Unexpected Mrs. Pollifax Read Free Page B

minutes,” said Carstairs fondly.
    “Have you considered someone not inactive but absolutely new—a fresh face?”
    Surprised, Carstairs said, “No I hadn’t—that would mean someone totally unseasoned, wouldn’t it?”
    Higgins shrugged. “If there’s no point of contact would it matter?”
    “Mmmm,” murmured Carstairs thoughtfully.
    “One has to sacrifice something for said tourist’s being unknown to anyone. I mean, that’s what you want to avoid, isn’t it—someone met in Vienna in 1935 suddenly popping up in Mexico City years later?”
    Carstairs smiled faintly—he doubted if Higgins had even been born in 1935. “Suppose you show me the possibilities,” he suggested. “Very little is demanded of my tourist except accuracy, but he or she must look exactly right.”
    They walked back into the files where photograph after photograph was drawn out, sometimes to be instantly withdrawn with a “Oh dear no, he won’t do, he broke his tibia in the Balkans,” or “Oops, sorry, this lady’s been loaned to the Orient.” When Carstairs left it was with five photographs and a soggy carton of cold coffee.
    “Nothing yet,” said Bishop, glancing up from his typewriter.
    “Damn,” said Carstairs again, checked his watch—it was just half-past nine—and went into the office. Bishop, bless his heart, had left a fresh carton of coffee on his desk and Carstairs peeled it open, brought a cube of sugar from his desk drawer and dropped it into the coffee. He reminded himself that Tirpak was good, one of his best men, but if Tirpak had reported from Nicaragua two days ago he should have been in Costa Rica by now. For eight months Tirpak had been on this job, and from the bits and pieces he’d sent out of South America by wireless and coded mail his eight months had been extremely fruitful. Visually Tirpak was only a photograph in the top-secret files, but Carstairs knew his mind very well—it was that of a computer, a statistician, a jurist. Months ago he had been fed all the tips, stories and rumors that reached the department and from these he was bringing back neat, cold, irrefutablefacts on all of Castro’s secret operations in the hemisphere. But alone the facts were nothing; what was most vital of all was the proof that Tirpak was carrying with him out of South America, proof so concrete and detailed that each nation in the Alliance for Progress would know once and for all the face of its enemy and in exactly what form the Trojan horse of communism would appear in its country.
    Coffee in hand Carstairs walked to the ceiling-high map on the wall and stared at it moodily. One might say that Tirpak’s job of work was finished now, and so it was in the literal sense, but actually it was only beginning. This was “phase two,” the most difficult of all, the getting of the proof into the right hands, moving it north, country by country, until it would arrive here on Carstairs’ desk to be forwarded upstairs. That was the difference between this particular job and the others, that it entailed quantities of documents, photographs, dossiers and descriptions of operating methods. It could only be expected that eventually the wrong people would get wind of Tirpak’s job, and it was no coincidence that several of Tirpak’s informants had begun disappearing. The wonder of it was that Tirpak had worked for so long in secrecy. Now time was against him and Carstairs realized that he was worried. He knew the shape that phase two ought to take if everything went off perfectly … the shabby photographic studio in Costa Rica where Tirpak’s bulky packages of material would be reduced to microfilm, and then the trip into Mexico to leave the microfilm with DeGamez, for Tirpak was
persona non grata
in the United States, a myth that had to be perpetuated for his safety. Once the microfilm reached Mexico City it would be out of Tirpak’s hands and the rest would be up to Carstairs and his tourist—but Tirpak ought to