Kirby's Last Circus Read online

  “You must have something.”

  “Yes, we can smell smoke but smoke is intangible—we’ve had operatives on this thing since back in April when Pentagon Radio first picked up shortwave radio signals beamed to Moscow. So far, we’ve drawn blanks.”

  “That’s not so unusual, is it—radio signals beamed to Moscow?”

  “It’s unusual when our triangulation processes indicate that they emanate from somewhere in the immediate area of Grizzly Gulch, Illinois—damned unusual!”

  “Why so? Probably just a kid with a ham rig, seeing what he can scare up.”

  Dixie shook her head emphatically. “Don’t you believe it! We’re dealing with highly sophisticated communications gear! This carrier-wave packs enough sock to transmit around the globe!”

  “Are there responses to these signals?”

  “We don’t know—the Kremlin could be burying replies in its shortwave weather reports, just as the Japanese did in December of ’41. Langley’s theory is that the KGB’s listening station is divorced from its transmitter—a safety precaution—that way, if we grab one, the other is alerted.”

  “The stuff out of Grizzly Gulch—coded text or clear?”

  Dixie made a wry face. “Coded, of course, but Pentagon Radio can’t find the handle because the transmissions are so damned brief. What can you do with a group of seven characters?”

  “Plenty, if you have enough groups.”

  “Yes, but there’s only one group per transmission and it’s always the same.”

  “No variations?”

  “Not the slightest—‘SAMD + 23,’ over and over again. What the hell can ‘SAMD + 23’ mean?”

  Kirby squelched his cigarette and frowned. “Some kind of sports-line?”

  “We can do without the humor, Kirby.”

  “Just a thought.”

  Dixie said, “We don’t have a green light yet, but now that they’ve hit Gallagher, something has to give! We can’t make waves because the Agency’s been taking a lot of left wing media heat recently, so if we’re barking up the wrong tree, we’ll back off and leave the waters unruffled.”

  “There’s a chance that you’ve picked up a false scent?”

  “Yes, but it’s one in a million.”

  “You said, ‘we’—you’ll be coming along?”

  “Absolutely! We work in pairs where affairs of magnitude are concerned, but we won’t work shoulder-to-shoulder in Grizzly Gulch. It’s a crossroads village—population something like four thousand, if you count cows and stray dogs—no theatre, no bingo parlor, just a couple of bars, a small hotel, a ball park at the south end of town and a circus on the northern outskirts. It’s the circus that interests us.”

  “Why the circus?”

  “Too many coincidences, Kirby.”

  “Such as?”

  “We’ll discuss them later. You should be ready to travel on short notice because Hastings Jefferson will be in contact with Langley sometime today and I’m betting that we’ll be turned loose! We’ll run down there, we’ll stay in close touch, we’ll watch and listen, and sooner or later we’ll flush something! Jim Gallagher was no alarmist, and he was one hundred percent sure that national security is on the line!”

  “What happens to Sarah’s Boutique while you’re in Grizzly Gulch?”

  “Marianne will handle things here—she’s a capable junior field supervisor. This place serves as a front for our Chicago operations war-room—Sarah’s doesn’t sell fifty items of clothing a year.”

  “I can understand that—I’ve seen a few of your price tags. I’m to report to the Grizzly Gulch baseball team—what about you?”

  “I’ll be with the circus.”

  “Doing what?”

  The corners of Dixie Benton’s violet eyes crinkled mischievously, a quarter-smile toying with the corners of her full-lipped mouth. Very deliberately she extinguished her cigarette. “Well, honest to God, Kirby, I was beginning to think you’d never ask!” She stood, stepping clear of her chair, undoing her belt, and slipping her gauzy dress over her head. She wore no half-slip, only a white lace brassiere and a pair of white bikini panties that appeared to have been applied with an air-brush. She raised her hands high above her head and began to snap her fingers at a brisk tempo. She showed Kirby what she’d be doing with the circus. Kirby nearly went crosseyed trying to keep track of her navel. It was buzzing in every possible direction, like a demented hornet.

  Kirby blinked. “Belly dancing?”

  “Why not? I learned the tricks a couple of years ago when I was working Istanbul!” She perched on the edge of her desk, her long legs crossed at the ankles. She smiled at Kirby. She said, “It’s really quite easy.”

  Kirby said, “Uhh-h-h-h, Ms. Benton—”

  “Dixie, dammit!”

  “Right—Dixie—aren’t you going to get dressed?”

  “Well, yes, eventually, I suppose, Kirby.” Her violet eyes flashed with challenge. “Why do you ask?”

  “Oh, just curious.” He groped for a change of subject. “Where is Grizzly Gulch?”

  “South.”

  He got up and plucked his hat from the floor beside the wingback chair. “Yes—yes, that’s right—I believe that Jefferson may have mentioned that it was south of here. Well, I won’t require much notice, so…”

  Dixie Benton fidgeted on the edge of her desk. “You know which way south is, don’t you, Kirby?”

  “I could probably figure it out.”

  “Oh, that’s wonderful!” She popped from the desk with the feathery agility of a kitten. She walked flush up against him like a woman who knows exactly where she’s going and exactly what she’s going to do when she gets there. She gripped his shoulders and leaned back to peer up at him, her eyes turbulent, her rose and spice perfume rolling over him like a crimson fog. She kissed him. Just once. For five minutes. His ears were roaring like Niagara Falls. She said, “Kirby?”

  Kirby dropped his hat. “Uhh-h-h-h, yes?”

  “I have a navigational problem for you—if the top of my head is north, could you find your way south from there?”

  Kirby stepped on his hat. “I could take a whack at it.”

  “Then don’t just stand there—go south, young man!”

  In a moment Dixie Benton’s eyes were closed tightly and her voice had trailed away into a throaty whisper. She was saying, “Yes, that’s south, and you’ve just crossed the Mason-Dixon Line!” She locked her arms around Kirby’s neck and squeezed until his eyes bulged. She said, “Ooooooh, God!” She sighed and said, “Ooooooh, God!” She gulped in a long, shuddering breath and said, “OOOOOOH, GOD!!!!!”

  Kirby’s hat had been smashed flatter than a Sunday morning billfold. He was swallowing hard. He said, “How far to the Gulf?”

  Dixie Benton was vibrating like an out of control jack-hammer and she gasped, “You’re there—oh, Jesus Christ, Kirby, you’re on the shore!” She seized him by his ears to back him in the direction of the leather couch behind her desk. She murmured, “Do come in—the water’s fine!”

  Seven

  The steaming gray canyons of the Loop were nearly silent under the light of a pallid three-quarters moon, and it was beyond midnight when Kirby located his Ford, dug a parking ticket from under the left windshield wiper, tore it into tiny pieces, and drove northward on the Outer Drive along the shores of an inkily placid Lake Michigan. He popped a tape into his cassette-player—the old Miller Orchestra doing “Sunrise Serenade,” “Moonlight Cocktail,” “Santa Fe Trail,” and assorted sweet chestnuts from a time when America’s music had amounted to considerably more than a bloodthirsty banzai attack on the human eardrum. It was mellow stuff, melody to think by, and Kirby thought by it. Well, get out of the way, world, here comes Birch Kirby, closing out one more wasted day, every muscle of his aging, abused body aching, his ravaged groin area alternating between empty throbbing and dull numbness, his hair pulled, his back clawed, his shoulders chewed on, his neck sporting a cranberry splotch the size of a
silver dollar, but it hasn’t been a total loss—he’d learned the meaning of those Bengal tigress paintings and he’d savored every thirsty gulp of the damning elixir that transforms boys into men, men into fools, and fools into doddering shells. Yes, indeed, here comes Birch Kirby on his private supercharged treadmill to where-the-hell-ever, losing ground with every staggering stride, old enough to know better but too young to do anything about it. Still, there was always tomorrow, and that disturbed him because tomorrow had always been Birch Kirby’s unlucky day.

  He swung his rattling Ford away from the lake shore to roll west on Belmont Avenue and down a long tunnel of darkened shops and glaring, blaring taverns. The Miller Orchestra tape clicked off and so did Kirby’s thinking. It was twelve forty-five when he entered Lulu’s Jungle Tap. The place was nearly deserted, a drunk drowsing on a stool and Lulu leaning on the bar, holding hands and chatting with Bud Hackelson. The cheap plastic radio on the back-bar honked out an organ rendition of “Blue Berry Hill” and Kirby remembered the first time he’d heard the number—it’d been eleven o’clock at night and he’d been parked behind Jake Dargan’s Hardware Store with Jake Dargan’s wife and the car radio had played “Blueberry Hill” while he’d tremblingly helped Carrie Dargan out of her wet-crotched black panties and Jake Dargan had swung by to check his burglar alarm or some God damned thing and he’d hauled Carrie out of the car and he’d kicked Kirby’s ass halfway to Baltimore. Kirby had been eighteen then and Carrie had been thirty-eight. Four years later Jake Dargan had run away to California with the skinny young pianist from Marie Schollenbeck’s Sunset School of Dance, Carrie had gotten a divorce, sold the hardware store, married a missionary to Uganda or Gary, Indiana, Kirby wasn’t sure which, and the frantic Blueberry Hill scene had added up to a great deal of excitement over nothing of much consequence. In the dim recesses of a booth, someone coughed and Kirby turned to see Hastings Jefferson of the Central Intelligence Agency, motioning to him. Jefferson whistled to Lulu and she rustled up a bottle of Hickory Barrel Ale for Kirby and a gin and tonic for Jefferson. Jefferson pushed money at Lulu and when she was gone he raised his glass to Kirby. His eyes were badly bloodshot. He said, “Cheers, for Christ’s sake!”

  Kirby said, “Cheers, and thank you.”

  Jefferson said, “This is my fifteenth—I’ve been waiting since seven o’clock.”

  “I was being briefed by Dixie Benton.”

  Jefferson nodded. “I’d assumed that you’d be briefed by Dixie Benton, but I failed to assume that you’d be briefed for eight fucking hours!”

  Kirby took a slug of his beer. “Well, as you say, Dixie’s thorough.”

  “Usually, Dixie can run through half-a-dozen briefings in eight hours.”

  “Well, she sure beat hell out of half-a-dozen tonight!”

  “I knew that when you stumbled through the door.”

  “That is, she got into any number of subjects—geography, for example.”

  Jefferson was shaking his head. “Y’know, Kirby, that’s Dixie’s single weakness.”

  “Geography?”

  “She’s a nymphomaniac!” Jefferson’s brow was scowl-darkened. “This branch of the service is teeming with nymphomaniacs! Nymphomania must be an employment requisite!”

  Kirby said, “I’ll be damned.” Better than saying nothing at all, he thought, if not much.

  Jefferson said, “Dixie Benton is one of the finest operatives in the history of this slimy racket! She can shoot the ears off a termite, she’s a world-beater at karate, a flat-out genius where disguise is concerned, she has the reflexes of a mongoose, the courage of a mama lion, and she’s smarter than a seventy-five-dollar buggy-whip!” Jefferson sighed disconsolately. “But she’s a flaming dyed in-the-wool, brass-bound, gilt-edged, Class double A nymphomaniac!”

  Kirby lit a cigarette and sat watching the paper match curl and die in the cheap tin ashtray.

  Jefferson was saying, “Back in April, Dixie was bringing Boris Chekov in—” He stopped to shudder at the recollection.

  Kirby said, “Who’s Boris Chekov?”

  “Chekov was a crack KGB agent, one of their four best—only Caviar, Kisarze, and Tofchitsky ranked Chekov!”

  “‘Caviar’? I thought caviar is a Russian delicacy.”

  “‘Caviar’ is his code name—the others had code names but over the years we’ve managed to peel them off. We can’t get to Caviar’s real name.”

  “You said that Chekov was a crack KGB agent—is he dead?”

  “No, but he might as well be. Chekov was important—we could have learned a lot from that rotten sonofabitch.” There was a wistfulness in Jefferson’s voice.

  “You didn’t?”

  “Damned little, considering the effort expended to bag him! Before Dixie handed him over, she’d taken him to bed. Chekov was a wreck, a shambles—the poor bastard’s mind was completely blown!”

  “Well, what the hell, he didn’t have to hit the hay with her.”

  Jefferson scratched the back of his neck, squinting. “Kirby, when you get the business end of a .357 Magnum stuck in your ear, you just might be surprised at the things you’ll do.”

  “But, my God, that’s rape!”

  “Oh, there are better ways of putting it—‘persuaded’ might be one.”

  “That’s a bit farfetched—a CIA agent raping a KGB agent.”

  “Well, Kirby, the field of espionage is farfetched territory—you believe everything, and you believe nothing—that way you get to be half-right every day.”

  “Chekov was out of the ball game?”

  “Out of it? Boris Chekov stumbled into our interrogation room, believing that he’d just come out of the Battle of Stalingrad! He kept hollering, ‘Stretcher bearer! Stretcher bearer!’ It was pathetic! You hate to see something like that happen to a man, even if he is with the fucking KGB!”

  “Reminds me of my second cousin—every time he gets looped, he thinks he’s on Hill 700.”

  “Hill 700?”

  “Yeah—on Bougainville, World War II—

  Buy me another, if you will,

  And we’ll drink to the Bastards of Bougainville.

  They came to stay and they stayed to fight,

  They died by day and they died by night,

  They walked in blood and they slept in shit

  On that steamy chunk of a witch-whore’s tit,

  And the awful stench rose to the skies

  And the angels puked and God wiped his eyes,

  And the corpses festered in the sun,

  and the flies grew fat, and the Devil won.”

  Jefferson was staring open-mouthed at Kirby. He said “Jesus Christ, who the hell wrote that?”

  “My second cousin.”

  “Delirium tremens?”

  “No, Harold Kirby.”

  Jefferson thought it over. Then he said, “Yes, Bougainville was rough, no doubt, but, you see, Boris Chekov is too young to have been in the Battle of Stalingrad—he’s just thirty-five.”

  “Yeah, well, Harold Kirby is only twenty-four, whaddaya think of that?”

  Jefferson leaned toward Kirby. He said, “How did you get that big red splotch on your neck?”

  “Birthmark.”

  “Uh-huh—well, it’s a birthmark you didn’t have yesterday.”

  “Sometimes I got it, sometimes I don’t.”

  “I see—and right now you got it.”

  “I don’t pay much attention.”

  “Strange.”

  “Not really—a whole bunch of people have birthmarks.”

  “Like yours?”

  “Maybe not like mine, but a woman up on Foster Avenue had a perfect blue caboose on her left buttock.”

  “When was this?”

  “When she was born—that’s why they call them birthmarks, you see.”

  “Let me put it this way—when did you see this blue caboose?”

  “The minute she dropped her panties.”

  “Yes, Kirby, but when—yesterday—l
ast month?”

  “Fifteen years ago, me and the West End Liquors baseball team.”

  “Oh, she was a stripper.”

  “No, she was the wife of the guy who owned West End Liquors.”

  “Where did you see the blue caboose?”

  “Oh her ass, like I already told you.”

  “Yes, but dear God in Heaven, Kirby, where was her ass?”

  “In her bedroom—she was throwing a party for the ball team. She told us that her mother had been frightened by a Soo Line locomotive. At Grand and Edgington in Franklin Park, I think she said.”

  Jefferson cleared his throat. He seemed nervous. “What about her husband—where was he when she was displaying her blue caboose?”

  “At West End Liquors—it was on fire, as I recall.”

  Jefferson was drumming the table-top to a tango rhythm. “But if her mother was frightened by a Soo Line locomotive, why a blue caboose? That doesn’t make a lick of sense!”

  “I know it. The Soo Line got black and white cabooses.”

  Jefferson blinked several times. “Is that right?”

  “Sure, with real big letters. The Soo Line got a freight yard up in Schiller Park.”

  Jefferson jerked a blue bandana handkerchief from his hip pocket. He was sweating profusely. The pressure of the Grizzly Gulch thing was getting to him, Kirby thought. He said, “Well, anyway, Chekov had a birthmark exactly like yours.”

  “Where?”

  “Same damn place.” Jefferson’s sigh was audible and born of relief. He blotted sweat from his forehead, steadying himself with a visible effort and shrugging the birthmarks away. He said, “All right, Kirby, I’m here for one reason—Langley has notified me that we have a go-sign for this Grizzly Gulch safari. Dixie Benton will be driving down there tomorrow morning and she’ll pick you up in front of your apartment building at ten-thirty sharp. You’ll be ready?”

  Kirby nodded a nonchalant nod.

  Jefferson got to his feet and left the booth. He patted Kirby lightly on the shoulder. He said, “Y’know, Kirby, when Jim Gallagher first told me about you, I was inclined to doubt him, but, brother, you’ve made a believer out of me! In all my years of service I’ve never seen anything quite like you! You bring it off beautifully, your bonehead facade is virtually impenetrable, and how Jim ever saw through it defies my comprehension!” Jefferson went out, mopping his face, shaking his head, but smiling.