Cities of the Red Night

'And bring your assistants and the books what you got,' adds Blum.

When Jim and I go to see Blum and Krup on Thursday, we take along the books the Iguanas have given me. Krup looks the books over, snorting from time to time, and as he finishes leafing through each one, he slides it down the table to Blum.

'Mr. Snide, where are the books you are now making?' asks Krup.

'Books? Me? I'm just a private eye, not a writer.'

'You come to make with us the crookery,' snaps Blum, 'we break you in your neck. Hans! Willi! Rudi! Heinrich! Herein!'

Four characters come in with silenced P-38s, like in an old Gestapo movie.

'And now, your assistant will get the books while you and your Lustknabe remain here. Hans and Heinrich will go with him to make sure he does not so lose himself.'

Hans and Heinrich step behind Jim. 'Keep six feet in front us at all times.' They file out.

In half an hour Jim is back with the books. B & K spread them out on the table and both of them stand up and look at them like generals studying a battle plan.

Finally Krup nods. 'Ach ja. With these I think it is enough.'

Blum turns to me, almost jovial now, rubbing his hands. 'Well, you and your assistant and the boy, you are ready to leave, hein?'

'Leave? Where to?'

'That you will see.'

Hans, Rudi, Willi and Heinrich march us up some stairs onto a roof and into a waiting helicopter. The pilot has a blank cold thuggish face and he is wearing a 45 in a shoulder holster. He looks American. The guards strap us into our seats and blindfold us and we take off. The flight lasts for about an hour.

Then we are herded out and into another place, a prop job. Dakota, probably. About three hours this time, and we set down on water. They take off our blindfolds and we now have a different pilot. He looks English and has a beard.

The pilot turns around and smiles. 'Well, chaps, here we are.'

They untie us and we get out on a jetty. It is on a small lake, just big enough to set the plane down. Around the lake I see Quonset huts and in an open space something that looks like an oil rig. A barbed-wire fence surrounds the area with gun towers. There are enough armed guards around for a small army.

In front of a Quonset hut several men are talking. One comes forward to greet us: it is that CIA punk Pierson.

'Well, Snide,' he says. 'Welcome aboard.'

'Well, Pierson,' I say. 'If you can't lick them join them.'

'That's right. How about some chow?'

'That would be just fine.'

He leads the way into a Quonset that serves as a dining room. There are some long tables and tin plates and a number of men eating. Some of them look like construction workers, others like technicians.

My attention is drawn to a table of about thirty youths. They are the best-looking boys I have ever seen at one time, and all of them are ideal specimens of white Anglo-Saxon youth.

'Our genetic pool,' Pierson explains.