Bombshell Max Collins (best ereader for textbooks .txt) 📖

“Anything to help a brother agency.”

The hand with the cigarette holder gestured, making abstract smoke patterns. “I think you’ll find this … of interest.”

“You mean, you’ve got everything on tape,” Harrigan said, perking, realizing what that spool might hold. “You know exactly what went down in that room!”

“Well, now,” Munson said slowly, sighing smoke, invoking an old radio catchphrase, “I wouldn’t say that…”

Harrigan waited for the CIA agent to continue.

“You see, we’ve been keeping an eye on a certain Chinese assassin for some time…”

Harrigan grunted. “China—should have known. That lead from Formosa…”

“Actually, not Nationalist China—Red.”

“Red!” Harrigan was stunned.

“… At any rate, this hitter is a freelancer named Lee Wong; but our operative lost track of him in Hong Kong last month. We considered him a good candidate for use in a K hit, and figured, if such an attempt were to be made on the trip, California with its ample Oriental population made sense for where he might surface.”

“Red China,” Harrigan said to himself, as if tasting the words, trying to get some recognizable flavor out of them. “They wouldn’t dare … would they?”

Another sigh of smoke. “Mao Tse-tung is reportedly furious over Khrushchev’s visit.” Munson made a melodramatic gesture with the cigarette holder. “Views it as a ‘sell-out’—the Russians consorting with the enemy, so to speak.”

Harrigan was frowning, shaking his head, damn near incredulous. “And that’s enough for Mao to start World War III over?”

Munson smiled wickedly. “It might be—if China were on the sidelines, waiting to come out on top.”

And now Harrigan had to nod—he could see the terrible “sense” of it…

“We have it on good authority,” Munson continued, “that relations between Russia and China have atrophied, although both countries make a concerted effort to lead the free world to believe otherwise.”

But now Harrigan was shaking his head. “What in hell makes you think that, Agent Munson? I work the State Department beat, remember—and I’ve seen nothing but cooperation between Russia and China.”

“That’s because the State Department—at least on your level, Agent Harrigan—is unaware of Khrushchev’s refusal to give Mao the bomb.”

Harrigan’s eyebrows shot up. “The A-bomb? Mao wanted Russia to share atomic secrets with them … ?”

Munson shrugged. “They are supposedly allies. You can see how Mao might consider such a refusal … less than gracious.”

“Jesus, Joseph, and Mary… Well thank God for that much. Maybe Khrushchev means it, all this disarmament talk.”

“Perhaps he does,” Munson said. “And the failure to share with China, shall we say, one from column A? That discourtesy isn’t the only breach between the Red giants—there’s also Khrushchev’s denunciation of Stalin … his determination to erase any memory of the former dictator—who is still revered in China, after all. That is seen by Mao as an outright act of betrayal.”

“That I can understand,” Harrigan said, half a smirk carving itself in his cheek. “Mao and ol’ Joe Stalin have a hell of a lot in common.”

“Aptly put,” Munson said, nodding; then he drew on the cigarette-in-holder and, as if suggesting a round of golf, said, “Let’s play the tape.”

The two men looked at the chubby technician, who during their discussion had returned his attention to his sandwich; he switched on the machine with a mustard-smeared finger.

As the tape began to play, Harrigan leaned closer to the machine, but for a few agonizingly long minutes, nothing but hum, mere room tone, could be made out.

Then, finally, came a faint murmur.

“He’s talking to himself,” Munson whispered.

Harrigan’s eyes had heard it too—the premier was talking, all right…

“The fat bastard knows English,” Harrigan said through tight teeth. “That son of a bitch!”

“He is a cute one,” Munson admitted, then held a “shush” finger to his lips, though another humming minute of silence followed. Then Munson cocked an ear.

“Now he’s getting out of bed,” Munson asserted. “He’s going to the window … opening the window … getting some air, perhaps …”

Harrigan leaned in further, straining ears that had long since paid the price of his firing handguns.

“Sounds like two people talking,” Harrigan commented.

“That’s what we thought,” Munson said, nodding, “but we couldn’t be sure… Who would he be talking to, and in English? It’s not a bodyguard.”

As the tape played on, the voices diminished. Then suddenly a crack! and snick!, snick!, snick!

The remaining tape returned to room tone.

The chubby technician stopped the tape, and returned to his sandwich.

Harrigan was silent for a moment. “I want to hear it again,” he said. He plucked the sandwich from the technician’s thick fingers. “And crank it up, this time. Starving kids in Korea don’t have headphones, you know.”

The chubby tech frowned, but—after a nod from Munson— complied.

As the tape replayed Harrigan’s heart began to race.

“Is that a woman’s voice?” Munson asked.

“Goddamn,” Harrigan said.

“We had no reports of K being any kind of letch. No women, before. What do you make of—”

Harrigan was grinning. “I’ll be goddamned if that scatterbrained blonde didn’t save all our asses!”

Munson gave Harrigan a puzzled look; even the chubby guy seemed interested.

“What scatterbrained blonde?” Munson asked.

“The one in bungalow seven,” Harrigan said without glancing back—he was already halfway out the door, praying a Chinese assassin hadn’t beaten them to the punch.

That K wasn’t already dead, with Marilyn Monroe another casualty on the floor of that comfy bungalow, her brains truly scattered.

11 Mad Tea Party

Washed in the ivory glow of a full moon on this clear starry night, the homely portly man and the lovely young woman—looking a bit like father and daughter, or perhaps uncle and niece—sat in a large teacup.

The pair had the Mad Hatter’s Tea Party attraction to themselves, that whirling ride of colorful Volkswagen-sized cups-on-saucers, which was motionless at the moment, and … like everything else in the vast amusement park around them … shrouded in darkness but for the occasional security light. Across the way, its garishly painted movie-flat-style façade muted in the wee hours, stood Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride, free of laughter and screams, draped in an eerie stillness, while the turrets of Sleeping Beauty’s