“It’s not as bad as it looks.” The CIA man made a dot on the map. “Right here, between the villages of La Cruz and Elota, there is an airstrip. It’s privately owned and being used now — I’ll tell you about that later — but formerly it was used to fly out gold shipments. That’s gold mining country around there, or used to be. Our best information is that it’s mined out now. Deserted. And it is also pretty wild country. Bandit country. I’ll tell you about the bandits later, too.”
Hawk walked to the map now, a cigar drooping from his thin mouth. “That’s the only airstrip around there?”
“As far as we know. We’re pretty certain that the plane that crashed must have come from that strip. Everything fits. The earth specimens, the vegetation, the gas consumption.” The CIA man pointed to the larger circle again. “The counterfeit is being made, or at least distributed, somewhere in here.”
Hawk was looking skeptical. “Maybe. But it seems a little too simple to me. That plane, I mean, flying over the border with a load of queer money in broad daylight. Just asking for trouble. Those counterfeiters are a lot smarter than that — look at how they plastered the country with those bills before the T-men woke up. No. Something’s wrong with that picture.”
The CIA man rubbed his thatch of red hair. Of a sudden he looked tired and strained. “You’re right, of course. That’s, been puzzling us, too. But we’ve got a sort of a theory about it. The pilot’s name was Antonio Vargas. A renegade type, from what we can get out of Mexico City. He was booted out of the Mexican Air Force some years ago. And he had a reputation as a drunk. We’re inclined to think that maybe he was working for himself this time — he just snatched a load of counterfeit and took off. Maybe he had cooked up some sort of deal in the States. That’s not really important to us now.”
Nick ran his finger around the red circle. “You want me to go in there and see what I can find?”
“We do,” said the boss of the CIA, “But that is only your primary mission. There is a lot more to it than you’ve heard so far.” He glanced at his watch. “I suggest we take ten, gentlemen. I could use a drink.”
Nick settled for sandwiches and a beer. Hawk and the man from CIA took bourbon and Scotch respectively. When they had finished, the CIA man relaxed at his desk and lit a cigar. Hawk began to gum a fresh one. Nick sat near the wall map, studying it, and smoked a cigarette.
Neither he, nor Hawk was prepared for the bomb.
“The Chinese Reds,” said the CIA man in an ordinary conversational tone, “have a fleet of six nuclear subs. Snorkels. Some of them are capable of carrying midget subs, of launching and recovering them at sea. We think one of those subs is lying somewhere around the Gulf of California right now.”
It was the first time Nick had ever seen Hawk look truly shocked. Frightened. “Nuclear subs? Good God! You’re sure there’s no mistake?”
The redheaded man shook his head. “No mistake. I wish there were. They’ve got them, all right. Capable of launching missiles, too. Only they haven’t got any missiles. Yet.”
Nick felt his guts tighten. Chinese subs prowling the Pacific coast! It was not a pretty picture.
The CIA man was looking at him. “That’s why I insist on the cyanide,” he said. “You have to know about the subs so you can do your job properly, but you mustn’t talk if you’re captured and tortured. It cost us a few million dollars and the lives of six agents to find out about those subs. The Chinese have guarded that secret the way we guarded the atomic bomb. But we found out. We know where those subs are. But the Chinese don’t know that we know — and they must never find out! If they do find out they’ll move the subs, they’ll just disappear, and we’ll have to start all over again. Above all we must keep them thinking that their secret is safe.”
Again the CIA chief went to the map. He touched the Gulf of California with the glowing tip of his cigar, leaving an ash smudge. “I said the Chinese have six subs. So they have. But only five are where they should be at the present time. We’re guessing that the other one, the sixth sub, is lying around this vicinity somewhere. We think that it is somehow tied in with the counterfeiting — and also with the Serpent Party. And I’ll admit we’re getting pretty hypothetical now. Still, we’ve got a few clues and—”
“The paper,” Hawk broke in. “That nearly perfect paper the phony bills are printed on. The Chinese invented paper!”
The CIA man nodded. “It’s a possibility that we’ve considered. That they’re running in the paper for the bills. But the Chinese didn’t make those plates, or so our experts tell us. But more of that later. Right now let’s concentrate on this sub we think is messing around off the Mexican coast.”
The CIA man swished the dregs of his Scotch around in his glass and gazed at the ceiling for a moment. “We’ve got a lot of monitoring stations around the world, as you know. Some in places that would surprise even you, David. Well, for the last two months we’ve had indications that a sub, not ours, has been working up and down our Pacific coast. But they’re cagy as hell — they change positions constantly and their transmissions are very short. Until a couple of days ago we couldn’t get anything like a fix on them. Then we got a break, they used their wireless for a longer time than usual, and we did get sort of a rough fix.” He pointed to the map. “As near as we could get it — off the tip of the Baja peninsula and about fifty to a hundred miles off the Mexican coast. That’s a lot of ocean, of course, and we don’t have much hope of finding them, but we’re trying. A dozen destroyers are working the area now.”
Hawk asked, “Are we with the Mexicans on this? Nick has to know that. Are we keeping them informed?”
The CIA Director did not answer for a moment. An enigmatic look was frozen on the hard features. He caressed his battered nose with a forefinger as he stared back at Hawk.
“Not exactly,” he said finally. “Not to the fullest extent, at least. Officially the CIA is helping them keep an eye on the Serpent Party, which doesn’t appear to concern them much, but they know nothing about the rest of the problem.”
Hawk nodded dourly. “I thought not. This is going to be a regular ‘black’ operation, then?”
The Director’s smile was faint. “Yes. That’s why you were called in. I, we, defer to you people in handling these things, these ‘black’ operations as you call them. You people in AXE are the experts, after all.”
Hawk flipped his chewed cigar at a wastebasket and fumbled for a new one. “Just so that’s understood.” He inclined his head toward Nick. “When my man is on the ground, and takes over, he will be allowed to do things his own way?”
“Within the limits of his instructions,” the CIA man said. A little stiffly, Nick thought. “He is not to exceed them.”
Nick felt, rather than saw, Hawk’s wink. “Okay,” said his Chief. “Let’s get on with it. I take it there is more?”
“Much more. To get back to the Chinese sub we think is lurking about. As I explained, we’ve gotten a partial fix on her. But there have been two sets of rather mysterious transmissions in that area. One from the mainland, on a rather weak set — weak, but capable of reaching the sub. Another, from the sub, we think, to practically anywhere in the world. Very powerful beam. So again we have a lead pointing to that part of Mexico. We think the land station is working the sub, and the sub is relaying the messages. To China, most likely. They’re arrogant bastards, too. They’re using a straight code. In English!”
He picked up a yellow flimsy from his desk and looked at it with a show of distaste. “This is a fragmentary message that our monitors got. They use the standard wireless procedures, never any voice. Listen to this.