"Laura--"
"Mike--I started to live again. I thought I was dead and I started to live again. Have I pushed you into anything?"
"No."
"And I won't. You can't push a man. All you can do is try, but you just can't push a man and a woman should know that. It she can, then she doesn't have a man."
She waved me to be quiet and went on. "I don't care how you feel toward me. I hope, but that is all. I'm quite content knowing I can live again and no matter where you are you'll know that I love you. It's a peculiar kind of courtship, but these are peculiar times and I don't care if it has to be like this. Just be sure of one thing. You can have anything you want from me, Mike. Anything. There's nothing you can ask me to do that I won't do. Not one thing. That's how completely yours I am. There's a way to be sure. Just ask me. But I won't push you. If you ask me never to speak of it again, then I'll do that too. You see, Mike, it's a sort of hopeless love, but I'm living again, I'm loving, and you can't stop me from loving you. It's the only exception to what you can ask--I Won't stop loving you.
"But to answer your question, yes, I like living. You brought me alive. I was dead before."
There was a beauty about her then that was indescribable. I said, "Anything you know can be too much. You're a target now. I don't want you to be an even bigger one."
"I'll only die if you die," she said simply.
"Laura--"
She wouldn't let me finish. "Mike--do you love me--at all?"
The sun was a honeyed cloud in her hair, bouncing off the deep brown of her skin to bring out the classic loveliness of her features. She was so beautifully deep-breasted, her stomach molding itself hollow beneath the outline of her ribs, the taut fabric of the sleeveless playsuit accentuating the timeless quality that was Laura.
I said, "I think so, Laura. I don't know for sure. It's just that I--can't tell anymore."
"It's enough for now," she said. "That little bit will grow because it has to. You were in love before, weren't you?"
I thought of Charlotte and Velda and each was like being suddenly shot low down when knowledge precedes breathlessness and you know it will be a few seconds before the real pain hits.
"Yes," I told her.
"Was it the same?"
"It's never the same. You are--different."
She nodded. "I know, Mike. I know." She waited, then added, "It will be--the other one--or me, won't it?" There was no sense lying to her.
"That's right."
"Very well. I'm satisfied. So now do you want to talk to me? Shall I listen for you?"
I leaned back in the chair, let my face look at the sun with my eyes closed and tried to start at the beginning. Not the beginning the way it happened, but the beginning the way I thought it could have happened. It was quite a story. Now I had to see if it made sense.
I said:
"There are only principals in this case. They are odd persons, and out of it entirely are the police and the Washington agencies. The departments only know results, not causes, and although they suspect certain things they are not in a position to be sure of what they do. We eliminate them and get to basic things. They may be speculative, but they are basic and lead to conclusions.
"The story starts at the end of World War I with an espionage team headed by Gerald Erlich who, with others, had visions of a world empire. Oh, it wasn't a new dream. Before him there had been Alexander and Caesar and Napoleon so he was only picking up an established trend. So Erlich's prime mover was nullified and he took on another--Hitler. Under that regime he became great and his organization became more nearly perfected, and when Hitler died and the Third Reich became extinct this was nothing too, for now the world was more truly divided. Only two parts remained, the East and the West and he chose, for the moment, to side with the East. Gerald Erlich picked the Red Government as his next prime mover. He thought they would be the ultimate victors in the conquest of the world, then, when the time was right, he would take over from them.
"Ah, but how time and circumstances can change. He didn't know that the Commies were equal to him in their dreams of world empire. He didn't realize that they would find him out and use him while he thought they were in his hands. They took over his organization. Like they did the rest of the world they control, they took his corrupt group and corrupted it even further. But an organization they could control. The leader of the organization, a fanatical one, they knew they couldn't. He had to go. Like dead.
"However, Erlich wasn't quite that stupid. He saw the signs and read them right. He wasn't young any longer and his organization had been taken over. His personal visions of world conquest didn't seem quite so important anymore and the most important thing was to stay alive as best he could and the place to do it was in the States. So he came here. He married well under the assumed name of Rudy Civac to a rich widow and all was well in his private world for a time.
"Then, one day, they found him. His identity was revealed. He scrambled for cover. It was impossible to ask for police protection so he did the next best thing, he called a private detective agency and as a subterfuge, used his wife's jewels as the reason for needing security. Actually, he wanted guns around. He wanted shooting protection.
"Now, here the long arm of fate struck a second time. Not coincidence--but fate, pure unblemished fate. I sent Velda. During the war she had been young, beautiful, intelligent, a perfect agent to use against men. She was in the O.S.S., the O.S.I. and another highly secretive group and assigned to Operation Butterfly Two which was nailing Gerald Erlich and breaking down his organization. The war ended before it could happen, she was discharged, came with me into the agency because it was a work she knew and we stayed together until Rudy Civac called for protection. He expected me. He got her.
"Fate struck for sure when she saw him. She knew who he was. She knew that a man like that had to be stopped because he might still have his purposes going for him. There was the one thing she knew that made Gerald Erlich the most important man in the world right then. He knew the names and identities of every major agent he ever had working for him and these were such dedicated people they never stopped working--and now they were working for the Reds.
"Coincidence here. Or Fate. Either will do. This was the night the Red agents chose to act. They hit under the guise of burglars. They abducted Rudy Civac, his wife and Velda. They killed the wife, but they needed Rudy to find out exactly what he knew.
"And Velda played it smart. She made like she was part of Civac's group just to stay alive and it was conceivable that she had things they must know too. This we can't forget--Velda was a trained operative--she had prior experience even I didn't know about. Whatever she did she made it stick. They got Civac and her back into Europe and into Red territory and left the dead wife and the stolen jewels as a red herring that worked like a charm, and while Velda was in the goddamn Russian country I was drinking myself into a lousy pothole--"
She spoke for the first time. She said, "Mike--" and I squeezed open my eyes and looked at her.
"Thanks."
"It's all right. I understand."
I closed my eyes again and let the picture form.
"The Commies aren't the greatest brains in the world, though. Those stupid peasants forgot one thing. Both Civac--or Erlich--and Velda were pros. Someplace along the line they slipped and both of them cut out. They got loose inside the deep Iron Curtain and from then on the chase was on.
"Brother, I bet heads rolled after that. Anyway, when they knew two real hotshots were on the run they called in the top man to make the chase. The Dragon. Comrade Gorlin. But I like The Dragon better. I'll feel more like St. George when I kill him. And won't Art hate me for that, I thought.