The By-Pass Control Read Free Page A

last contact?”
    “Eighteen months ago.”
    “Then they’re lucky. They had their work done for them.” I let it go through his mind, then added, “He had two of your men in that back room. How he nailed them I won’t worry about, but what was he after?”
    “Classified, Tiger.”
    I shrugged, making a real production out of it. “It doesn’t matter. Whatever they told him won’t go any further. It’s over with.”
    “Is it?”
    He could see the edges of my teeth in the grin. “Not quite. You see, we had a little talk too... before I killed him.”
    “That’s what I thought.” Charlie turned, walked to a chair and sat down with a sigh of relief. “Want to come out with it?”
    “Sure, Charlie. Tell me why Salvi wanted those men and I’ll tell you what he told me. Maybe.”
    “One of your men was dead too.”
    “Nobody that counted.”
    “He was in Martin Grady’s employ.”
    I nodded. “In a minor capacity by government directive.
    Grady owns pieces of many essential industries that come under the identical setup.”
    Slowly, Charlie Corbinet turned the glass around in his hand, studied it before he took a drink, then decided. “You really want me to get my head chopped off,” he said.
    “Not really. I’d just like to see you draw a full General’s pay with bonus for the work you do ... and some real authority to back you up instead of handing it to guys like Randolph.”
    “Tell me, Tiger... why don’t you like the way Washington runs things?”
    “Because I don’t like to be classified with the patsies. I don’t like the stupidity that went behind the Bay of Pigs invasion... or the Panama crap... or the way they can knock us off in Viet Nam while we sit on our thumbs and get laughed at by the real pigs on the other side of the Berlin Wall. Someday they’re going to find out a few people in this country got the message a long time ago and are doing something about it—using their time, money and talent to protect what they have. Funny, but it’s fun too. It’s a real pleasure to shove it up and break it off in Moscow’s tail. We’re not any better than the Washington boys. We just have more latitude to operate in and can buy what they can’t, and have that nice, juicy knowledge that we can’t be pushed too far because whatever we do, we’re protected, and in that respect we can use the Soviet’s own cute techniques to slam back at them.”
    “I’ve heard that speech before.”
    “And I never get tired of giving it, buddy.”
    “So what did Vito Salvi tell you?”
    “Let’s start from the beginning. You first,” I said.
    As usual, he waited, digesting his thoughts, but as usual, he came across. He had to and I knew it so I just sat there until he was ready. “Tiger... those two men...”
    “Go on.”
    “One came from Poland. He brought the story in.”
    “What story?”
    “There was a man named Louis Agrounsky, an engineer.”
    He looked at me carefully, but I shook my head. “Never heard of him.”
    “Very few ever did. He was an electronics engineer employed on our ICBM projects. In fact, the chief technician, in charge of the project. Somehow or other he has disappeared.”
    “When?”
    “About a year ago.”
    “What makes him important?”
    “Only one thing.”
    I waited. Charlie Corbinet was watching me carefully, the drink in his hand forgotten.
    “What?”
    “The simple fact that Moscow’s top agent was assigned to locate him.”
    “So?”
    “Those two men were assigned to find him too, just to uncover why the Soviets wanted him so badly. They were narrowing down the search when they disappeared and you showed up in time to really scramble things.”
    Rondine came up with another drink and shook one of the capsules from the bottle and handed them both to me silently. I didn’t really notice it, but my side was hurting like hell.
    “Now you tell me,” Charlie said and I knew he had spilled all he knew.
    When I swallowed the capsule and washed it down