The Big Bite Read Online Free

grinned. “Sorry. Habit. It’s Nat, all right. Natasha, to be exact. I don’t know what her last name is; she’s had a dozen off and on.”
    “Russian?”
    “Partly—a sort of mixture. When we met her, she was busy in Hungary helping the Communists come in and at the same time selling them out to all the other sides that were there at the time. She had a good thing going when she crossed Dad, who was trying to get some friends of ours out of the country. To save our friends, he exposed her and she had to run. She swore she would get him, but she never did.”
    “Except now—through your name.”
    “I suppose,” Nat said. “Anyway, I went to Mexico. She has a place on an island in the Gulf off a small fishing village called La Cruz. It’s between Tampico and Vera Cruz, in a rather unpopulated section. Her two men are an English renegade called Nigel Forrest—whom I swear I’ve seen somewhere before—and an American-German called Tiber.”
    “New boys to me,” Knox confessed. “So is she. What’s the game, by the way?”
    She grinned at his dry tone. “I wish I knew,” she said, no longer smiling. “But it is something big, Paul. Dad’s man who went there just disappeared. No trace of him. The natives say he went fishing and got too close to Fog Island—a grisly hunk of rock and swamp—and was killed by evil spirits.”
    “Obviously,” Knox said, “she was making sure that all your father’s old group who might be able to identify her were eliminated. How does that make it big?”
    “Wait,” she said. “I came back here and I started checking around. I learned that after she did some gold buying, a regular run took place. The gold was bought with currencies of all kinds but mostly dollars and Cuban pesos.”
    “Oh, oh,” Knox said. He sat up and reached for the brandy bottle.
    “I had the same reaction,” she said. “And I’ve come up with this much. Now that Batista, the Cuban strong man, is threatening to retire, there’s bound to be unrest. In fact, last spring it began. Our Iron Curtain friends seem to be trying to take advantage of the situation and, when it breaks, step in and make another Guatemala out of it. In the guise of ‘doing something for the people,’ an old-line puppet government will be set up.”
    “But why the gold buying?”
    “Because,” Nat argued, “it will be strictly a homegrown revolution to all appearances. That means any obvious financing will have to come from the Cuban revolutionaries themselves. So when the time is ripe they appear—with a treasury full of gold. The fact that the money is Iron Curtain money won’t be apparent.”
    “Very neat,” Knox said. “Have you given this ta the authorities?”
    Nat looked at him as though he had turned simple. “Hardly, Paul. They’d think I was trying to grind my own axe because the woman has taken my identity.”
    It was not only reasonable, it was damned well true, he knew. “How did you make contact with me—as one of our agents?”
    “One of your agents,” Nat said sadly, “was a rather greedy young woman here. She didn’t get greedy until she fell in love with a man who had been with Interpol but had succumbed to a pay-off. The two decided to pool the knowledge they’d got while legal—and go into smuggling. She needed ready cash; I supplied it for the code. That’s all.”
    “I’m glad we’re rid of her,” Knox said. When anyone defaulted in that fashion it always meant trouble. More than one operative had “disappeared” for the good of the Agency. “Anything else?” he asked.
    “Yes,” Nat said. “I saw her before she sailed today. There was a message for you.” She shut her eyes and quoted: “ ‘Get to La Cruz, Mexico. Tinsley raising hell. One of our men, Orvil Curtis, has disappeared down there. Details to be picked up usual place.’
    “Apparently,” Nat said, “World Circle heard I was in Mexico recently.”
    “And sent down Orvil Curtis—whoever he may be—and