Miles Running Bear Farmer began to whistle. A tuneless, chanting something that smacked of redskins dancing around a bonfire, donning war paint and getting ready to make war talk.
“Miles,” Seven sighed.
“No ear for good music?”
“It’s not that. We’re being followed. A Pontiac. License plate from Michigan. See the beautiful blue paint job.”
It was true. Behind them, no matter how slow or fast their own cab darted, no where or how it careered, glued onto their very tail was the Pontiac. And Mr. Foreman was smiling the smile of he who sees rescue in the offing.
Seven pondered, thinking fast.
Farmer craned his head. “What’ll we do? Can’t drive right up to Headquarters with those birds on our backs. After all, what will Sam think of us?”
Seven nodded, reached forward and tapped the cabbie on the shoulder. “Driver, you’re being followed.”
The cabbie spun his head, belligerency and wonder fighting for control of his face. “Yeah? Where?”
“The Pontiac. Now if you’d like to make an extra five dollar bill and show us exactly how well you know New York and what you can do with this jalopy of yours — why, you’ll lose that car, won’t you?”
The cabbie frowned, keeping his eye on the throttling traffic that hemmed in his vehicle on all sides.
“Thought you guys said you were actors?”
“Oh, but we are. Good ones, too. Now those people back there in the Pontiac are bad ones. Got it?”
“For five bucks,” the cabbie averred, “I could disappear into the ground.”
“That’s what I want you to do.”
“Watch me.”
He was good for the word. Suddenly, like a rabbit jumping across the highway, the cab sprang forward, skirted a sedan, nosed ahead of it and rapidly careened in and among an assortment of machines. Almost immediately, the Pontiac was lost from view.
“Still going to the same address?” the cabbie shouted, employing every trick of his trade. The cab whined, roared and droned, meshing gears, slamming on brakes, starting and stopping. Literally hurtling along. A dizzy panorama of New York rushed by the windows.
“Same address,” David Seven said.
“Fine work, gentlemen,” Miss Samantha Follet said, from the depths of her polished desk. She was especially attractive in white shirtwaist, pearl-buttoned down the front, with long fluffy sleeves tapering to her wrists. Her smooth, beautiful face and hair was, as ever, acutely out of place, when one considered her true occupation. But as a front and a facade, she was eminently in keeping with her environs. “Mr. Foreman has been housed close to Mr. Baroda. And we have the film.”
David Seven and Miles Running Bear Farmer, seated in the rounded ornate chairs of the office, watched her very carefully. They were never familiar with “Sam” as they were with each other. Somehow, the idea was unthinkable.
“It was my goof,” Farmer said. “I lost the film in the first place. It was up to me to get it back.”
“Good thing you remembered about those boxes on the sidewalk. A one-in-a-million hunch,” Miss Follet smiled. “What about that editorial office?”
“The Saint?” Seven laughed. “When Mr. Santesson gets back from Massachusetts, he’s going to think Santa’s little helpers were there. We opened a lot of boxes.”
“Intrex’s little helpers,” Farmer disagreed. “I found it in about the tenth one we opened. Right on top of a stack of hard cover books. Smack between a copy of The Koran and The Bride Wore Black by Cornell Woolrich.”
Seven frowned at him. “You really read murder mysteries? Tsk, tsk. Up on all the book titles and authors too. I’m surprised at you.”
Miss Follet folded her fingers together, making a lovely arch.
“Well, now that Baroda and Foreman are under wraps, would you like to see the microfilm before we send it along to the Federal Bureau?”
“Sure thing,” Seven said. “I’d be very much interested to see what all the shouting was about.”
“Shooting you mean,” Farmer amended.
“Good. Come along then. We’ll go to the projection room upstairs.” She rose from her desk. Tall, imperial. A queen. Seven and Farmer sprang erect. They followed Miss Follet to the draped concealment of the rear wall of the office.
Upstairs, the projection room was a cubicle affair set back from the main passageway. Beyond the working environs of the International Trade Experts; the regular offices and anterooms, lay this curious honeycomb of chambers and cells wherein the true nature of INTREX was ever working. Wheels of counter-espionage and security smoothly turning.
“Anytime you’re ready,” Miss Follet said into a tiny phone next to her chair.
The little theatre went dark. Seven and Farmer waited in their seats. A spray of orange light arched over their heads, finding a white screen. The film began to come alive. Frames flickered, then settled down to normal running speed. The valuable footage that Paul Baroda and Peter Foreman had worked so hard to get unfolded.
It was deadly material. In the wrong hands, it could have shaken the earth. The missile sites, the launching pads, the highly advanced stages of the weapons revealed on the screen was awesome. Neither Seven nor Farmer smoked, caught up in the wonder of the tiny roll of microfilm.
The film closed, no more than five minutes of material, and the cell’s light came up. Miss Follet regarded the tips of her fingernails, which like the rest of her, were shapely and even.
“You see,” she said slowly. “Real hot stuff. The hottest.”
“Amen,” Seven said.
“Heap bad medicine,” Farmer said in a low voice that wasn’t asking anybody to laugh at his analogy.
Further down the hall, not too far away, in their respective prisons, Baroda and Foreman were feverishly plotting an escape. But it seemed hopeless. All their personal possessions, all metal objects and shoelaces and buckles, had been removed from their persons. Two master spies, not mere hirelings, were suddenly faced with the extraordinary truth that they were in the hands of INTREX. That faceless organization whose reputation had already become a byword on the continent.
INTREX.
How could one fight these damn American capitalists with their millions and billions in oil, steel and diamonds and gold? Their worship of the God Baal and the golden calf had given them the fortunes to squander on the fight against the Isms. All the Isms in the universe.
Baroda and Foreman shuddered.
Money, on the side of the angels, was a most formidable weapon. Stronger and greater than all the sciences in mankind’s book of dreams.
“Good day, gentlemen,” Miss Follet said, at the door of her office, to David and Miles. “You may return to your duties.”
It was a candle-lit dinner for two. The food was good, the wine excellent, the company superlative. David Seven smiled fondly across the crowded tablecloth at Cathy Darrow. The candlelight set up golden lights in her blonde hair.
“Good to see you again, Miss Darrow.”
“Likewise, Mr. Seven.”
“I was very busy while you were gone. I never realized how much a man can depend on a good secretary.”
“Lots of extra-legal work again, David?” Cathy sighed.
He toyed with a breads tick and aimed it at her as if it was a pistol. “You know me — the D’Artagnan of the courtroom. Clients are always getting into trouble.”
“I don’t mean that. You’re a puzzle you know. Bright young lawyer. Working for a big important outfit like International Trade Experts. And yet — I don’t know—”
“Go on,” he urged.
“Well, you’re out of the office more often than you’re in it. Forever running off some place. And usually with Miles Farmer. And he’s an architect. It just doesn’t make sense.”