The Kremlin File

The car fired up thirty stories to a richly carpeted hall where an elegant blonde waited for me. The corridor was a gallery of high-priced art but I hardly noticed the pictures. The blonde was better to look at than any of them. She smiled and offered a slim hand that collapsed at the knuckles, an erotic surprise that got to me.

“Mr. Carter?”

“That’s me.”

“I am Tara Sawyer,” she said. “Father is on the telephone, as usual, and I’m to take you in.”

She tucked my hand under her arm, matching me stride for stride down the hall and through a door at the end. The room beyond could have held a convention with ease. At the far end a plate glass wall revealed a terrace forested with tubbed evergreens. There was no desk in sight, no files, only luxurious carpeting with islands of chairs and lounges. And a bar. The other half lived well. The girl homed in on the bar and let go of me finally.

“What would you like to wait with, Mr. Carter?”

“Brandy, please.”

She sloshed an inch into a snifter for me and built herself a scotch and soda while I warmed the glass in both hands. Then we carried the drinks to the glass wall and looked across the terrace, down on the snow in the park far below.

“It’s a shame,” she said in irritation. “All that open space and no one dares use it after dark. A disgrace.”

I thought of but did not mention a lot of places, open and closed, that were not safe for some people even in daylight. This room might have been one of them for Tara Sawyer if the parental presence was not so imminent. She was very tempting, a lot of woman under the slim, tailored pantsuit that clung to her firm thighs and hung softly over her breasts. I raised my snifter in a silent toast, letting her see my admiration. Then the door behind us opened and closed and that was that.

Thomas Sawyer in the flesh was a letdown. I had assumed the tycoon would reflect his overwhelming success, and expected to see an outsized man charged full of electric energy. Instead, he was about five foot four, half a head shorter than his daughter, birdlike in his quick movements, robust only in the surprisingly deep voice. He stopped a few feet from us, looked me up and down, appraising, the way he would when buying a car, or a man.

“Mr. Carter?” He wasn’t sure.

I dipped my head.

“You are not at all what I expected.”

He wasn’t complaining and I knew what he meant. Most people picture an agent as a cross between Bogart and Sir John Ogilvie Rennie, the poor joker the British M.I.6 Department called “C,” the man whose cover was blown by the German magazine Stern. He was retired on a pension but he was a natural for Central Casting as a spy. I just don’t look the part.

“I’d really enjoy sitting down with you and having a long talk,” the hotel magnate went on. “But that will have to wait. You and Tara have a plane to catch and time is getting short. You are to leave Kennedy at twelve thirty-five.”

David Hawk throws me a lot of curves but hardly ever any like this. The curves on the blonde girl were just dandy and she was coming along. Just for the ride? Things were looking better by the minute.

I touched her elbow. “If you’re packed, we’d better shove. My bags are downstairs but I have to see a man at the airport before we take off.”

She walked into another room and Sawyer took me to the corridor door. She was back in a moment in a mink hat, mink coat open over a soft blue dress. She brought only one small suitcase, a restraint I approved, and tossed it to me from three feet away. Maybe to see if I could catch it without a warning. I did. She bent to kiss her father, patted him on the head and we left.

In the limousine, a lovely thing long enough to make a Mafia cruiser look like a Toyota, she closed the glass between us and the chauffeur and turned unexpectedly businesslike, saying earnestly, “Now we have time for me to cue you in on some items. Dr. Fleming must not know who you really are or why you’re going to the island. He is to think you are only in Dad’s employ as a security officer for the hotel. He has a strange pride, an innocence if you will, and if he learned anyone other than his own people were putting him back in the palace, he would refuse to take the presidency.”

“Oh?” I watched her face. “Isn’t he aware your father bought the army?”

The corner of her mouth tucked in at the word but she didn’t evade the issue. “He has no idea and he must not find out. He thinks the army feels there is no one else capable of managing the country now. But my father doesn’t trust the military to keep its word and you’ll have to stay awake.”

I got the idea then. Papa was sending Baby along to watch me and to see the assignment through. It wasn’t just the LaClare army he didn’t trust. He didn’t trust AXE or me and he was willing to put his luscious daughter out as bait to make sure all went A-O.K. Well, that was one bribe I’d be happy to accept.