Peter Baron: Special Agent

By Bruce Cassiday

I.C.E., International Combine of Entrepreneurs (commonly called International Combine for Evil), was a recent outgrowth of the Cold War. They profited monetarily from friction between East and West, recruiting agents from among the castaways of professional spies. Some were dismissed from one country or another for double-dealing, selling secrets, or for arcane diplomatic reasons.
Against this international menace, Special agent Peter Baron embarks upon a trio of dangerous assignments: To retrieve ‘Deep Sleep,’ a biological agent; to guard agent ‘Red Fox’ from the Russians; and to locate a spy satellite under the shadow of Kilauea Volcano.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bold Venture Press
• Release date: Jan 29, 2021
• ISBN: 9781005612832

Bruce Cassiday

A prolific author of fiction and nonfiction, Bruce Cassiday’s career spanned five decades and various mediums. His early career was rooted in radio drama. Soon afterward he was an author and editor of pulp fiction magazines.Bruce Bingham Cassiday was born in Los Angeles, in 1920. He graduated in 1942 with a B.A. in journalism from the University of California, and spent the next four years in the Air Force, receiving battle stars and rising to staff sergeant. He engaged in North Africa and Italian theatres, and later in the West Indies and Puerto Rico. From 1946 he became a professional writer, scoring a big success with radio dramas and big CBS shows, including Grand Central Station, and Suspense. He became an editor at Popular Publications, heading both Western and Crime pulps, and published some three dozen short stories and novelettes in the late forties and early fifties, in such magazines as All-Story Detective and Dime Detective. As well as editing numerous Popular magazines into the 1970s, Cassiday also served as fiction editor for Argosy from 1954 until 1973.He penned the adventures of agent Johnny Blood, a continuing character in Popular’s F.B.I. Detective Stories magazine. The series ran from 1949 to 1951, until the magazine’s demise. Then, bonding investigator Cash Madigan appeared in two novels — Murder Trail and The Buried Motive — in 1957.Cassiday married Doris Galloway in 1950, and they had two children, Bryan and Cathy. In the late 1950s and early 1960s he diversified into paperback novels, excelling in crime noir thrillers for numerous publishers, such as Ace, Beacon, Belmont, Lancer and Monarch Books. Throughout the 1960s, whilst still working as an editor, Cassiday continued to produce an astonishing flood of paperback originals including private eye, police procedurals, action, war and spy thrillers, medical novels, gothics and science fiction, as well as numerous adaptations of TV shows and movies, such as Marcus Welby, M.D., General Hospital, The Bold Ones, Flash Gordon and Gorgo. They were written under his own name and personal pseudonyms such as Carson Bingham and Annie Laurie McAllister.His output was diverse and prodigious, including numerous non-fiction books on many subjects from landscaping to carpentry, and ghosting Film Star biographies. He also held Administrative posts with the Mystery Writers of America and the International Association of Crime Writers.He died in 2005, in Stanford, Connecticut.

Book preview

SECRET AGENT

I.C.E., International Combine of Entrepreneurs, commonly called International Combine for Evil, was a recent outgrowth of the Cold War. The International Combine for Evil profited monetarily from friction between East and West, recruiting its agents, many of whom were professional spies dismissed from one country or another for double-dealing, for selling secrets, or for arcane diplomatic reasons.

I.C.E. had kidnapped Mario Rimini in order to obtain Deep-Sleep, a top-secret biological weapon that it would sell to Russia, or to the West, or to some small emerging nation which needed to establish itself. World peace would not be secure from that moment on…

SECRET AGENT

Bruce Cassiday

Produced under license from

Cosmos Literary Agency

Bold Venture Press

Copyright © 1965, 1966 by Bruce Cassiday;

Copyright © 2021 by the Estate of Bruce Cassiday

Acknowledgments:

First published in INTRIGUE magazine

Bold Venture Press January 2021

Available in print and eBook editions

This is a work of fiction. The events and characters depicted in this book are fictional. Any similarities to actual persons living or dead is coincidental.

This eBook is licensed for your enjoyment only. If you didn’t purchase a copy, please purchase your own. Thanks for respecting the work of this author and his estate.

Contents

Deep-Sleep

The Mendoza Memorandum

S.P.Y. in the Sky

About the Author

Books by this author

About the Publisher

Peter Baron: Special Agent

DEEP-SLEEP

Agents of I.C.E. planned to acquire a top-secret biological weapon to place the world at its mercy — But first, I.C.E. had to thwart secret agent Peter Baron…

CHAPTER 1

Introducing Peter Baron

Peter Baron blinked and turned away from the incessant glare of the flash bulbs popped by the news photographers eagerly lining the walls of the gaudy Naples nightclub. His eyes smarted. He tightened his arm around the waist of the Countess, who had slid off his lap and was now sharing his chair.

Countess Elena Rondi turned to him to smile, sagging against him, rumpling his impeccable dinner jacket and absently stroking his ear. Her full attention was centered on the dancer.

On the tabletop in the middle of the room, a heavily made-up girl with coal-black hair, blood-red lips, and clad only in a two-piece bikini and high-heeled Spanish dancing shoes, pirouetted and stamped to the beat of a perspiring combo. In her navel she wore an enormous opal. At each gyration, the girl’s breasts seemed about to escape from the strip of silk which bound them.

She was an Italian starlet, and she had just returned from Hollywood, where she had filmed a daring feature-length trifle about incest. Because of it, she was the sensation of Rome, Paris, the Riviera—and Naples. The paparazzi, the tabloid photographers, were avid for her. She was the toast of the Neapolitan social set.

Peter Baron sipped at the third-rate, expensive champagne and gazed about the lavish furnishings of the plush Naples night spot. The room smelled of money, of aristocracy, of status. Men in exquisite formal attire, women in lavish gowns, inverts in eccentric fripperies, all sat about watching the antics of the actress with jaded awareness, some clapping sardonically to the tempo of the dance, some sipping the flat champagne morosely. Decadence and boredom looked out of well-fed, well-fleshed, well-painted faces.

Wishing suddenly that he had opted for the sunshine and abandon of the Riviera and his villa there, rather than Capri and Naples this month, Peter Baron whispered to the woman at his side:

"Andiamo, Contessa. Let’s go."

She was a lush, golden-bodied creature, with long, syrupy hair and eyes the color of Chinese ginger. Her carmine lips covered cat’s teeth. She was splendidly built, with the North Italian woman’s fine figure, and the South Italian woman’s passionate temperament.

She smiled lasciviously, her eyes darting about the room at the hollow-cheeked aristocracy, at the paparazzi, these denizens of the night whose job it is to capture in black-and-white permanence the tawdriness, the shame, the evil of modern Italy.

"Momentino," she whispered. She snuggled against him, and he felt the warmth of her flesh through her sleek gown. It stirred him sensually. He fingered the champagne glass.

On the tabletop, the obscene dance reached a crescendo. The mascaraed girl twisted suddenly, tore the scant silken ribbon from her bosom, and threw the scrap into the air. She thrust herself about with greater abandon. The paparazzi went mad; the air quaked with chained lightning. Someone shrieked. A bottle smashed and a chair went over backwards.

With a resounding crash the music stopped. The lights went out. The girl on the table jumped to the floor and escaped to the rear of the club.

The dance was done.

Peter Baron pulled Countess Elena to her feet. Now.

"Si," the Countess murmured.

She clung to him, pressing her soft body against him as he steered her through the close-packed tables, past the manicured hands of bright-eyed fairies and the fat, sweaty palms of bankers and merchants.

A paparazzo wearing enormous sunglasses which stretched in a wide band from one ear to the other stepped in front of Peter to take a picture.

"Aspettate! Baron said curtly. No pictures!"

The photographer shrugged, his lips a line of contempt under the black eyeless strip-mask. His flash bulb popped.

Baron lashed out at the camera, throwing it savagely to the floor. He bent down, opened it, unrolled the film quickly, and tore it off.

What’s going on here? the paparazzo cried in a woman’s way.

No pictures, Baron told him calmly. I asked you nicely.

The photographer swaggered forward, grabbing Baron’s shirt front in his fist. Baron struck the finicky hand away and flung the other man down. The news photographer sank to his knees. His sunglasses hung lopsidedly from one ear. His eyes were naked, furtive and small.

The night club went dead quiet.

Baron threw a wad of bills on the floor contemptuously. "For your trouble, signore!" Then he gazed around at the pale, tense faces turned toward him. Without another word he gathered in the Countess, regal and silent, and hustled her into the street.

Peter, she whispered, kissing him on the cheek. What did you do that to him for?

I don’t like my picture taken, Peter Baron said softly.

* * * *

More than anything else, Peter Baron loved to drive his off-white Lancia over the dusty roads of Italy. He liked to feel the wind blowing down on him, cooling him and washing away the stench of stuffy nightclubs, the rich and the sick. He laid his hand onto the Countess’s bare knee. He could see her gleaming thigh where her $2,000 Paris gown had hiked up.

Elena, he said softly.

She was leaning her head back, letting the wind catch her long, fine hair. Where are we going? she asked sleepily.

To bed, Peter said. I’m tired.

Where, specifically? asked the Countess, a smile curving her lips.

"In a pink palazzo near Avellino. You know it?"

My second cousin Julia was born there. Before the Social Democrats turned it into an inn.

It has a view of a lovely lake. Sailboats in the moonlight and all that.

I thought you lived on Capri, Peter.

Occasionally. Also in Geneva. On the Riviera. The Isle of Crete. I like a change of scenery.

"And the palazzo?"

I’ve rented it for the night, thrown out all the paying guests, and reserved it for us.

You’re a dear boy, Peter. She leaned over and kissed him.

Above them the sky spread up into eternity, and the stars looked down.

Peter?

Yes.

It must have cost a mint.

Yes.

You Americans!

Yes, but I never go to America, except to visit, Baron said, smiling.

An internationalist?

Something like that.

Peter.

Yes?

All that money. Where does it come from?

He smiled and looked at her. "What an embarrassing question. Where do babies come from, carissima? The dollars come from the birds and the bees."

You have style, she said.

We’ll try it out together later, Baron promised.

She laughed throatily, expectantly.

They were climbing a country hill outside Naples. Not a single light was visible in the emptiness of space around them. The smell of open fields drifted over them.

Peter. Can you stop a minute?

He turned to her questioningly.

That cheap champagne. I think I may be sick.

Sorry. Baron slowed the Lancia and pulled over to the side of the road. He snapped off the lights. They sat there a moment in silence.

Somewhere near crickets chirped. A night animal scuttled through the brush.

I feel better now, Elena said weakly. Let’s just sit.

Peter Baron heard the sputter of a motor scooter on the road behind them. In the rearview mirror, he could see one glowing head lamp hurtling through the darkness like a fiery eye of an errant cyclops. A Vespa passed them noisily and turned off the main road into a side lane twenty feet ahead. They were parked on the slope of a hill, looking down into a wide, silent valley.

The narrow beam of the Vespa’s head lamp wavered slowly down the dirt road. A young man was driving. The road wound across a rickety wooden bridge over a stream, and then into a clump of trees before passing up the slope of the next hill.

As Peter and the Countess watched idly, they saw the head lamp of the Vespa pick out what seemed to be a barricade of empty barrels in the middle of the road. To one side, a tree was leaning down at an angle, as if the wind had bowled it over.

That’s strange, Baron mused.

What, darling?

The barricade.

They both watched as the young man stopped the Vespa and alighted. In the dim glow of the head lamp, he stepped across a tangle of rope which lay on the road’s surface.

Peter Baron’s jaw dropped. Then he straightened in his seat, instantly alert. He pounded frantically on the Lancia’s horn. Its bleat echoed in the night.

What are you doing? the Countess asked.

The fool! Doesn’t he see?

See what?

The tree by the side of the road straightened with lashing swiftness, as if a rope which had held it pulled down had been released. Simultaneously, the tangle of ropes under the man’s feet gathered themselves together and whipped up around him, forming an enormous net. It drew together at the top, and hoisted him in the air, so that he was caught like a fish.

He hung there trapped, suspended from the treetop.

My God! gasped the Countess, as if she could not believe her eyes.

A varmint trap! Peter Baron murmured. I wonder…

Instantly he pressed the Lancia starter, and flicked on the headlights. He drove swiftly to the turn-off and onto the dirt road.

What happened? the Countess asked.

I haven’t the foggiest, Baron said. But I intend to find out.

That man—he’s hanging in the air! In a net! She stifled a hysterical laugh. It’s almost funny!

The Lancia sped down the dusty dirt road toward the wooden bridge. As they passed over the planks, the bridge almost shook itself to pieces.

Look! The Countess was pointing upward into the sky. Peter, I’m afraid!

Baron lifted his eyes from the road and saw an enormous black shape hovering over the clump of trees, high in the air. There were no lights inside the mass, only a bluish glow. Then, as he squinted, Peter made out the shape of a helicopter, painted black, without markings, and running without navigation lights. It was hovering like a hummingbird over the man-trap in the tree.

A chain appeared at the open hatch of the helicopter, lowering a jagged grappling hook down toward the tree. Expertly, the grappling hook engaged the top of the fish net and began to draw it upward. A slip knot in the net unfastened, and the net came loose from the tree. The hook drew the man upward toward the helicopter cabin.

Baron slammed the Lancia to a stop behind the parked Vespa and jumped out. As he did so there was a harsh report in the air. A thin pinpoint of rifle flame stabbed out from the helicopter. Near Baron’s feet a bullet cracked into the earth.

They’re shooting! he cried to the Countess. Get down on the floor of the car and don’t move!

Yes, Peter. Where are you going?

When somebody shoots at me, I shoot back!

He rushed to the boot and tore it open, removing his Winchester. He raised it to his shoulder and aimed at the nose of the helicopter, firing three times. One shot splintered a part of the Plexiglas bubble, but the other two missed.

Man and net disappeared into the interior of the helicopter. The snout of an ugly machine pistol protruded from the chopper’s nose. Bullets popped up dirt all around Baron. One hit the Lancia. The Countess uttered a muffled shriek.

Baron cursed and ran toward the cover of the trees to draw fire from the Lancia. The helicopter hovered overhead, descending slightly. Peter dashed through the aura of light from the Vespa’s head lamp. A bullet almost hit him in the shoulder, but passed instead into the trunk of a tree behind him. He plunged into the densest part of the wood, whirling to take a bead on the helicopter.

The machine pistol chattered, spraying leaves and bark around him. He fired back. The ’copter came down lower, its nose toward him, like a mechanical dinosaur in some futuristic nightmare. Baron backed down into the undergrowth as best he could.

He fired again. The Plexiglas starred. A voice cursed in a guttural, Balkan tongue. Instantly the chopper rose into the air and vanished over the trees, heading eastward overland.

Peter Baron ran out into the open, firing at the aircraft several times. The ’copter lowered quickly over the brow of the far hill and vanished into the darkened sky.

Baron investigated the Vespa briefly for signs of identification, found none, and snapped off the head lamp. Then he returned to the Lancia.

Are you all right? he asked Elena, who was sitting in the seat now, sobbing.

Yes. What was that all about?

Baron packed the Winchester back into the boot. I haven’t the vaguest. He stared thoughtfully into the eastern sky.