Loxfinger

Wop! Wop!

Two silencer-muffled shots slammed into the headboard of the bed upon which Israel Bond was making love to the impassive Oriental girl whose body, insouciantly straddled, lay beneath his eager thighs.

Even as he hurtled his body into a protective dive off the rumpled sheets into the corner of the room, upsetting a lamp, Bond's trained ears instinctively identified the weapon bent upon destroying him; the characteristic sound indicated, of course, an Italian-make gun, probably an Olivetti. Wielded by a very inept assassin, thank God!

Or so he thought until--wop!--a third shot seared his right shoulder. He lay helpless in the corner of Room 1818 of Miami Beach's prestigious Palmetto Roach Hotel, panting, a hot streamlet of blood coursing from his grazed shoulder into the dank, matted hairs of his chest, reddening the golden chain of his mezuzah, the cylindrical symbol of his faith. The lampshade, jarred loose by his dive, landed atop his head. I must be a ludicrous sight, he thought bitterly, a look of resignation framing his dark, cruelly handsome visage as he awaited the fourth bullet, the one that would end his life. Nay, his double life, for he had been sharing two existences--one the carefree, dashing public-relations man about town ("Israel Bond? Oh, yes, that Hebrew chap. Loads of fun at any party ... he knows where the broads and the action are ..."), and Israel Bond, prized member of a clandestine coterie, the Secret Service of the tiny democracy of Israel.

In that service he was known as Oy Oy Seven, a status which gave him license to kill. Not only was an Oy Oy holder licensed to kill, but he was also empowered to hold a memorial service over the victim. Bond thought of M, the head of the Secret Service, the only person to whom he had ever given his total love and trust; M, who had bestowed the Oy Oy rank upon him. But now, Bond reflected as he gazed into the menacing O of the Olivetti, the sallow-complexioned, wiry Levantine type in the bellhop's uniform who held it had that license to kill. And he would use it.

From a corner of a glazed eye, Bond caught the girl's face. No longer was it the sweetly obedient face of the lissome Oriental Bond had picked up a few hours ago. Its lips now were curled into a contemptuous sneer.

Of course! She was part of the cabal. He'd been had. As if she'd overheard his rueful thought, she responded with an insolent, "How big swinger rike his rittle Oriental praymate now?" And she spat into his face.

How different she had been earlier that evening at the Miami Beach Auditorium where Bond had gone with a fellow bon vivant, Seymour Feig, press agent for the Miss World Wow-Eee-Wow contest.

"Bond," Feig had winked, "one of the contestants has kind of a thing for you. She spotted you at the Boom Boom Room the other night and wants to meet you. I think you got a little action there."

So they had met. "My name is (continued on page 188)Loxfinger(continued from page 149) Nu Kee," she had shyly said with Far Eastern submissiveness.

Bond's eyes had twinkled. "A lovely name, my dear. Fraught with promise."

They had cabbed it to Wolfie's at 20th and Collins where the hip, show-wise crowd went. Bond had ordered for both of them, knowingly, crisply: "Morris, we'd like two egg creams, Seventh Avenue and 28th Street style. Made properly, there should be no ice shavings in the eight-ounce Corningware glasses. The seltzer should be cold enough to stand on its own with a 3.5 ratio of pin-point carbonation, roughly 1118 bubbles to the ounce. Before the seltzer is poured, a fourth of the glass should be filled with Walker-Gordon nonpasteurized milk from selected tuberculin-free Holsteins at the Immaculate Farm in Princeton Junction, New Jersey. Only Fox' U-Bet chocolate syrup should be used to complement the milk, both milk and syrup mixed delicately with an 1847 Rogers Brothers spoon, dairy silver, of course, in the tasteful Mrs. Aaron Burr scroll pattern, as the seltzer is added slowly, ricocheting rhythmically off the spoon."

"Boychickl, you've been around," said Morris the waiter, with new respect in his tired, I've-seen-it-all eyes.

At that point Bond had lit a filter-tipped Raleigh with his Nippo, a genuine Japanese copy of a Zippo, and had quizzed the girl.

"Whom do you represent in the Miss World Wow-Eee-Wow contest, my dear?"

She had bowed her head shyly. "Nu Kee not popurar with other girls. I am Miss Viet Cong."

Even now, as he crouched like a trapped animal, Bond remembered those words. Miss Viet Cong! How did I let that one go by me? She practically told me she was with the opposition and like the lazy vegetable I've become, I missed it. M was right. I've let myself get soft.

And the bellhop pointing the gun? What branch of the "oppo" did he represent? Heaven knows, there were many special organizations sworn to wreak havoc upon the secret agents of Eretz Israel. The Soviet Warriors for Immolating Secretive Hebrews? Or, as it was known to the Israelis, Swish. No, this one didn't shoot like a Swish operative. A Swish man would have made his first shot the last one. Perhaps, the Fraternal Egyptian Committee for Extirpating Sabras? Feces!

"No doubt, Mr. Bond," casually interjected the gun wielder, "you are curious as to who it is that will destroy you. I am a devoted member of a new terrorist group unknown to you, Mr. Bond, the Syrian Corps of Heroes for Murdering Unmercifully Craven Kikes. And now, dog of a Jew, say your infidel prayers!"

There was no time to figure out those initials, thought Bond. I've got to play my last card. And to do that I must wheedle, whine, beg.

"Please, please, let me say the final prayer. True, we are mortal enemies, sir, but is it not also true that we share a common Semitic heritage? Do you not accept Moses as the spiritual predecessor of your own great Mohammed? Please, let me pray for salvation, sir. Please ..." and he let his voice crack with emotion.

"Be quick about it!" snapped the Syrian, his finger tightening on the trigger. The girl snickered.

Bond reverentially lowered his head, muttering something in Hebrew. It was a list of the titles of all the Theodore Bikel albums he could remember, but the Syrian would not know that. Slowly, oh so slowly, his fingers slid imperceptibly down the bloodied chain. His fingers found the mezuzah, pointed it at an angle, then squeezed the Star of David. Clearly elated at the sight of a quaking Jew, the Syrian broke into a raucous laugh.

Z-z-z-z-z-z-z-z!

No longer was the Syrian laughing. A look of amazement had come over his features. He looked dumbly at the needle which had whizzed out of the mezuzah into his hand, which was now turning numb. He pitched forward, his fingers clawing at Bond's chest. Bond sidestepped quickly. The Syrian fell face down. It had taken Molochamovis-B, the nerve poison on the needle tip, just two seconds.

He turned to the girl. Her snickering also had stilled at the startling turnabout in the situation. Bond's cold gaze made her blanch.

"Now, my 'rittle Oriental praymate,' " Bond sneered, mimicking her speech, "we've a little unfinished business, haven't we? This ache in my torn shoulder isn't the only one on my Jewish body, you adorable hellcat!"

He crushed her mouth with his own, viciously drinking of her bruised lotus-petal lips. She began to scratch like a maddened jaguar, then sighed and yielded to the unstoppable bulk above her.

Occidental thighs met Oriental thighs, the latter learning the meaning of sweet surrender to a more compelling way of life. Now her scratches were loving strokings on Bond's back and the room began to swirl, spin, exploding in a 100-megaton flash of divine intensity.

Nestling in the crook of his bronzed arm, and watching Raleigh smoke floating from his flared nostrils, she told him of her involvement in the affair, a contact man from the Syrian clique with the curious initials telling her Bond was an enemy of the "people's liberation" movement in Southeast Asia, the "come-on" at the beauty pageant, a bellhop drugged and substituted for by the man whose face now met the Du Pont 501 Nova Scotia pink nylon rug.

She knew too much, he realized. And had to be gotten rid of. And yet, she was so young, so lovely, and such a great piece. Perhaps an attempt at reclamation would be worth while. Speaking to her softly and passionately for about 90 seconds, Bond pointed out the fallacies in her childlike devotion to the Viet Cong, gave her a reasonably detailed analysis of the true meaning of the political undercurrents in her part of the world and then, convinced she had seen the error of her ways, sent her out of his room with a friendly pat on her well-formed buttocks.

"Goodbye, Nu Kee. Now go out and win that contest. Only this time," he said huskily, "for freedom and democracy."

Her eyes misted as she stood in the doorway. "Will Nu Kee see her brave secret agent again?"

"Yes," he assured her with complete sincerity. "There must be more contacts between East and West such as we have experienced this night. Only through them can we look into each other's hearts and find the universality of purpose and basic goodness that exists deep down." Another pat on the derrière ... and she was gone, darting like some frightened jungle bird down the corridor.

It wasn't until a moment or two after her departure that Bond realized her tidy little pile of garments--cheong-sam, bra, panties and A. S. Beck opera pumps--was still on the chair by his bed.

• • •

"... and so, charming ladies of the Upper Township, Pennsylvania, Chapter of Hadassah," said Bond, "your purchases of Mother Margolies' Activated Old World Chicken Soup and, indeed, all of Mother's fine products, not only put the glorious culinary traditions of our ancient heritage upon your tables, nourishing your loved ones, but also assist your brethren in Eretz Israel, the Promised Land, the Land of Milk and Magnesia, to protect and defend its hallowed borders!"

Two hundred women, who had been nodding their teased hairdos approvingly all through his speech, burst into wild applause. Vivacious Mrs. Charlene Krosnick, president of the chapter which had booked the Palmetto Roach's fabulously decorated Pina Colada Room for its postmidnight brunch, beamed at Bond from her dais seat. "Tell them how, Mr. Bond! Tell them how!" And she gave his thigh a sudden squeeze.

Bond permitted a quick smile to force itself through the teeth he had been gritting for the last 25 minutes. Mrs. Krosnick, he noted, was quite a dish, tawny, full-breasted, possessed of two glowing schav-green eyes that held promise.

"How, you may ask, can purchasing this superior chicken soup aid Israel's gallant freedom fighters, your cousins across the sea, in their never-ending struggle? I shall now tell you a heartwarming thing: Mother Emma Margolies, the sweet, saintly old woman who has lent her skill and name to these splendid foods, has stipulated that fully twenty-five percent--I'll repeat that--twenty-five percent of the gross proceeds--or the Schwartz proceeds, if that happens to be your name [explosive laughter greeted his quickly conceived witticism]--will be donated to the Israeli Ministry of Defense, thus enabling it to acquire the cream of the world's obsolete weaponry."

"Such a brilliant speaker and so handsome, too!" said Cheer & Sorrow Secretary Mrs. Carol Bernstein, nudging Mrs. Marcia Freeman, Isometrics & Diet Cola Chairman. "Wonder if he's married."

"Nah ... those dark, cruelly handsome types with scars on their cheeks never are," responded Mrs. Freeman sagely. "So forget about him for your Merry Robin. Better she should marry that dental technician from Allentown." Thus cavalierly discarding Merry Robin's chances at the devastatingly debonair Israeli, Mrs. Freeman began to scheme: How can I get him to meet my Tara Lynne? And what's his name, anyway? Her bejeweled fingers skimmed the program, past "We shall all stand reverently as Mrs. Nettie Berk sings The Star-Spangled Banner, Hatikvah and Hello, Dolly!" ... past "welcoming remarks by Mrs. Charlene Krosnick, president" ... lingering on "Our Guest of Honor, Mr. Israel Bond, public-relations representative of Mother Margolies, Tel Aviv, New York and Miami Beach."

Israel Bond! A wonderful name, indeed, for a man from the Holy Land. And just look at Charlene Krosnick eating him up with those greedy eyes. Not that she blamed Charlene. Charlene's husband, Max, was a fine provider and all that, but, well, dull ... in the way a man can't afford to be. Mrs. Freeman, who had spent one mad impetuous night with Max at a Harrisburg motel, knew this all too well.

At the lectern, Bond, feeling the blood soaking through his jacket, thought: Time to wind up this ghastly business. Refreshing his parched throat with a quick, careless toss of Mother Margolies' Old World Parsley Tonic ("It Bubbles from You the Troubles"), he dragged deeply on a Raleigh and concluded: "It's been my pleasure to greet you dear Hadassah ladies. And now other commitments dictate my regretful departure. But please do not leave. You will soon see a highly entertaining color film featuring Mother Margolies herself, who takes you on a tour of her factory. As for me, let me say shalom, hoping that we shall all meet again on the slopes of Mount Tabor in Israel for the high holy days. In the meantime, remember our motto to be found on every can: 'Like Mother Used to Make It, Mother Makes It.' And so, shalom, shalom, I'll say shalom; it's the nicest greeting I know ... it means goodbye, salud, bon jour ... and twice as much as hello."

He sat down heavily, then rose reluctantly, painfully, to acknowledge their standing ovation. As the women regained their seats, they looked at him, squeezing their support-hose-covered thighs. Mrs. Krosnick again pressed against his thigh, then blushed.

It's coming, Bond thought. He'd seen the lovely matron's eyes X-raying his body all through the speech.

The room was darkened now and on the screen Mother Margolies was dicing carrots and turnips, sprinkling her commentary with Old Country aphorisms for which she had become justly famous: "The fool pours tapioca down an empty coal mine; the wise man ..."

Another squeeze on the thigh, this time more demanding.

Thirty minutes later, in 1818, Bond had won Mother a convert for life.

Nestled in the crook of his bronzed arm, she made the horrifying discovery of his shoulder wound. "Oh, darling! And I made you love me ... with this? What pain you must have been in!"

And she hugged him with a joyous squeal when he gallantly responded, "Charlene, there was a far greater, sweeter pain--if you know what I mean."

Br-r-r-ri-i-i-ng!

The phone. Who could be calling at this hour?

An emotionless voice: "Mr. Bond? The tire of Meyer the buyer is on fire."

Click!

Bond's gray eyes narrowed. A tire-Meyer-buyer-fire message was big stuff. Something was popping. Time to send Charlene Krosnick back to her mundane suburban world. M wanted him--fast!

• • •

His rented Rambler purred easily and effortlessly at 38 miles an hour. Bond gunned it north on the smooth-riding, bump-free superhighway, his destination New York State's famed resort center, the Catskill Mountains, known to the average man as the "Borscht Belt." But to the very "in" group Bond ran, drank and loved with (people who were by taste, temperament and sophistication justly entitled to include themselves in the Pepsi Generation), it was incisively termed "The Hebrew Himalayas."

M's urgent message, relayed through 11 1/2 (a midget whose cover roles took various forms--sometimes a Little League shortstop, other times a fireplug), had made him drop everything, which resulted in a painful buttock bruise for the ebullient Charlene Krosnick, and impelled him eagerly, tensely toward his next assignment. Trained traveler that he was, Bond had cut his packing time to a bare minimum by giving away most of his clothing to a friendly bellhop, grabbing a cab ("Driver, get me to the Miami Airport in twenty minutes and there's a box of Luden's Menthol Cough Drops in it for you!"), and churning with a powerful sprinter's closing kick into a Delta Airlines jet just as the boarding stairway was being pulled away.

The flight had been uneventful, even boring. Of course, there had been the interlude with the stunning, vixenish stewardess, who had practically forced Bond into the lavatory while a dozen passengers, squirming with nature's call, grumbled vociferously at the sight of the Occupied sign glowing for 35 minutes. The events in the tiny cubicle had not done Bond's aching shoulder one bit of good, Miss Bonnie Jane Abney (a former beauty-pageant winner herself, incidentally: "Miss White Citizens Council" in an Alabama summer bombing festival) practically serrating the edges of the wound with her industriously passionate teeth.

I'll have to knock off this crap, Bond told himself, shoving a Raleigh into the corner of his firm, sensual mouth. The Raleigh reminded him of the packages that had been awaiting him in his suite at the Ansonia Hotel, his plush Manhattan base of operations. Bundles and bundles ... each containing several cartons of Raleighs and heart-rending notes from the women he had known sweetly, intimately on his public-relations swing through the United States.

All of them had noted his constant Raleigh smoking and he had hinted that a carton or two would be a nice little gift to keep his memories of them glowing like cigarette ends. The cartons, of course, had four extra coupons. In reality, Bond loathed Raleighs, but due to M's urging, he smoked them solely to acquire the coupons.

"Ours is a penurious little Secret Service," M had pointed out. "We need those coupons. How do you think I got your silencer and plastic-bomb kit? Fifteen hundred coupons--that's how. You'll smoke Raleighs, Oy Oy Seven, and like it."

After a good night's sleep at the Ansonia, Bond moseyed over to West End Avenue to make his contact and get further instructions from an agent at the Café Aw-Go-Go-Already who made fellafel and acted as a "mailbox" for messages.

Ah, fellafel! Israel's answer to the pizza and hotdog! Chickpeas ground up and fried into inedible balls, covered with techina, an exquisitely uninspired sauce, then housed in an envelope of pita, the thoroughly tasteless Arab bread. Fellafel! He grew nostalgically sick to his stomach with each sniff at the counter.

Zvi Gates, the fellafel maker with the piercing eyes, had greeted him with a grin: "Back from Miami Beach, Mr. Bond? Here's a special fellafel for you."

And Bond's trembling fingers had reached into the bottom of the pita, extracting the message from M, written in invisible ink, made doubly hard to decipher since it was inscribed on invisible paper.

He had sprayed on the powders which restored visibility to the paper and its message and read:

To Israel Bond, Public-Relations Representative for Mother Margolies: Subject--21-Case Shipment to Catskills: Possibility of New Territory for Sales Opening up at the Kahn-Tiki, Large Hotel in Loch Sheldrake, N. Y. be on your Guard to prepare speech for delivery before greater New York League against Anti-Semitism by Jews. While there Greet Renowned Philanthropist Lazarus Loxfinger. Shalom--M.

A seemingly innocuous message. Should it fall into alien hands, the reader would deduce it had something to do with Bond's PR duties for the firm. He knew, however, that the 21-case designation meant that the 21st word of each following sentence was the key word. He counted the words deliberately, his heartstrings going zing! zing! zing!

The 21st word of the first sentence: "Guard."

Word number 21 of the second tortuous sentence: "Loxfinger."

With blinding clarity, it was clear. Frighteningly, blindingly clear.

"Guard Loxfinger!"

Lazarus Loxfinger, septuagenarian, multimillionaire, philanthropist, whose personal story had assumed epic proportions. He had come from Argentina several years before with seemingly unlimited funds, determined to use them to make Eretz Israel a better place in which to live. His charitable works were legendary by now, the Lazarus Loxfinger League Against Constipation, the Lazarus Loxfinger Mothers March On Acne, the Loxfinger Center for Retarded Jewish Children, the Loxfinger Center for Nonretarded Jewish Children, the Loxfinger League for Positivism in Everyday Thinking (Its members, imbued with the league's philosophy, favored probiotics and prohistamines, among other things), et al. His endless generosity had caused a grateful citizenry to term him "tzaddik"--saint! And he had gone beyond mere charity. He had written a series of articles for the highly respected Boot & Shoe Recorder which had been given wide coverage by the press and TV the world over, becoming famous as The Plowshare Papers, since he continually stressed the "beat swords into plowshares" theme vis-à-vis Israel and the hostile Arab diehards. His articles had noted the spiritual kinship between the Jewish state and its neighbors, pointing out the undue strain on their respective economies engendered by the arms race, offering (in his words) "... a final solution based on equitable negotiations, cultural exchange, trade and other unifying factors. To see this final solution in my lifetime is my goal, my raison d'être."

And now this magnificent old man was in peril. From whom? Why? How?

Ergo, the hell-for-leather trip in the rented Rambler, now leaving the Harriman Exit 16, and roaring up the Quick-way to the mountains.

Hungry for the sound of a human voice as he sped down the deserted roadway, Bond flicked on the radio. "... the elderly Israeli philanthropist, seemingly unnerved by his brush with death at the Kahn-Tiki Hotel [Bond froze; his hands were clammy against the wheel], vowed he would continue his attempts on behalf of Israel, his adopted homeland. Said Loxfinger: 'This cowardly attempt at assassination will only spur anew my efforts to seek a final solution for Israel in her relationships with her Arab neighbors.'

"The philanthropist then shrugged off his frightening experience and plunged into a full round of speeches and appearances at the Catskill-area hotel. Meanwhile, the suspect in the shooting, who Police Chief Ed Chelland said was driving a 1963 blue Cadillac convertible, was possibly headed toward New York City. State troopers were patroling the Quick-way, hoping for an early arrest. And that's the latest on the attempt to murder Lazarus Loxfinger, Israel's old man with a heart as big as his fortune."

Two streams of Raleigh smoke jetted through his nostrils. Bond switched off the radio. At least Loxfinger was alive. Alive!

And if it hadn't been for my damned conceit. I might have been in Loch Sheldrake 30 minutes ago. A Rocket Olds 98 would have gotten me there in time to stop this hideous thing. But I had to rent this Rambler. You know why, Bond. Because it has a bed in the back. You'd hoped for a little hanky-panky on the road, hadn't you? The whole fantasy had run through your mind a hundred times ... a car broken down, some high-breasted young thing with chopped-liver-brown eyes imploring you to help her: "It got overheated, sir. You'll take me to Grossinger's in your car? Oh, bless you, sir! I could just kiss you." ... which she would, their tongues tangoing sensually against each other's gold fillings, sharing deep swigs from Bond's flask of heady, potent, aphrodisiacal Gallo wine ... then thighs thrashing thighs ...

Bond, Bond told Bond, you'd better stop letting your damn, blessedly endowed genitalia rule your head. A lecher can't operate effectively as a Double Oy. Mother Margolies would have a proverb applicable to this, he thought. What had she once said? Yes ... "I cursed because I had no eyes; until I saw a cheerful man who had no head."

Wait! What had the radio bulletin said? The blue Caddy convertible was New York bound!

He pulled the Rambler over sharply, parked and lit a Raleigh. His face was icy now, lips in a tightly set vise. It was a look his enemies had learned to fear, an Israel Bond turned into a murderous machine.

He double-timed it across the northbound section, flattening his body on the grassy medial strip. It was luxuriantly rich against his cheek--Burpee Seed, no doubt. His fingers felt the road, drawing some comfort from its texture. Portland Cement. Tops in any league!

And his right hand fondly stroked the slim, deadly item resting in his Neiman-Marcus shoulder holster.

A black speck at first ... high-tailing it south. It grew bigger. The blue Caddy! And behind it a patrol car, siren screaming, red rooftop light revolving madly. There would be time for one shot; with luck, two.

Now he could see the face of the driver, a swarthy Levantine type, features flattened by the force of the wind. A fanatical face, maniacal eyes, teeth bared into the snarl of a rabid mongrel ...

Wang! Wang!

Bond squeezed the hair trigger on the Har Su Dung-55, the special crafted exclusively for him by Kok Eee Moon, the Hong Kong gunsmith.

The bullets had found the front tire, as Bond had intended, but that of the patrol car, now careening out of control. The assassin, however, startled at the reports, had taken his eyes off the road for a second, a fatal second. His own tires caught the cement ridge of the road. Bond watched the Caddy leave the road, rip over some underbrush, then rip under some overbrush. It smashed into a billboard, went through it with a sickening sound of agonized metal. A flash! And the Caddy went up in a white-hot ball of flame.

Now two towering troopers were chugging from the patrol car several hundred yards up the road. They found a grim-visaged Bond staring blankly at the billboard which seconds ago had read: Crest toothpaste--shown to be highly Effective when used with a conscientiously applied program of Oral Hygiene. Where a curly-headed moppet had stood before her adoring mother clutching a dental report in her hand there was a gaping hole, behind which smoldered what remained of the convertible.

Bond dragged on a Raleigh. The troopers saw a hint of a smile as he said, "Crest or no Crest, our friend sure made a hell of a cavity, didn't he?"

• • •

His Rambler idled in front of the huge neon sign at the entrance to the winding lane that would take him to the hotel.

Welcome, Welcome to the Fabulous Kahn-Tiki Hotel!

You'll enjoy every moment at the Kahn-Tiki! Polynesian delicacies--Kosher Style! Modified dietary laws (no smoking during the serving of the Ham Salad)! Learn the latest Jewish dances from the tropics taught by Lithe, oversexed Latinos!

Two heated Swimming Pools filled with Mother Margolies' activated old World Chicken Soup! Nosh while you splash!

The only Hotel in the Catskills with an Indoor Ski Lift! Schuss on a six-inch base of Matzoh Meal!

Don't hit your Rotten, Whining Kids! Let our College-Trained Counselors do it for you!

Estrellita and Schuyler Kahn, your Hosts at Miami Beach's Glamorous Palmetto Roach Hotel, hope you enjoy their Mountain Resort as well! Let's all meet at tonight's get-acquainted Soiree in the Litvak Luau Room! Featuring the West Coast Comedy Sensation--Henny Benny Lenny! Hermie House and his House House Band for Dancing!

His smart Bakelite luggage stowed away, Bond warmed the tip-hungry palm of the bell captain with a shiny new Lyndon Johnson 75-cent piece, frankly relishing the awed reaction. "Yes sir, Mr. Bond! Anything else, sir? Well, hope you enjoy your stay!"

He showered for three minutes under the bracing needles of Mountain Valley Water, changed his suit, slipping into the high-priced casual garb required in this class milieu ... skin-tight Ship 'n Shore Levis, burnt cantaloupe-shaded crew shirt with the prize Korvette's label showing (perhaps a bit ostentatiously; it was on the breast pocket), and Mafia Raffia shoes.

He picked up the mauve Princess phone. "Operator, this is a Princess phone, isn't it? Good! Well, I'd like to speak to Princess Margaret."

The hotel operator, Miss Studnia, unused to Bond's dazzling spur-of-the-moment bons mots (he was as famed for his wit as Mother was for her proverbs), said, "Huh?"

And Bond, sorry he'd wasted a goody on an unappreciative clod, was all business now: "Dr. Loxfinger's suite, please."

Her voice was guarded. "I'm sorry, sir, but no one is permitted to disturb the doctor ..."

"Look, honey," said Bond. "This is Israel Bond. The doctor will respond, I assure you."

"Just a minute, please, Mr. Bond. Dr. Loxfinger's public-relations representative will talk to you, Mr. Bond." New respect in the metallic tones. "Go ahead, Mr. Saxon."

"Mr. Bond?" A composed voice with a trace of hauteur. "Angelo Saxon here, the doctor's PRO. Dreadfully sorry, but he can't be disturbed. The dreadful incident and all that. Perhaps tomorrow or--"

"Knock it off, Saxon!" Bond's rasp slashed through the room. "This is Israel Bond, security, M 33 and 1/3 section. Stop 'dreadfulling' and tell me what's happened, how the old boy is and mach's schnell!"

"Uh, perhaps first we'd best meet for a chat, Mr. Bond. See you in the Leni Lenape Lounge in ten minutes. Check-o."

Well, some of the spray starch had been taken out of Mr. Saxon. Now, a friendly drink or two and he'd put the man straight.

He started for the lounge and his meeting with Saxon. On the elevator he bumped into a girl. "Beg your pardon."

She said nothing, content to flash a look of utter disgust.

She's a smasher! Bond thought. Sullen savage loveliness ... full, pouting lips, eyes of Brillo black and bluish highlights, a heart-stopping shape, hugged affectionately by leotards of sheerest net lace. Her proud, defiant breasts were completely uncovered. If this damn elevator doesn't stop in three seconds, I'm going to crush those maddening rosebud nipples in my aching teeth, he swore vehemently.

Rosebud! He smiled a secretive smile. Odd to think of that word now. As a child he'd had a sled by that name. Wonder what ever happened to it?

With arch humor he bowed, permitting the blazing creature to leave the car first. "See you around ... or around you," he riposted. She never even turned to acknowledge his quip, walking lithely away with her tantalizing dancer's stride.

She was a smasher! Bond thought again. But he'd sensed something strange, a man-hating look he'd noticed in certain bizarre bistros with an offbeat clientele. Lesbo? Well, if she was, he'd--in Warren Harding's classic phrase--restore her to "normalcy"!

At the desk he asked for any messages.

"Uh, you're Mr. Bond in Room 1818, correct, sir?"

"Yes."

"Here you are, sir."

The brief message read: "I'd ride a Camel a mile to smoke an Oasis."

What the hell was this? Bond frowned, his cruelly dark handsomeness becoming even more attractive. More than one woman had been driven wild by that frown.

Camel? Oasis? If these were code words, they were certainly not in his master book. "Clerk, are you sure this message is for me?"

"Oh, I beg your pardon, sir," said the clerk, reddening. "This is for the gentleman in 1817, the room next to yours. A Mr. Jew."

Mr. Jew? Bond thought hard. "Sounds rather familiar. What's the gentleman's first name, clerk?"

"His first name is Achmed. Just checked in an hour ago. Strange sort. When I asked him to register, he just gave me a blank look as though he didn't understand what I was saying. He shoved a piece of paper in front of me that specifically requested he be quartered in the room next to yours. I thought the fellow was a friend of yours, so I saw no harm in assigning him 1817."

No sense making the clerk suspicious. Bond snapped his fingers as though in recollection. "Of course! My old buddy Achmed Jew! Slipped my mind completely."

He thanked the clerk with a handful of Hubert Humphrey nickels and walked out onto the porch to give the matter some thought. Achmed Jew! And in the next room! Where was he from? Jordan? Kuwait? Saudi Arabia? Whoever he was, he must be a dunderhead, indeed, to pick an on-the-head last name like "Jew" in order to blend into the crowd at this kind of hotel. And to use his first name yet! What a faux pas! What Arabic stupidity! Or arrogance, rather, to think a name like Achmed would go unnoticed. No doubt, Mr. Achmed Jew felt uncomfortable in this totally alien environment. Well, he'd have to make Mr. Achmed Jew feel right at home--with a little welcome call late tonight.

In the Leni Lenape Lounge, decorated with Eastern American Indian motifs--somewhat at variance with the Polynesian theme of the Kahn-Tiki--Bond spotted the man he thought was Angelo Saxon.

"Saxon?"

The tall, weedy blond who wore a baggy (and rather gamy, Bond's nose reported) brown woolen suit, sipping a tom collins, turned to him. "Why ... uh ... yes. Bond, is it? Sorry for my seeming impertinence, old man, but I'd heard you were in public relations, like me. Thought you'd try to con old Loxfinger into some shady promotion or other. Had no idea you were ... uh ... in your type of occupation. Drink?"

How tactful, Bond thought. Taken down a few pegs, he wants to be friendly. All right. We'll join hands on the friendship trail for a bit. "Yes, thanks. Bartender, a Lhasa Lizard, please. Just a soupçon of mildly rancid yak butter in the bottom of the tumbler ... the right eye of any domestic lizard--iguana will do nicely ... one ounce of Gallo wine--from the first pressings of the grapes, please ... three crumbs from a Drake's Yankee Doodle cupcake. Shake well. Now, how much? Sixty-five cents!" Bond's chin shot out indignantly. "Good grief, man! Lhasa Lizards are never more than forty-five cents in the most elegant Manhattan posheries!"

Nevertheless, he left the mixicologist some gleaming Bobby Baker pennies. Wasn't the man's fault, actually. He didn't set prices.

"Now to business. What happened, Saxon?"

"It happened rather quickly, Mr. Bond. Dr. Loxfinger--he's been a 'doctor,' of course, ever since that honorary degree from Brandeis University--was exhorting the crowd in the Kahn-Tiki's main ballroom to double their pledges to the UJA ... not the United Jewish Appeal ... this one's a new organization which is seeking enough money to put Israel in the Nuclear Club. It stands for 'Unleash the Jewish Atom' ..."

"Yes, yes, go on," said Bond.

"Well, that's when this wiry, Levantine type, who'd been masquerading as a busboy, dropped his tray of dishes, whipped out a revolver and fired point-blank at the doctor. I, of course, had seen the gun in his hand and made a lunge at the filthy little cretin. I missed. But, strangely enough, so did he. I suppose my lunge unnerved him. Then he fled. Tell me ... did you get him?"

"Yes, the matter was taken care of on the Quickway."

"Good show!" said Saxon, but there was something deep in his eyes Bond could not fathom as yet, but did not like. "This little gunman ... did he talk?"

"No, he died without talking, I'm afraid." Was that a gleam of triumph in Saxon's eyes? "Well, tell me, Saxon, what else happened when the shot was fired?"

"Naturally," said Saxon, sipping his drink, "all hell broke loose. The loudest cries, it seemed, came from the hotel owner, Mr. Kahn. The 'busboy' had ruined forty-eight dollars' worth of genuine East Side Fiesta dishes when he dropped the tray. In the confusion he fled. You know the rest."

Time to put the screws on. "Frankly," Bond began coldly, "I'm shocked at the general laxity around here. Has there been no guard assigned to the doctor up to now? Remember, this man is the greatest thing that has happened to Israel since Leon Uris. He is beloved by world Jewry, vastly respected by non-Jews. Wrap up Albert Schweitzer, Ringo Starr and Shirley Temple and you have Lazarus Loxfinger. This man must be guarded!"

"Oh," Saxon said, his eyes widening with concern, "but I agree. Fully. The doctor does have a bodyguard, you know, quite a formidable one. You will meet him later. He's a mountain, not a man ... a sort of Neanderthal, really. The doctor found him working on the docks in Marseilles, took pity on him and made him part of our entourage. This creature is the product of a rather hasty mésalliance between an American soldier, a nigger ... oops!" He winked. "Sorry for that. One does have to be 'liberal' these days. Uh, an American soldier of ... sepian hue, shall we say, who consorted with a white Scottish barmaid in Glasgow during World War Two. The issue of this one-night stand is our bodyguard. His name is MacAroon. Wanted by neither parent, he was shunted from orphanage to orphanage. Grew to be amazingly huge and powerful. He must be seven-foot, six if he's an inch. MacAroon's specialty is karate. I've seen this simian shatter a twelve-by-twelve with one chop of that monstrous hand."

"Why wasn't he around to protect Loxfinger when he was needed?"

"Simple. He'd been drugged. Someone, the 'busboy,' no doubt, had spiced his haggis and chitlins--that's all he eats--with a powerful sleeping draught."

Bond inhaled. "You mentioned 'entourage.' Who else is in this charmed Loxfinger circle?"

Saxon winked again. "Besides MacAroon and yours truly, there's one other ... his personal secretary, Peepee. You appear to be the sort of man who appreciates good womanflesh, Mr. Bond. You'll find Peepee quite a mouthwatering sight."

"Peepee? What kind of a gibbering, infantile name is that for a grown woman?"

"Those are her initials, P. P. But here she is now, Mr. Bond. I'd asked her to join us. Hope you don't mind."

Bond's eyes rose--then popped. Peepee was the fascinating, unreachable minx he'd struck out with on the elevator. Still wearing the same fetching costume she had on when last they met, she ... she oozed ... that was the word ... oozed across the lounge, those Junoesque breasts pointing to only heaven knew what mystical horizons, that frigidly wonderful, sullen face ...

She faced him now, those frosty lips opening, spitting out word icicles: "Mr. Bond, I presume? My name is Poontang Plenty. Mr. Saxon here insists on calling me Peepee. You may if you wish. I don't give a flying f--"

"Well, now," Bond laughed, cutting her off diplomatically. "I rather like your given name ... Poontang Plenty. Fraught with promise."

Her top lip curled into an adorable sneer. "Forget it, he-man! The name is all that's been given."

Saxon yawned. "I'll leave you lovebirds to peck out each other's eyes. So long, Peepee, see you later." He bent his gaunt frame to buss her cheek.

"Put those Tussaud waxworks lips on me and I'll kick you right in the--"

Mumbling an insincere farewell, Saxon exited hastily, gratefully, too, Bond thought. At least the fish-eyed PR man was no competition.

"That water lily!" Her voice was pure cobra venom. "I hate him, him with those putrid eyes and that stinking suit--eeech!" She shuddered, toying with something in her right hand. Whatever it was, it made a clicking sound like two marbles tapped together.

"Ah," said Bond, resorting to his usual lighter-than-air touch. It's as good as any other gambit in this game d'amour, he reasoned. "Ah, Captain Queeg! Playing with your balls again, I see."

"That's right, buster," her voice came up hard and gritty. "Know what these are?" She thrust her hand dramatically into his face, opening it. Two marbles, deep highlights radiating from their exotically striated cores, lay in her palm.

"Why, yes, Poontang. Marbles, aren't they? Some childish carry-over?"

"Think marbles is a childish sport, Mr. He-Man with the faggot sandals?" A smile, but hate-filled. "Care to ... uh ... take me on in a little game, maybe?"

His eyes gleamed. "What's in it for me if I win, Poontang?"

"Win? Win?" She exploded into helpless, thigh-whacking laughter, the first Bond had seen on that sullen face.

"Win? You stupid, prideful bastard! I'll show you who's really got balls at this table, Bond. I have. Right in my hand. The neatest shooters you ever saw smack a marble on its ass and send it flying!"

Bond looked into her eyes, deviltry dancing in his own. "Let's say the impossible is possible, Poontang. And I win. What's in it for me?"

She stood up regally, extended those staggeringly desirable mounds to within an inch of his twitching lips. "Yes ... they're yours! Yours! And everything else that goes with 'em! Gladly! But you'll never outshoot me, buster. And to make it interesting for me, I'll relieve you of some of your long green. Shall we say twenty bucks for each captured marble?"

"So, Her Nibs digs mibs, eh?"

"That's the size of it, lover boy. I'm throwing the gauntlet right in your craggy, cruelly handsome face and I hope to hell it drives your blackheads clear through your cheeks!"

He spoke. The charm was gone from his voice now, she noticed.

"You're on, Poontang. Marbles it is. Noon tomorrow, any place on the hotel grounds you want. But make it far from the main building. I don't want the folks to be upset by your screams when ..." He could hold back the sound of his gritting teeth no longer. In his passion a wisdom molar crumbled into chalk.

"Brave words, buster. But you're on. Tomorrow--noon."

• • •

His nerves raw from the tension he had undergone ever since the whole chaotic skein of events had started to unravel in Miami Beach, Bond gulped down one of Mother Margolies' favorite relaxants--M. & M., Manischewitz & Miltown. It would ease him into a peaceful late-afternoon catnap from which he would emerge refreshed and ready for the grim tasks ahead. He stripped down to his Fruit of the Loom spun Egyptian cotton shorts (you had to hand it to the warmongering bastards; they did grow splendid cotton), lit up his 198th Raleigh of the day (I've smoked enough for a clip of .45s at least, he exulted) and lay on his bed. His eyes were closing now, but there was one more chore. "Operator--get me Milton Bond in Trenton, New Jersey. Area code 609, Import 7-8898."

He waited. "Milt? Your Israeli brother. Listen, Milt, I'm practically asleep, but I need a favor damned fast. Look through my old things in the attic, the junk I stored before I went to Eretz in '48. Still got it? Good. Now, I must have these things no later than noon tomorrow. Got a pencil?" His voice droned a list. "That's the whole schmear. Fly 'em up to the Kahn-Tiki Hotel, Loch Sheldrake, in your Piper Cub. Love to Lottie and the kinderlach. I'm so damn sleepy I ..."

The receiver fell from jellyfish-weak fingers. Bond was out cold.

Cold.

He was cold. Shivering, freezing cold.

He smiled in his sleep. The smell of salty fish permeated his dream. Lox? Loxfinger? Herring? Yes, a gooten shtickel pickled herring, the way his mother used to make it back in Trenton, his birthplace in 1930. Momma! His warmhearted, crafty, typical Jewish mother, who had dreamed of a profitable career for him in medicine. "Study hard, learn," she had said in her careworn way. "Someday, son, you'll be a famous abortionist with a big practice and a country clubber in Stockholm." She was smiling at him now in this loveliest of dreams. Hello, Momma. I miss you.

He knew he was dreaming, but, ah, it was divine! The cold salty fish is moving over my body, he smiled. I'm in a Catskill hotel and a cold slimy fish is crawling over me!

Crawling?

Fish don't crawl!

He sprang into consciousness--something wet, cold, slimy, furry, impossibly huge was advancing on his body. Something was--Gottenu! The pain! Something with a fetid, fishy breath had sunk its teeth into his shoulder--the bad one.

Two red eyes were glowing in the darkened room, part of something enormous that was crushing him, mashing his ribs, his chest. Pinned to the bed like a butterfly on a card, he stared into the enraged face of a polar bear!

Bond screamed, unashamedly. He tried reaching for the mezuzah with a hand already puffing up horribly from the mashing. Gone! The bear's claw had ripped the chain from his neck. Blood from the reopened shoulder wound raced lavalike down his body.

He was virtually on the verge of fainting. The swollen hand was all that remained to combat this one-ton terror from the top of the world. Its growl sent chills down his bruised spine. He could imagine the not-so-stupid Mr. Jew next door in 1817, his ear pressed to the wall, laughing gleefully at each of Bond's screams. No, Mr. Achmed Jew was not the dumb bunny he had thought him to be. While he, Bond, had talked a good game, Mr. Jew had acted! Somehow managing to smuggle his murderous arctic aide into the Kahn-Tiki.

Only the thought of that cackling anti-Semite bastard next door kept Bond going. A rage, every bit as towering as the polar bear's, swept over him. His mashed fingers found a shoe under the bed, touched a spring in the heel. A knife sprang out. Now it was in Bond's demoniacal clutch, driving down toward the bear's exposed neck. No! Wait! He knew from the extralight feel of the knife and its dull edge that it was a milchig (dairy) knife. Sacrilege! To kill a meat creature with a dairy knife. He dropped it, felt for the mate to the shoe, found its spring and drove the flayschig (meat) knife again and again into his adversary. Blood--the bear's now--was gushing out like an oil strike from a gusher in Eilat, southernmost city of Eretz Israel. With one tormented roar, the bear rolled over Bond again, inflicting more indescribable pain, then fell ponderously to the floor. It would lurk no more in the Kahn-Tiki Hotel.

He had met his greatest challenge--and won.

Gottenu! What pain! Pain! Pain! Tension! Tension! Tension! He would give the world for one Excedrin now!

Gingerly he felt for the phone. He had to make sure this terrible thing was indeed premeditated.

Though his body screamed in a million agonized places, he forced himself to make his voice as dignified as possible. "Bond, 1818. Tell me ... uh ... have there ever been any ... uh ... polar bears inside this hotel before? As guests, visitors, in any capacity at all?"

"Definitely not, Mr. Bond!" The clerk sounded highly insulted. "A polar bear in the Kahn-Tiki? Never, sir! We only get a family crowd."

"Thank you," said a thoughtful Bond. He hung up.

Then there was a score to settle!

• • •

The phone rang in 1817.

The wiry, Levantine type dropped the all-purpose Gideon book of worship provided by the management (Old Testament-New Testament-Koran-Kama Sutra), reached for the phone with some apprehension. He had not been expecting any calls. For a moment he debated the advisability of answering. He felt for the Sphinx-77 in his shoulder holster, patted it reassuringly and lifted the receiver.

"Meester Achmed Jew?" A harsh, thickly accented voice.

"Yes."

"The Oasis is pleased at the death of the Camel."

A sigh of relief escaped his throat. Ah, a fellow member from the Yemeni Elite for Nullifying Zionist Traitors, Yentz! The caller could be no other; he had used the key code words aptly.

"Who is this, please?" One still had to be cautious.

"Mr. Jew, this is Gamal Goy, your superior from the El Nakid Sidi section. I am calling with further instructions. Meet me at the indoor pool adjacent to the solarium. I have instructions regarding the Israeli philanthropist." The caller hung up.

The tense Yentz agent could hardly believe his ears. He let go an irrepressible squeal. Surely Gamal Goy must think he, Achmed, was worthy indeed to have proffered such a monumental assignment.

Moments later he stood by the pool, his nostrils assailed by the stench. Then he recalled he had been told it was filled with Mother Margolies' Activated Old World Chicken Soup.

It was dinnertime. The pool was deserted. A creepy feeling pervaded him, his own footsteps echoing against the moist, steamy walls gave him a sense of unease. Lighting a Rameses, he waited.

He pricked up his ears. He heard other footsteps reverberating through the man-made fog. Then silence.

"Achmed Jew!"

The harsh voice, sounding strangely disembodied. But from where?

"Goy?"

"No Goy, Jew! This is Jew, Goy!"

That voice! Achmed whirled, his hand sliding into his coat.

Dreck! Dreck!

Two slugs from Bond's Tzimmes-88 tore past him, missing by a foot. But in spinning to answer the misdirected shot with his Sphinx-77, Achmed slipped on the wet tiles, his head cracking the pool deck. Stunned, his temporal parietal area gashed badly, he toppled into the pool. For a few seconds there was a strangling, gurgling sound. Then his struggles ceased.

A cold smile on his face as he watched the bloody eddies mingling with the tender bits of plump Rhode Island Red fowl, Bond came down from the high diving board, his vantage point for the shooting. The Tzimmes-88 still smoked in his swollen right hand. Justice had cried out for a chauvinistic killing with a good Jewish gun this time. His lips spoke mockingly to the bobbing body of the drowned Yemeni: "Gamal Goy greets his desert brother, Achmed Jew. May many dark-eyed houris greet you in your warriors' heaven--all of them with yaws--you bastard!" (But I really must get back to the practice range, he admitted.)

Flicking off an imaginary dust spot on the lapel of his Dino tuxedo, the model favored by leading stars of stage, screen and television, Bond took out his Nippo, lit a Raleigh and watched the smoke become part of the pool's mist. He pulled the wick out, placed it in his ear and spoke into the bottom of the lighter.

"Zvi?"

"Shalom, Oy Oy Seven.''

"Have you disposed of the bear's body?"

"Yes, Oy Oy Seven. It has been sliced into bits. Every cat in the Catskills will have an unexpected treat tonight. How are your wounds?"

"Better, thank you. The hotel doctor dressed the lacerations, thinking he was ministering to a very poor skier. As for the pain, it's bad, but bearable. The Excedrins are definitely helping. You see, I had this pain that felt like two billygoats were pulling my head asunder, so in a case like this when I need big relief ..."

Zvi's voice cut in: "Yes. But what shall I tell M about our friend from Yentz?"

Bond's gray eyes gleamed as his quick mind prepared to hurl one of his famous jests.

"One can say," he paused for telling effect, "that Mr. Achmed Jew is definitely in the soup!"

• • •

For once, disposing of a body had proved relatively simple for Bond. Zvi, who had left the Café Aw-Go-Go-Already to come to the Catskills and work more closely with him, had wangled a part-time job as an animal trainer with the Ring-A-Ding Barton Brothers & Bill Bailey Circus and Smoker ("The earthiest show on earth") touring nearby, and had brought over a starving Bengal tiger, shoved it into the pool and calmly watched it dine on the Levantine.

Bond, a Raleigh dangling from his lips, commented: "You can always count on fast action, Zvi, when there's a tiger in the tank."

Grinning, Zvi again was overwhelmed by Oy Oy Seven's trigger mind. How does he do it? And why?

"Boy, that tiger is doing a real job. I don't think Agent D could have handled this any better." Then he bit his tongue.

"Agent D?" A sharp look of interest was on Bond's face. "Who is Agent D?"

Zvi stammered. "Forget I ever mentioned Agent D. Please, Oy Oy Seven, please forget it. Means nothing, really."

Agent D? Zvi apparently had gleaned something from one of M's top-secret missives. But Bond decided to press the matter no further. His confrere was obviously embarrassed enough.

Ten minutes later, reverting to his cover role, Bond found himself delivering the speech to the organization mentioned in M's communication and then found himself dragged into yet another conclave by a spry, surprisingly powerful old matron in gold lamé evening hip-hugger slacks and blouse, matched regrettably with brown-and-white saddles. He had given an abbreviated version of his speech to the group, the Molly Picon Golden Age Political Action Club, and with another of his typically gallant (and basically goodhearted) gestures--"Waiter, a bottle of your best Geritol for every lovely lady in the room"--had gained applause and reverence.

Still pain-racked from his mauling, the bored Oy Oy Seven strolled into the Litvak Luau Room where, before a jam-packed audience, West Coast comedy sensation Henny Benny Lenny was holding sway at the microphone, tossing glib patter:

"Geez, what a quiet bunch! I've gotten better reaction from a Schick test!"

(Nervous, somewhat light laughter.)

"Are you sure this is the regular group? So this guy falls off the Washington Monument and the cop says, 'What's goin' on here?' and the guy says, 'I don't know. I just got here myself!' "

(Nervous rustlings; no laughter.)

"This can't be the regular group! Well, let's try the hip, sophisticated, topical humor right out of today's front pages, huh? Vietnam? That's affecting all of us in these troubled times. Well, these two South Vietnamese soldiers are sitting around in a foxhole under fire from the Commies and the first one says to his pal, 'I just bought me one of them Italian sports cars--Cosa Nostra. Underneath the hood is a hood!' "

(Some response this time ... of a sort. A ringsider vaulted onto the stage and hit the funmaker across the mouth with a whiskey bottle.)

"Well, good night, folks, and God bless youse."

And the peppery comedian walked off to the strains of I Know That You Know, grinning, spitting out his teeth and whispering to a stagehand, "Tough crowd at first, but I finally got 'em."

Too bad, Bond thought. He was a hilarious chap. The frequent cabareting Bond had been exposed to as part of his PR role had made him rather an expert on funnymen. This one was first-rate. But the crowd had been impatiently waiting for a message from Dr. Loxfinger, who had agreed on a brief personal appearance to show an anxious Jewry he was alive and well.

Bond, too, felt a stirring at the prospect of hearing one of Loxfinger's messianic pronunciamentos.

The honor of the introduction rightly belonged to porcine Schuyler Kahn, now on stage beaming beatifically.

"Ladies and gentlemen ..."

As though a needle had been lifted from a phonograph, the murmuring ceased abruptly.

"My lovely wife, Estrellita Kahn, your cohost at the Kahn-Tiki and the only woman I'll ever look at ..." there was hearty applause; the love between the Kahns was well known to their patrons.

Estrellita rose, shouted, "I feel the same way about you, Schuyler, sweetie!" which triggered another wave of applause and laughter.

"Estrellita and I feel truly blessed tonight. I'm here to humbly present the greatest Jewish gentleman I ever seen--and, believe me, Schuyler Kahn in his role as owner of the best Class B hotel in the mountains has met them all ... all the big ones--Gary Morton, Bobby King, Jerry Lester, Bob Melvin, London Lee, Johnny Puleo--you name 'em; I met 'em. Without further ado, here is Dr. Lazarus Loxfinger!"

There was a glass-shattering roar. Bond looked blankly at the shards in his hand and the ice cubes in his lap.

Lazarus Loxfinger, trailed by a huge mulatto wearing a plaid kilt and a T-shirt with the letters I Dig Miles Davis and carrying a board on his shoulder, walked slowly onto the stage. He stood motionless during a fantastic, ten-minute standing ovation, hearing his name screamed over and over again: "Loxfinger! Loxfinger! Loxfinger!"

Then Loxfinger raised his right hand stiffly, palm out. The throng stilled.

MacAroon suddenly crossed in front of his leader, swung the board off his shoulder, held it by the end with his left hand and, with a frightening blur, chopped his right hand down on it. There was a sharp crack; gasps sounded through the ballroom; the board, split in two, fell to the stage. Then the monster lumbered off.

And Loxfinger began to speak.

• • •

Now it was two in the morning and Bond, still beset by the sense of unreality that had begun the instant he heard the voice of Lazarus Loxfinger, found himself unable to sleep. He lit a Raleigh in the dark, indifferently watching the flames from his tossed match creeping up the blanket toward him.

As the flames licked at his swollen hand and singed his mangled shoulder, Bond phoned the desk. "My room's on fire."

His charred hand paining him, Bond, now dressed in a powder-blue iridescent suit, Panama hat, string tie and Venetian bedsocks, pushed his way past the bellhops trying to contain the blaze to the 18th floor and went down to the lounge.

Elbowing his way through the dancers, he spotted at a corner table Poontang, Saxon, MacAroon, smashing boards with terrifying grunts, and, yes ... Loxfinger, the old fellow cuddling with a sultry, Nordic-type blonde, well upholstered, too, a shocked Bond noted.

Unthinkable. This saintly figure pawing, grasping, insinuating his hands into her cleavage. It was a blow to Bond's image of the man, but he supposed that Loxfinger, too, was only human.

"Hello, Bond," Poontang said in her typically hostile manner. "Come down for some night life?"

"Had a slight fire in my room and couldn't sleep. Matter of fact, burned my hand. I thought I'd ease the pain with a little nightcap."

"Oh," she said with a sneer. "Hurt your hand, eh? Your shooting hand, no doubt. I thought you'd find some way to cop out on tomorrow's match."

"I'll be there, Poontang, so don't worry your sick little head." And to the waiter: "A very, very dry Majorca martini, the olive from the personal groves of Francisco Franco, a simulated pearl onion on a toothpick of Pacific Plywood."

"You forgot to tell him the most important ingredient, buster. The pinch of Indian Ocean kelp taken from the belly of a pregnant female manta ray."

"Still competing with me, eh, Poontang? Who's the young lady with the good doctor?"

"Some cheap little cocktail hostess named Eve Brown. He can't keep his hands off her. I'm afraid you're late, Mr. Bond. The old lecher has beaten the young lecher to the prize."

"You mean he beat you to it?" Bond shot back.

"Still nasty, eh, buster? We'll see how nasty you are tomorrow after I take away all your mad money." Dashing her drink into his face, she hurried off, her breasts heaving.

Saxon leaned over. He was very drunk. "How's the kosher cop tonight? Shoot any more baddie-waddies since I saw you last?" He was still wearing the same brown woolen suit which seemed even sweatier, gamier and baggier--if possible.

"Tell me, Saxon, who's your tailor? Pillsbury?"

Saxon's face purpled. "You f -- Jew bastard!" He started a right-hand punch which Bond's superior reflexes deftly enabled him to block with the point of his jaw.

"I'll overlook that, Saxon, because you're blind, piggish drunk."

"You snotty kike!" Saxon swung again wildly, missed and fell against an artificial palm tree, knocking himself out. He slid to the floor.

Bond looked at the unconscious PR man. "MacAroon, take this sot back to his room and sober him up."

His carbon eyes glowering, MacAroon muttered, " 'Tis a bonnie moonlicht nicht, yo' mothah frigguh." He tossed Saxon over his shoulder as if the man were a feather and steam-rollered out.

Turning to Loxfinger, who also seemed on the verge of collapse, Bond said gently: "Bedtime, sir. It's been a long day for you. I'll take you back to your suite."

The doctor, who had been whispering endearments to Eve Brown in his thick, drunken voice--"Eva, mine schatz, Eva" --looked at Bond with a trace of suspicion, then nodded his assent. "Yah, I go now. You are Mr. Bond, the security person." He clicked his heels fatuously, then swayed. Bond caught him, led him on a tottering path to the elevator. They got off at the ninth floor, Bond continuing to guide him toward the suite.

"You are very solicitous, Mr. Bond. But then, we mockies have to stick together, right?" He winked confidentially, nudging Bond's ribs.

Saxon was up, partly sober, soaking wet and still bellicose. "That Jew bastard made fun of my suit! And that stinking nigger ape threw me in the shower! My suit is ruined! I'll kill him ... and that f -- kike, too!"

"Now, now, Mr. Saxon," said Loxfinger placatingly. "Your good doctor will buy you another one. May I bid you good night, Mr. Bond?"

"Good night, sir," Bond said. "And shalom."

In the corridor Bond let the fury he had suppressed in Loxfinger's presence roll out of him. He kicked a passing bellhop in the leg, savoring the man's yammering and sobbing.

How he had yearned to smash those epithets back into Saxon's foul-smelling, bigoted mouth. And why ... why had Loxfinger, a fellow Jew, said nothing when his aide spouted them? Did Saxon have some strange hold over the philanthropist? I've got to do some thinking.

Something else occurred to him. He decided to play a hunch. Returning to the lounge, he smiled his most inviting smile at the hard-faced blonde, Eve Brown. She sized up his trim physique, the dark, cruelly handsome face. She decided it would be worth her while to smile back.

• • •

Her moist corn-silk hair in strands against his pillow, the girl looked with adoration at the tawny, steel-framed Apollo who had just taken them both to the very heart of the sun.

"Geez, mister. You're the living end."

He smiled, slipping in one of his irresistible shafts: "Your end is the livingest, too, Eve. Tell me, how did you get entangled with the celebrated doctor tonight?" Naturally, he had made love to her in hopes of eliciting some information, but that task had somehow become secondary the moment he had torn away her pitifully sordid little evening dress. (He would, of course, send her a Simplicity pattern and three yards of material.) And when he saw her golden thighs, he'd heard the same old song in his blood.

Bond, he berated himself, you're impossibly horny. I think you'd get aroused by a navel orange.

"Oh, the doc," she said, her words derailing his train of thought, sending him back to the job at hand.

Nestling in the crook of his muscular arm, she related how Loxfinger had given her the once-over twice in the lounge. "I knew he was famous, of course, but I never thought he'd ever dig a cheap, flashy little number like me. And it's funny, when I told him my name was Eve Brown, he sorta flipped. Like he'd seen a ghost or somethin'. All the time he was coppin' a feel he kept whisperin' crazy things like, 'Eva, it's been so long ... so long since we splashed in the pool together, watching the sun glinting on the snow-capped peaks' ... stuff like that. I swear, Mr. Bond, I never laid eyes on him before--or nothin' else. And my name's Eve--not Eva."

Bond knitted his brow with a frown of concentration. Then he realized he'd made a mistake.

"Geez, you're handsome when you frown!" she said with breathy excitement. And she pulled him down to her, the old song welling up again.

• • •

"Zvi," Bond said in a low voice over the Nippo. "I want you to contact Monroe Goshen at CIA. Tell him I'm sending some photos of Saxon, MacAroon and Poontang. I want him to check them out. There's something going on here I don't like. And tell M I'm making these inquiries."

"Is the doctor safe, Oy Oy Seven?"

"For the time being, yes. Shalom."

Poontang! The mention of her name had made him remember the marble game at noon. And his hand, mauled by bear and fire ... how in the name of heaven would he be able to hold a shooter in those grotesque caricatures of fingers?

He held his hand in a sinkful of ice water until the swelling reduced enough for him to try a few feeble shots with a cat's-eye he'd induced one of the hotel's younger patrons to give him, after having to beat the kid up badly.

Satisfied that the hand was at least serviceable, he took the contact lenses off his eyeteeth (standard with M 33 and 1/3 personnel), extracted the microfilms from the tiny cameras built into the enamel, developed the negatives in a can of Mother's Chicken Soup (it was ideal for "souping up negs" as well as eating) and airmail-specialed the prints to Goshen. He, of course, had been snapping pictures of the Loxfinger party in virtually every conversation. The ones of Poontang, he knew, would drive Goshen out of his goyisher Boston bean. They'd crossed paths before and had a warm regard for each other. In fact, it was Bond who had brought a breath of spring to Goshen's reticent, dour life, fixing up the CIA operative with his first sexual encounter at the age of 43.

Lighting a Raleigh, he laid plans for the coming match. It's about time, he said to himself facetiously, to lay plans!

• • •

The day of the game dawned clear and bright.

Bond, dressed in a sporty one-piece Air Force-type jump suit, walked over to a spot about a mile from the Kahn-Tiki's main wing after receiving a terse call from Poontang.

Poontang, all business, was wearing a sweat shirt on which were emblazoned the letters Kansas city, Mo., Jaycees Marbles Tournament Champion 1954-55-56-57 and a pair of faded jeans that did not entirely hide her wicked silhouette.

Pine trees and thick clumps of bushes encircled the brown patch of earth she had selected.

"Buster, I think we'll start off with a little game called 'in-the-hole.' "

"That's how it may end up, too," Bond jested lightly.

Preferring to ignore his quickie, she said: "You're an Israeli and I don't expect you know much about our games. But I'll teach you this simple one. I've dug a hole over there"--she indicated a depression about four feet away--"and over here I'll make two parallel lines about three feet apart." She busily drew them in the earth with her sneaker tips. "Now we stand on this line and trawl--throw the marble--to that line. One closest to the line goes first. He, but it's gonna be she, buster, then shoots at the hole. So does the second player. One closest to the hole gets the next shot. Object is to get into the hole first, 'cause then you're eligible to shoot at the other guy's mib. If you hit the mib, it's yours. Or rather it's mine, Hercules. And it's twenty smackeroos for me. Here--take a shooter."

They stood at the first trawling line, peering intently at the second. She wound up like a baseball pitcher, then with startling delicacy let the mib fly. It landed about two inches from the second line. "Trawl," she said with a pleased expression. He did so. His landed six inches away.

"I'm first!" she cried triumphantly and for a moment she was the rock-hard sophisticate no longer, just an eager young girl with wind-blown hair.

She kneeled, holding her blue marble in the V of her forefinger, shoving her thumb forward. It skittered along the loam, straight into the hole. On the first shot!

Lucky, Bond mused, particularly because of the way she shoots. It's a fairly accurate style, but not basically powerful.

"I'm in, buster! Now you're in trouble. Either you've gotta make the hole on the first shot or stay away. Because I'm now eligible to knock the crap out of your aggie."

Sticky situation, he conceded. He bent over and duplicated her shooting method, affixing his red alley in the V position, fired toward the hole. It stopped about two feet away.

"Spansies! Spansies!" she bubbled in delight. "That means, Richard the Chicken-Hearted, that since I'm in the hole already, I can take the span of my hand, either once or twice, and move my shooter closer to yours. That's one of the privileges you get when you're in first. And," she paused dramatically, "I'll take double spansies--if you please."

Her two hand lengths placed her within inches of his red alley. She shot. Click! Her aggie drove his spinning ignominiously into a bush. "Twenty schmolyeres, buster! Cough up!"

Expressionless, he peeled a 20 from his roll, paid up and went into the bush to retrieve his shooter. He nearly stepped on the soft, plump hand of Estrellita Kahn, who was writhing passionately on the ground with Henny Benny Lenny, West Coast comedy sensation. They did not notice him as they gyrated their locked bodies in animalistic fury, the little laughmaker whispering, "Speaking of sex, this married couple, Abie and Becky, go to a motel and ..."

"Shush with the goddamn jokes and swing!" she moaned.

Bond found the marble and returned to a smiling Poontang, his eyes radar-scanning the sky anxiously. Where the hell was Milton?

Poontang repeated her victories in the next six games, following the same pattern. She was now $140 ahead. "Want to quit, he-man, and admit she-man shot the pants off you?"

Then he heard it. The motor of a small plane. Milton's Piper Cub! Soon it was just 90 feet above them and Bond could see his brother waving frantically. An object dropped out of the Piper, thumping near his feet.

"What kind of a tinhorn gimmick is that?" she said angrily. "Trying to rattle me, Bond?"

"My dear, I'm going to give you a short, but highly informative lecture."

"Do go on, Mr. Bond, if you think it'll help you--and it won't."

"Poontang, in ten minutes you're going to undergo the most traumatic experience of your life. Know ye this, Miss Plenty, it's a fact that I'm an Israeli, but by choice, not by birth. I saw the light of day first in Trenton, New Jersey, where as a boy I played this game at a certain intersection--Market and Lamberton streets. Mean anything to you?"

"Not a damn thing," she said. But her voice was obviously guarded.

"There is a vacant lot there--or was, before urban renewal changed things around. And on that lot, my venomous pet, I learned the art of marbles from the greatest of them all--one Sonny Jo Washington, better known in the annals of marbles as Sonny the Schvartzeh. In fact, Sonny Jo once told me I was the best white player he'd ever encountered. No, I never beat him; no white boy ever did. But I came so close to doing it that Sonny the Schvartzeh, as a token of his esteem, gave me this."

From the object dropped from the Cub, a burlap sack, Bond extracted a marble from a leather bag.

"This, my sweet, is Sonny's own shooter, the immortal 'Potbuster.' " He let her feel it; she seemed entranced as she held the black-and-white-beribboned aggie.

"And while we're at it, Poontang, let's dispense with this 'in-the-hole' crap. We both know it's for babies. The real test of marbles is the five-foot bull ring. Here's a string with the exact measurements. Put it on the ground and trace around it while I change into my outfit."

For the first time she knew uncertainty ... even fear ... but she set about etching the five-foot ring. Bond disappeared behind another bush, slipped off his jump suit. So intent on revenge was he that he scarcely took notice of Eve Brown's cheery "Hello, Mr. Bond!" which seemed to annoy the grunting Schuyler Kahn, who was making love to her.

When Poontang saw Bond reappear, her blood ran cold. In his new garb, which had been among items in the bag, it was frighteningly clear that Israel Bond was--a shark!

The difference between a shark and an ordinary marble player could be likened to that between a gimlet-eyed Dodge City hired gunslinger and a homesteader.

Bond was wearing knickers!

With reinforced knee patches!

And on his right hand was a dirty glove with the fingers cut out, affording protection to just the knuckles!

Worst of all, he wore a red corduroy shirt and a beanie whose letters read: Orphan Annie and Sandy Drink Ovaltine. So do I.

His killer eyes boring into her own, Bond said coldly, "It'll be one hundred bucks a marble now, Poontang. Strict rules of the Asbury Park World Tournament. Now put ten of your mibs in dead center of the bull ring ... bunch 'em up tight ... no stragglers ... now add these ten of mine. We'll trawl for firsties."

His eyes in deadly slits, he casually flipped his shooter from the trawling line. It landed squarely on the second line. "Your trawl." Dazedly, she trawled. A foot off the mark.

"My firsties. And, incidentally, watch the way I hold my shooter, Poontang."

Now her worst fears were realized. Previously he had copied her own V style, but that had been a ruse, she now knew. For this time he was positioning his shooter the shark's way, aggie held between the topside of the thumb and the tip of the forefinger.

Bond cocked, shot. The Potbuster whizzed, crunched into the 20 bunched mibs like a missile, scattering them to the four winds. With a single shot he had knocked ten out of the ring! And, worse, his shooter had "stuck" in the middle.

"Time for a little pot-clearing, Poontang, but I may leave you a couple just to see your bull-ring technique."

With a series of short, powerful shots, Bond blasted eight more out of the circle. Then he deliberately closed his eyes and missed.

Two forlorn marbles were all that were left to her in the bull ring which seemed as vast as Shea Stadium. Her shot didn't even come close to either, barely making it across the ring.

"You inched, Poontang! You inched!" His voice was a whiplash of contempt, melting the wax in her ears. "And with all your inching, you just about made it across. Watch this, Poontang."

He did not assume the kneeling position this time, but stood straight, firing his shooter from his hip. It dive-bombed on one of the survivors, driving it fully six feet past the line.

My God! she thought. A drop shot! Who alive today could zero in on a mib from three feet up with a drop shot? Oh, Bond, Bond, she whispered, you're incredible. And a strange song, one her body had never heard before, began to sing in her inner marrows.

He deliberately missed again. "Your shot, Poontang."

Now he isn't even looking at me when he speaks. He hates me. I love him and he hates me. The Lord has punished me for my false pride. At least I'll show him I can get across the ring faster. She gave her arm a push from the elbow as she shot.

"Cowhunching, Poontang? Cowhunching?" His contempt knew no bounds now. "No real power, so you throw your aggie, you bitch!"

Cowhunching. The foulest crime. And he's right--I cowhunched.

With a last flourish, he backed three feet away from the ring to show the true power of a shark, aimed the Potbuster and walloped the last aggie. It did not go out of the ring. But he felt no shame. His shooter had cracked it in half!

Bond looked down at his hand, which throbbed terribly, red rivulets pouring down his fingers. The hatred was gone from him now.

"Oh, your poor, poor blessed shark's hand! It's bleeding. And you shot with a hand like that ... with pain like that? Just for the sake of my damn stupid challenge? Oh, Bond, Bond! I'm yours!"

She stood naked before him, her trembling hands having stripped off her garments. "Have you any strength at all left in that golden hand?"

"Yes," he said dully. Fatigue had formed on that dark, cruelly handsome face.

"Then take that magnificent agate, that Potbuster of yours, and shoot it at me ... my breasts, my thighs ... shoot it at me!" Her voice rose to a frenzy.

"Don't forget you owe me two thousand dollars," he said.

"Shoot! Shoot! Shoot!"

Bond took aim, letting the Potbuster fly again and again. Circular red welts mottled her heavenly nakedness.

"Now!" She pushed him into the bushes, clawing off his clothes like a mad woman. "Take me, Israel Bond!"

Bond whispered to Poontang. "Yes, darling, you're ready for my kind of love now. Because you've lost your marbles."

• • •

Dusk over Manhattan. Two teenaged gangs doing a ballet in the street below. A Salvation Army major imploring an A. W. O. L. captain to return to the fold, the captain ignoring him and trying to sell a trombone to passers-by. Poontang lying in the arms of Israel Bond, sipping (from a cup balanced on his lean, hard navel) Eight O'Clock Coffee, the brand served exclusively at the Ansonia Hotel.

Their steel-mill hot affair was now in its seventh day. It was their last night in town before the flight to Israel on the morrow (the doctor had accepted an invitation to vacation at a kibbutz in the Negev). "Happy seventh day, darling," she whispered. "You know, the Lord rested on the seventh day. You're my lord of love. Is my lord going to rest on the seventh day?"

For an answer, he stilled her kittenish teasing with his hungry mouth, leading her to another dazzling pinnacle of fulfillment.

But there was something in his face ... his dear, cruelly dark, handsome face ... pain in the gray eyes.

"What is it, my life, my own?"

"Your coffee burned my groin," he said softly.

"No," she said. "That's not it. You're unhappy, Israel."

"All right," he said. "I'm unhappy. I love you, but it's no good. You're a gentile girl, a shikseh. And I swore to my mother that I would plight my troth with a daughter of Zion."

"Oh, Iz, Iz, you fool!" She was laughing, but tears streamed down her drawn cheeks. "I'm a Jewish girl, you ninny! Not very observant, maybe, but Jewish all the way."

He inhaled a Raleigh and pressed it to her lips. "I'm so glad, so glad!" His own eyes were wet now ... rain, he told her, but she smiled in her wise woman's heart. She knew better. They were indoors.

Nestling in the crook of his bronzed arm, she told him of life in Kansas City, a Mark Twainish tomboy life with marbles, weenie roasts, apple pies cooling on window sills, girls in blue sashes, brown paper packages tied up with strings. "Yes, darling, these were a few of my favorite things."

Then a secretarial course at the Middle Missouri Valley Land Grant College of Mining, Farming and Baton Twirling, a stint with the Peace Corps in Argentina, where she and other shining-eyed young idealists had gone to answer a crying need and build a Howard Johnson's in the middle of the jungle. While there, she recounted, she had met Loxfinger, already fabulously wealthy due to shrewd speculations, and had accepted a post with him. It was she to whom he had dictated the notes that were later to become The Plowshare Papers.

"Where does Saxon fit in?" queried Bond.

"He was already on the scene when I joined the doctor. But if he's a public-relations man, I'm Carroll Baker."

"You're far more exciting than Carroll Baker, my sweet," Bond said gallantly. Which is true, he thought. It was something he could honestly say to any girl. "Why are you suspicious of Saxon?"

"I once asked him if he'd ever worked for B. B. D. &.O. and he said in that superior way of his, 'Hell, no! Those railroad jobs are just for niggers and dumb Irish Catholics.' Now, what PR guy wouldn't know about B. B. D. & O.?"

"And MacAroon?"

"He came later. We picked him up in New York when the doctor first went to America to accept the Brandeis award."

"New York? Saxon said he was a part-Negro, part-Scottish waif Loxfinger found in Marseilles."

"I don't know why Saxon's been telling you these things, darling. The ancestry part is OK, but he was recruited in New York."

Three black marks for Saxon! The brown woolen suit that no PR man in his right mind would ever wear, his ignorance of the advertising field, his blatant lie about MacAroon. I hope Goshen's checked him out good. But, again, why would Loxfinger employ such a man?

• • •

El Al Airlines--you should only Land and be Well

The sign on the sleek jet warming his heart with its folksiness, Bond, dressed in his Don Loper cape and Bermuda shorts, flashed his M 33 and 1/3 security card to the hostess: "Let's see the passenger list, please."

One name jarred him: "Kismet Ali Herzl, Cairo, Illinois, flying-carpet merchant." And in the seat next to his! So they were playing that game again, were they? Cairo, Illinois, indeed! Cairo, Egypt, more likely, his trained sixth sense told him. He'd be on his guard.

And, of course, the Loxfinger party, the old man, Saxon, MacAroon, Poontang. He'd told her to play it cool, maintain her usual frigid reserve in his company. But the adorable little hellcat, hopelessly lovesick, had made a salacious grab for him as he passed them; Saxon had seen it, whispered something to Loxfinger.

On the intercom was the pilot:

"Shalom and welcome aboard Flight 78, El Al Airlines, nonstop New York to Tel Aviv. I am Captain Tevyeh. Our airline is a friendly, informal operation, so just relax, have a ball, a matzoh ball, of course (Tevyeh chuckled at his play on words; Bond, jealous, wished he'd thought of it first). Don't be hoity-toity ... introduce yourselves to one another ... sing, talk, laugh, tell a hearty joke. Our lovely hostess, Miss Tigerblatt, will be around with tea in a glass and a lump sugar for between your teeth. Our dinner menu is great tonight, sweet and sour sweetbreads, three different kinds of boiled chicken, salad with Two Thousand Island dressing--we don't stint on El Al--raisins with almonds, the whole ethnic bit. Later we'll all line up in the aisle and Miss Tigerblatt will teach us the hora. For your amusement, we'll have continuous showings of The Jolson Story; it'll tear out from you the heart."

Bond gazed into the hostile eyes of the wiry Levantine traveling under the name of Mr. Herzl. "Hello," he said pleasantly.

The man thrust something on Bond's lap, hissing "Die, Israeli jackal!"

Bond's heart pounded. A black-widow spider crawled onto his knee.

Counteraction 12! The old words of the service manual rang a bell in his mind. There was a rebuttal for this loathsome thing on his kneecap. He unscrewed one of the large gold buttons of his cape. Out sprang a praying mantis!

Removing its little prayer shawl and yarmulke, the mantis gulped down the arachnid with one bite of its awful jaws. "Good show, Mendel!"

Counteraction 13! As the Levantine reached for his gun, Bond's ring sprayed fiery chain (horseradish) into his face. He drove his meat knife home into the blinded Levantine's innards. The man slumped dead against the window.

His head spinning with tension, Bond applied Counteraction 14. He fainted.

Minutes later, he revived and dragged the man down the aisle with an apologetic "My ol' buddy just can't take that schnapps," to the hostess. Inside the lavatory, Bond lifted the seat and stuffed his victim into the bowl. Thanks be to heaven he's lanky, he thought, pushing the "flush" button.

"Takes just one good flush to get rid of a four-flusher," he said casually, wishing that Zvi had been there to guffaw at this latest Bondism.

Back in his seat, he rifled the man's attaché case. Mr. Herzl, he discovered, was a member of the Cairo Legion Armed Police. Who had put him onto Bond?

But there was no more time for pondering. A favorable sirocco wind had brought the craft in nine hours ahead of schedule. Lydda Airport twinkled its lights below. "Fasten your seat belts. Smoke if you wish," said Miss Tigerblatt.

Eretz Israel! At last!

He bade farewell to Loxfinger and his retinue. "We'll meet again, doctor. I'll probably be assigned to your kibbutz."

Those unbelievably blue eyes focused on him. "Of course, Mr. Bond. We ..." again he nudged Bond's ribs conspiratorially, "mockies must stick together." His breath was alcoholic.

The secret agent hailed a cab. Soon he stood in front of the gleaming yellow one-story factory. This is the Home of Mother Margolies' activated Old World Chicken Soup. And under the sign, one of her proverbs: I am the Master of my Fate; I am the Captain of my Volleyball Team.

As he entered the modernistic structure, he heard the familiar lamentive strains of the violin evoking memories of another era in the Jewish saga. His eyes looked up. Yes, the fiddler was still there on the roof.

"Welcome home, Oy Oy Seven!" said M's bewitching private secretary, Leilah Tov, flicking her tongue at him alluringly. It had been a long time since he and Leilah ...

"M wants a full report, on the double."

He quickened his pace, zipping past the Chicken Soup division, the Mushroom and Barley section, the Blueberry Blintze room. He stopped in front of a door. Mother Margolies.

He knocked. The sweet, quavering old voice he loved so well said, "Come in, Mr. Bond."

Her back was to him and he could hear the rocker creak and the assiduous click, click, click of her omnipresent knitting needles. What was she making now? A sweater for the prime minister? Socks for Abba Eban? Or was she still knitting that lovely, multihued doily she had started two years ago?

The rocker spun around and the kindly, wise old eyes of Mother Margolies were on him. Dear, dear Mother, the wonderful lady whose factory it was and who had permitted a secret portion of the building to be utilized solely for the dark manipulations of M 33 and 1/3.

For a very good reason.

M stood for "Emma." Dear old Mother Emma Margolies was--M, number one in the Secret Service of Eretz Israel!

• • •

"Let's have it already," said M.

Bond opened his carrying case, dumped a mound of Raleigh coupons on her desk. "Four thousand, three hundred and eighty-two, M. How's that?"

She sniffed. "Just so-so, Oy Oy Seven. Oy Oy Nine really gave us a full measure of devotion when he was with us. More than six thousand."

"Was with us?" Bond said. "You speak as though he ..."

"He is," M said flatly. "We buried him yesterday. Lung cancer, emphysema, smoker's heart, and a particularly bad case of adenoids." She sighed. "Very clumsy at judo, botched up codes ... but, vay tzu mineh yooren, could that boy smoke! We got seventy-five walkie-talkie radio sets from his last batch."

Bond lit a Raleigh, offered her one.

"Are you crazy?" M said indignantly. "You can die from that garbage. Now let's have the report."

He began with the Miami Beach affair, relating fully everything that had happened since, placing emphasis on certain puzzlements that had occurred during the Loxfinger phase of the assignment. "My capsule opinion: It's a weirdo setup. I'd like your permission to snoop around."

"Granted. Snoop. But you should be extra careful. The doctor is more important than ever to our country's well-being. You were on the plane, so I guess you didn't get a chance to read these."

She held out a bunch of newspapers from all over the globe. "The top one is particularly interesting."

It was an English edition of the United Arab Republic's propaganda mouthpiece, Scimitar 'n' Feather, with this headline: Israeli Loxfinger's Peace overtures mulled by our Government.

Impossible!

He read the lead story. In essence, it was straight-away reporting on Lazarus Loxfinger's Plowshare Papers, with liberal quotes from them. The story was not favorable, he noted but, more significant, not unfavorable. Something big was in the wind. It had to be. For, in the past, a peace proposal from Israel would have meant reams of ridicule, sarcasm and the tired old call for a "jhidad," holy war, to rid the Middle East of "these Zionist bandits, blah, blah, blah."

Just as eye-opening were the organs of the other Arab nations, all noncommittal, but nonbelligerent.

The non-Arab papers had the freedom of speculation, pointing out that this was the first time Arab journals had ever carried an Israeli declaration without abusive comments.

Breakthrough in Mid-East at Last? asked the Manchester Guardian, Loxfinger Papers get hard Arab looksee-- Chicago Sun-Times.

Arabs hint end of Hostility to Jews--Paris Match. And predictably:

Mets' Rookie has hangnail!

V-doll and Cop Link Bared (and that's not all!)

Commies seen Threat to Russia

Mid-East Talks Peace--New York Daily News.

I've been an ass, Bond realized. I actually had doubts about a man who might crack the nerve-racking stalemate that has hamstrung my country for 17 years. Just because he drinks a little, mauls blondes and uses a few ethnic slurs.

"And yet," thinking he was still talking to himself.

"And yet," M chimed in with a knowing smile, "you still have some doubts. Then go to Loxfinger, guard him and, while doing so, satisfy those doubts. You will be working alone ... unless something extraordinary comes up. In that case, you will be contacted by Agent D, only if necessary."

Agent D! Again the mention of that shadowy figure behind the scenes.

She anticipated his next question: "Do not ask me about Agent D, Oy Oy Seven. Now go."

One more stop--the quartermaster's, where he would receive any equipment he needed, reload the mezuzah and requisition an automobile.

He walked into the office of Lavi Ha Lavi, quartermaster and inventor of diabolical espionage devices.

Ha Lavi hardly looked up from a diagram he was sketching.

"Shalom, Oy Oy Seven."

Behind him was Oy Oy Two, a grizzled veteran of many dangerous missions into enemy territory, testing a powerful new flame thrower. "It works," he told Ha Lavi. "The tip of the cigarette is definitely smoldering."

"Good," said Ha Lavi. "Bond, look over there. You'll be driving that baby to the kibbutz."

The grill of a gleaming new MBG grinned at him. A Mercedes Ben Gurion! And a powerhouse, too, Bond guessed.

Ha Lavi chuckled. "Sports some fairly interesting features, triggered by this row of buttons ... sixty of 'em ... on the dash." He licked his lips, an enthusiastic schoolboy showing off his collection of dead Japanese beetles. "This one ... you press it and a 125mm machine gun slides out of the right fender. This one ... a similar gun slides out of the left fender. Then they open fire--on each other. Needs a little work there."

"Fascinating," Bond purred.

"This one ... converts your ashtray into a Lazy Susan. Here ... windscreen and windows that become completely opaque in case you're driving and don't want to be seen. You can't see either, but it's a sacrifice you'll have to make. This little button makes the dual exhaust pipes blow bubbles ... more of a fun thing than anything else, Oy Oy Seven. Radical new turbojet motor. Runs on any liquid whatsoever. So drink heartily, old man. Homer radio signal planted in the horn. It lets you pick up signals from a similar device planted in the rear axle. And this one ... I love it ... the new Sunbeam laser beam. Shaves you without a blade ... or a razor. Then the master button ... this red one ... number twenty-seven ..."

"Yes," said an interested Bond.

"Only, I repeat, only to be used in the direst emergency. Chips down and that sort of thing. Press it and the whole car converts into one big goddamn button. Frightens the deuce out of anyone who's ever seen it. Now memorize the master list of buttons, Bond! The right button could save your life!"

• • •

Even as the MBG sped deep into the wasteland, Bond pondered Ha Lavi's last words ... something about the right button. It was a typical Negev day ... unbearably hot. The sun shimmered off the rippling mirages, blinded his eyes, caught the rocks in a crystalline flash, dropping into a wadi for a ground-rule double, scoring Maris and Downing, who had come in to run for Mantle.

Then a sudden patch of green, incongruous in this tan-colored nowhere, and Bond knew he had come to the kibbutz, K'far K'farfel, which was playing host to Loxfinger & Co.

Under the shade of a tree sat the dread MacAroon, who obviously found the sun too taxing for his usual display of karate. He seemed content to sit and split popsicle sticks with his pinky.

"Hello, MacAroon," said Bond affably.

"Why ye not lay doon anna die, yo' mothuh humpah?" said the mulatto with an unfriendly growl.

"If you're to use that phrase at all, it's 'mater-violator,' at least in my circles," Bond snipped back.

Then he heard Saxon's voice, just a snatch of it, as he pushed open the noisy screen door.

"... Taken care of ..." and something that sounded like "my" ... then "furor."

Saxon and Loxfinger froze, ceased their palaver at the sight of Bond. "You were not expected here so soon, Mr. Bond," said the doctor somewhat accusingly. "Mr. Saxon was just telling me about the furor my Plowshare Papers have created in the world and the highly salubrious reaction among Arab leaders. I have further news, Mr. Bond, which, as a security person, you'll doubtless be told of eventually. The Knesset has given me permission to stage top-secret exploratory peace talks with two key Arabs. We shall convene on a dhow in the Red Sea very shortly. Around the Passover season, I believe. Confidential, of course."

"Fantastic!" Bond could only shake his head in wonderment.

"Yes, my friend, these talks could yet achieve that final solution to this nation's problems which I see just beyond the hills of doubt and confusion."

A twinge in Bond's cheek, mirroring something horrible stirring deep down inside. Something as yet nameless.

He heard the beeper from his MBG. Someone was trying to reach him. He went out and took the call. "Bond here."

"Bond? Monroe Goshen. Listen, I'm in Israel. No time for explanations. AAA Priority. Meet you at Tel Aviv Sheraton."

AAA Priority! Was Israel in danger from the Arabs? The American Automobile Association? He did not dare guess. Bond started the motor, but suddenly Lazarus Loxfinger appeared.

"Uh, Mr. Bond." The voice halting, about to divulge something delicate. "I am a man with great human frailties. Women the greatest one. I gather from your dalliance with my secretary that you, too, are a man of the world."

"You know about Poontang and me?"

"Of course, my dear boy. And why shouldn't you? She is a splendidly constructed type who will give you fine sons for soldiering, tall, blond sons whose marching feet will crush the mongrelized enemies of ... Israel, of course."

From the back of the house came Saxon in a Volkswagen bus, speeding past them down the road to the main highway without so much as a glance at either of them.

"Getting back to the subject of women. Could you do me a favor, Mr. Bond? There's a Bedouin camp not far from the kibbutz."

"I passed it, doctor."

"Ah, yes. Well, Bond, I rather took a fancy to a well-proportioned young nomad there by the name of Mara. She should be waiting for me in a rendezvous spot not far from the camp." His lips glistened lasciviously. "Please go and fetch her for me. You would be doing an old man a great favor. And I will reciprocate by bringing some sweetness into your life--like so!"

He clapped his hands. MacAroon appeared with a jug and in a lightning move dumped its contents on Bond's head. Something sticky, sweet, thick dripped from the top of his skull down his white linen suit. Some of it touched his lips.

"Honey!" Bond cried. "But ..."

"Has it not always been in our Jewish tradition to cover the things we love with honey, Mr. Bond? Now go fetch the supple Mara. You'll like Mara, Mr. Bond. She has a bite, a tang you'll never forget. In fact," he winked, "I wouldn't be surprised at all if she were taken with you instead of an old codger like me. But go get her quickly!"

As he drove away from the kibbutz Bond felt a sticky crawly feeling. It's not just the honey, he thought. It's from a personal beeper in my soul, "danger ... danger ... danger." He lit a Raleigh, last one in the pack, and was so unnerved he threw it away without taking off the coupon. Gottenu! I really must be rattled to do that.

A bit past the encampment of striped tents, he spotted a likely rendezvous site. A small bluff rose above him. He parked the MBG.

"Mara?"

His voice echoed off the wall: "Mara?"

"Mara is here, Mr. Bond." A mocking, sinister female voice. "Your Mara. Mara Bunta!"

Pain seared his head, face, body. A stream of evil, biting things poured down the cliff's wall, tearing at his flesh.

"Mara Bunta, your Mara, you Jew bastard!" Saxon's voice, unmistakably. "Mara wants you, darling," said the girl's voice. It was Poontang's. Was she in this, too? Was her "eternal-love" vow part of the plot?

He now knew what the black stream tumbling upon him was. Marabunta! South American soldier ants! Each an inch long, voraciously hungry, stimulated into a frenzy by the honey. And in five minutes Israel Bond would be a skeleton bleaching in the Negev sun!

• • •

Every pore was on fire from the overwhelming onslaught of the tiny fiends. He clawed at them futilely. No use! There must be thousands of them. He'd be a goner in short order. Short order. "One order of Israel Bond on toast," his brain said sardonically, flinging out the last great Oy Oy Seven witticism--at his own expense.

His brain! The list! The last shred of his reason was telling him something. The master list of defense mechanisms that Ha Lavi had warned him to memorize. "The right button may save your life," a voice from 10,000,000 light-years away echoed.

He'd remembered one bizarre item, chuckling at it with a what-will-Ha-Lavi-come-up-with-next wonderment. Button 27! Pushing at the ants with his bad hand, screaming as their tireless jaws ripped into his bad shoulder, Bond, lungs whistling (Heartaches, the immortal Elmo Tanner solo), staggered to the MBG and, with a badly nibbled forefinger, pushed Button 27 with his final atom of power.

The MBG's trunk popped open. Six insanely shaped South American anteaters, every bit as voracious as their prey, popped out, their gluey tongues ejecting from their bananalike heads. With a gratitude he could never express, he felt those magnetic tongues clean away the marabunta. His body empty of the foe, the anteaters sprinted to the bottom of the canyon and swallowed up the remaining hordes. "Great going, lads," he whispered to his sextet of allies. "If you can't join 'em, lick 'em!"

He ignored the blood pouring from the innumerable openings in his devastated body and haltingly climbed the rise. There was Saxon pulling away in the Volkswagen bus. It undoubtedly had carried the crates of hellish cargo to the cliff, where he'd unleashed them on the secret agent. Convinced the marabunta had done their work, the sweaty Saxon was not even looking back to check.

And Bond found something else. His heart stopped.

Poontang, lying in a pool of blood, a knife between her shoulder blades. Saxon!

"Iz," she smiled bravely. "Was hypnotized ... made me do it ..."

"Don't talk, my sweet. There's a doctor at the kibbutz. A real doctor. I'll ..."

"Lazarus ... legend of Lazaru-u-u ..."

Poontang Plenty was gone.

Standing silently over her body, Bond dug the Potbuster from his pocket, shot it tenderly into her face and then placed it in her hand. "There'll be big beautiful bull rings where you're headed, my mixed-up darling, where pretty, corn-fed kids from Kansas City with wind-blown hair never miss. Knock out all twenty mibs with one shot."

He dug a grave, unmindful of the heat, the wounds, and placed her in it with all her belongings--except the $140 she had taken from him in their game. But that seemed chapters away now. "We'll meet there someday, you and I," he swore to the mound of sand, "and then you can pay me the two thousand you owe me."

Weakness flooded him. It's been too much. My body can't take it. He used his Nippo to contact the closest agent in the vicinity, Edward Brown, 116, who was working at a Mediterranean port on one of the tiny democracy's most vital secrets, the conversion of salt water into taffy. Brown's helicopter ferried the emaciated Bond to the factory and an anxious M.

"Israel, mine boychikl, what has happened to you?" M cried.

He collapsed at her feet, the point of her sturdy Daniel Green Comfy slipper mashing his ant-chewed nose.

A stinging medication, jolting him back to consciousness. Bond stirred.

"Got to think things out ... put the pieces together fast," the agent said through torn lips. Monroe Goshen stood at M's side, fear and consternation on his American Gothic face, highlighted by the field of corn that had suddenly shot up around him.

M spoke: "The fool eats the cheesecloth; the wise man waits for the cheese."

Bond smiled faintly. Good old M!

Her eyes gleamed. "I know what must be done now, Oy Oy Seven. There are things deep inside of you that must be purged. You will go to sleep and have a dream sequence, Oy Oy Seven. A bad dream. I'll make it so it should be a bad dream caused by overeating, gas pains, that burning sensation."

Now her bony fingers, fingers that had created the world's finest foods, pushed vast quantities of it down his craw. Deliberately greasy London broil, great gobs of carp, sturgeon, Kem-Tone-tinted roe, cold (ugh!) chicken soup, schmaltz, sour pickles, badly burned cholent, a moldy onion roll, pistachio ice cream (a definite violation of the traditional dietary laws, but this was an emergency), plus the powerful knockout drops, Schloofen-22.

"Eat, eat, mine kindeleh," said the soothing voice of the Secret Service chieftain. "Eat. And dream."

He passed out.

• • •

Phantasmagoria!

He was diving into the bottom of an endless cornucopia, horrendous sights, sounds, phantoms, jagged patterns from the cosmos of his mind. "I want to sleep with my mother, but, oh, you id!" His own voice?

Ten tons of lead in his stomach ... nausea ... hot flushes. M rode by on a broom; "Got to see the wizard. He'll give me a new tin heart, some brains and ..."

MacAroon skipping merrily down a yellow-brick road, his hand slashing Bond's brain with an H-bomb flash: "Lay Lorna Doone, ye ofay mothuh ..."

Saxon: "Spin on, Jew boy, spin on."

"Mara's here," said a cool, sinister voice. Poontang. She turned into a gigantic ant and started chewing at his marbles.

Blue eyes, incredible blue eyes, opening into sneering mouths: "Mockey! Mockey! Mockey!"

Loxfinger? Yes, Loxfinger!

That name screamed over and over by hard-eyed, brilliant-eyed sycophants. "Loxfinger! Loxfinger! Plowshare Papers! Furor! Furor! Loxfinger! Loxfinger!"

Hot waves of nausea. Bond retched, came to. There was a queasy feeling in him and it wasn't the food. It was from the dream and what it meant.

"I've got it all now," he croaked. His mouth twitched into an uncertain smile. "I'll tell it to you straight."

M and Goshen chorused: "Tell us."

"Lazarus Loxfinger is Adolf Hitler."

• • •

M said, "So what else is new?" A brave attempt at casual humor, but Bond knew his bombshell had gotten to her. She inserted her needles into the bowl of soup on the tray and started to crochet the noodles.

"That snatch of conversation between Saxon and Loxfinger at K'Far K'Farfel ... the words 'my,' then 'furor.' Knowing I'd overheard it, the doctor tried to palm it off as the word 'furor,' f-u-r-o-r, the excitement caused by his overtures to the Arabs. A lie. Saxon was saying 'my Führer'!

"The very name 'Loxfinger' ... another slur. To Der Führer, all hated Jews have fishy hands. And, Monroe, he takes a rap at your parish, too, mocking your New Testament. Remember Poontang's dying words? 'Lazarus ... legend ...' She apparently had overheard something just before they hypnotized her. You remember the story of Lazarus?"

"He ... he rose from the dead," said a stunned Goshen. "I see. Hitler is telling us that the allegedly dead Führer has been resurrected."

"Precisely," said Bond. "And here's the capper ... the phrase that made me wince during Loxfinger's speeches. I didn't know why at the time. I do now. Can you guess it?"

Dazed by the complete unreality of his whole monolog, they were unable to answer.

"The 'final solution.' Remember Eichmann's phrase? Well, he's still obsessed, is Der Führer. He's still after that 'final solution' -- the destruction of Eretz Israel."

M broke in again. "Now I shall tell you boychikls a few things only I and our highest officials know. We've swallowed his scheme, all Loxfinger, stock and barrel of it. We've even planned a ceremonial meeting with the Arabs at Eilat to show our good faith, during which a rifle will be broken to symbolically indicate our plans to disarm. Loxfinger will be there, some Arab muckamucks, our own P. M. and his aides. It'll be on the first day of Passover, just a few days away. If we cancel, we'll tip our hand. They'll know that we know something isn't kosher. Then they'll say we are, indeed, aggressors with no wish for peace whatsoever. They'll murder us with propaganda."

"Yes, but if we follow through, don't be surprised when, on that first joyous Passover day, an Eretz Israel, its guard down, is overrun, their armies pouring on us from all sides like those damned marabunta," said a bitter Bond.

"I've got to make a very important phone call in the next few minutes," said Goshen from taut lips. "A tall man of the West with a mournful hound-dog face must be told of this evil plot."

"What the hell good can John Wayne do at a time like this?" snapped Bond, envisioning the annihilation of his people.

"If that phone call is to whom I think it is," said M shrewdly, "go make it, young man. And don't call collect. We'll pay for it. Of course, if you could make it station to station ... after nine P.M...."

Even now, she's trying to save my poor little country a few pennies, Bond thought. What a magnificent old woman! Then he snapped his fingers. "M! Loxfinger told me he was clearing the way for peace with a secret meeting with some Arab mahouts on a dhow in the Red Sea ... around Passover. That would fit in with the ceremony. They'll probably be making final plans for the invasion. I've got to get on that boat, hear that conversation."

"Don't be a fool," M said. "You'll never get within a mile of that boat. They'll have frogmen, sonar, the whole schmear. Besides, it isn't necessary. Agent D will handle it very nicely."

Agent D! Again that name!

"M," said an emboldened Oy Oy Seven. "Nothing should be withheld from me at this stage of the game. I've been in it from the start. I broke the case. Now, who is Agent D?"

"Only three people know that--the P. M., a certain scientist and me. That's how it must stay, Oy Oy Seven. Now, get down to Eilat, disguise yourself and be ready for anything. Big things will be happening in a few days. And at the right time, Agent D will make his ... or her," M said cleverly, "presence known to you. Now go kill and be well."

• • •

Bond and Goshen sat on the terrace of the Sheraton, which had an outstanding view of the terrace of the Hilton.

Aware that his confrere in espionage was in a funk, Goshen barked: "Snap out of it! At least we know the score. And Loxfinger thinks you're dead, that he's still got your government bamboozled. So you can play a lone hand undisturbed. Leave Saxon and MacAroon to me; they're U. S. citizens, so they're my pigeons."

He patted Goshen's back fondly. Good old Goshen! A man couldn't have a better pal. He'd have to get Goshen laid again sometime.

"After all, Iz," Goshen said, "times have changed. This bastard can't make the world go Sieg heil! anymore."

The Israeli looked up quickly. "What did you say?"

"I said, he can't make the whole world go Sieg Heil! anymore."

"That's it!" Bond nearly jumped off the bench. For the first time in days, Goshen saw that cruel, darkly handsome face light up.

"You're cracking, Oy Oy Seven."

"Like hell, Monroe, but you just gave me the world's greatest idea." He whispered heatedly into Goshen's conch shell of an ear. Goshen nodded.

"It's crazy, but it might make it. I'll fill M in on the bit, pronto! You get down to Eilat!"

• • •

Now the MBG's petrol pedal was jammed down to the floor and Bond, a sharp new Robert Hall Westerfield suit on his back, was racing to Eilat, the frontierlike boom town at Israel's southernmost tip.

A sign: Eilat. Nestling on the shores of the Red Sea, where thousands of years ago a hardhearted Pharaoh and his minions had perished by a miracle as they pursued the Children of Israel into its waters. Are there any more wondrous works in that bag, sir? Bond asked, looking skyward, seeking some message, some sign. He saw one: Drink Coca-Cola--in Hebrew. The skywriting pilot (unless he was an Israeli) probably was going stark, raving mad, flying from right to left.

On the outskirts of Eilat, he pulled off the road, changed into a laborer's uniform, affixed a mustache and got back into the MBG. Her tank read "empty," but Bond's was full; he had sensibly downed four quarts of Gallo on the way. True to Ha Lavi's word, the MBG roared anew and he continued on.

M had arranged a new temporary cover role as a laborer with an American company which had been granted a concession to drill for oil offshore. The beefy, red-faced straw boss assigned him the task of hauling supplies to the company barge. It would be an ideal spot from which to keep an eye on the large Arab dhow, whose sails could be seen faintly a few miles away.

A shifty-eyed Arab sidled up to him and whispered with a licentious mouth: "Monsieur, would you like to purchase some interesting American postcards," his voice dropped confidentially, "with dirty zip-codes?"

For a second, Bond felt like smashing the filthy beggar. But--wait! Could this man be one of ours? Agent D? Or one of theirs? He'd find out. "The prune in the spoon sings a Frank Loesser tune."

"But the man who must hum will find scum in the drum."

"Who are you?"

Whipping off his headdress, the Arab said, "Shalom, Oy Oy Seven!"

"My God! Zvi! What's up?"

"Nothing as yet. But I want to tell you that M has OK'd the use of the three hundred young pioneers you requested. They'll be down here in a few hours, dressed just the way you want 'em."

• • •

Now Bond was apprehensive. The days had slipped by, one after another--a logical sequence of which he fully approved. But now it was the clay before Passover and he had seen or heard nothing. No visitors to or from the dhow. Could that advertised meeting be a red herring, too? All he had seen was a happy-go-lucky dolphin skimming through the sea, doing flip-flops.

It was late in the afternoon as he stood on the deserted beach. The sun was at its zenith; the clouds at their Motorola. Then he saw it. A cabin cruiser heading toward the distant dhow. He caught a glimpse of a huge dark head. MacAroon! Then Saxon! The same brown woolen suit. It could be no other. And--Loxfinger! sitting in a camp chair with a pith helmet atop his dome as the others fanned him with large palm leaves.

The dolphin he'd seen earlier was quite close to Bond now, rolling its hilariously squinted eyes at him, that perpetually sly grin to be found on all members of its species, causing him to forget his grim mission for the moment.

"Looks like you're having--you should pardon the expression--a whale of a time, big fella," Bond called to the dolphin. I'll start talking to trees next, he mused.

In the next second he was stunned as though from a mighty clout on the head.

Out of the mouth of the dolphin, in perfect Yiddish, came:

"Putz! I heard all about you with the bad jokes. Enough, already! You think I can spend all damn day rolling my eyes at you? You want I should be picked up for soliciting? Or get astigmatism? I am Agent D!"

• • •

"Look," said the dolphin matter-of-factly. "Light up a Raleigh. You look like a ghost altogether. I'll make a long story short. I am Agent D, Dovidl the Dolphin. I am M 33 and ?'s secret weapon. I speak Yiddish because the very clever scientist who taught me to speak speaks it. Incidentally, so clever he's not; I can already beat him in chess three out of four times.

"Now, for many years marine biologists and psychologists have thought dolphins were intelligent. They understated the case. We're positive geniuses. They always dreamed that one day we could be taught to talk. Well, now it's happened. I fell in with a Dr. R. Nathan Axe of the Israeli Marine Institute and started working with him. He was rewarding me with a barrelful schmaltz herring a day, which no other dolphins are getting, so I figured I was ahead of the game and I cooperated. Until that time, I was just bumming around in an aimless life. Oh, a Timex watch commercial here and there, but nothing steady. I just missed getting my own TV series when Flipper, my cousin, a big ass-kisser, by the way, got the part. He had an agent. So I came to Israel. When your M heard of my accomplishments she naturally figured I'd be perfect for certain situations you other operatives couldn't handle. Like snooping around Arab boats, which I've been doing all day. I got the whole poop on the Loxfinger business."

Bond stared at the grinning maw. "A fish that talks!"

"Look, schnook, I'm no fish. I'm a mammal like you. Use your head for something more than a dandruff holder. You can swim. Does that make you a fish? Certainly not. Now--let's talk shop. I've been floating near the dhow all the time. They're speaking German, which is close enough to Yiddish so I can pick up most of it. Tomorrow is the first day of Passover. They'll all be together at the ceremony, Hitler, his two flunkies, two high-ranking Arabs, your brass, foreign dignitaries, the press, TV, etc. They'll make a few speeches and when Der Führer proposes a toast to unity, friendship and all that chauserai, it'll be the signal for an all-out attack. You'll get it from every which way ... ground troops, naval batteries, Soviet-built jet bombers. In the confusion, Loxfinger will be flown by chopper to some Arab hideout. So now you know. Don't stand like a klutz; do something. The ceremony starts at three P.M. tomorrow. I won't be far away, so look for me."

And Dovidl spun and swirled off.

Bond, using his Nippo, spent the balance of the night contacting M, Goshen, the Defense Ministry. Monroe's news was encouraging:

"Iz, three American nuclear subs, the Hazel Bishop, the Allen Funt and the Martin Luther King, will be lying off the Mediterranean coast, each carrying sixteen missiles, Polaris tipped with Lavoris. No reason an H-bomb can't smell kissing sweet. They'll be launched if necessary. That's a promise from the tall Westerner I spoke to an hour ago. In addition, an entire SAC wing will fly--very ostentatiously--over the entire Middle East. That'll give any would-be aggressors some second thoughts. Twenty thousand marines, gyrenes and saltines will be air-lifted here by an armada of jet transports, cargo planes, B-56s, 47s, 36s, 29s, 17s, Cessnas, Fokkers, Spads, Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade balloons, the Spirit of St. Louis ... anything we can get in the air. In addition, I hear that one division from Fort Bragg is trained to stick big, feathery wings into wax molds on their shoulders and fly that way. If they don't go too close to the sun they've a chance of making it."

"Great!" enthused Bond.

"There's more. An hour before the ceremony, each of the Arab embassies in the U. S. will get a note from our State Department, informing them we know all about Loxfinger's identity and that we will not hesitate to intervene militarily, if needed, to preserve freedom, peace, tranquility, and our oil holdings in the Middle East. I am personally going to contact the two Arabs at the ceremony and inform them we're hip to the plan. They'll cop out, don't worry, when they learn it's in their best interest to do so. We'll promise the Arabs we won't reveal their part in the plot if they dissociate themselves from Der Führer--publicly."

"Then there's nothing left but to wait. See you tomorrow, Monroe."

"I'll be there, Iz, in disguise. Good luck!"

• • •

The day of the war dawned bright and clear.

To symbolize the fact that the Arabs, too, were prepared to meet the once-hated Jewish state halfway, the ceremony was to be held virtually on the line that divides Eilat from its Jordanian neighbor town, Aqaba, from which the gulf derives its name.

Indeed, the rites would start in Jordanian territory, the first time in Israeli history that its officials would be recognized on Arab soil. Workmen from both nations were putting the finishing touches on a large reviewing stand, and facilities for the press and TV. The latter would carry the momentous program via Lady Bird satellite to all nations of the world. The major networks had agreed on a pool coverage with Walter Cronkite, who spoke all languages and understood all things, as the anchor man. Dignitaries from all over the world would attend, except for Red China, which in a blistering radio attack had berated the Arabs for attempting a modus vivendi with "the tool of Western imperialism, Israel." They had threatened to cut off shipments of mah-jongg sets, already forbidden to Israel, to the Arabs as well.

As the time approached and various officials began to take their seats in the stand, an American Dixieland band, the Canal Street Bordello Band, serenaded the ever-swelling crowd with music carefully selected to give each equal representation, alternating The Sheik of Araby with Bei Mir Bist Du Schoen.

• • •

In the offices of the American oil company, the senior member of the firm said to his junior partners, "As far as I'm concerned, this is just another working day. I don't give a damn what them wild-eyed Yids and Ay-rabs is up to. Now," and he bent over a geological map, "Dr. Huer feels there's an excellent chance of a rich deposit of oil-bearing shale right about here," and he indicated a point offshore on the Israeli side. "We plant the stuff here 'n' here 'n' here ..."

• • •

Now there was an earth-shaking roar as Loxfinger, with Saxon and MacAroon at his sides, walked onto the scene with the two burnoosed Arab potentates, the Israeli P. M. and his deputy, two members of the United Nation's Commission on the Middle East and Dorothy Kilgallen.

As the sun flashed brilliantly off their washboards and kazoos, the Canal Street Bordello Band rendered somewhat haphazardly, along with 15-year-old singing star Bobby Ricky Danka (just as haphazard), the national anthems of the many nations involved. But there was one person in the crowd who "dug" young Mr. Danka--M, disguised as a discothèque doll, her wrinkled limbs quite flagrant in the bikini she had chosen. Bond could see a wordless "yeah, yeah, yeah!" on her lips.

A tall, distinguished man stepped to the microphone. "Good afternoon, friends of world peace. I am Ned (Good Driver) Reamer, your Allstate Insurance spokesman, sponsors of this international telecast. In deference to the solemnity and significance of this occasion, my sponsor has instructed me to forgo our usual commercial messages. They merely wish me to say that whether you're from the state of Israel or the state of Egypt, you're in good hands with Allstate. Thank you."

A murmur went through the throng as the Arab and Israeli representatives alternated short speeches, each a cool, diplomatically correct presentation. If there was no love, at least there was no hate.

Bond, nervously inhaling the forefinger he had lit, glanced about. Good! The 300 young pioneers from K'Far K'Farfel were on the edge of the crowd, all clad in long black raincoats. They had been well rehearsed by Zvi, he knew, and would play their part upon his signal.

But where was Monroe? Aha! There he was near the podium in disguise. A hastily thrown together one, Bond realized, and all wrong for him. He was wearing trunks and a sweat shirt and bouncing a basketball. Bad cover, Bond mused; Goshen's only five feet, four; sure as hell doesn't look like a cage star. Worse, he noted, the letters on the shirt read: Harlem Globetrotters.

But his thoughts were interrupted by a mighty roar. Loxfinger was approaching the podium. Bond could imagine fingers tightening on triggers all over the Middle East, pilots smoking Turkish cigarettes ready to scramble into their jets, tank commanders inside their steel leviathans.

Loxfinger, in highly formal attire, was at the lectern, rustling his notes, as one of the UN aides was preparing to introduce him. He glanced at his Arab colleagues. They seemed to be in a heated discussion with an American athlete in red-satin shorts, dribbling a ball as he spoke. Suddenly the Arabs looked at Loxfinger, shook their heads in violent disapproval, ran their forefingers across their throats in an unmistakable sign. They walked quickly to their limousine and drove off.

It was all too plain to Loxfinger. The dogs! They were abandoning him for some reason. Untrustworthy Arab Schweinhund! Then he would take another tack, reveal to the crowd that he, Lazarus Loxfinger, had uncovered last-minute evidence of an Arab scheme to invade his homeland. That would touch off the powder keg just as well, he thought with grim pleasure. This time I shall call for a Jewish holy war. It will serve the same end ... the "final solution."

Bond had also seen the Arab runout. Goshen got to them! Good old Monroe! But Herr Doktor will try anything now to start a war, he reasoned. Got to alert the young pioneers. He ran toward the young men of the kibbutz.

"... Who more than any other man is responsible for our being here today ... the Twentieth Century's greatest man of peace, who should win the Nobel Prize because he is noble ... Dr. Lazarus Loxfinger!"

Smiling confidently as he acknowledged the acclaim, assured of his powers to mesmerize, to send people into battle with a willingness to die gladly, those incredible blue eyes afire, Loxfinger began: "My friends, I had hoped today to be the giver of peace. But just minutes ago I received information that--"

Heil Hitler!

Three hundred young men, who had shed their raincoats, stood before him. They wore brown uniforms, arm bands with swastikas, arms outstretched in that rigid tribute he had adored in the good years. His godlike name was crackling from their throats. He was--

Heil Hitler!

His right hand shot up. "Yes, Heil Hitler! Heil me! I am Adolf Hitler, your Führer, resurrected! I am ..."

And pulled his hand down quickly, but too late. All had seen it. He was unmasked before the crowd, the television eyes of the world.

"My God!" cried Bill Link of the AP to Dick Levinson, NBC-TV. "It's Adolf Hitler!"

Loxfinger flashed a baleful glance at the young "Nazis"--then saw their leader, a cruel, darkly handsome man in laborer's coveralls. But that mustache, dangling from one side of his lip. And that scar! Bond! Israel Bond, the security man. He has been the cause of my downfall.

"Kill the mockey swine, MacAroon, kill him!"

Saxon fired a machine-gun burst into the midst of the young kibbutzniks, several falling wounded. "Die, you Jew bastards! Die!" The crowd scattered in screaming panic.

One of the shots tore into Bond's shoulder--the bad one. Another zinged, burning the bad hand. He froze, hardly caring about the pain. For MacAroon loomed above him, dark, menacing, that horrible killing right hand cocked. The mulatto pulled a board out of his sequined shirt, brought that hand down. The board shattered.

When that calloused rhino-hard hand comes down on me it's the end, Bond thought. But I'll get in one damn lick. He hunched into Position 75, basic judo, swung a muscular leg and drove his toe into the giant's stomach.

MacAroon's face almost turned white. Confusion, bewilderment, pain crossed it, in that order.

Elated, Bond swung into Number 45, leaping superhumanly, chopping his hand down hard on the Goliath's neck. MacAroon went down like a torpedoed freighter. He pulled up his bulk slowly, picked up another board, brought that awful hand down. It cracked--but barely.

Now it seemed to him there was a vicious wasp named Israel Bond, stinging him in a million places with kicks in the groin, chops to the neck, a two-finger poke into an eye.

The half-blinded mulatto reeled. He picked up another board, chopped at it. Thump! It did not break.

But his hand did.

Hot tears flooded his brown cheeks.

And then Bond realized, with a wild laugh bubbling out of his throat, what was wrong. This big son of a bitch only knew how to break boards!

"I've got you now!" Bond roared, a demon unleashed. He slashed again and again at the tottering giant. There was bloody pulp on his hand.

"Inferior nigger schwein!" Loxfinger screamed. He brought up a Luger, blasted his failing strongman three times. MacAroon fell with a thunderous crash against the first row of the reviewing stand, cracking it completely. In death he had split his last board.

Poor bastard, Bond thought. But now a Luger slug smashed into his own body, the bad shoulder again. He was alone, unarmed. Loxfinger and Saxon were lunging toward him, eyes hot with hatred.

Got to run. Where? Another slug nicked his hand--the bad one.

The tall, distinguished man appeared suddenly with his microphone. "You know, ladies and gentlemen of the world audience, when sudden disasters like this can strike, isn't it wise to call your All state ..."

A screaming Luger slug sent Ned Reamer to his final reward. Bond hoped the man's policy would leave his widow in good hands.

But there was no time to worry about anyone but himself. The enraged Nazis were at his heels, their fusillade sending sand flying into his eyes.

"Oy Oy Seven! Over here! You should shake a leg!"

A voice near the shore! In Yiddish! Agent D--Dovidl the Dolphin! May heaven send him schmaltz herring six times a day!

"On my back, hurry!" commanded the dolphin.

He leaped upon Dovidl, who launched into a frantic dive deep into the Red Sea. Truly it was the Red Sea now, Bond's claret staining every inch of it.

At last the doughty dolphin had to surface for air. "Gevaldt! What a mishmash this day has turned out to be. But we're clear of 'em."

Zig-a-zig! Zig-a-zig!

Two bullets from a powerful Maquereaux, with silencer attachment. Bond glanced back. It was as he feared. The cabin cruiser manned by Saxon was bearing down on them, Der Führer's hand clutching the smoking French automatic.

"Faster, Dovidl, faster!" he implored. "Just three hundred yards more and we're safe on the shore of Eretz Israel, old mammal!" He could see Israeli soldiers waiting for the cabin cruiser to get in range so they could blast it into perdition.

Zig-a-zig! Zig-a-zig!

One slashed through Bond's right arm. He fell off the dolphin, choking on the salt water and his own blood. "Dovidl! Dovidl!"

A thickening circle of blood next to him. Dovidl!

"The second one got me," the dolphin grinned. But then, dolphins always grin. Bond knew his ally had suffered a mortal wound. The courageous Agent D thrashed, murmured "Oy Oy Seven, I'm sorry ..." and went under.

I'm done for now, Bond knew. Shot up ... can't swim. The boat will cut me in twain.

The cabin cruiser was just a few yards away. Bullets sang a dirge all around him. Israel's greatest secret agent was on his way out.

Then--a sudden blinding flash!

Then--a roar, louder than anything he had ever heard!

The Red Sea opened!

His face fell into wet sand. His unbelieving eyes saw the sea rolled back on two sides, leaving a pathway to the shore of Israel. He pushed his pain-racked, bullet-riddled frame. "Run!" The wet sandy path sucked at his feet, tripping him time and time again. Fifty yards now, forty, thirty, twenty, ten, five. Touchdown! He fell into the arms of two Israeli infantrymen.

Forced to abandon their cruiser when the parted waters left it beached in a trough, Loxfinger and Saxon were running an aimless pattern on the sandy strip, cursing, screaming, shooting without purpose, two stunned drunken beings going nowhere.

Then they saw the divided waters surging back!

Two gigantic waves, their white-foamed tips looking like the jaws of a mad dog, roared down on them.

Then ... then there was just the Red Sea ... eternal, peaceful, unconquerable as of old.

• • •

"He'll live ... I don't know why, but he'll live," said the doctor, with a clamp in his hand. It held a Maquereaux slug, one of two he had dug from Israel Bond's mangled shoulder. "But I doubt if this ... this man will ever do your section any good again."

M inhaled a Raleigh. Until Oy Oy Seven came back--and he would, she prayed--she herself would assume the burden of coupon gathering. And since it did seem sinful to buy the cigarettes just for the coupons and then chuck them away, she had begun to smoke. I'm an old harpy, she told herself. A few cigarettes a day won't harm me at my age. She was on her 80th smoke of the day, one for each of her richly spent years.

"He's moving," said Leilah Tov, M's beauteous secretary. Her heart pounded hopefully. Perhaps someday she would nestle again in the crook of Oy Oy Seven's muscular arm. The only man she would ever love.

With a shout, Zvi Gates rushed into the Secret Service infirmary, a bundle of newspapers under his arm. "Gottenu! It's the biggest thing that's happened to Israel since ... since ..." he struggled for a fresh simile ... "since canned beer!" Without Oy Oy Seven around to spur him on, Zvi's humor tended to be a bit archaic. "Gevaldt! Look at these headlines! 'Israel Superman destroys man believed to be Adolf Hitler! Saved by Red Sea opening as Bible Miracle is Repeated!' Here's another! 'World TV viewers see Miracle in Red Sea and Death of Hitler! Israeli Hero Clings to Life!' "

"What did the New York Daily News say?" asked M, a shrewd smile on that infinitely wise old face.

"Here," said Zvi, handing her the gutsy big-city tabloid:

Giants nip mets in 11-3 Squeaker liz, Dick share Hotdog at Harvest Moon Ball Festival

Hitler Dies in Red Sea.

"Everybody out!" M commanded. They scurried from the clinic, casting warm glances at the wounded secret agent.

"Israel, mine kindeleh," said M softly. "You're all right."

"Yes, Mother," he said. There was a fondness in his tone, not the fondness of a secret agent for his superior, but that of a secret agent for his mother.

Please, dear Lord, don't let me show my own weakness, a weeping M pleaded. This is a cold, hard business. I can't get sentimental over a boy I wish had been my own son.

"Oy Oy Seven, you did a fairly competent job. But we must rule out the ... uh ... divine aspects of your escape. We all know now that the Red Sea parted because of a row of strategically placed high explosives detonated by the oil company at the exact moment you fell off poor Dovidl's back. We don't need miracles, my boy."

"Our land is a miracle, M."

"Exactly. I'm happy to see you haven't lost your deftness with a phrase, Oy Oy Seven. But there can be no publicity, no personal interviews. If you are to remain with the Oy Oy branch, you must slip into anonymity immediately. We will release a report that you have died from your wounds. Your friend, Goshen, will be told the truth, of course. You two may be forced to share another assignment someday. One question: Do you think you can ever be strong enough to return to the M 33 and 1/3 section? Make your answer truthful, no heroics. We've had enough of them, God knows. Remember, a crippled agent is a danger to himself and to his organization."

Bond lit a Raleigh, scratching the match on his shoulder cast. Some of the section people had written on it in ink: "Get well, Oy Oy Seven." He was touched. As a rule, M 33 and ? personnel were necessarily an unsentimental lot. Or so he thought.

"I'll be all right in a while," he said. "Whenever my land is threatened by the forces of injustice, I want to be called in. With every breath in my body I vow this: Bond's for Israel!"

Healing sleep overtook him.

Good lad! Good heart! Good soldier! M thought. If only the shmegeggi could shoot straight.