The Vulcan Disaster

I scowled. “Oh, by the way,” I said. “If you’re going anywhere over water, you might drop this in.” I handed him a not very neat, fairly heavy package wrapped in a hanky. “And it wouldn’t do to go waving it about on the way there.”

He gave me a cold glare. “What’s this? I...”

“The murder weapon,” I said. “The one I shot the General with.”

After he’d gone I finished my scotch and sat there thinking for a few minutes. My reverie was interrupted by the hotel boy’s arrival with my mended coat; I tipped him a dollar, U.S. — somehow I’d never gotten around to changing money yet — and let him out again. As I turned back to the room I spotted the little piece of paper Basil had missed. Cursing the bad ribs, I bent down and picked it up.

When you carry a letter around in your pocket for a long time, folded in three the way letters are, the paper tends to fray along the fold, then, as time wears on, to break off. This was the bottom third of a very short letter. Basil presumably had the top of it, and that part would tell him what the letter said. It wouldn’t — or could, once I thought about it; the expensive deckle-edged stock might be monogrammed or even embossed at the top — tell him who the writer was. Basil Morse had his half, I had mine. I wished I could see his half right now. Mine told me damn little:

...l’honneur, mon general, de visiter chez moi.

Bien sincierement,

KOMAPOB

That was all. And “Komapob?” No. The signature had to be in Russian, even if the letter had been in French. Even now, if a Russian studies a foreign language and it’s not English, it’s likely to be French — tradition. “Komaroff,” then. But who was Komaroff? The name didn’t ring any bells at all. Perhaps — just perhaps — the General had been playing a little game with the Russians. Selling the arms to the highest bidder, toying with the notion of dumping the arms shipment on the Soviets so they could, in turn, “loan” the lot to one of their ever more strange bedfellows around the world for a revolution, or a palace coup.

And if he had been, who would Komaroff — apparently his contact in the matter — be? I gave the mental file a quick check, then a slower one. At neither time did I come up with any reference to anybody named Komaroff, at any level I knew about — and that would be pretty high level. KGB, the Party hierarchy, the whole list of “diplomatic” phonies operating out of the embassies and consulates — everywhere in my mental file that I looked, I drew the same blank.

I poured myself another painkiller and settled back into the seat, favoring the rib cage. Russians, Russians... my mind started free-associating all by itself. Who did I know in the Far East that was Russian? Who would the General know? Who would...

Who would Meyer know?

Of course.

I dug out my wallet and pulled out the homey little photo the late Mr. Meyer had been so fond of. And there she was: gorgeously dressed in a platinum wig and a flawless full-length mink coat, her wide-set, almond-shaped eyes looking up at the photographer through long lashes in a pose so sexy, so seductive, that... well, it made me begin to think interesting thoughts. Erotic thoughts. I blinked, came to, and gave her the once-over again, this time for purely informational purposes, trying to fix the face so that I’d be sure to recognize it.

The mouth was a trifle too wide and a little too full-lipped for absolute perfection, whatever that is. The cheeks had a Tartar broadness that seems to be out of style in some quarters. Not in mine. For my dough she was a lot of woman.

To Hermann with love, the delicate writing on the back of the picture had said. Tatiana...

Okay, so I had a face and a name. There are enough White Russians — daughters, granddaughters, and even great-granddaughters of the original Civil War exiles — left in the Far East for the name to be less of a novelty than it might be in Dubuque. But girls with that name and that face?

I got on the phone again.

“Fredericks here.”

“It’s Hong Kong’s favorite import.”

“What can I do for you, Nick?”

“I need some dope on a broad. The girl is White Russian, and she’s got a blonde wig on in this photo I have. The eyes are set nice and wide and they have this lozenge shape about them, with a little tilt at the corners. Maybe some Oriental blood. On her it looks terrific. The cheekbones are wide — Slavic influence — and the mouth is nice and full...”

“And her name is Tatiana?”

“How’d you... oh, yeah. I sort of thought she’d be hard to hide in a town like this.”

“Oh, she does precious little hiding, chum. Rather the other way round. What do you want with her?”

“Well, I want to see her...”

“Few things could possibly be more easily arranged. Go on.”

“And I want to talk with her...”