came back to reality as Ilona, startled, relinquished her erotic meal-in-the-making and half rose to her feet.
"What's that?" she exclaimed.
The knocking was repeated.
"Who is it?" she called.
No answer. Just more rapping.
"Go away!" Ilona responded, frustrated and annoyed.
But the pounding only grew louder.
She crossed over and opened the door. "There's no one here!" Puzzled, she threw the door wide open to demonstrate her conclusion to me.
However, I knew she was wrong. And a moment later, just after she closed the door, she knew it herself. "Eek!" she screamed as she turned around and her line of vision fell downward. "What's that?" She pointed.
"Lagula," I sighed. I had seen him walk softly between her legs to enter the room while she was still peering out the door. "What do you want?" I asked him.
"To save your life once again, Mr. Victor. You and the young lady must get out of this room immediately!"
"Your timing is really something," I grumbled. "I can well believe Putnam put you up to helping me. He has a sadistic habit of interrupting me at the most crucial times."
"My apologies, Mr. Victor. But believe me, it's a matter of life and death."
"Who is he?" Ilona demanded. The way her voice went up the scale showed she was just as outraged at the interruption as I was.
"I guess we don't have time for me to explain," I told her. "We'd better do as he says."
"Can't he wait five minutes until we -" Her hands slid down her body expressively.
"There is no time!" Lagula insisted. "Please! Come at once!"
"Come on," I echoed to Ilona reluctantly.
"Just a minute." She crossed over to a closet and grabbed a dress from a hanger.
I followed her example and started for my clothes out on the balcony.
"No time to dress!" Lagula insisted, tugging at my arm and starting to push me towards the door.
"But I'm stark naked! I can't go out like this," I protested.
"Wait. There's a poncho here. You can wear that." Ilona reached into the closet and tossed me the slicker. It was the kind of thing both men and women wear in Africa during the rainy season.
Her dress was on over the shorts and halter but still unbuttoned as Lagula urged us out of the room. He led us down a back staircase, and we left the hotel by the delivery entrance. Lagula had a car waiting, and Ilona and I got in the back while he took the wheel. He pulled the car around to the front of the hotel.
We were just in time to observe the effect of the fate we had so narrowly missed. A man hopped nimbly down from the balcony just above Ilona's, tossed an object into her room, and kept going to the balcony beneath hers, where he threw himself flat on the flagstones. A moment later there was an explosion, and the contents of Ilona's room spewed out over the street. I caught a faint whiff of manure as the clothes I'd been wearing wafted by in fragments overhead. We all ducked instinctively, and when I raised my head, the man who had thrown the bomb had vanished. Lagula hit the gas pedal, and we too sped off in the wake of the explosion.
"I feel faint," Ilona said, grabbing at me with instinctive accuracy.
"So do I!" I told her, chopping at her wrist to make her loosen her grip. "What are you trying to do? Unman me?"
"Sorry." She eased up enough to allow the blood to circulate again. But she didn't let go. She seemed to find some sort of security in keeping her hold there.
"Was that T.U.M.S. again," I asked Lagula.
"Yes," he said, his nose, which just barely cleared the steering wheel, pressed to the windshield as he drove.
"You mean S.M.U.T.?" Ilona sounded shocked. But her emotions were all cross- circuited, and her response to the situation was a deliberately erotic tickling motion that sent a sexy shiver up my spine.
"Arrange the initials as you wish," Lagula shrugged. "It's all the same organization."
"But why should they try to kill me?" she asked, her hand starting to twitch frantically under the poncho I'd donned.
"It is Mr. Victor they want to kill," Lagula told her. "You just got in the way, and I imagine they consider you expendable."
"Oh, they do, do they?" Indignation made her squeeze hard again.
"Please," I moaned.
"Sorry!" She loosened her grip and patted me soothingly. "So I'm expendable, am I?" she muttered to herself. "Well, I'll show that dirty pig!" She released me and reached behind her back with both hands. The simple summer frock she'd grabbed before was still unbuttoned, and now she released the clasp of the halter she was wearing. She tossed it to the floor of the car and her breasts bobbled free, only half hidden by the loose material of the low-cut dress.
"What are you doing?" I exclaimed.
"Switching sides!" she told me with grim determination as she pulled her skirt up over her hips and unzipped her shorts. They fell to the floor with the halter as she pulled the skirt down again.
"But it isn't necessary to -" I started to say.
"I never do things halfway! If I'm going to betray Highman, I'm going to betray him in every sense!" Ilona took my hand, slipped it under her bodice, and pressed it hard against the straining of her breast.
"Highman? But what has he got to do with -?"
"Don't worry, I'm going to tell you." She reached under the poncho again and her hand slid down my belly. "I'm going to tell you everything. And I'm going to make love to you, too! That'll show that -!" Her legs began moving like feverish scissors.
"Aren't you being just a bit hypocritical?" I asked mildly. "After all, you were all set to make love before you had anything to get even with Highman about."
"That was different!" she insisted with typical feminine logic. "That was because you got me all excited when you came in smelling like that. That was because I couldn't control myself. It was strictly for my own pleasure, and it made me feel guilty. But this is for revenge, and I don't feel guilty at all." As if to drive home her point, she parted the folds of the poncho, straddled my lap, and neatly impaled herself.
"I see," I said, not seeing at all.
She stayed quite still for a while, thinking, her face reddening with obvious anger as she thought. I was somewhat torn myself. My natural instinct was to start moving like crazy, of course. But I didn't want to take a chance on sidetracking her from anything important she might be about to tell me about the S.M.U.T.-Nyet- Highman mishmosh. I noticed Lagula adjusting his rear-view mirror and realized we were putting on a show for him. I wondered just how much of a show we might be putting on for the rest of the traffic we were passing. It was considerable at the moment, and we were crawling along in a jam reminiscent of mid-Manhattan at theatre time. I decided the situation was ridiculous.
"Look, why don't we postpone this until later?" I suggested to Ilona. "And you can tell me what you know about Highman and the rest now."
"Are you rejecting me?" she asked indignantly. "Because if you are, I won't tell you a damn thing!"
"Tact, Mr. Victor," Lagula murmured from the front seat. "Hell hath no fury like a lady scorned. But be sure it is Highman's scorn which remains uppermost in her mind."
"Of course I'm not rejecting you," I assured Ilona soothingly. I bounced a bit to prove my enthusiasm.
"Ahh!" she responded, bouncing right along with me. "Well then, let me start at the beginning." She nuzzled my lips with her breast, and I opened them to receive it. "I was seventeen years old when I first met Peter Highman." Her womanhood continued to clutch at me thythmically as she spoke. "That was two years ago and -"
"What's going on here?" A voice at the top of the side window of the car interrupted her.
I looked up. Lagula had been forced to stop the car at an intersection. And now a Salisbury traffic cop was peering into the back.
"It's all right officer," Lagula said quickly. "The gentleman and the lady are engaged. She is merely sitting on his lap to see better out the back window."
"Yes," Ilona agreed without missing one twitching movement under the cover provided by her skirt. "Is there a law against sitting on my fiance's lap? If not, then wy are you bothering us?"
"Sorry." The cop touched his cap apologetically and moved away.
Our car began inching again as Ilona resumed her story. "At that time, two years ago," she said, digging her nails into the back of my neck and slamming down on my thighs with each frantic downstroke of her passion, "I was oversexed. Now, you may find that hard to believe, but I really was."
"I don't find it hard to believe," I panted, straining to keep up with her.
"At least Peter Highman said I was oversexed," she said, enveloping me with ripple after ripple of her sudden climax, "and I believed him."
"Few are the things upon which he and I might agree," I grunted, keeping a firm grip on her hips so that she wouldn't bounce right through the roof. "But -"
"Yes, I believed him. Ahh! Ahh! Ooh! Aah! That was good! Now again!" She had subsided momentarily, but then she started again, moving in slow, churning circles. "After all, I was a simple farm girl in Hungary when he found me."
"How did he happen to find you?" I was biting hard on my lip and concentrating on the pain to keep from ending matters before Ilona finished her story. By now I had realized that it was sex which was making her so loquacious, and I couldn't risk turning her off.
"By sticking a pitchfork into a haystack. I was – umm – playing there with a field hand. That pitchfork stabbed me right in my bare sitter. I still have the scar. You want to see it?" Ilona was innovating now, rocking with a gentle motion that caressed the entire length of my manhood.
"Maybe later," I told her, tensing my muscles for the same reason I was biting my lip. "Go on with your story. What was Highman doing on a Hungarian farm in the first place?"
"Working for S.M.U.T."
Now, that was interesting! I had thought Highman's connection with S.M.U.T. was only because his wife headed up a chapter. Now it seemed that he was much more deeply involved. Not just in New York – which I'd guessed after seeing him with Ilona at the airport – but internationally. "How does an outfit like S.M.U.T. operate in an Iron Curtain country like Hungary?" I wondered aloud, still rocking right along with Ilona.
"Undergrond," she told me. "But with a lot of infiltration in the government, too. The Commies are notoriously moralistic, you know. That makes it easy for S.M.U.T. For instance, Highman had been sent to Hungary because the illegitimate birth rate had dropped. I don't understand that even now. I mean, you'd think S.M.U.T. would be pleased by that. But they weren't. Highman said they weren't because the reason was that more birth-control devices were being used, and while there were fewer illicit conceptions, there was lots more immoral love-making." Ilona wriggled tantalizingly, as if to demonstrate her point. "Anyway, Highman was sent to my district to organize small watchdog groups that would put a stop to it and punish the people involved. Highman spoke perfect Hungarian; you couldn't tell him from a native. And in the hinterlands where we were, party control is kind of loose, so he didn't have any trouble getting things organized. I guess the neighbors must have told him I had a sort of reputation as a wild kid in the area, and so he led a bunch of them down to give me a lesson in morality. As I said, they caught me in the act." She contracted expertly, as if to show me that it had been, and still was, quite an act.
I bit through my lip and somehow managed to hold back the release of my passion. "Go on," I said through clenched teeth.
"Well, when they caught me that day, they insisted that my father give me a strapping in front of the whole bunch of them. I was already pretty sore from the pitchfork, but tht didn't stop dear old Dad. He pulled up my skirt and pulled down my panties and beat me with his belt while the whole bunch of them watched. I'll never forget their faces. They may have been spouting morals, but there wasn't a man there who wasn't itching to lay hands on my bare and twitching derriere." Her derriere was just as bare and just as twitching under the poncho now.
"Including Highman?" I asked, unable to stop myself from thrusting upward in response to her tight-clutching movements.
"Yes! Yes! Yes! Including Highman-Highman-Highman!" She was off again, her body shaken by one tremor after another of release.
It was much harder now – more difficult, I mean – not to join her. A sudden cramp in my leg was the only thing that enabled me to control myself. It was agonizing, and I concentrated on the pain, purposely prolonging it to reduce the boiling point of my lust.
"Highman, yes." She subsided, not through, but merely resting a moment between explosions. "He tried to look stern while my father was beating me, but I caught him licking his lips. And I wasn't surprised when he came to see me a few days later. Still, I was pretty young and naive. I believed him when he said he only wanted to help me fight my own evil passions."
"Evidently he wasn't too successful," I observed, made conscious of the fact that her oven of love was starting to rekindle itself.
"Surprisingly enough, at first he was. I bought the reform bit hook line and sinker. He almost had me shouting Hungarian hallelujahs!"
"Hallelujah!" I echoed, pounding the exclamation point home.
"Did you call, Mr. Victor?" Lagula asked.
"No. Just keep driving."
"You too," Ilona instructed me, her enthusiasm mounting again. "So anyway," she continued, "Highman converted me to the S.M.U.T. cause. And just about the time he had me really convinced, something must have exploded inside him because he raped me."
"That's hard to swallow."
"Goodness, you're not supposed to!" She pulled her breast from my lips in alarm.
"I meant your being raped."
"Oh. Well, he did. One night in the parlor after my folks had gone to bed. He was explaining to me how evil sex is, and he went into detail. The more detail he went into, the more excited he got. Then he told me he was going to show me exactly what he meant so I wouldn't forget it, and he raped me."
"Why didn't you scream if your parents were home?"
"Because I liked it," she admitted frankly. "And I still do. Don't you?" She was galloping frantically now.
"Yes." I felt like I was being raped myself. Fortunately, the cramp in my leg had gotten worse.
"He liked it, too," Ilona went on. "He liked it so much that he took me with him when he went back to New York. He arranged for forged papers for me and everything. And when we got there, he got me into S.M.U.T. so we'd have a legitimate excuse to see each other. It was sort of a cover-up for our affair. He was married, you see. I didn't know that until after we got to New York. He didn't tell me until then. But unless he's a bigger liar than I think, he and his wife didn't have much of a sex relationship. If they did, my hat's off to him, because he was insatiable when it came to making love to me."
"He was telling the truth," I assured her. "But just where does he stand with S.M.U.T?"
"Very high. He was the one who gave the orders in New York. Only one or two people in S.M.U.T. knew that. His wife wasn't one of them, either. He played the henpecked cipher with her. But he arranged things through S.M.U.T. so that she was always kept busy when he wanted to be with me. And he wanted to be with me a lot."
"I can understand that," I panted, realizing that I couldn't possibly hold out much longer.
"I was crazy about him, and I thought he was crazy about me. But after that bomb today, I am beginning to wonder. And then there was that business with him having S.M.U.T. send me to that brothel. He said that it would be good experience, that I'd learn some new innovations there. But I didn't learn anything I didn't already know. And I think I know enough to get by all right. Don't you?"
"Yeah," I gasked. "Did Highman assign the other two girls to the brothel, too?"
"The order came down from him."
"Did you know the oher two?"
"Not before we went to the brothel. But I didn't get to know them there, either. We were kept too busy."
"Do you know if one of them was Russian?"
"Russian? Search me." She relaxed her muscles to expedite the search. "All I know is," she admitted bitterly, "that Highman must have been getting tired of me. I wasn't willing to face it until today. See, I was really hung up on him. But looking back, it's clear. First the brothel, then sending me here to get rid of me. And that cock-and-bull story he told me at the airport about how he was doing it for my own good because my life was in danger in New York. Oh, he promised to join me here all right, but he sure didn't mention anything about having somebody throw a bomb at me."
"Are you sure he was behind that?"
"If your pinky pal is right, he was. He's pretty high up in S.M.U.T. – more than just running the New York operation. So if S.M.U.T. was behind that bomb, I'm pretty damn sure Highman must have known about it. I guess I'm expendable, all right," she added bitterly. "Well, I'll just show him!"
She was going like a Mixmaster again. Her laugh announced the beginning of a new series of joyous releases. This time I couldn't stop myself from joining her. Some six laughs later I slammed up so hard that she cried out, and we went off the deep end together in a burst of cataclysmic ecstasy.
"We have arrived," Lagula announced, pulling the car into the curb.
"I'll say we have!" I agreed, still up on Cloud Nine.
"I mean we're here."
"Oh, yes!" Ilona agreed. "Yes-yes-yes!"
"Don't you want to get out and rest?" Lagula asked. "The long ride must have tired you."
"Now that you mention it, I'm exhausted," I admitted.
"Wouldn't you like to stretch your legs?"
"I've been doing that for the past hour," Ilona said.
"He said 'stretch'," I explained.
"Oh. Well, all right." Amazingly, she sounded reluctant.
But she rearranged her dress anyway. I adjusted my poncho, and the three of us got out of the car. We were in front of a small hut on the outskirts of Salisbury. It was Lagula's home, and he ran much of his business as a tourist guide from there. Twilight was descending as he showed us inside.
He fixed us something to eat, and we hit the sack early. Not the same sack. Three different ones. But it wasn't long before Ilona crawled into mine. I was beginning to appreciate why Highman might have wanted to ditch her. She was insatiable. If he'd had her as a steady diet, she must have been quite a drain on his energies. I couldn't see how he'd had any strength left for S.M.U.T. It was one whale of a night, and it as nearly dawn before she allowed me to get any sleep at all.
It was close to noon when Lagula shook me awake. Ilona was still deep in dreamland. I envied her.
"I thought I might drive you back to your hotel to get some clothes," Lagula suggested.
"Yeah. I guess we'll have to do that. I can't keep running around in a poncho."
"Shall I wake the young lady?"
"Please don't." I shuddered at the thought of facing any more of Ilona's passion. "Let her sleep until we get back."
The trip took us about an hour. We made better time than the afternoon before because it was still early and the traffic wasn't so heavy. I figured Ilona must still be asleep when we returned.
But she wasn't asleep. She wasn't awake, either. She was lying in the middle of the room, a shambles now, like a naked, broken doll. Her body was horribly twisted, the neck broken. Yet there were no visible marks on her. Only her face, with its horrible grimace, seemed to speak of violence. Only her hands, like claws frozen to her ears, gave some hint of the agony through which she must have gone. Only her staring eyes gave mute testimony to the final terror of her death.
As with Prudence Highman, there was no clue to what had killed Ilona. But the twisted flesh was enough to make me sure of one thing. Peter Highman was in Rhodesia, all right. He'd kept his date with his mistress. And somehow, he'd murdered her.
He meant to murder me, too. I was positive of that. He'd kill me as he'd killed Prudence and Ilona if he got the chance. He'd do it in the same way. There wouldn't be a shred of evidence, yet somehow he'd contrive my death.
The question was how?