There was something like respect in his eyes now. "It's amazing that you even heard of it."

"I have friends in amazing places."

"Yes, you had."

As slowly as I could I put the gla.s.s down. "What's that supposed to mean?"

And then his eyes came up, fastened on my face so as not to lose sight of even the slightest expression and he said, "It was your girl, the one called Velda, that he saw on the few occasions he was home. She was something left over from the war."

The gla.s.s broke in my hand and I felt a warm surge of blood spill into my hand. I took the towel John offered me and held it until the bleeding stopped. I said, "Go on."

Art smiled. It was the wrong kind of smile, with a gruesome quality that didn't match his face. "He last saw her in Paris just before the war ended and at that time he was working on b.u.t.terfly Two."

I gave the towel back to John and pressed on the Band-Aid he gave me.

"Gerald Erlich was the target then. At the time his name wasn't known except to Richie-and the enemy. Does it make sense now?"

"No." My guts were starting to turn upside down. I reached for the beer again, but it was too much. I couldn't do anything except listen.

"Erlich was the head of an espionage ring that had been inst.i.tuted in 1920. Those agents went into every land in the world to get ready for the next war and even raised their children to be agents. Do you think World War II was simply the result of a political turnover? "

"Politics are not my speciality."

"Well, it wasn't. There was another group. It wasn't part of the German General Staff's machinations either. They utilized this group and so did Hitler-or better still, let's say vice versa."

I shook my head, not getting it at all.

"It was a world conquest scheme. It incorporated some of the greatest military and corrupt minds this world has ever known and is using global wars and brushfire wars to its own advantage until one day when everything is ready they they can take over the world for their own." can take over the world for their own."

"You're nuts!"

"I am?" he said softly. "How many powers were involved in 1918?"

"All but a few."

"That's right. And in 1945?"

"All of them were-"

"Not quite. I mean, who were the major powers?"

"We were. England, Germany, Russia, j.a.pan-"

"That narrows it down a bit, doesn't it? And now, right now, how many major powers major powers are there really?" are there really?"

What he was getting at was almost inconceivable. "Two. Ourselves and the Reds."

"Ah-now we're getting to the point. And they hold most of the world's land and inhabitants in their hands. They're the antagonists. They're the ones pushing and we're the ones holding."

"d.a.m.n it, Rickerby-"

"Easy, friend. Just think a little bit."

"Ah, think my a.s.s. What the h.e.l.l are you getting to? Velda's part of that deal? You have visions, man, you got the big bug! d.a.m.n, I can get better than that from them at a jag dance in the Village. Even the bearded idiots make more sense."

His mouth didn't smile. It twisted. "Your tense is unusual. You spoke as if she were alive."

I let it go. I deliberately poured the beer into the gla.s.s until the head was foaming over the rim, then drank it off with a grimace of pleasure and put the gla.s.s down.

When I was ready I said, "So now the Reds are going to take over the world. They'll bury us. Well, maybe they will, buddy, but there won't be enough Reds around to start repopulating again, that's for sure."

"I didn't say that," Art told me.

His manner had changed again. I threw him an annoyed look and reached for the beer.

"I think the world conquest parties changed hands. The conqueror has been conquered. The Reds have located and are using this vast fund of information, this great organization we call b.u.t.terfly Two, and that's why the free world is on the defensive."

John asked me if I wanted another Blue Ribbon and I said yes. He brought two, poured them, put the bar check in the register and returned it with a nod. When he had gone I half swung around, no longer so filled with a crazy fury that I couldn't speak. I said, "You're lucky, Rickerby. I didn't know whether to belt you in the mouth or listen."

"You're fortunate you listened."

"Then finish it. You think Velda's part of b.u.t.terfly Two." Everything, yet nothing, was in his shrug. "I didn't ask that many questions. I didn't care. All I want is Richie's killer."

"That doesn't answer my question. What do you think think?"

Once again he shrugged. "It looks like she was," he told me.

So I thought my way through it and let the line cut all the corners off because there wasn't that much time and I asked him, "What was Richie working on when he was killed?"

Somehow, he knew I was going to ask that one and shook his head sadly. "Not that at all. His current job had to do with illegal gold shipments."

"You're sure."

"I'm sure."

"Then what about this Erlich?"

Noncommittally, Art shrugged. "Dead or disappeared. Swallowed up in the aftermath of war. n.o.body knows."

"Somebody does," I reminded him. "The Big Agency boys don't give up their targets that easily. Not if the target is so big it makes a lifetime speciality of espionage."

He reflected a moment and nodded. "Quite possible. However, it's more than likely Erlich is dead at this point. He'd be in his sixties now if he escaped the general roundup of agents after the war. When the underground organizations of Europe were free of restraint they didn't wait on public trials. They knew who their targets were and how to find them. You'd be surprised at just how many people simply disappeared, big people and little people, agents and collaborators both. Many a person we wanted badly went into a garbage pit somewhere."

"Is that an official att.i.tude?"

"Don't be silly. We don't reflect on att.i.tudes to civilians. Occasionally it becomes necessary-"

"Now, for instance," I interrupted.

"Yes, like now. And believe me, they're better off knowing nothing."

Through the gla.s.ses his eyes tried to read me, then lost whatever expression they had. There was a touch of contempt and disgust in the way he sat there, examining me like a specimen under gla.s.s, then the last part of my line cut across the last corner and I asked him casually, "Who's The Dragon?"

Art Rickerby was good. d.a.m.n, but he was good. It was as if I had asked what time it was and he had no watch. But he just wasn't that good. I saw all the little things happen to him that n.o.body else would have noticed and watched them grow and grow until he could contain them no longer and had to sluff them off with an aside remark. So with an insipid look that didn't become him at all he said, "Who?"

"Or is it whom? Art?"

I had him where the hair was short and he knew it. He had given me all the big talk but this one was one too big. It was even bigger than he was and he didn't quite know how to handle it. You could say this about him: he was a book man. He put all the facts through the machine in his head and took the risk alone. He couldn't tell what I knew, yet he couldn't tell what I didn't know. Neither could he take a chance on having me clam up.

Art Rickerby was strictly a statesman. A federal agent, true, a cop, a dedicated servant of the people, but foremost he was a statesman. He was dealing with big security now and all the wraps were off. We were in a bar drinking beer and somehow the world was at our feet. What was it Laura had said-"I saw wars start over a drink"-and now it was almost the same thing right here.

"You didn't answer me," I prodded.

He put his gla.s.s down, and for the first time his hand wasn't steady. "How did you know about that?"

"Tell me, is it a big secret?"

His voice had an edge to it. "Top secret." "Top secret."

"Well, whatta you know."

"Hammer-"

"Nuts, Rickerby. You tell me."

Time was on my side now. I could afford a little bit of it. He couldn't. He was going to have to get to a phone to let someone bigger than he was know that The Dragon wasn't a secret any longer. He flipped the mental coin and that someone lost. He turned slowly and took his gla.s.ses off, wiping them on a handkerchief. They were all fogged up. "The Dragon is a team."

"So is Rutgers."

The joke didn't go across. Ignoring it, he said, "It's a code name for an execution team. There are two parts, Tooth and Nail."

I turned the gla.s.s around in my hand, staring at it, waiting. I asked, "Commies?"

"Yes." His reluctance was almost tangible. He finally said, "I can name persons throughout the world in critical positions in government who have died lately, some violently, some of natural causes apparently. You would probably recognize their names."

"I doubt it. I've been out of circulation for seven years."

He put the gla.s.ses on again and looked at the backbar. "I wonder," he mused to himself.

"The Dragon, Rickerby, if it were so important, how come the name never appeared? With a name like that it was bound to show."

"h.e.l.l," he said, "it was our our code name, not theirs." His hands made an innocuous gesture, then folded together. "And now that you know something no one outside our agency knows, perhaps you'll tell code name, not theirs." His hands made an innocuous gesture, then folded together. "And now that you know something no one outside our agency knows, perhaps you'll tell me me a little something about The Dragon." a little something about The Dragon."

"Sure," I said, and I watched his face closely. "The Dragon killed Richie."

Nothing showed.

"Now The Dragon is trying to kill Velda."

Still nothing showed, but he said calmly, "How do you know?"

"Richie told me. That's what he told me before he died. So she couldn't be tied up with the other side, could she?"

Unexpectedly, he smiled, tight and deadly and you really couldn't tell what he was thinking. "You never know," Art answered. "When their own kind slip from grace, they too become targets. We have such in our records. It isn't even unusual."

"You b.a.s.t.a.r.d."

"You know too much, Mr. Hammer. You might become a target yourself."

"I wouldn't be surprised."

He took a bill from his pocket and put it on the bar. John took it, totaled up the check and hit the register. When he gave the change back Art said, "Thanks for being so candid. Thank you for The Dragon."

"You leaving it like that?"

"I think that's it, don't you?"

"Sucker," I said.

He stopped halfway off his stool.

"You don't think I'd be that stupid, do you? Even after seven years I wouldn't be that much of a joker."

For a minute he was the placid little gray man I had first met, then almost sorrowfully he nodded and said, "I'm losing my insight. I thought I had it all. What else do you know?"

I took a long pull of the Blue Ribbon and finished the gla.s.s. When I put it down I said to him, "Richie told me something else that could put his killer in front of a gun."

"And just what is it you want for this piece of information?"

"Not much." I grinned. "Just an official capacity in some department or another so that I can carry a gun."

"Like in the old days," he said.

"Like in the old days," I repeated.

CHAPTER 8.

Hy Gardner was taping a show and I didn't get to see him until it was over. We had a whole empty studio to ourselves, the guest chairs to relax in and for a change a quiet that was foreign to New York.

When he lit his cigar and had a comfortable wreath of smoke over his head he said, "How's things going, Mike?"

"Looking up. Why, what have you heard?"