Alpha-Beta pushed a small tape-recorder across to Mimis and said:
“It’s all in there. After you’ve played it for the first time, the tape will self-destruct in five hours, enough time for you to memorize the simple instructions.”
Bondopoulos looked at the recorder with distaste.
“Why do we have to go through the stupid ritual with a self-destructing recorder, which makes such a mess in my apartment, when you could give me written instructions that I could then chew and swallow like any respectable secret agent?” he said.
“Five pages of foolscap?” Alpha-Beta inquired, sardonically.
Bondopoulos shrugged. “For the service, I would do anything, as you well know. And talking of my dedication, how about that – “
“Forget it,” Alpha-Beta interrupted. “We have no money. Now go off and play that tape, and if you don’t want it to make a mess in your apartment when it explodes, drop it in the toilet.”
Grumbling inwardly, Bondopoulos left the back room of the pizzeria that served as a front for the headquarters of the Greek sacret service and went home to play the tape. This is what he heard:
“You will proceed to Skopje, disguised as the great grand-nephew of the famous World War I arms dealer Sir Basil Zaharoff. We shall provide you with a false Ukrainian passport in the name of Simigdaly Zaharoff and a catalogue of the latest guns, rifles, tanks, battleships, aircraft carriers, bombers, fighters, missiles and space shuttles available on the world market. You will visit the Minister of War or Defense or whatever he calls himself, of the republic of whatever it calls itself, in Skopje, and while offering to supply him with these state-of-the-art weapons of death, you will endeavor to ascertain the state of his armed forces, where they are deployed and what sort of threat, if any, they could pose to our country if they keep insisting on calling themselves what they shouldn’t be calling themselves and we have to prevent them from doing so.
If the minister you will be visiting places an order for any of the weapons listed in the catalogue, you will take it and we shall supply him with them, making sure, of course, they are all defective. And to guarantee that he does place an order with you, we shall have inserted ten thousand dollars’ worth of hundred dollar bills between the pages of the catalogue as a bribe and in emulation of the discreet methods of your soi-disant great grand uncle.
You will tell him that if he gives you an order, he will receive the second catalogue – implying that he will get another ten thousands dollars.
The passport, the catalogue, your return tickets from Athens to Bucharest and from Bucharest to Skopje and enough money for a three-day stay at the Grand Hotel in Skopje (we can’t afford more) will be sent to you by dispatch rider tomorrow. If you are arrested, tortured, flung into a dungeon and then shot at dawn, the service will of course deny it has ever heard of you but will recommend you for the posthumous award of the Order of the Phoenix which is given to all senior officers and civil servants for long service. This tape will self-destruct in five hours.”
Bondopoulos threw the recorder into the toilet in disgust and forgot all about it. Five hours later, he was rushed to a first aid station to be treated for several small cuts in his bottom caused by the magnetic head and other bits of the tape recorder.
The following day he received the false passport, the arms catalogue and the tickets to Skopje and late that night, after an uncomfortable journey during which he remained standing most of the time, he registered at the Grand Hotel under the assumed name of Simigdaly Zaharoff.
Just as he was about to settle in bed, lying carefully on one side, and preparing to enjoy the latest Barbara Cartland romance, the phone on his night table rang loudly. There was a husky, sexy female voice at the other end of the line, speaking English with a pronounced foreign accent.
“Ees zat Meester Seemeegdaly Zaharoff, ze celebrated arms dealer?”
“It ees, er I mean, it is. What can I do for you?”
“I am Olga Pulovski, ze secretary of General Rosbif Sandvic’, ze minister you vill be seeing tomorrow at 10 am. Ve haf information zat oriel of your rivals, ze notorious Bulgarian arms dealer, Aimekem Popov, vill be vaiting in ze lobby of ze hotel tomorrow morning to stick you wiz hees umbrella and keel you.”
“With his umbrella?” Bondopoulos echoed in surprise.
“Yes, it ees an old Bulgarian custom. You must leave your hotel immediately. Bring ze catalogue wiz you and come and stay wiz me for ze night. In ze morning, ve shall go to ze ministry togezzer.”
She gave him her address and, getting up gingerly, Bondopoulos dressed and took a taxi to Olga Pulovski’s apartment.
She greeted him in a silk negligee, open down the front to reveal a stunning, beautifully shaped body. When Bondopoulos finally tore his gaze away from it to look at her face, he saw ravishingly lovely features with full, pouting lips; velvet blue eyes and a flawless complexion framed in luxuriant, raven-colored hair.
As he stared at her, transfixed with admiration, she took stock of his manty) rugged features, his cool, grey eyes and his athletic body, and gave a low, appreciative whistle.
“Come, let’s go to bed,” she said without further ado.
The bedroom, with its huge bed with the red satin cover and array of dolls on the pillows, was identical to many a one Bondopoulos had seen in the best cat houses around the world. His worst suspicions were confirmed when he saw a printed price list on the back of the bedroom door.
“I thought you said you were General Sandvic’s secretary,” he said, with a hint of disillusionment in his voice.
“I am,” she said, “but I do ozzer tings in ze evening to make ends meet. Zat is how I met Popov last night. He got drunk on champagne and started telling me how he vos going to stick you wiz his umbrella to keep you from seeing Sandvic. Come, take your clothes off and let’s go to bed, and dont’ worry, it’s on me tonight. But let’s have some champagne first.”
Bondopoulos undressed and lay carefully on his side on the king-sized bed while Olga got the champagne. After his first glass, his senses began to leave him and the last thing he heard as he flopped on his stomach and passed out, was Olga saying:
“Vot kind of kinky tings haf you been doing to your po-po?”
In the morning, Bondopoulos woke up with a splitting headache. He groaned and shaded his eyes when Olga pulled open the drapes on the windows and let a brilliant shaft of sunlight into the room.
“What happened last night?”
“I’m sorry, I gave you champagne from ze wrong bottle, the one I use wiz tourists when I roll zem. But after you passed out, my old friend and colleague Eftiheeya Buzumoglu dropped in out of the blue. You remember her, she’s ze girl you worked wiz in Istanbul and who dumped you for ze Russian naval attache. She took one look at your bottom and recognized you immediately.”
“Eftiheeya Buzumoglu,” Bondopoulos exclaimed. “My God, is she still around? What’s she doing here anyway?”
“She’s on assignment for ze Russians and as an old colleague, she came to me for help. But I’m not going to tell you any more. It’s your turn to tell me vot you’re doing here, Secret Agent 007-UP and vy ze disguise as an arms dealer?”
Bondopoulos shrugged and said: “You might as well know. The Greek government is interested in selling its surplus war material but since it cannot make a direct approach to your government, which it has not recognized, it hit on the idea of sending me, as an independent arms dealer who does not need to divulge the source of his weapons.”
“But why send you instead of negotiating secretly through a bona fide arms dealer?” Olga insisted.
“Because they would have to pay a hefty commission to a bona fide arms dealer, whereas me, I’m on the government payroll and I don’t make a cent on any deal.” Bondopoulos said, hoping he had sounded convincingly disgruntled.
Olga thought for a while, then said:
“Eet steel sounds fishy to me, but, anyway, let’s ‘ave a quick breakfast and get going, or you’ll be late for your appointment wiz Sandvic.”
Bondopoulos was convinced that Eftiheeya Buzumoglou was on the same assignment as he was and that Olga was going to give her the deployment plans of the country’s armed forces and a detailed list of its weaponry, Lord knew for how much money. They must have made the deal while he had been flaked out on that bed, dead to the world. He had to know when Olga was seeing Eftiheeya again.
When Olga brought in his breakfast, he asked casually: “I’d like to see Eftiheeya again, even though she pulled a fast one on me that time in Athens. Are you planning to meet again?”
“Yes,” Olga said. “She’s coming round for a drink after work tonight and ve’re going out to dinner after that. Vould you like to join us?”
“With pleasure,” Bondopoulos said. “What time?”
“Give us a chance to talk over old times first. Vy don’t you come round at seven?”
“It’s a deal.”
Bondopoulos’s meeting with Sandvic was concluded without mishap. Sandvic did not open the catalogue, saying he would study it later, and arranged to see Bondopoulos two days hence to discuss the placing of any orders.
At seven o’clock that evening, 007-UP was outside the door of Olga’s apartment and was about to ring the bell when he heard muffled sounds coming from inside. He realized something was seriously amiss. Picking the lock, he opened the door silently and crept inside.
He saw Olga and Eftiheeya both tied to chairs with a burly man facing them and threatening them with a black umbrella.
“You can’t fool me,” he was saying. “I know what Buzumoglu was buying in here,” he kicked a bag stuffed with dollars that was lying beside the chairs, “and I want it for myself. I will count to five, and if you don’t tell me where it is, I shall stab you both with my umbrella and search for it at my leisure.”
Bondopoulos realized the man was Popov and that, like him, he was no arms dealer but a Bulgarian spy after the same information.
He drew his 22 Beretta, fitted a silencer on the muzzle, and as Popov was counting to five, he shot him in the back of the head.
As the heavy body slumped to the ground, Olga and Eftiheeya wept with relief and began heaping thanks on 007-UP.
But instead of untying them, Bondopoulos looked closely at Eftiheeya. She had five moles on her face and neck that didn’t remember her having when he knew her. In fact, he was sure she never had any moles on her face. Then it struck him. Those moles were microdots, supplied by Olga, with all the information on the country’s military set-up, and the money in the bag was what Eftiheeya had paid Olga for the microdots.
He prised the microdots carefully from Eftiheeya’s face and neck with a penknife while she shrieked in protest, and stuck them on his own face and neck. Then he found the bottle of champagne Olga had plied him with the night before and forced them both to drink from it. Finally, he picked up the bag with the money, without bothering to count it, and left the apartment.
That same night, Bondopoulos was on his way back to Athens, still standing most of the time. His only regret was that the night he had spent with Olga had been an unsatisfactory one, to say the least. But if he was any judge of human nature, Olga would be after that money as soon as she could get away from the nameless republic and he smiled to himself pleasantly at the though of their next encounter.
