The Factory Girl by Robert Franklin Murphy - Chpater 01
Genre: Vintage Sleaze / Lady Spies
A vicious plot to destroy a cloned* woman world render the world's sexiest and most lethal operative—inoperative
Su-Lin Kelly was six feet of undulating, pulsating, waiting-to-be-taken woman, with a stable of studs just waitin' for the takin', and a reputation as one of the world's richest and most adventurous play girls. Trained in a Tibetan monastery in the arts of the ancient East—Oriental fighting and the Kama Sutra—Su-Lin was as mysterious as she was murderous, inscrutable as she was sexy. It was a combination that made Su-Lin deadly—and someone wanted Su-Lin dead.
But the mystery was that there was no mystery. Though Su-Lin headed the global espionage network she inherited from her husband, she hadn't had a case in months. And her highly-paid informants had no information when they traced the source of her first attack...
And the second...
And the third...
*see page 1
PAGE 1
“Which is which?" Su-Lin asked, amazed.
Joe said, “The scared one is the waitress, Ella Quong. And the other is Candy Soong, the massage-parlor girl.”
It was spooky; the two girls were even more identical than twins. Su-Lin pulled Joe Zen aside, whispering, “I mean, how do we figure out which one is real and which one is the clone?”
“The waitress has a scar on her belly. I think they must have removed some skin from there and used the body cells for incubation to produce an exact duplicate of the original person.”
“Then that means Candy Soong was grown from the skin cells of Ella Quong, and that there could be dozens more just like her—maybe hundreds of clones made from the cells of one little Hong Kong waitress. But how do they do it?” Su-Lin asked, still mystified.
"All I really know is that the cells of any part of a living organism have the capacity to reproduce a total duplicate of the person they were taken from. Under the proper laboratory controls, that is. But the question remains: Who's got the formula, and what, exactly, have they got up their sleeve?”
CHAPTER 01
Listen to the audio version of Chapter 01
Su-Lin Kelly was bored.
Boredom between assignments was one of her main problems. Sex sometimes filled the gap and sometimes not. One dubious cure—if things got really bad—was to throw a party. When Su-Lin sent out invitations, people came from three continents to attend. The Jet Set flocked in gratefully to pay homage to Su-Lin, the western world's fabulous playgirl. "If we didn't have that sweet child we would have to create her, she fills such a vital need..." it was said of her because her reputation was so unique.
Su-Lin's Fifth Avenue penthouse was jumping when Joe Zen elbowed his way across the crowded room and whispered, "Phone call.”
A slight frown appeared between the lovely brows. Su Lin had discovered an Italian scuba diver with superbly muscled thighs and biceps who showed promise as a diversion and she was understandably annoyed at the interruption.
“Tell whoever it is to get lost," she suggested.
Joe Zen leaned close enough to smell the scuba diver's aftershave—a masculine scent from Paris—and his nose twitched in contempt.
"It's Casey Greer,” Joe whispered.
Su-Lin sobered instantly. "That's impossible. Casey's in an Egyptian jail.”
“Not anymore. He's in a deserted warehouse on Pier 13 off the Hudson River.”
That was strange. Only yesterday Su-Lin had talked to connections in Cairo about getting Greer, who was a dear friend, out of the slammer. She had learned that it would take on-the-scene negotiations and she planned to head East as soon as her party broke up.
"Excuse me, darling," she said as she unwound herself from the magnificent thighs and biceps of the Italian. "Keep those muscles flexed, I'll be back."
She followed Joe Zen into her private suite where Mala Key, her luscious little Hawaiian companion, had slacks and a black turtleneck laid out.
As Su-Lin stripped down and snapped an ermine-lined sheath onto her inner thigh—a switchblade was her standard weapon, that and the lethal techniques she'd spent long, laborious years in perfecting—she noted that Joe Zen was pulling on a jacket.
"You stay here," she said. "See that nobody throws anybody else off the balcony."
Joe was disappointed but made no objection. Su-Lin's word was law and when she gave an order she expected it to be obeyed with no quibbling. She hurried to her private elevator, descending ground level at high speed. She crossed the lobby onto the street and signaled a cab parked some fifty yards from the entrance.
The cab was not there by chance. It stood available during all Su-Lin's waking hours just in case she needed it. The arrangement was expensive but Su-Lin got more than a mere cabby for her money. Known only as Zero, her driver was loyal to Su-Lin, to his fat pay-checks, and to the pension he would receive if he lived long enough to collect it.
Su-Lin said, "Hudson Pier 13, Zee. Can you find it?”
"Sure.”
Su-Lin climbed in beside him and he eased out into the Fifth Avenue traffic, cutting over to cross Central Park at 79th Street. "Anything important?” he asked.
“Could be. I'm meeting Casey Greer.”
“Casey? I thought he was—“
"I did too. He isn't."
"Casey's an all-right guy,” Zero said. "A good man."
He was more than that to Su-Lin. She had been called cold blooded, distant, incapable of love. She was basically a loner, but Casey Greer was one of the few freelance espionage agents she trusted and a man she came as close to Loving as her strange, alien nature would permit. Something else also drew her to him. He was an expert on Asian affairs, Sino-Russian intrigue, and Su-Lin suspected that he knew secrets of her own past of which she herself was unaware. She knew of course that Casey Greer was in love with her although he had never admitted it.
Traffic seldom eases off in Manhattan, night or day, but this did not greatly impede Zero. He had driven in Rome and Paris as well as Berlin and other cities of the world and had survived. That made him an expert even to a point of instinctively avoiding blocked streets and finding open lanes. He crossed the avenues to the west in the shortest possible time, turned under the crumbling and deserted West Side Highway and pulled up in front of Pier 13, a dark, empty finger of desolation jutting out into the Hudson River.
"I'll lead the way,” Zero said. “Let's go."
"You stay put," Su-Lin ordered. “I'll handle this."
“It could be a trap.”
“Hardly. I haven't been on an assignment for months so who'd be bothering?"
Some old enemy perhaps, Su-Lin answered her own question in her mind, but she banked heavily on the fact that vengeance was a luxury most sensible operators in her world could not afford. Personal vendettas were not profitable.
Nonetheless, she moved forward into the pitch black tunnel with every sense alert. A pencil flash, lighted at intervals in her cupped fingers, kept her from falling over obstacles. With her ears tuned to the faintest of sounds, she caught Casey Greer's whisper halfway down the pier.
"Over here, precious."
She hurried to his side there in the shelter of an oversized packing case, expecting at the very least to find him disabled. Instead, he sat cross-legged against the wall like a handsome blond viking, his teeth agleam in a welcoming smile.
“Casey! What the devil! What goes on?"
"Cool it, angel. Just a sudden yen to rap with you."
“Are you hurt?"
His smiled remained as he held out his arms, turning his palms slowly. "Not a scratch.”
"Then what are you doing here?”
"It's nice and private, and I've got things you should know."
Before continuing, however, Greer cupped Su-Lin's breasts in his hands. He then lifted a hand to run the tip of his forefinger across her mouth. She kissed the fingertip as it went by but was unable to respond more ardently because the approach was wrong. As it was, Greer's gesture stirred only a sense of warmth without passion in Su-Lin. If he had seized her viciously with intent to hurt as well as love, her response would have amazed him. But Greer had never learned how to satisfy Su-Lin, so the moment passed.
"You're sure you're all right?”
"As right as I'll ever be. Honey, you've got to watch yourself. They'll be gunning for you."
"Anybody I know?” Su-Lin was cool.
"The MU."
That would be the Matsu Underground and Su-Lin was doubly puzzled. "But why? I've never been involved with those clowns.”
"I think you will be.”
"Tell me about it.”
"Everything I know. You see I was on an assignment for an Arabian Syndicate oil money boys—hunting for a formula coded Quantum Growth. Remember that."
“Growth of what?”
"People, sweetheart. Did you ever hear of cloning?”
"Vaguely. It has to do with duplicating living organisms by taking a single cell and incubating it in a test tube."
"Right. And Quantum Growth is a long step forward in that process. The final step.”
"I'll read up on it."
"Cloning is supposed to be new—the product of modern science and research. Actually, I don't think it is at all—in fact, I know it isn't."
"So you were working for some Arabs," Su-Lin said, urging him on. “Where does the MU come in?”
“I set up a working arrangement with Zella Kovak, but it didn't pan out."
"The Polish broad?”
"And one of the best, you know that.”
“Yes,” Su-Lin agreed, but with some reluctance.
"Well, they snatched Zella. I'm sure she's dead now."
"You're positive it was the MU?”
"No doubt about it. Now stop interrupting me because I've got an appointment. Just remember what I'm telling you. There are two girls. I've got their pictures. You'll find them behind the baseboard in my hotel room-601 at the Bradshaw-data on the back. You'll understand."
"What makes them important?”
"One of them is a clone."
"Do you mean...?"
Su-Lin was going to protest the implication—that cloning could produce complete adult human beings. The whole concept of cloning, from what Su-Lin had read, came when two American scientists broke the genetic code. She wasn't too clear on any of it but it had been established that the pattern, or model, of any living entity, is to be found in every cell of that entity's body. Later experiments proved that any single cell removed and incubated produces an embryo identical to the parent body. But only an embryo. From that point natural growth takes over. But as far as Su-Lin knew, the whole thing was still in the experimental stage.
These nubs of scientific lore flashed through Su-Lin's mind as Casey Greer reached out and drew her close. A quick flash of her electric pen revealed the smile on his handsome face but she sensed that something was wrong. He was in pain.
“What is it, baby?”
“There's more—a lot more—but I can't tell you."
“Why not?”
“Too late."
“Why, sweetheart?”
"Because I'm dead."
“Casey, for God's sake!”
She flashed the light full into his face and saw the rising agony.
"They got in and poisoned my private bottle. I was careless. You know. That three-hour toxin. Eats the nerve system. No antidote.”
“The rotten bastards!" Su-Lin raged helplessly.
She kissed Casey as though her lips would somehow stay the "appointment” he'd mentioned. His lips responded and then went lax with a final sigh of relief. The agony was over. She held him in her arms for a time and then arose and moved back up the pier.
The cab was waiting where she'd left it, Zero silent behind the wheel until she opened the front door to get in beside him. Then he jerked a thumb over his shoulder.
“What'll we do with him?"
Su-Lin leaned over the seat and inspected the dead man propped up on the seat. The head lolled grotesquely on one shoulder.
"He tried to follow you inside,” Zero explained. "When he didn't have the right answers I cooled him.”
Su-Lin frowned into the still face. "He looks local," she said.
"I think so. A hit man from one of the families around here."
"I hope he wasn't just out for a stroll."
"Not likely. Unless I'm mistaken he's one of Cappy's hoods.”
"Terracina? The Brooklyn family? But I'm on good terms with Cappy."
"They rent their soldiers out. If the price is right they're on good terms with nobody."
"Okay. Pull close to the pier. We'll dump him out. They'll come for him.”
The task completed, Zero u-turned the cab. “You came out of there alone,” he reminded her.
"Did you miss Casey?”
"Casey's dead."
"But nobody went in. You found him that way?"
“We had maybe five minutes. It was a slow poison."
Zero had seen too much of death and violence to flinch at the mention of it. He'd been with the French Resistance during the German occupation and had lost many friends. "Where to now?” he asked.
“The Bradshaw Hotel. It's at 38th and Park.”
"I know where it is.”
“Casey was staying there. Let's go."
Zero crossed over and took the Park Avenue tunnel and pulled up near the Bradshaw, a small hotel that gained most of its revenue from out-of-town buyers who scoured the nearby garment district for clothing bargains. At the moment there was a seasonal lull, although several lonely out-of-towners eyed Su-Lin's slim loveliness and indulged in pleasant sexual fantasies as she crossed the lobby.
She went straight to the elevator with the security man frowning in her direction. If she'd had the look of an ordinary hooker he would have challenged her. But she was obviously something special: a top-price job, and whoever had ordered her had clout so he allowed her to pass.
Su-Lin used the key she'd taken from Casey Greer. She checked the baseboards after assessing the damage she saw elsewhere. A previous search had been thorough. All the overstuffed furniture had been ruthlessly gutted, the padding strewn about the floor. Pictures had been ripped from the walls, their frames split away. Even a large section of the wall-to-wall carpeting had been pulled free.
A thorough search but not thorough enough. Only half of the baseboard had been pulled from the wall. The wrong half.
Su-Lin finished the job, found a flat pack covered in heavy cellophane and left as she had come. As she re crossed the lobby, the security man pondered on how fast things were moving these days. The broad must have humped the john standing up. There hadn't been time to lie down.
Back at the penthouse, Su-Lin found things jumping. The party had reached the orgy stage. She peeked in from the foyer and saw that her scuba diver was not mourning her absence. He had corralled a dusky Latin beauty and was busily screwing her in a far corner. Su-Lin recognized him by his magnificent thighs. The noise level, however, was low because most of the conversations had subsided into pantings, gurglings and occasional moans of orgasm. Mala Key, Su-Lin's little Hawaiian maid, had found a companion of her own: a red-lipped blond Swedish girl with an understanding heart. The girl's rapt expression showed that she appreciated what Mala Key's skilled little tongue was doing first to one nipple and then the other.
Only Joe Zen had remained unattached. True to his loyalties and his duty, he was surveying the scene morosely from the top of the concert grand where he sat cross-legged.
Su-Lin slipped onto her private suite without signaling him, glad of the time to be alone. Inside, she opened Casey Greer's packet. It contained two excellent pictures. They were full-length shots of what appeared to be the same naked girl. She was strikingly beautiful in both face and body. The poses were unimaginative, more clinical than flattering. The girls—if indeed there were two of them—stood full-face and expressionless against a white background. The shots were in clear, sharp color. Su-Lin could only wonder how and where the photos had been obtained.
She studied them side by side and could find not the slightest difference. Going to her desk, she got a large reading glass and turned the desk lamp full upon the images. Studying one very carefully, she found that the perfect, black triangle of pubic growth was indented about an inch from the right corner. She trained her glass on the other photo. The pubic patch was identical. She continued to search minutely...the faces, the breasts, the bellies, the legs...until she finally murmured, "It's the same girl. It has to be."
Then, just beside the navel of one figure, she found a small moon-shaped scar which was not duplicated upon the other. This was a triumph of sorts but really proved nothing. The pictures could have been taken at different times; before and after the girl got nicked there on her belly.
Su-Lin turned the pictures over to read the statistics penned thereon. One identification read:
Candy Soong—24—The Sweetheart Massage Parlor—8th & 42nd—Manhattan.
The other:
Ella Quong—24—Waitress—Soo Yat Sen Restaurant Orchard & Clinton—Chinatown. Below the Quong data were the heavily underscored words: Check These.
Evidently that was what Casey had planned to do when the MU—if they were the assassins—got to his Scotch bottle.
Su-Lin put the pictures in her wall safe and lay back on her chaise lounge to think. And with little to go on relative to the immediate problem, her mind drifted into the past: into her checkered, violent past wherein she'd led several lives of such perilous nature that she'd concluded: I'm really a cat. I have nine lives—five still to go so I'd better start conserving them.
But it was not Su-Lin's way to conserve anything. Wealthy beyond dreams thanks to the fortune of her dead husband, Rene Cartes, and Mack Gordon's own ability to triple it, she spent money like water only to have it come flooding back tenfold.
And relative to her personal life, Su-Lin's thoughts always went back to the Shan Tal Cloister in Tibet where she'd received her early training; where Mata Wong, the legendary "Abbess" of that establishment had spoken frankly: "My dear, you have two vital weaknesses. You are terribly oversexed just as your father was. And you are a creature of moods. Steadiness of character is not one of your gifts.”
That had been years earlier; before Rene Cartes' assassination; before the sophisticated and elite of three continents came to rejoice in the most refreshing playgirl to surface in many a season; before she went forth to avenge Rene's death and discovered what his mysterious occupation really was—espionage under cover of fame as a financier, That was when Su-Lin switched from one life to the next; from that of a pampered mistress and wife to a career as one of the world's foremost freelance espionage agents. Of course, Su-Lin had started at the top-literally—in this new career. She inherited Rene's network of sub-agents, a skein of able people on various social levels the world over so that wherever she went and whatever her mission, she had sources upon which to draw.
Su-Lin's primary motive in taking over the operation was grim and implacable: to avenge Rene's death. But when that had been accomplished, there was the excitement of such a career and the dread of the boredom she would find in a life of aimless wealth.
As to the weaknesses pointed out by Mata Wong, Su-Lin frankly acknowledged them and accepted them quite cheerfully. So men turned her on. Close proximity to a male—under the right circumstances—made sex an ecstatic thing; the right circumstance being violence, conflict, danger...even if these elements had to be synthetically injected. That was one of her reasons, perhaps the main one, for keeping Joe Zero around. She'd found Joe doing feats of strength in a Hong Kong cafe. A superbly muscled specimen with the ability to take orders and stay within the guidelines she specified, he'd proven his worth many times over. Also, there was Mala Key, the lovely little Hawaiian who served Su-Lin faithfully and was indeed a jewel beyond price.
Thus Su-Lin pondered the past. Then, when the natural trend of her thoughts pushed back even farther—to her fabulous father, Chinese Kelly, and his horrible death—she closed them off sharply and returned to the present. She stirred there on her chaise lounge. Restlessness swept her. The room was stifling. She could not stand another minute of it. Suiting her action quickly, she slipped on a jacket, again skirted the main party, pushed past a few male hands that reached for her, and went down in her private high-speed elevator.
A few moments later, she was on one of the winding paths in the cool silence of Central Park, just across Fifth Avenue from her mid-60's building. It was soothingly lonely. The lights here and there along the asphalt path cast a bluish glow in perfect accord with the bleakness of her mood. She strode along, trying to keep her mind on the present. But it kept slipping back. Back to what she had been told of Chinese Kelly's terrible death; the blood, the horror, the ferocity centered at Tang Kho, that unhappy Tibetan village where her father and mother had died...