The Howard Hughes Affair

A counter-espionage job leads to Toby Peters facing the barrel of a gun.

After midnight, NBC Studios is as quiet as a grave. For Toby Peters, it may as well be a sealed coffin. He came on a stakeout, and has spent hours in the dark of a television soundstage waiting for the appearance of a man with a silenced pistol. The killer has already taken three lives, and Peters's may be the next. After a long wait, Peters's dulled reflexes let the gunman get the drop on him. A frantic chase through the deserted studio leaves Peters shoeless, gunless, and out of ideas. Finally the killer corners him and prepares to fire. The stakeout was Howard Hughes's idea. Earlier that week, the aviation magnate hired Peters to investigate the theft of top-secret blueprints from his home. What starts as counter-espionage turns into a murder investigation, and Peters finds himself in the uncomfortable role of murderer's bait.