The Underground Cities Contract

By Philip Atlee

 In Turkey, a planned prisoner exchange goes dangerously awry, in this thriller from the Edgar Award–nominated author.
 
Joe Gall must travel to Turkey after three Americans are abducted by terrorists. The plan is to break one of their compatriots out of jail in order to make a trade for the hostages. But kidnappers aren’t known for keeping their promises—and before he knows it, the freelance operative is in deep danger . . .
 
“[Philip Atlee is] the John D. MacDonald of espionage fiction.” —Larry McMurtry, The New York Times

“I admire Philip Atlee’s writing tremendously.” —Raymond Chandler

• Language: English
• Publisher: MysteriousPress.com Open Road
• Release date: Mar 2, 2021
• ISBN: 9781504065887

Philip Atlee

Philip Atlee (1915–1991) was the creator of the long-running Joe Gall Mysteries, which is comprised of twenty-two novels published in the 1960s and 70s. Born in Fort Worth, Texas, Atlee wrote several novels and screenplays—including Thunder Road starring Robert Mitchum, and Big Jim McLain starring John Wayne—before producing the series for which he is known. An avid flyer, he was a member of the Flying Tigers before World War II and joined the Marines after the attack on Pearl Harbor.

Book preview

Chapter 1

I first realized I was slipping out of gear during the guts Frisbee game. We were playing on the wide lawn beside my old, turreted, frame castle in the Ozark Mountains, and everything was jollytime until the lanky blond boy faked me out of my shoes twice in a row. He was a basketball player at the university a hundred miles to the south and had good moves. It was funny, I guess, so I joined in the laughter. Spread my hands and looked imploringly at the bright afternoon sky.

What none of them knew, not even the trim little leotarded redhead who had brought them to visit, was that I was a man who made his living out of his reflexes. The redhead was a ballet teacher in the university dance department, and we had been more than friends for several years. Whenever I drove down to fetch her.

The general laughter dwindled, and the game proceeded. The pro-model Frisbee disk went curving, climbing, and planing from one player to another across the fifteen yards which separated the teams. The other two girls, and man, were graduate instructors, old hands at winging the disk in confusing ways. But I was watching the basketball player.

When the Frisbee returned to me, I rocked back like a baseball pitcher taking a full windup. Thrusting my left foot toward the smiling basketball player. As my right arm swung forward in a blur, he moved instinctively toward his left.

That was wrong. He was keying on my right arm and never even saw the disk leave my low, dangling left hand. Steadied by the thumb and snapped end over end like a tumbling football, but with all the force my wrist could generate. There were no aerobatics involved; the Frisbee was flipping, not sailing, and he was still watching the wrong hand when it smashed the right side of his face.

The laughing shouts dwindled as the lanky boy dropped to his knees. When he shook his head, blood spurted from his cheekbone to his jaw, and he went on down to all fours. The others converged on him, and kneeling Marge, the redhead, turned to stare at me.

I walked toward the house, through the towering stand of pine, and was having a drink in the butler’s pantry (where have all the butlers gone? To join the plutocrats, one by one?) when Marge came in and said they would have to leave. Herb was bleeding too much; they couldn’t stop it. She also asked if I hadn’t dropped him on purpose.

A variation on the old Satchel Paige hesitation pitch, luv. Take the stupid bastard home. I’ll pay for his hemstitching and dental work.

She left while I was pouring another drink. I watched her join the Samaritan group coming down from the eastern lawn, followed their progress down through the pine grove. Herb was still bleeding, as advertised, and jelly-legged, being supported by his friends.

When they were nearly to the electrified front gate, I pressed the panel button which unlocked it. Saw them get in the two cars and drive off down the winding backcountry road.

Marge was incensed, but I didn’t give a fiddler’s frig about that. She was only an amiable little mare who serviced me when we both felt like it. And her friends were strangers; I hadn’t even known the boy’s name was Herb. I was, however, acutely aware that he had faked me out twice.

Going downstairs, I stripped to jockey shorts and put on bag gloves. Went barefooted to the speed-bag and started rolling an easy tattoo off it with alternate hands. The pear-shaped bag blipped in perfect rhythm as I stepped up the pace. Then, unaccountably, I faltered and the bag skittered sideways.

Beginning to sweat, I skipped rope briskly. Leaped off the floor and whistled the rope twice over my head and under my feet before coming down. No problem. Went back to the speed-bag and worked it with my hands held breast-high. Again, the rhythm faltered when the pace was stepped up.

Disturbed now, because that simple exercise had been a throwaway in my daily training for years, I showered and went upstairs. Had another drink of sour-mash Beam and selected a Kansas City prime porterhouse from my walk-in freezer. Spent half an hour preparing it on the butcher’s table and, when the broiler was hot enough, picked up the steak and walked out onto the western terrace.

The steak was heavy, two inches thick, and beautifully marbled. Using my best stiff-armed grenade movement, I threw it as far as I could. It cleared the near slope of my Edo Period Garden and the icy lagoon and thumped somewhere near the cluster of black bamboos. In the fading afternoon light, the life-sized limestone Bodhisattva statue I had brought back from Korea was motioning gently.

I went back into the house, through the kitchen to the control panel in the pantry. The butler still being absent, I flipped the master switch which turned on every light in the house and out on the estate grounds. Concealed spotlights and pin spots in the Edo Garden, the towering pine stand, and over the mandarin-red arching bridge, which led to the waterfall.

Then I returned to the western terrace. Master of all I surveyed, because I had spent years restoring the old clapboard mansion, creating its gardened grounds on the immediate slopes. Putting a high, electrified fence around my one hundred and six Ozark Mountain acres, most of which were still as wild as rain and storm could make them.

Frowning because I seemed no longer master of myself, I got a bottle of dark rum, sliced a lime in quarters, and had several drinks. Got the night-snooperscope from my study and went back to the terrace. Three raccoons were savaging at the steak I had thrown away.…

Two hours later, I had finished the bottle of rum and was opening another when the front-gate buzzer sounded in the pantry. I pressed the intercom button.

It’s me, said Marge’s voice.

Okay, me. I unlocked the front gate and was about to light up the path through the pines when I realized that all the lights were already on. When she came up to the wide gallery, I was waiting.

She mounted the steps toward me, saying that Herb was patched up and that she was sorry she had accused me—I motioned her to silence, took her upstairs to my bedroom, and undressed her patiently, like a man shucking an ear of particularly nice corn. Had her twice, in controlled abandon, and told her to put her clothes back on.

She started to protest, but I said, Right now.

Going back down the stairway, I gave her three hundred-dollar bills and said it was to pay for the damaged basketball player. Turning at the bottom of the wide gallery steps, she stared up at me.

My God! Just like that?

Lady, we had an implied contract. That I would titillate you when you were so inclined. That contract is terminated.

Marge put both hands up before her mouth, forgetting that she was holding the hundred-dollar bills. Looking down, I had the thought that a pretty girl was munching lettuce. Weeping, she turned and went running down the lighted path.

I heard her car start and leave. Heard owls enquiring, cicadas thrumming, and wind freshening through the high pines. I addressed myself to the rum again, pausing to check on the raccoons with the night-scope. Only one of them was left, a female cleaning her face. She seemed to be waiting for another delivery from Kansas City.

When I tired of drinking, about an hour later, I switched off the lights and dropped myself with a jolt of chloral hydrate that would have immobilized the entire Andorran Army.

Chapter 2

The next morning I slept until nearly ten, which was unusual for me, but resumed my normal training program. It didn’t work. As before, the speed-bag faltered from both hands, and twice I tangled my feet in the skipping rope. Giving up, I went across the arching bridge and ducked under the side of the waterfall into the cavern. Sat sweating in the sauna hut there for twenty minutes and was brought out of it by the ringing of the bell inside the cavern entrance.

Someone else was at the front gate. Unhooking the inch-thick hawser, I swung through the waterfall and dropped into the chilled lagoon beyond. Thrashed out and toweled myself beside the stone-lantern and ran up the slope toward the house.

My visitor was an agency courier. A black one named Bob Sylvester, who had brought me contracts before. I met him at the steps and asked him to leave the attaché case with me, then go back in his rented car to the airport.

Mr. Gall, I can’t do that. You know I have to give you time to read the file and make a decision. If you take the contract, I have to watch the papers being burned. If not, I have to return them to Washington.

I told him things had changed. Just put the fucking documents down on the steps and depart.

Sylvester shook his head. I can’t do that.

Okay, then take them away again. Pronto!

His intelligent black face was a study in puzzlement. Mr. Gall, he said slowly, there’s a procedure for this kind of trouble, too.

Either leave them here and go, or take them back with you.

He stared at me for a few seconds longer, then slowly unlocked the attaché case, which was linked to his right wrist by a small chain. Removed a large sealed envelope and put it down on the steps.

I moved down to get the fat envelope and went inside to unlock the front gate. Then into the kitchen and put the envelope on the butcher’s block table. Just what I needed. Another contract, another errand for the murderous butcher’s boy. Official, on business of the republic…

Lifting the envelope, I walked out on the terrace. The nooning sun was arrowing down through the pines, and all evidence of the raccoons’ feast was gone. The bulky file was about the same weight as the steak, but more unwieldy. Taking one corner with both hands, I whirled like a discus thrower and launched the envelope across the lagoon.

It fell short of the place where the steak had landed, so after I had cooked breakfast, I saved the bacon grease and took it in a cup across the arching bridge. Moved the top-secret envelope to the exact spot where the steak had been ripped apart and poured the bacon grease over it. Then pissed on the streaked envelope while the half-smiling Bodhisattva watched me.

My own odd little territorial imperative …

Chapter 3

For two more nights, every light on my remote estate burned on. Blazing inside the ornate old mansion, spotting the bridge and waterfall, and shafting from sources in the high pines. I had given up trying to punish my body into proper performance and was at work on my time-span. I couldn’t hold any subject rigidly fixed; after a brief period of concentration, anger and irritation drove me to something else, usually unrelated.

I tried to reread Burton’s Arabian Nights, a book I admired, but after I had turned a few pages, I threw it down. Remembering, as I stalked out of the house, to curse Burton’s fat-faced fool of a wife, who had burned all his notes and preliminary writing for the monumental work on erotica.

To further enrage me, a tawny whippoorwill banked overhead and landed on one of the high scrollwork towers of the house. The hill people know that such a visitation means impending death, so I hurried to my gun rack and got a twelve-gauge shotgun. As I ran out again, the bird curvetted