The Vulcan Disaster

I got up with no new broken bones — but I looked like hell and felt worse. This wasn’t Kai Tak; it was up north somewhere, and there’d been a predawn rain so I was covered with mud. That put a crimp in all my brave plans to get working as soon as I got to town, trying to find out what was going on. After taking a nosedive in that sticky goop I’d have to dump virtually everything I owned into the cleaners before I did much of anything. And, on second thought and sober reflection, I decided that would work out just fine; I could use forty winks. I was so damned tired, I thought, that I might even be able to get off to sleep despite the dull ache in the ribs.

As luck would have it the second car I flagged stopped for me, and it turned out to be a licensed cabbie, coming back from dumping a fare way up in the New Territories halfway to Canton. My stolid Oriental chauffeur didn’t so much as bother to waste a glance on me as I settled back on the leather seats, croaked “Peninsula Hotel,” and passed out cold. I slept soundly; I had some favors piled up at the Pen’s front desk, and folks would take care of me there...

It worked even better than I’d expected. Matter of fact, somebody not only hauled me out of the cab, booked me, and lugged me up to an elegant third-floor room, but undressed me, put me in a big double bed, and sent every stitch I’d been wearing out to be cleaned. When I woke up, everything was hanging, impeccably cleaned and pressed, on the door.

I sat up quickly — and then wished I hadn’t. It was a relief to see the harnesses of my three lethal little friends Hugo, Wilhelmina (empty, I saw) and Pierre laid neatly on the bedside table. I took note of another fact: someone had changed the bandage on my ribs.

The Pen thought of everything.

It was already late afternoon. I was famished, but it was too early for Peking Duck at the Princess Garden and too late for lunch anywhere, and without a day’s notice there was no sense in looking forward to beggars’ chicken at the Tien Hong Lau. I sent out for coffee and settled down to the telephone.

I placed the call, put the phone down, and began the wait. The coffee came; I got a cup and a half down before I finished dressing, thinking all the while about what had happened, and, worse, about how I’d go about explaining it all to David Hawk. I could imagine it all pretty easily, but nothing I could imagine was very reassuring.

Yes, sir, you see, Corbin got himself shot by this one-eyed, one-armed guy after he’d wiped the floor up with me. But, in the meantime, somebody had picked him clean. And I went to the last guy who could have seen him alive, and he was dead too. And then I’d explain, nice and cleverly, how I came to be alive and breathing and sitting up on a big bed in a posh hotel in Kowloon without that little roll of film Hawk wanted.

Maybe after that he’d explain what I was in the Far East for, and what was on the film, and who we were chasing this time. Maybe.

I poured another cup of coffee and the phone rang. I put the coffee down and picked up the receiver. It wasn’t Hawk and it wasn’t Washington. It was one of the staff downstairs at the switchboard. “Mr. Carter?”

“Yes?”

“This is most unusual. May I please have that number again?”

I gave it to him. “Why?”

“Well, sir... I thought I might have got it wrong. But that was the number I’d asked for all right.”

“What’s the matter?”

“There doesn’t seem to be any such number.”

“You mean it’s been disconnected? Or that it’s, uh, ‘no longer in service,’ as they say?”

“No, sir. There doesn’t seem to be any such exchange in the District. Neither there nor in the Maryland or Virginia suburbs served by the Chesapeake and Potomac Telephone Company.”

“No such exchange? But... but I’ve called the number a hundred times. I’ve talked on that line. I...”

“I was sure you knew your business, sir. That’s why it all seems so extraordinary. Shall I make an inquiry?”

I thought about that. “Uh... no, thanks. I’ll send a cable later, perhaps. Can I dial outside directly for a local call?”

“No, sir. You may call for me. Operator Two.”

“Thanks.” I hung up. Then I sat there on the bed, thinking. The wire was Hawk’s semi-covert line. He’d answer... oh, this month is was “Westinghouse. Repair Department.” Then you could say anything you pleased to him on it, so long as it sounded like a repairman calling in, or perhaps a salesman or parts jobber. You’d be surprised at how much of your message you could get across if you both knew in advance more or less what you’d be talking about on that line. Of course there’d always be the other direct line. You could say anything you chose on that one. But you couldn’t call on that one from anywhere outside the continental United States. It was on a very special scrambler, and only the Bell System was equipped to handle it.