A Good Peace Read online

  “You’re right. Tell you what. Since I’m your teacher and you have a real thirst for knowledge, perhaps I can extend your knowledge. Have you ever tried the Kentucky Runaway?”

  She raised herself above my chest, staring into my eyes.

  “Kentucky . . . ?”

  “Yes. It’s an American custom that is surprisingly advanced for an area of such slight cultural advantages. But you’ll like the method. All we need is us and some room. Plenty of room to move. It’s quite simple. You pretend to be the horse and I’m your rider. Of course, I don’t get on top of you but rather I stand behind you and when I say Gallop! you try to run ahead of me without my being able to reach you—of course, you can’t duck or dodge. You just keep on the straightaway. Trying to run away, see? I try to head you off. From the rear. It’s a truckload of fun.”

  Her eyes glowed eagerly.

  “Don’t you ever reach the limit of your inventiveness, Master?”

  “Pshaw. I’ve got a million of them—”

  “Don’t you ever quit?”

  That wasn’t Minda Loa walking and I did not have to look up from my chair to see who had barged in on me for the nine thousandth time at the wrong time. Walrus-moustache has an absolute genius for finding me in the buff with some woman. He’s not a voyeur or queer in any way, you understand, it is simply that he is Bad News, Incorporated.

  As a front for the Thaddeus X. Coxe Foundation, which presumes to pose as a group of Right Wing America Firsters, he is also the man who dishes out the espionage assignments that have come very close to getting me killed. In case you haven’t heard, I am the James Bond of the sex world.

  I closed my eyes. I didn’t want to see the supercilious smirk of his trim, classic face. He always came complete with bowler hat, dark clothes and the smirk. And an eternal satisfaction in cutting short my homework.

  “Tut, tut, Damon . . .” I heard him say.

  “I have no desire to discuss dead Egyptian kings with you,” I said, still with my eyes closed. “Please take off. Make like a ballerina and dance away.”

  Minda Loa left my lap. I had to open my eyes. I rocked down in the swivel until my bare feet held the floor. She was quite an exchange student. I think she would have exchanged anything. She had moved swiftly across the floor, genuflected at the feet of Walrus-moustache until her buttocks were a perfect eight. My employer merely coughed brusquely and stared down at her.

  “Does the divine man with the moustache,” Minda Loa cooed in her mellow voice, “wish to make love also?”

  “Certainly not!” Walrus-moustache harrumphed, twirling his scrubby hirsute adornment.

  Minda Loa raised herself, turned to me, bowed and then without so much as a Bye, Bye, Baby, pattered out of the room. Her buttocks shimmered as she walked. The long dark hair trailed; her shoulders sagged, however.

  When the door closed, I yawned.

  “You hurt her feelings,” I said.

  “She made me nervous. Make love. The idea.”

  “I’m glad she made you nervous. Maybe it will cure you of this terrible habit you have of catching me flagrante delicto.”

  His eyebrows rose and he stepped further into the room. His eyes swept over my male equipment and he sniffed again. Out of deference to his internal envy, I moved closer to the desk so that half of me was hidden from view. The important half.

  “Odd you should use that expression, Damon. It has all to do with what has brought me flying to your very doorstep once again. Truly, I could well believe in ESP.”

  “Tell it to Sweeney. Any man who wears a belt and suspenders and carries safety pins doesn’t believe in anything.”

  He scowled and ignored the remark, taking the soft plush chair on the other side of the desk. He could still see my undercarriage so he shifted his chair, still scowling.

  “Damon, we must talk. I’ve locked the door—”

  “I wish I had.”

  He wagged his head. “I have never known a man like you. By my estimate you have had at least one woman every day of your life since your college studies and experiments launched you into the limelight. By thunder, man, I’m probably underestimating the count!”

  “Is there any other way to live?” I reached for my pipe and relit it. I puffed on it and he sighed unhappily.

  “The Foundation needs your services once again. Now, don’t regale me with your familiar complaints and fears. We’ve been through all this before. You’re still the best man we have for any field work that entails sexual activity. Agreed?”

  “Agreed. What now, my love?”

  “I am not your love and since I never intend to take that circuitous route, we won’t discuss it at all.”

  “You’re so right. When it comes to that, you can go screw yourself.”

  “Please,, Damon.” He looked miserable. “Must we? Always you offer me this wit and rebuff, and in the end, you do the job anyway and have a high old time. Do you remember Berlin? Mexico? Sarmania? You got enough research data out of those countries to stock the New York Public Library, the London Museum and, yes, the Smithsonian Institute! Not to mention the National Archives. Do let me get on with it.”

  “Get on with it, then. It’s past my bedtime.”

  “No, my friend. You will pack a bag, two bags if you have to, and sleep on the night plane to Paris. We have another big one for you. As always, perhaps the biggest one so far.” His caustic gaze searched my face. “Have you been following the peace talks?”

  “I follow that all the time. You know me. Piece at any price.”

  “Damon! Stop joking, man. I’m discussing something that is no laughing matter. No place to make puns or bantering remarks. Really, Damon——”

  “All right. Relax.” I put the pipe down, folded my arms and leaned back in the swivel chair. In spite of his being there, I felt like a million dollars, all in negotiable bonds. Minda Loa had made my evening. Not even Walrus-moustache and his categorical imperatives could sour that for me. “What’s bothering the Thaddeus X. Coxe Foundation—and this dreary old automated world of ours ——now?”

  Walrus-moustache stiffened. The way he usually does when he’s about to drop a bomb in my lap. Naked or otherwise.

  “The safety of the free world, Damon.”

  “Oh, that old thing—”

  “World peace, Damon,” he said grittingly between his teeth, “and your inalienable right to go on screwing to your heart’s desire. Does that interest you, my dear fellow Coxeman?”

  I lost my cool. Anything that affects or can affect that—change my way of happy living—had to be important. I put a serious expression on my face to mollify him and paid closer attention. He was heartened by my response and lost some of his own cynicism and biting tongue.

  “Wow,” I said. “All that? What could be so bad that it might do all those terrible things you said?”

  “The Paris peace talks,” Walrus-moustache said with dreadful emphasis. “Someone is out to wreck them. To sabotage them, to kill them. You know what that means? If peace talk fails at this dangerous time, the whole world could go to war. You know what that means?”

  “Yeah. They use the bomb, we use the bomb and nobody will be around to tot up the score.”

  “Precisely. And now I’ll explain it all to you so that you will know why it is so imperative that you fly to Paris as soon as possible. You should have been there yesterday, old boy.”

  “I get the picture. Start talking. The sooner the better.”

  I gave him a break. I put a bathrobe on and made some coffee while he poured out the sad, important, wretched news about the state of the world.

  Something wasn’t only rotten in Paris; it was lousy in every spot on the globe. The Coxeman Foundation was worried. And when they worry, Rod Damon swings into action. Once again, the die was cast. I was going to be asked to give more than my life for my country.

  Once again I was very much wanted.

  Balls and all.

  You’d be amazed, really, just how m
any of the espionage, foreign intrigue cum security problems of this mad old universe have been solved, avoided or gotten around via the bedroom. Sex is perhaps the greatest secret weapon in the business. Ask the CIA, ask Interpol, ask the FBI, but above all, ask the Coxe Foundation. Sometimes a dame with measurements of 38x22x38 can stop a hydrogen bomb from going off if some mad scientist has a restless liver. No specifications on a drawing board can ever match the arsenal of one torrid tomato out to make or break a code or steal a blueprint or make a genius defect to the enemy. As for the male spy—great!

  And if one secret agent, very well hung, properly spirited and loaded with charm, is on your side, why, then you can steal a march on all the would-be Napoleons and budding Eva Perons in the political grab-bag.

  The Coxe Foundation has always found it so.

  I, Rod Damon, am their secret weapon.

  And they sure know how to use me.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Walrus-moustache settled down for a nice long chat. I made myself comfortable behind the desk. Gone but not forgotten was Danielle Lebeau’s fascinatingly incorrect thesis. It still lay on the floor between us. Walrus-moustache had sniffed down at the clutter only once as if to rebuke me for disorderliness but immediately got back to the business at hand. The coffee on the stove bubbled merrily, filling my rooms with the wonderful aroma of fresh Java. Somewhere on the campus grounds, a clock tolled ten times. The night was still young.

  “Take it from the top,” I suggested. “The peace talks are important. I know that. So who’s spoiling the party? Moscow?”

  He shivered. “That could be. They would like to see China busy in Asia, would like the war to continue. But a world holocaust wouldn’t fit into their next ten-year plan right now, I would say.”

  “China, then?”

  “Possibly. They do want the U.S.A. hot and bothered at all times. Anything that drains our economy, such as the war effort, would make them ecstatic. But again—it’s hard to say for sure.”

  “How about the United Arab Republic?”

  “No, Damon.” Walrus-Moustache winced. “It’s true our new man in the White House is committed to help Israel and if the Viet Nam thing ends, we certainly would have more time and more money to aid Israel, but again, the Arabs are merely a possible bad man in this project.”

  “You sure aren’t making it easy,” I said. “Can it be that some notoriously Right Wing Yankee-Doodle-Not-So-Dandies are trying to louse things up? Just out of sheer blindness and stupidity?”

  Walrus-moustache spread his manicured hands and smiled sourly. His eyes were appreciative. He likes it when I know my politics.

  “You have put forth some excellent candidates for troublemaking, Damon. But let me clue you in. Right now, the guilty nation would be anybody’s guess. After all, ostensibly, the whole world is in on the peace talks. Even France has a stake. As well as our British friends and the lesser nations such as Italy and Spain.” He leaned forward in his chair and his right shoe brushed against Danielle Lebeau’s thesis. He ignored it. “As of yesterday, a sex scandal has broken all over Paris. Involving one of the very officials sitting in for France. Gaston Corbeau’s mistress or personal acquaintance or secretary or what have you, was knifed in the left breast with an Oriental dagger. The woman is dead, of course, and all Paris is talking about her affair with a man so highly placed in government. Corbeau is married, you see, and the dead woman, a Miss Danielle Lebeau, seems to have been a member of the Académie Sexualite—you should appreciate that, my dear Damon. It’s a woman’s college devoted to your main interest in life. But to get on with it—whatever the woman was she somehow left a coded message for the Coxe Foundation satisfied that Gaston Corbeau is a victim of unfortunate circumstances. After all, many an influential man gets to know a beautiful woman but you know the French; they are smacking their chops over this one. It’s—ah—extremely juicy. Miss Lebeau was a stunning brunette. Only twenty-one. Corbeau is over sixty. You see how it is. There may be no connection with Miss Lebeau’s demise and the peace talks—except for the nature of the message which we decoded and I now have in my pocket.” He reached into his impeccable coat and drew forth a folded tissue-like streamer of paper, passing it across to me. I took it, my mind agreeing with what he said about ESP. How many women living in Paris could be named Danielle Lebeau who went to academies for sexual study and wrote theses like the one that now lay on the floor of my college home!

  “Lebeau,” I said. “What was she doing in the Académie Sexuality!”

  “Working for her Ph. D. Do you know her?”

  “Only by mutual interest. Pick up that thesis on the floor and don’t call me a hoodoo. It’s a helluva coincidence.”

  While he was snorting in amazement over the by-line typed on the cover of the thesis, I scanned the note. It was in block letters, all caps and had obviously been transcribed from its original form by some Coxeman underling in the office:

  I HAVE REFUSED TO WORK FOR THEM. THEY WISH ME TO INVOLVED THE ADVISORS IN A TRAP WHERE THE WORLD WILL REJECT THE PEACE EFFORTS. THREE MEN AND ONE WOMAN AND MEMBERS OF THE ACADEMY WILL BE CAUGHT FLAGRANTE DEL1CTO. SEE DANIELLE.

  (signed) DANIELLE

  When I looked up, Walrus-moustache was almost glaring at me. I shrugged.

  “Don’t chew my head off. I never met the woman. She sent me her thesis because we lend-lease our professional talent here. I also read theses by overseas students. I don’t know Danielle Lebeau from Danielle Darrieux.”

  “Extraordinary.” He sniffed again. “I come to you with a message sent to us—for you, by the way—from a woman soon to be murdered. What would make her think you were a spy as well as the eminent sexologist, Rod Damon?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Think, man,” he glowered. “You’ve had hundreds of women—no, thousand—had you ever met this Lebeau creature before?”

  “Don’t crowd me. I’ve had more women than you’ve had hot Sunday breakfasts, but offhand, no, I would honestly say I didn’t know her. Not by that name, at any rate. Got a picture of her?”

  He frowned. “Unfortunately, no. You’ll have to find one of her in Paris somehow. Or go see the corpse.”

  “No, thank you. I’m a lover not a ghoul. Damn coincidence, isn’t it? Me having the theseis, you having the message she wanted me to read.”

  “Yes,” he growled. “And when I came in you used the very same expression she used in her decoded message. Flagrante delicto.”

  “In my business,” I sighed, “it’s as normal as saving ‘Had any lately?’ Forget it. Question is—somebody must have tumbled to my cover. The fact that she knew she could reach me through the Coxe Foundation.”

  Walrus-moustache snorted. “Bah, forget that. We underwrite you, don’t we? We pay for your research. Most natural thing in the world, I’d say.” He riffled the pages of the thesis in his fingers. “Mind if I keep this for the time being? There’s a bare possibility of more messages. Either between the lines or invisible ink. We’ll fluoresce it and see what happens.”

  “I doubt that. That is merely a very potent, highly individual interpretation of sexual mores by a young woman out to make a point. But help yourself. It’s Greek to me now. I’m more interested in what happens in Paris.”

  He nodded. “You see now, don’t you, why you must go there at once? The woman’s murder caused a scandal and any scandal however innocent could scuttle the whole project. Which is what we feel somebody certainly wants. Even among lesser officials, this sort of thing could blacken the eyes of the peace program. We can’t have that, can we, now? You recall what the Profumo scandal did to the United Kingdom? It knocked the very bottom out of the English pound!”

  “You’re crazy,” I laughed, “but I’ll go. One of my fellow sexologists has been murdered, obviously, and even though she was a stranger, I feel I owe her the effort, at least. Who knows? Maybe it’s just open season on sex scientists, and that, I am interested in. That could become a dangerous habit, knocking off people wh
o want to find out all there is to know about sex. There’s enough sexual ignorance in the world already.”

  “Damon,” he said standing, “Coffee’s done. May I have a cup?”

  “Sure. Sorry I can’t offer you even a stale doughnut or cruller. You see, sweets are very bad for the masculine potency factor, sugar has a tendency to——“

  “Please, my dear fellow. Spare me your howling in the wilderness. I’ll have my cuppa and then you will fly to Paris. As usual, the Coxe Foundation will allow you a very heavy expense account. I’m leaving you ten thousand dollars in American traveler’s checks. As well as my Paris phone number. Again, caution is your byword and only call me when it’s a life and death matter. Ostensibly, as the head of L.S.D., you can snoop around the Académie Sexualité to your heart’s content. No one will question your interest. But it is up to you to find the connection between the Lebeau woman’s murder and the peace talks. They’ve gone on a long time now and will probably continue past next Christmas, but as long as they continue, nothing must stop them. You will have to investigate and thwart this planned scandal which Miss Lebeau got wind of. Can you do all that, Damon?”

  “Sure. I’m as bright as a pin. Did you know that the name Corbeau is the French word for raven?”

  His eyes popped. “Incredible. And it means——?”

  “Absolutely nothing. Just wanted to show you how bright I am and already I’m making like Sherlock Holmes. Jeezis, relax and sit tight, will you? Have the coffee before you explode.”

  An irritated smile crossed his face but he sat down, crossed his perfectly tailored knees and had a cup of my coffee. He sniffed at the vapors, nodded to himself and sipped. I looked at him and enjoyed my own cuppa knowing he would have preferred tea and that he hadn’t removed his bowler hat in all the time he was in the room. He was a character, all right. My favorite bureaucrat. He would have been a perfect watchdog for a row of IBM machines. He had red tape in every one of his bloody veins.