Idly I turned the watch over to look at the back of the slim casing. Normally, you’ll find tiny, engraved print that identifies the type of metal the casing is made of, whether it’s waterproof and, if it’s expensive, the maker’s hallmark. What caught my eye was a miniature engraving of a sort I’d never seen before.
It was hard to make out because it was so small. No matter how much I twisted or turned the watch in the light of the bedlamp, I just couldn’t determine exactly what the emblem was. I needed a magnifying glass.
Now damned few people carry magnifying glasses with them. I sure didn’t, and at four in the morning I wasn’t about to call room service to ask them to get one for me. Then I remembered an old trick. I went over to my suitcase and took out my camera. Removing the lens, I turned it upside down, looking through it at the engraving on the back of the watch.
The image leaped up, because a reversed lens makes a fine magnifier of about five to eight diameters of enlargement, depending upon the focal length of the lens.
What I saw, etched delicately into the metal of the gold casing, was a reproduction of a Revolutionary War flag — the famous Snake Flag. Underneath a partly-coiled snake are the words “Don’t Tread on Me!”
Puzzled, I put the watch down, replaced the lens on my camera and got into bed. I lit one of my gold-tipped cigarettes and lay there thinking for some time.
The flag on the back of that expensive watch made no sense, even though for more than a year Boston had been filled with trinkets and souvenirs of the Bicentennial, celebrating the two hundred years of our country’s existence. There was hardly a place you could turn without being confronted by historical banners, posters, flags, photographs, paintings, etchings, postcards and whatever else anyone could think of on which to slap a Bicentennial slogan. But not on a watch like this! You just didn’t do that to a Patek Phillipe that must have cost well over a thousand dollars. No one’s that patriotic.
I mulled it over until I could hardly keep my eyes open. Then I crushed out the stub of my cigarette in the ashtray and turned out the light. I fell asleep trying to dream of Sabrina and not succeeding.
I awoke late in the morning and ordered breakfast sent up. The tray it arrived on also carried a folded copy of the Boston Globe. Splashed across the front page were the headlines: “SWAN BOAT KILLER SLAYS PROMINENT ATTORNEY!” and “DEATH AT HANDS OF LUNATIC!”
The story went on to describe the finding of the body by a couple of teenagers who’d called the cops.
There were three inches at the bottom left of the front page devoted to the “bizarre murder” of a smalltime mobster who’d had his head blown off by an exploding camera in the Granary Burial Ground the previous day. The police were ready to term it a “gangland killing.” Which just proves that all chubby little men with horn-rimmed glasses aren’t as innocent as they look. At least the cops wouldn’t be sniffing up my trail.
But the “swan boat killing” was the important story. Important enough for the editors to have replaced the front page and brought out a special late-morning edition. Normally, the morning paper is made up and printed the night before. I read through the four columns they gave to the story, along with a “feature” on the dead man’s background.
Malcolm Stoughton was a member of a prominent Boston law firm. He also had a reputation as a sports buff. In college he’d played as middle linebacker and had spent two years playing for a pro team to earn enough money to pay his way through law school. Apart from this bit of information, the only other thing outstanding about him was that he came from a family that traced its beginnings back to the Mayflower.
There was no mention whatsoever of the list of five names I’d pinned on his chest.
Sometime between the finding of the body and the arrival of the reporters on the scene, someone had removed the list. I knew that the teenagers who’d discovered the body must have seen the list. They couldn’t miss it. The first cops to get there must also have seen the list. And if they saw it, then the sergeant and the homicide detail had seen it, too. God alone knows how many others saw it.
Yet there wasn’t a word in the news story about that list!
And that in itself told me a lot about the men whose names were on it.
About the time I was finishing my second cup of coffee, the telephone rang.
“What the hell is going on up there?” Hawk was angry.
“Right now,” I said, “I’m having breakfast. I was out late last night.”
“So I understand!” snapped Hawk. “For Christ’s sake, Nick, what the devil’s the idea of pinning those names on his shirt? Don’t you know who you’re fooling around with?”
I interrupted him. “How did you know about the list? There wasn’t a word about it in the newspapers.”
“There wasn’t?”
“Not one word. They kept it out. How’d you learn about it?”
“I get copies of requests for information made to the FBI by local police departments,” Hawk said. “And it’s none of your business how I get that information out of the FBI office.”
“Well, you’re not the only one who knows how to pull strings. Someone up here has done a lot of tugging to keep this quiet.”
Hawk made no comment, but I knew it had made an impression on him.
“I gather all hell must have broken loose down there for you to call me,” I ventured.
“Damn right.” Hawk was furious. “Just about everyone but the White House has been putting pressure on me to get me to call off whatever it is — you’re doing up there. I’d like to know how the hell they know you’re there!”
“Jacques Crève-Coeur,” I said. “I had him pass the word to the KGB that the Russian had talked to me and that I was in Boston.”
Hawk said nothing for a moment, letting the implications sink in.
“Does Washington know the mission I’m on?” I said finally, breaking the silence.
“No,” said Hawk. “They only know that someone from AXE is up there creating havoc, and they want it stopped. I wouldn’t be surprised if the next call came from the Oval Room itself!”
“Lots of power working behind the scenes, I take it.”
“More than you can believe! First of all, most of them shouldn’t even know that AXE exists. When a civilian not only knows about us, but knows whom to call to apply pressure on me, you’d better respect the kind of influence he has! So far, four Senators and two Cabinet members have telephoned.”
“Who put them up to it? That should clue us in on the man we’re after.”
Hawk snorted. “Every one of the five names on your list! That tell you anything?”
“So you’re calling me off the assignment?”
“Don’t be a damn fool! I’m still running AXE! And I’m telling you to get on with your job before they have my head. I want it finished and over with as soon as possible!”
“Maybe I need a secretary.” I heard him sputter, but stopped his response with a question. “Where are the dossiers on these men? When I called you last night, you promised to have them up here by courier this morning.”
Hawk took a deep breath. “There aren’t any,” he confessed. “There are no files on any of them.”
It was a bombshell. Things like that just don’t happen. Somewhere, in some government agency, there’s a dossier on everyone of any importance in this country, and AXE has access to any file in any Federal department.
“FBI? CIA? Secret Service? Department of Defense? Damn it, Hawk, someone’s got to have something!”