Milo March #9

Kendell Foster Crossen, M.E. Chaber

Description

Milo March, back in uniform again, does his bit for the CIA in a quest for a paper stolen from the highest government files—a job that the government can trust only to him. Milo, relying only on his wits and seemingly unlimited American dollars, travels from Paris to East Berlin and then to Moscow. He drugs a Russian delegate at a trade congress in East Berlin and trusses him up like a chicken in order to assume his identity and attend a reception party where he comes face to face with Premier Khrushchev himself. He lures a beautiful brunette who is an important Russian spy into a date by posing as a shy comrade who just happens to have a collection of her favorite American jazz records. As if that weren’t enough chutzpah, he then steals the private limo of a high Russian official and, after changing identities again, leads the secret police on an insanely dangerous goose chase. Fortified by vodka-fueled courage and the thrill of risk-taking, Milo stirs up enough trouble to make even the Kremlin see red, not to mention his own government. And before the conclusion of this tense and exciting adventure, he even endangers the entire mission to protect an enemy out of loyalty to that special breed of humans who are secret agents.

Sujets

• Detectives
• Cold War
• Thriller
• Pulp Fiction

Informations

• Publié par: Steeger Books
• Date de parution: 09 août 2020
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9788835875994
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 4 Mo

Extrait

So Dead the Rose
by
Kendell Foster Crossen
Writing as M.E. Chaber

Steeger Books / 2020
Copyright Information

Published by Steeger Books
Visit steegerbooks.com for more books like this.

©1987, 2020 by Kendra Crossen Burroughs
The unabridged novel has been lightly edited by Kendra Crossen Burroughs.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without permission in writing from the publisher. The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law.

Publishing History

Hardcover
New York: Rinehart & Co., February 1959.
Toronto: Clarke, Irwin & Co., 1959.
London: T. V. Boardman (American Bloodhound Mystery #286), January 1960.

Paperback
New York: Pocket Books #1274, March 1960. Cover by Jerry Allison.
New York: Paperback Library (63-396), A Milo March Mystery, #11, August 1970. Cover by Robert McGinnis.
Dedication
For Lisa
She was a phantom of delight
When she gleamed upon my sight …
—William Wordsworth
One

Up to a point it was like any other morning in the week. I reached my office on Madison Avenue at about ten o’clock. The floor was covered with letters that the postman had shoved through the door. I scooped them up and went to my desk. I lit a cigarette and started opening the mail. It was usual, too—up to a point. The phone company wanted money. My subscription to Celebrity Service was about to expire. Someone wanted me to contribute to a charity fund. A restaurant wanted me to pay my bill—a big bill, which had been run up there mostly because the bartender made his dry martinis with Beefeater gin. Somebody else wanted me to subscribe to a magazine. And then there was a letter that started off in a very friendly fashion with “Greetings.” I’d almost finished reading it before I realized it was informing me that I had just been recalled to active duty with the United States Army.
When I finished cursing, I read it again, hoping there was a mistake. But there wasn’t. It said very clearly that Major Milo March of the Army Reserve was recalled to active duty. That was certainly me. Normally it’s Milo March, insurance investigator. Which means that if you bump off your favorite uncle because he’s loaded with the green stuff, and the cops don’t get you right away, I’m sent out to look for you. But then I’d also made the mistake of getting caught in a little donnybrook known as World War II, serving in the OSS, and since then I’d been called back to active duty twice. Each time it had meant nothing but trouble for me, and this time would probably be no different.
I calmed down a little more and took another look at the letter. I was supposed to report in Washington. The time was twenty-one hundred. Or nine o’clock at night. The date was the same date as the morning I was reading the letter. The place was a room number in a Washington hotel.
That made me curse even more, for I knew what it meant. There was only one man in the entire army who would think of having me report for active duty at nine o’clock at night in a Washington hotel room. But there wasn’t much I could do about it and there wasn’t even too much time to brood about it.
I was busy the rest of the day. Fortunately, I didn’t have any cases that were active at the moment, but there were a couple of small local cases that would have to be worked on soon. I arranged for Eddie Coady, another investigator, to take them over. I checked in everything else with my attorney and gave my answering service instructions where to route which calls. I paid up the outstanding bills. Then I went down to the Village to my apartment and dug out an old uniform. It still fit and it was reasonably clean, so I took it around the corner and had it pressed.
By the time I was packed and tricked out like the Army’s idea of the well-dressed man, it was only about two hours before I had to catch the plane for Washington. I took my suitcase and walked over to the Blue Mill on Commerce Street. Alcino, behind the bar, gave me a mock salute and wanted to know if it was Boy Scout week. I gave him a rude answer, in Portuguese so that I wouldn’t shock the nice old ladies who were sitting next to me and sipping their manhattans. After that I ordered a martini. I repeated the order a couple of times and then went into the back and had a steak dinner. By the time I’d finished I had to leave for LaGuardia Airport.
It was just about eight o’clock when I landed in Washington. That still gave me a little time, so I went into a bar and had a triple order of Seagram’s VO. It made me feel more military.
I took a taxi to the hotel. Since I wasn’t sure about the next step, I checked my bag and then I went up to the room number I’d been given in the letter. I knocked on the door.
“Come in,” a voice called.
I opened the door and stepped inside. The room was extremely dark. Before I could react to that, someone pushed the door shut behind me. That completed the darkness.
Something pressed against my side. It felt suspiciously like a gun. “Kto idyot?” a voice asked. The language was Russian.
“Moya familiya March,” I said, automatically answering in the same language. “Ya by khotyel posmotryet vasha komandir.”
“Gde vy zhiveot—” he started to say.
That’s when I went into action. He’d talked enough so that I had a good mental picture of him. I swung quickly away from the pressure against my back, pivoting on one foot and launching one fist in the direction the voice had come from. My knuckles connected solidly with flesh, the impact jarring pleasantly along the muscles of my arm. There was a crash as the victim bounced off the wall and hit the floor.
“All right,” I said tightly. “Somebody had better turn on some lights. And if General Roberts is in the room, he’d better start hiding behind those stars.”
There was a click and a light went on. I’d been right. There were four other men in the room. Two of them were civilians whom I’d seen before. One was George Hillyer, the head of Central Intelligence Agency, and the other was Philip Emerson, his assistant. The third man wore an army uniform with three stars on each shoulder. His name was Sam Roberts and it seemed to me that every time I saw him he’d just gotten a new promotion. The fourth man was sitting on the floor, rubbing his chin and trying to get the dazed expression off his face. He wore the uniform of a captain in the Army. I’d never seen him before.
“Old slippery Sam,” I said to General Roberts. I figured I had a right to talk that way to him. In World War II, I’d worked behind the lines with him when he was only a chicken colonel. Every time I’d seen him since then it had meant trouble for me. “I figured you were in this somewhere. Nobody else would think of making a man report for active duty at nine o’clock at night at a hotel room. And there isn’t another idiot in the service who would have the reporting man walk into a dark room.”
The two civilians were concealing grins, but General Roberts ignored me. He was looking at the Captain on the floor. “Well, Captain,” he said, “how was his Russian?”
“Very good, sir,” the Captain said. He grinned ruefully. “So are, I might add, his reflexes and his right.”
“Sorry I hit you, Captain,” I said, “but it’s one of the risks of serving under a commanding officer who insists on indulging in childish games.”
“Silence,” roared the General. He was glaring at me, his face darkly red. “Major March, you are the most insubordinate, disrespectful, disobedient officer I ever had the misfortune to command. For two cents I’d break you to a second lieutenant and send you to Alaska.”
“Yes?” I said. “Who’s going to pull your chestnuts out of the fire if you do that?”
The two civilians were now grinning openly. General Roberts was struggling manfully with his temper. “What do you mean by that?” he demanded.
“You know damn well what I mean,” I said. “This is the third time you’ve called me back to active duty. The first two times it was to do something you didn’t think your regular boys could do. Why should I think this is any different—especially after that jazz you pulled on me as I came in?”
One of the civilians decided to help the General get off the hook. It was Hillyer. “After all, General,” he said pleasantly, “I think we agreed when we used Major March before that his attitude was somewhat unusual, at least in military circles, but that the results made it worthwhile. As a matter of fact, it was you yourself who first convinced us of this. And we all agreed that he was the man for the present assignment before he was recalled to active duty.”
“I suppose so,” General Roberts said slowly. Some of the color had faded from his face. He stared at me. “Under the circumstances, Major March, we’ll forget that we’re both in uniform. But I sometimes wonder why I didn’t have you summarily shot when we were both overseas during the war.”
“That’s easy,” I said.