The Code

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I didn't make it to Kirby's funeral. I was in Singapore at the time, wearing a beard and glasses and posing as a turncoat missile expert eager to sell American secrets to the Chinese Communists. I played my role well enough to eliminate one of Mao's key agents and crack an information pipeline he had established, to pick up a couple of bullets in my side, and to receive a coded wire of congratulations from Hawk, the guiding genius of the dirty work division that employs me. We call it AXE. We're the good guys.

When a belated report of Kirby's death reached me, I was in a British hospital on the north coast of the Malay Peninsula, recuperating. Hawk had sufficient pull with the British to get me good doctors, a soft bed, and a pretty nurse. The news about Kirby spoiled it all.

Kirby had been one of AXE's best agents, sharp and dependable. We had worked together on some sticky jobs in Latin America, the kind of jobs that put you to severe tests. I hadn't forgotten how Kirby, a cool man in a clutch and a skilled helicopter pilot, had picked me off a boat in Cuban waters just before the craft exploded into more small pieces than a jigsaw puzzle.

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