Bombshell by Max Collins (pdf ebook reader TXT) 📕

After what seemed an eternity, Harrigan forced his sleep-crusted eyes open, and Sam Krueger’s round face floated over him like a moon with features stuck on, Mr. Potato Head-style.

“Wake the fuck up!” Krueger was shouting, shaking Harrigan by the shoulders. “K is gone!”

“Gone?” The groggy, disoriented Harrigan tried to make sense of the words. “Gone how? Gone where?”

The normally affable Krueger was scowling. “Khrushchev has gone missing, Sleeping Beauty! And our asses are grass.”

All these words Harrigan understood, and—as awake now as if he’d just dived into an icy lake—he bolted upright in bed. The clock on the nightstand reported 2:06 a.m.—and immediately reminded him of Marilyn’s prediction …

… and a promise that had been forgotten in the aftermath of the Hungarian’s assassination attempt at the Ambassador.

But the dream—still vivid in his mind, not fading as so many of his dreams immediately did—indicated that somewhere in his subconscious mind he had taken her seriously. Harrigan only wished his conscious mind had done the same.

As Harrigan threw off the bedcovers, Krueger was at his side, adding gravely, “One of the bodyguards is dead.”

“One of Khrushchev’s KGB ones,” Harrigan said, on the move, smoothing the rumpled suit that had doubled as pajamas.

Krueger was frowning in surprise. “Yeah—how did you know—”

“I didn’t—Marilyn Monroe did.”

“Marilyn Mon … Are you dreaming?”

With Krueger on his heels, Harrigan raced down the hotel corridor toward the Presidential Suite, cursing under his breath. There’d be plenty of time to fill the FBI agent in on the actress’s now largely moot information.

Still, all Harrigan could think of was that he’d let the woman down—and the premier. After the attempt on Khrushchev’s life at the Ambassador Hotel, and the fuss that had followed, he’d been bone tired. He knew he never should have gone to bed, he should have babysat K all night and followed up MM’s lead, but fuck! He’d been bushed, goddamnit—how much could one man withstand? He wasn’t superhuman.

Rushing toward Khrushchev’s room, Harrigan asked Krueger if any of the extra security he’d requested had shown up.

“After you hit the sack, you mean?”

Harrigan glared at him. “Yes—after I hit the sack.”

“Nope,” Krueger said, shaking his head. “Nobody. Not federal, not local. Not even a Campfire Girl.”

Even doing advance work in Des Moines-fucking-Iowa—not exactly a hot-bed of agitators—Harrigan had been able to round up at least five thousand officers to protect Khrushchev. Here, only a few hundred men had stood between the dictator and disaster. They’d been lulled by the finality of the junket, seduced by the California climate …

… and, once again, Jack Harrigan had been caught with his pants down around his ankles.

Harrigan entered the outer room of Khrushchev’s opulent suite; right in his path was the sprawled body of the uniformed KGB agent who’d been guarding the premier’s bedroom door.

“Get on your walkie-talkie and get some more bodies up here,” Harrigan told Krueger. “Live ones.”

Harrigan knelt briefly over the KGB officer, who lay on his back, arms casual at his side. The right lens of the man’s wire-framed Coke-bottle glasses was spiderwebbed and blood-spattered, but enough visibility remained through the lens to make out the black gore-ringed hole where his eye should have been. The Russian’s gun was still holstered. The man had not expected this—either he was one of the conspirators himself … tied off as a loose end by a fellow conspirator … or he’d been caught off-guard by someone he trusted.

The poor dead bastard wasn’t the only one who’d been caught off-guard tonight. As Krueger used the walkie-talkie out in the hallway, Harrigan stepped over the corpse and crossed the outer area of the suite and entered the bedroom through its door, which yawned open, the wood around the lock splintered by the “key” of a bullet.

Quickly the State Department agent surveyed the sleeping quarters.

Feathers littered the mattress, the pillows shot to hell, several bullet holes on the bedcovers as well.

He yanked back the blankets and sheets, and found no sign of blood anywhere. Harrigan read the scene—in the darkness, the assassin had approached the bed and just started shooting, not realizing that the premier was no longer there.

Krueger approached. “We have men on the way, but Jack— there’s another dead guard out in the bushes.”

“Another Russian? KGB?”

Again mildly surprised that Harrigan knew this without being told, the FBI man nodded. “The guard who was supposed to be watching the fire escape… We got a coup on our hands?”

He placed a hand on the FBI agent’s shoulders. “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves, Sam. We have to search these grounds and the whole goddamn hotel, to see if we have any more dead Russians layin’ around.”

“I already have that in motion.”

“Our people only—not K’s!”

Krueger nodded. “Strictly Secret Service… But so far, two dead Rooskies is all we got.”

“Isn’t that enough?”

Krueger’s face was pale as milk—spilt milk. “What if a certain other Russian stiff turns up?”

Harrigan’s laugh was devoid of humor. “Then, Sam, you and I may be the first Americans ever sent to Siberia.”

Harrigan was staring at the open window onto the fire escape, the heavy velvet curtains billowing gently from the autumn night breeze.

“If it weren’t for the bullet-riddled bed,” he said to Krueger, “I’d make this a kidnapping.”

“But it isn’t—it’s an assassination attempt gone … please God … awry.”

“I agree. But then … where’s Khrushchev?”

Krueger shrugged. “If I were him, and thought my own people were after me, I’d run and hide. You try under the bed, Jack?”

Harrigan just looked at Krueger, who’d been kidding of course … but then the FBI man did check under there…

Oleg Troyanovsky rushed into the bedroom just as Harrigan was turning away from the window. The previously unflappable translator—wearing only hastily thrown-on trousers and a blue silk pajama top—had unruly hair and wild eyes.

“What have you done?” the translator demanded.

Harrigan let out a breath. “We haven’t done anything—your people, your KGB guards, got themselves killed.”

“Your incompetence has cost us dearly!”

“Our incompetence? If you people hadn’t insisted on