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  Armitage wasn’t so easily put down. “A gold medalist has been known to make a few bucks in endorsements,” he persisted. “Remember Mark Spitz?”

  “He was a swimmer. All right, anyone who hits the headlines at the Olympics can generate some dollars if he turns professional immediately after, but that’s one jackpot in a whole career. Spitz won seven gold medals. That was great news in 1972, but now who wants to know? The first commercial contract an Olympic athlete signs effectively destroys him as a newsmaker. He’s a declining market. Just compare that with your game, where you have big-money tournaments all year round. Golf, Grand Prix, all the professional sports are repeatedly reinforcing the big names. It’s hard work, but it makes sense commercially. Now tell me, Dick, how many of the 1976 gold medalists in track do you remember?”

  Armitage nodded. “But you’ll admit that the Olympics is a fantastic sales vehicle? The TV coverage alone.”

  “That’s it, is it?” said Dryden. “You read the piece in Newsweek about the price the networks are charging advertisers for a spot in the telecasts from Moscow. It’s crazy, isn’t it? Two hundred grand a minute. I know sport moves the product, but with that sort of money involved, somebody could get his fingers burnt.”

  “You’re saying you wouldn’t care to get involved in the Olympics?” The champion looked as if he was two sets down.

  Dryden hesitated. From the way Armitage was pressing the subject of track athletics, he was to some degree committed. To persist with the argument that track was not a commercial proposition would lead to embarrassment if there was some promising pole vaulter scheduled to join them for dinner. It would be crazy to damage his standing with the biggest star in tennis. This required a change of emphasis.

  “I’ll put it this way, Dick. One year in every four you find a lot of men in my profession buzzing round the track meets offering the moon to anyone likely to make it to the Olympics. They say nothing is formalized till after an athlete has won a gold medal, but the speed at which those contracts are drawn up beats anything on the track. They’re ready for signature before the band is through ‘The Star-Spangled Banner.’ Next day your gold medalist announces to the world that he owes his success to breakfast cereal, soft drinks and button-down shirts. Two weeks after, he’s a forgotten man. Okay, that’s exaggeration, but you follow me. Organizations like mine have tended to keep a little aloof from that. It seems slightly undignified to tag breathlessly around after quarter-milers. We keep it under review, naturally.” He left it at that. To give more at this stage would be too obviously inconsistent. It was there for Armitage to pick up if he liked.

  “I guess so. Same again, Jack?” Armitage beckoned the bartender. “Say, that Mercedes of yours is really something. Custom-built, is it?”

  They discussed the elegance of nineteen-thirties automobile design, tacitly agreeing to a short adjournment of the main debate. But it wasn’t long till dinner. Armitage couldn’t leave the thing unresolved. Dryden, totally unenthusiastic about dabbling in track, was ready to compromise at least to the extent of sitting at the table with an athlete. There he would be on familiar ground, so to speak. Most of his business was conducted over meals. Without being too obvious about it, he ought to be capable of raising enough difficulties to smother the project. He gave details of the Excalibur’s performance, pausing tactfully at intervals.

  Armitage wasn’t oversubtle at this game. “It was a great period, the thirties. There was hardship, I know, but fabulous things were going on in most areas of life. Take sports. Have you ever thought what a killing you could have made as agent to giants like Babe Ruth, Joe Louis, Fred Perry. Hey, and that’s forgetting Jesse Owens. Now, there was a guy with merchandising potential. What was it — four golds at the Berlin Olympics? You could have done Jesse a good turn if you’d been around in thirty-six, eh, Jack?”

  Dryden avoided answering directly. “The best they could think of was matching him with racehorses and having him do a turn at the Globetrotters’ games.”

  Armitage lobbed it back. “What if some genius like Owens showed up in America this year and gold-rushed the Olympics? You’d be interested in handling the commercial rights, wouldn’t you?”

  “No agent would pass up a commission like that,” said Dryden, and added with a wink, “Level with me, Dick. Do you have the grandson of Jesse Owens staying here?”

  Armitage grinned. “Don’t rush me, Jack.” The awkwardness between them was lifting. “I want to fill you in a little before we get around to identities. Suppose, for example, I told you that my athlete is completely unknown to the public.”

  Dryden smiled back. “That’s not a good selling point, Dick. You have me a little disappointed there.”

  “It could be an advantage if we really go over big at the Olympics,” Armitage pointed out. “Unknown American on Moscow Medal Spree.”

  “I like that,” said Dryden generously. “I begin to think you should try journalism, Dick. One detail still gives me a little trouble. How does our completely unknown athlete get selected for the U.S. Olympic team?”

  The whimsical trend in the conversation was relaxing Armitage. “I can understand your problem there,” he told Dryden. “Being unfamiliar with track in the States — up to now, that is — you wouldn’t know our selection system. It’s beautifully simple, actually. We have our U.S. Olympic Trials a month before the Games, and the first three in each event make the team. No argument, no comeback. If the world-record holder has muscle problems and finishes fourth, that’s too bad. It saves a lot of hassle, though. Do you see it now? If our unknown can make the first three, that’s the ticket to Moscow.”

  Dryden leaned back in his chair with an air of satisfaction. “Nice.” He smiled for fully five seconds before allowing the puzzled look to steal across his features again. “There is another area of difficulty. The Trials. How does an inexperienced athlete get up there at the finish with fellows professionally coached in all the finer points?”

  “Ah.” Armitage held up a finger in acknowledgment. “I mentioned that our athlete was unknown. I didn’t say inexperienced. There’s a difference. You see, she’s had expert coaching.”

  “She? We’re talking about a girl?” Dryden’s surprise cut clean through the irony that was cushioning the conversation.

  Armitage began speaking rapidly. “We are. A good-looker. Blond. A natural for the admen, Jack. More important than that, a fantastic runner. Sure, I know everyone says American sports are male-oriented, and they are. But women do make it to the top, and don’t tell me America doesn’t need a sports goddess when there’s one in my own sport earning bloody near as much as I am. That’s in prize money. What she picks up in endorsements I wouldn’t mind having.” He glanced at his watch. “Look, I want to tell you about this, Jack. Two years back, I was having terrible hamstring trouble, remember? I did the rounds of the hospitals and was near despair. Finally I was recommended to a physiologist in Bakersfield, a qualified physician who earned his bread lecturing at the California Institute of Human Science. I was told he sometimes treated sports injuries and had a lot of success with muscle injuries. He fixed it for me, and I’ve had no twinges since. Doc Serafin, a great guy.”

  “I remember,” said Dryden. “You were full of admiration for him.”

  “You bet. Well, you know how it is, you get talking in physiotherapy? I mentioned one afternoon that I was doing some work to foster tennis at college level — you know, my UCLA project? We soon got around to talking about girls and the poor facilities they have in college compared with guys. He said the system was loaded against women in sports, and I had to agree. Then he started to tell me about this seventeen-year-old girl he knew with an incredible talent for track. Left to herself, she’d most likely lose interest in the sport. Doc Serafin had a plan to set her up in a secret training camp with a team of top-line coaches. He reckoned that in two years she could make the Olympics. He was forming a group of businessmen — a consortium — to sponsor her. They each put up a
few grand, and if she won, they’d recoup it with interest.”

  “From merchandising revenue, I suppose,” said Dryden. “And you joined the consortium?”

  “I went to see her run a private trial in Bakersfield first, and that convinced me she was blue chip.”

  “How much?”

  Armitage frowned. “I’m not reading you.”

  “The stake. What did you hand over to Serafin?”

  “Fifty grand.”

  Dryden closed his eyes.

  “The physiotherapy was almost worth that,” said Armitage in justification. “I won two-sixty plus that season, if you recollect.”

  “Sometimes I think I do you guys no good at all, keeping you in pocket money like that,” said Dryden. “Tell me, this secrecy bit — did Dr. Serafin explain why that was necessary?”

  “Mainly to achieve a dramatic impact. If the girl had spent this two years in competition around the world, she’d be marked down as Olympic favorite by now. Believe me, Jack, she’s that good. It wouldn’t surprise anyone when she took the gold. But this way she’ll be a sensation. The all-American blonde who appears from nowhere to beat the world in the Lenin Stadium. The Golden Girl of the West. You’ve got to admit it has great possibilities.”

  “What’s Serafin’s angle — political?” asked Dryden.

  “Christ no,” answered Armitage. “You mean he wants to put one over on the Soviets? No, I can’t go along with that. He’s just a regular American with an interest in sports who wants to see a talented girl get her chance in the Olympics. That’s my reading, anyway. You’ll be able to judge for yourself. He’s coming to dinner. I think you’ll find him a one hundred per cent genuine guy.”

  “I’ll let you know,” said Dryden, unimpressed. “Do I meet the girl as well?”

  Armitage hesitated. He took a long sip of beer. “Well, no. That is, not this trip. He’s bringing a film instead. I haven’t seen it myself yet.” He gave an embarrassed laugh. “It’ll make a change from the late-night movie. And there is another guest. One of the backers, a guy named Gino Valenti. He’s in pharmaceuticals in a big way.”

  “Valenti. I know the name,” said Dryden. “From his profit margin, he can afford to lose a few grand.”

  Armitage looked injured. “You don’t sound too impressed.”

  Dryden picked up his glass and gently rotated the last of his drink. “Don’t worry, Dick. I won’t upset your guests. But if you want to know, this whole thing sounds to me like a con.”

  Chapter 2

  A speck above the pine forest flashed brilliantly, touched by sunlight.

  “That’s him!” At the window of the cocktail lounge, Dick Armitage was triumphant. “I told you I could count on him.”

  Undeniably an aircraft was coming their way, defined against a pink cirrus formation. The engine note carried to them, telegraphing its type by its flat pitch. It dipped low, skimming the conifers. Glasses rattled in the lounge as the sound intensified.

  Armitage went out to meet his guest.

  The helicopter passed overhead, a Jet Ranger 206A executive model, a white five-seater. The pilot banked as he spotted the concrete tennis court Armitage had cleared for the landing. The Jet Ranger hovered, descended and touched down.

  Dryden from the lounge watched for his first view of the man who had relieved Armitage of fifty thousand dollars. The door swung open and a slight, silver-haired figure emerged, dipping to avoid the downthrust of air from the still-whirring rotor. He stepped down spryly, shook Armitage’s hand and indicated that a second person was at the cabin door. A girl.

  She was laughing at her predicament. Long red hair whipped her face while she pinned her skirt to her knees with one hand and gripped the support rail with the other. Armitage went to her aid. The maneuver was complicated by her shoes, glossy yellow creations with a heel Dryden could see from the lounge was not styled for balancing on a bar two inches in width, but she got down without mishap.

  If this was the wonder runner, she threatened a revolution in track, for she was generously curved and scarcely five feet tall in her elevated shoes.

  The three moved briskly out of the rotor’s unsocial orbit, leaving one of Armitage’s staff collecting hand luggage from the pilot. They passed out of sight behind the projecting bay of the restaurant, the girl still laughing, more careless of her wind-blown hair than Armitage, who had clamped his to the back of his neck.

  On returning to the lounge, he told Dryden the party was complete. “Gino Valenti’s car was moving up the drive as I left Doc Serafin unpacking. They’ll join us very soon.”

  “The girl?” inquired Dryden.

  “An unscheduled bonus. Her name is Melody Fryer. Some chick.”

  “She’s not by any chance the Olympic hope?”

  Armitage gave a broad grin. “You’ve got to be kidding. The sport she’s built for doesn’t need spiked shoes. Not for my taste, anyhow. No, the Doc informs me Melody is his personal assistant, and in case, like me, you jump to conclusions, I can tell you they asked to be accommodated in separate casitas.”

  As it was past eight when the party finally assembled, they took their drinks to the dining table. The restaurant, empty now, but with seating for a hundred or more, was partitioned with white lattice screens. Circular tables of wrought iron, also painted white, suggested a period theme reinforced by photomurals of tennis action between women in bonnets and flounced skirts, and mutton-chopped partners in straw hats and long flannels.

  Armitage steered his guests around a small water garden with fountain and lilypads. “I thought we’d use the table at the end. The large lady with the winning smile is May Sutton, the first U.S. girl to take the Wimbledon title. She came from California and she was just eighteen years old when she won in 1905. I’m told she had a devastating forehand drive.”

  Dr. Serafin put on bifocals to examine the blowup. “The photographic evidence, so far as it goes, confirms what you say. This garment she is wearing has padded shoulders, of course, but the biacromial measurement must still have been formidable. I’ll sit with my back to her, if you don’t mind. Melody, would you take the place on my right?”

  Dryden drew back the chair for Melody.

  “You just have to be English,” she told him, smiling over her shoulder as she sat down. She had disciplined the wayward hair, but it was too fine to lie still against the silk grosgrain of her dress. The movement of her head caused some to slip around her throat. She flicked it off her breasts without glancing down. There was no need to draw attention to them.

  “Crazy about sports, you mean?” said Dryden. “Yes, it won’t bother me facing Miss Sutton’s forehand through dinner if I can sit here.” He took the place beside her, shaking open the napkin with a decisive action.

  She smiled without looking at him as she started unwrapping hers. Her arms were pale against the classic blackness of the dress, cut straight across the bodice, with shoestring shoulder straps.

  The other guest, Valenti, seated himself by Dryden’s right and made it clear from the outset that he expected conversation irrespective of Miss Fryer’s claims. “So you’re the super salesman. What is it — merchandising agent?”

  “That’s what I put on my tax forms,” Dryden said, “but it’s an area of employment that’s variously described. Some of my colleagues are sensitive about the word “agent.” They prefer to be known as managers or consultants. It doesn’t trouble me.”

  “All this fancy labeling,” said Valenti. “I’m in pharmaceuticals and I don’t give a damn if you call me a dope peddler so long as you buy my products.” Plenty did, if appearance was any guide. Valenti’s suit had the Brooks Brothers finish, and the several rings on his hands indicated a predilection for rubies. They weren’t paste. “Myself, I don’t have much time for PR. I handle the production side and hire guys like you to do the selling. When Dr. Serafin invited me to join the consortium, I told him straight I’d be a sleeping partner. I wouldn’t interfere — just put up a few grand as a
n investment. And you can’t say I haven’t kept to it, eh, Doc? But when I heard they were figuring on hiring a — what do you call yourself? — I thought I’d like to know who was getting into bed with us. You run that Brooks Stevens job I saw outside, do you?” He stabbed a glittering finger in the general direction of Dryden’s car.

  “That’s mine, yes,” said Dryden, and to make it clear he didn’t expect a one-way interrogation over dinner, asked, “What do you drive?”

  “Nothing,” said Valenti. “I have a chauffeur. We used the Cadillac this trip. Here’s the menu. What are you ordering? Myself, I’m starting with prawns in aspic.”

  “In case it influences your choice, we have nothing strenuous planned for the rest of the evening,” Armitage told his guests. “A film and, I believe, a progress report from Dr. Serafin.”

  Serafin gave a nod in confirmation. Unlike Valenti, he seemed indifferent to the impression he made, offering no remarks to the table at large, but speaking quietly at intervals to Armitage on his left. Slimly built, with the deep-set eyes and angular cheekbones of a Slavonic cast of face, his hair silver, thinning and neatly barbered, he made an unlikely — and therefore potentially successful — con man. His bow tie was the worst that could be held against him.

  Dryden waited for Melody to complete her examination of the menu and asked her, “Is this a commercially made film we’re going to see?”

  She leaned his way, ambushing him with cleavage and Clinique. “You’re too inquisitive. I’m not allowed to say. He doesn’t want us to talk about the project over dinner. He’s anxious that you should see the film first.” So close that their shoulders touched, she added, “We’re not too expert on the promotional side. That’s where you come in — hopefully.” She moved away as the waiter approached to change the cutlery for Dryden’s hors d’oeuvre. “Say, could you really play Miss Sutton’s forehand?”

  The meal — Dryden had crab salad and escalopes of veal Valentino — could not be faulted, but the conversation never developed beyond trivialities. Serafin was unable or unwilling at this stage to commit himself to anything touching on their presence at the ranch, and the others took their cue from him. Dryden divided his attentions between topping up Melody’s glass with Pouilly-Fuissé in the hope that it might give more substance to her conversation — it didn’t — and reaching the conclusion, as he listened to Valenti’s hard-headed rundown on the problems facing the U.S. economy, that if Serafin had conned him, he was a very skillful operator.