Nick Carter

The Living Death

Dedicated to The Men of the Secret Services of the United States of America.

I

Buckingham Palace and "birds," miniskirts and majesty, tradition and Twiggy, Carnaby Street and King s Row. That's what I was seeing, that strange admixture that is London today. I'd been walking the streets of the "Colossus astride the Thames" and there was one thing I'd definitely concluded. It was no accident, no vague, straying wind of fashion that the miniskirt originated in London. The English girls have the legs for it and the hips for it and, most of all, the walk for it. I know; I'd been watching them all day, ever since I had arrived at the airport that morning and found Denny wasn't home. It wasn't time for killing yet, so I was killing time.

There's a walk the English girls have, a way they have of striking out. They talk with their legs. They say; "These legs are lovely and they're mine and they could be yours, if I want them to be." In a way, I couldn't help thinking, those legs and hips were a twentieth-century physical reaffirmation of the Magna Carta. "I'm English, I'm a free soul and I'm my own master," they seemed to say. "I've a right to wear my skirt short, to go where I please, to sleep with whoever takes my fancy, King, Crown and commoner be damned." I exchanged glances with one free-swinging, long-legged lovely, her mini just covering the bottom of her swinging little rear.

It would be nice, I told myself, if just once I could get a week in London without being on assignment for AXE. Just little old me, Nick Carter, and not agent N3, working. And this trip was bound to make me look longingly at all the open, direct young things. On this trip I was feeling like a duck in a shooting gallery. That's why I'd wangled the extra day to see Denny, only to find her not home. Of course, according to Hawk, I ought not to be feeling this way and, in all honesty, you couldn't ignore the old fox's sixth sense. I have pretty damn good antennae of my own, but compared to Hawk, they're strictly a crystal set. Behind those steely blue eyes, behind that calm, unruffled exterior, there's a collection of antennae, sounding boards and sensitized reactors that would make an interstellar listening post envious. Let's face it, that's what makes Hawk the top exec for AXE. He's shrewd, smart, resourceful and uncanny. As I strolled about Trafalgar Square I saw the scene once again in Hawk's office at AXE headquarters in Washington. It had been only a day ago but I wasn't likely to forget it.

Hawk had fixed me with his bland, casual expression, his soft-sell approach. We'd worked together for so many years that it was hard for him to find a tactic I couldn't recognize.

"The message is ambiguous, I'll admit, Nick," he said. "The woman called our source and said she had something extremely important and would speak only to a top AXE agent. She set up the complicated meeting procedure I outlined to you."

"Obviously she feels she may be under surveillance," I went along. "But you haven't any idea what it could be. It might even be a hoax."

Hawk smiled indulgently, his smile telling me I was being childish to think he hadn't considered that one. I smiled back. I wasn't being childish and he knew it.

"She could be an advance agent for someone who wants to defect, perhaps her husband, a man of prominence," he went on. "Or perhaps her own self. Maybe she is someone with valuable information to sell. She might even be someone who wants to work for us, someone in a sensitive position. Or, frankly, it could concern any number of things."

That's when I threw mine in, with some stuffiness, I'll admit.

"What if it's a clever setup to kill top AXE agents, me in particular?" I asked. Hawk remained silent for a long moment. Finally, he unpursed his lips and commented. Give him credit for his uncompromising New England honesty, even when it hurt.

"It's a possibility. I have to admit that," he said. "But I don't think it's a probability. Our source has always been a most reliable one. We must proceed on the assumption that a woman has something very valuable to give us and has requested a meeting."

I was waiting for him to toss the ball back to me. He did.

"But, if what you brought up should be true, Nick," he said, "then it's even more important you put a stop to that kind of foolishness at once."

He smiled, so damned pleased with himself that I had to break into a grin along with him. So here I was in jolly London town on what might be a hoax, a very important meeting for America, or a deadly trap. I still leaned to the last one and looked forward to being wrong in this instance. Luck hadn't been running my way, though. Denny being away all day after I'd managed to get here a whole day early was more than disappointing. Denny Robertson was more than a memory. She was a very special page from the past. We'd met some years ago, when she was a lot younger than I'd realized. It was immediately apparent that she was not someone to meet and turn into a memory. I'm hardly the kind that women easily get to. It has always been my firm belief that girls, the true-love, waiting-by-the-picket-fence kind of girls, had no place in the life of an international agent. Girls, other than in that way, had a helluva big place. They were the best damned way to wipe away all the ugliness, the taste of death, the glimpses into hell that made up this business. But Denny Robertson had been different from all the others. Not that she could make me change my opinions on the place of girls in my life, or that she'd tried, but she'd reached me in a way no other girl ever had. As I said, she was a lot younger than I'd realized. I found that out the night we made love. I also found out how naturally talented she was. I'd been called away a day later and the whole brief interlude had left us both like two music lovers who had heard only half a symphony. They both desperately want to hear the second half.

The list of girls I'd enjoyed and left, for one reason or another, was a mile long. Brief interludes were a built-in part of my life. And some, of course, stayed longer in the memory than others, each for their own reasons. But only with Denny Robertson had I felt the unfinished symphony syndrome, the feeling of having to go back. Not that we'd had an idyllic relationship. She'd called me every name under the sun on a couple of occasions and her temper and her jealousy matched. In the letters she'd written to me two or three times a year since then, she'd never been maudlin, never been anything but gay. But she had put into words an echo of the things I had felt. She had never been able to forget that one night, or me. Everything since, for her, had been second best, she'd written in one letter. I could see her fine, delicate handwriting in my mind.

When are you going to stop by and visit me again, Nick? Why are the absolute rotters like you so unforgettable? Please try. I know it'll only be en passant, and I know I'll no doubt get terribly angry at you for something or other, but do try. Who knows, maybe you've reformed and become a thoroughly likable chap.

I had tried, a few times, and we'd always missed connections. Denny wasn't one to sit around and stare into space. She was very British and had grown up with plenty of money and all it could buy. Finishing schools, ballet schools, riding academies and the very best of British gentlemen as escorts. But she also had the things money can't buy — breeding, honesty, intelligence. Denny was equally at home in a miniskirt, jodhpurs or an evening gown, a feat few girls can equal. The frank, open British girls who unabashedly showed their interest in me as I passed diem couldn't know that their chances had been made even slimmer by a memory. I saw a phone booth and called Denny again. I had till two o'clock in the morning to wait for a phone call, the first step in the contact procedure. It would be much pleasanter if I were waiting with Denny. This time the phone was answered by a voice that opened the floodgates of memory.

"I don't believe it!" she gasped over the phone.

"Believe it," I said. "I'm at the Gore Hotel, really only passing through. I thought we might squeeze in a few hours."

"Damn it all!" she swore. Denny could swear like a Grenadier Guard and make it sound terribly proper. "I've a dinner dance I must attend — the school where I teach."

"You're a schoolteacher now?"

"It's a riding school," she said quickly, "But I'll sneak away early — as close to ten as I can."

"Wonderful," I said. "I'll be waiting in my room."

"Nick!" she said, adding hurriedly, "How are you? Still the same?"

"I've changed," I laughed. "I'm older, more mature. I'm that thoroughly likable chap you wrote about. Isn't that what you want?"

"I'm not sure," she said, thoughtfulness creeping into her voice. "Besides, I don't believe you. Oh, Nick, it'll be so wonderful seeing you again. Tonight — ten-ish."

I walked from the phone booth seeing only a tall, regal girl with deep red hair, auburn, she always called it, framing a peaches-and-cream complexion. I went directly to dinner at a fine restaurant, and though I don't especially enjoy eating alone, I thoroughly enjoyed the meal. Perhaps because I wasn't alone. Denny and memories of her were an almost physical presence. It was a damn good dinner, too, Cock-a-leekie and roast ribs of beef with Yorkshire pudding, topped by a good brandy. I returned to my room, stretched out on the bed and briefly reviewed the contact procedures to be followed later in the night.

The woman was to phone me at two a.m. and use the identification code she had set up herself. Once that was cleared, she would give me further instructions about where to meet her. The brandy was still with me and I closed my eyes. I guess I'd walked more than I'd realized during the day, for I fell asleep almost instantly. The ringing of the phone woke me. Instantly glancing at my watch, I saw that it was just ten o'clock. I answered, expecting Denny's voice. It was a girl but it sure wasn't Denny. In fact, to one expecting Denny's precise, impeccable English, the voice was a rude shock to the ear — flat, somewhat nasal, the distinctive dialect I recognized as a Liverpool accent. It has often been said that an Englishman's accent reveals far more than the part of the country he hails from; it is a fairly accurate guide to his educational, social and economic background. In a half-dozen words, my caller had revealed herself as what the English call a working-class girl, or perhaps something a little less.

"Mr. Carter?" the voice said hesitantly. "Can you come to the lobby? There's been a change in plans."

"In what plans?" I asked, my naturally suspicious nature leaping to the fore.

"In the plans for your meeting," she said. "I'm down here in the lobby. Can you come down? Time is important."

"Who are you?" I questioned.

"Nobody important," she said. "My name is Vicky. I've been sent to drive you to a new meeting place. Please come down."

I agreed to go down and found her still standing beside the house phones, a round-busted little thing, a manufactured blonde, with a sexy shape beneath a too-tight, red dress. She had a round, youthful face and I guessed her age at not more than twenty-one. Her round breasts were made even higher and rounder by a platform bra that pulled the dress almost to the breaking point. Beneath the makeup and paint there was an air of underlying scrounginess that refused to be hidden. Her hands nervously fingered a small, shiny leather purse. I didn't see her as a trollop. She merely looked like one, a not uncommon condition with many girls. I saw her eyes, light blue, look me over expertly and automatically, involuntary approval in her glance.

"What's this all about, Vicky?" I smiled down at her.

"I don't know anything," she said. "I only know I'm to drive you someplace and I was told to tell you there'd been a change in plans. They told me you'd understand."

I turned it over in my mind and had to come up with one conclusion. This whole bit had been a weird one from the beginning, shrouded in mystery and uncertainty. No one knew what, why or who. The change in plans fitted right into the picture. Just to check her again, I tossed her another one.

"A woman sent you?" I asked sharply.

"A man," she answered with hesitation. I pierced her with a speculative gaze which she returned evenly.

"That's all I know, luv," she said, a touch of defiance in her tone. I believed her. She was a messenger. Whoever was behind this wouldn't tell her anything beyond her immediate instructions.

"Okay, doll," I said, taking her by the arm. "I'll go with you. I just want to stop at the desk for a second."

I'd intended to leave a note for Denny but before we got to the front desk I saw Denny enter, radiantly lovely in a white satin evening gown and rich, red velvet cape. She saw me at the same instant I saw her and I saw her brown eyes take in Vicky at my side. Her lips, finely edged, grew tight and her eyes narrowed. I could see her temper skyrocketing. It had always been an instantaneous thing and I had to admit it looked as though I was on my way out on a date with Vicky.

"I can explain," I said, attempting to head off the explosion. "I'll call you tomorrow and explain the whole thing to you."

She had stopped directly in front of us and her eyes flashed as she looked at me. I could see that beneath the anger there was hurt.

"I'm sure you'll come up with something absolutely brilliant by then," she said, her words wrapped in ice. She always looked so gorgeous when she was angry. "But don't bother calling because I won't be listening. You haven't changed a bit, I see. You're still a tomcat on two legs."

"Denny, wait!" I called after her but she was already stalking out the door after throwing me one of those I-might-have-known looks. I glanced at Vicky and cursed inwardly. There was no question what I wanted to do and no question what I had to do. I hustled the little blonde through the door, noting the fleeting expression of sly, bitchy pleasure that had crossed her face. Even though she hadn't really a damn thing to do with it, she enjoyed the role of superiority over another female. It was a reflex action, a built-in part of the female organism.

"She your bird?" she commented with studied blandness. "Bit of a problem explaining this to her, I fancy."

"She's not my bird" I said gruffly. "She's an old friend. Where's your car?"

She pointed to a little Sunbeam Imp standing at the curb and I slid in beside her, feeling as though I might split the sides on it.

"Lord," Vicky exclaimed, glancing at me. "You fill up a seat, you do." There was a hint of interest in her glance again, a glance which said that under other conditions, another time, another place, she'd be more than friendly. I sat quietly, watching London go by. She was following Victoria embankment, through the inner City, past Billingsgate Market and the old Tower, still grim and forbidding. She paid no attention to her dress, which was riding up high on her lap. Her legs, a little too short of calf and thick of thigh, would be stubby and dumpy in another five or more years. Right now, they had enough youth and firmness to exude a raw sexuality. As we drove on, I tossed a few more questions at her, just to see what they might elicit.

"Am I going to meet the woman now?" I asked casually.

"Lord, you're a persistent one," she exclaimed with some heat. "I told you I don't know nothing at all and that's the bloody truth of it."

"Little jumpy yourself, aren't you, Vicky?" I grinned.

"What if I am?" she retorted. "I'm just doin' a job, that's all. Throwing a bloody lot of questions at me isn't helping any."

She turned the Sunbeam when we reached a large sign reading: "Royal Albert Docks." She swung the little car into the narrow streets of the first of the dock sections, streets that led past warehouses, rows of crates and bales and vessels ablaze with lights illuminating the night unloading. The London docks, unlike any others in the world, did not jut out from the Thames but consisted of five huge, man-made areas set back from the river and reached by narrow passageways. In these vast complexes, London could accommodate over a hundred oceangoing liners and cargo vessels at one time. Vicky threaded the Sunbeam through the sections alive with lights and activities, turning into an area that was dark, deserted and silent. The vessels moored there were equally silent and dark, obviously out of service. I felt a warning chill sweep over me, the hairs on the back of my neck starting to rise. It was a reliable sign of trouble and danger. There was no explaining it. Call it extra-sensory perception, sixth sense, experience, give it any name you like, but it was a built-in part of me that defied rational explanation. I was damned glad for it, don't get me wrong, but every now and then even I wondered what made it operate so unfailingly. Right now, for example, there was no reason for it to start ticking. It was only logical that the kind of meeting that was planned would be held in some dark, out-of-the-way spot. The whole business, by its very nature, would be a dark and secret thing. It was to be expected, and yet I felt that sense of impending danger, a premonition that it was twelve o'clock and all was not so well. I felt for Wilhelmina, my Luger, safely in my shoulder holster. It was reassuring. Along my right forearm, in its leather sheath, Hugo, the thin stiletto, added a further touch of reassurance.

Vicky stopped the car, peered out the window, and in the darkness I could see her chewing her lips nervously.

"This is the place," she said. "Pier 77." The dark hull of a freighter loomed up on one side, its cargo booms giant claws reaching up into the night. A low, flat warehouse lined the opposite side of the dock. A half-dozen crates and boxes stood at one edge, alongside the hull of the ship.

"You first," I said. "I'll get out on your side."

"Me?" she said, her voice both fearful and defiant. "Not me, luv. I've done me job. I'm not getting out, not in this creepy place."

"You're getting out," I said, putting one hand behind her back. She looked at me and I could see her eyes were round and wide with fright. What she saw in mine frightened her more. She pulled the door open and swung out of the car. I was right behind her and I'd just straightened up beside her when the shots came, two, maybe three of them. They whizzed past my ear and plunked into the car with a dull thud. Vicky screamed and I threw her to the ground with me. Despite her terror, I saw her squeezing herself under the car. I lay quietly, face down. It had happened too fast for me to see where the shots had come from, except to note that they came from different directions. Only the fact that I had gotten out of the car on Vicky's side and blended in with the dark shape of the car had prevented them from being directly on target. They'd been fractions away from it, as it was. If I tried to get up and run for it they'd ventilate me in seconds. I continued to lie still, still as a dead man.

In a minute, I heard footsteps approaching, one pair of footsteps. They were cautious and competent. I'd been mentally reconstructing what little I'd been able to take in of the spot. The dark hull of the merchantman was closest to me, just beyond the row of packing crates. The footsteps stopped and a hand reached down to turn me over. Certain the other hand would have a gun in it, I let him turn me half over, limply, and then, pressing into the cobblestones of the dock with my heels, I flung myself into a roll, catching him at the ankles with the full weight of my body. His feet were swept out from under him and he toppled forward across me. I heard the gun explode and the high-pitched whine of the bullet as it richocheted off the pavement at close range. Before he could get to his knees I'd reached the row of packing crates and dived behind them. I heard the thud of two more bullets hit the crates, and now I saw that there were two more men, positioned at opposite ends of the dock, three of them in all. I ducked low behind the crates and raced along the dock until I was alongside the gangway ladder running down the side of the merchantman.

I leaped onto it and raced up, a dark blur against the black bulk of the hull. It took them half a minute to zero in on me and then I was a lousy target. Their shots were wild and I vaulted onto the deck. They'd be coming after me, I knew that, too. I was aboard the darkened vessel. I could go down into the hold and hide from them. They might not find me there, but it could also be a certain death trap. I elected to stay out in the open where I could maneuver. I raced up to the bridge and lay flat on my stomach. I hadn't long to wait before the three dark forms came up the gangway ladder and onto the deck. They separated at once, ending my thoughts of gunning them down with a quick burst. I watched one head aft, another to the bow. The third one started to climb up the companionway toward the bridge. I let Hugo drop into my palm and lay flat. The minute his head appeared over the top step he saw me and started to raise his gun hand. But I'd been expecting him and Hugo flew with deadly speed. I heard him gag as the stiletto struck deeply into the side of his neck. He started to topple backwards but I was on my feet, catching him and pulling him onto the bridge. I retrieved Hugo and went down the steps to the main deck. Moving in a crouch, I went forward. The second one was searching behind every boom, every deck winch and ventilator. I managed to move close enough to him so that when he saw me, there was not more than six feet between us. I dived, catching him in a flying tackle, but my objective of silence failed. He got off one shot which, though it missed, exploded deafeningly on the silent vessel. The tackle sent him backwards against a deck cleat, and I heard the grunt of pain. He was bigger than the other one, heavier. I grappled for the gun with him, and as he slid from the cleat it fell away from both of us.

He pushed up against me, his hand pressing into my face. I twisted away and brought a short right around that only grazed his jaw. He tried to roll away but I stayed with him. I could hear the sound of running footsteps approaching. I grabbed an arm and twisted to find he was strong as an ox. He managed to pull away from me and I felt his hands on my throat. I brought a knee into his groin and he let go with a gasp. The other one had come up but, as I'd hoped, couldn't get off a shot at the two dark figures grappling on the deck. I felt his hands grabbing my jacket to pull me away from his friend. I let him and as he lifted me, I caught the other one with a kick that landed right at the point of his jaw. I could feel the jaw give way and he lay still. Twisting backwards and reaching to one side, I gave the newcomer a hip flip that sent him sprawling. He came up with gun in hand but I had Wilhelmina out and ready. She barked once, and he fell sideways over a chock.

I didn't bother to search them. I knew they'd have nothing revealing on them. They had been professionals. Their silent, efficient manner tipped that off. It was over, and that was all I knew. Who sent them, who they were, whether they were involved in the original message to AXE, were unanswered questions. There'd been enough shots fired to bring the London Bobbies or the Thames Division of Scotland Yard, who patrol the waterfront and dock areas. I was starting down the gangway ladder when I saw the small figure emerging from under the Sunbeam. I'd forgotten about little Vicky in the tumult of events. She had the engine coming to life when I reached her, had the car in gear when I got a hand in and snapped off the ignition. I felt her teeth sink into my wrist. It hurt, but instead of tearing away I pressed up against her mouth, snapping her head back. She let go with a cry of pain and I grabbed her dyed blonde hair and shoved her across the seat. I had one hand on her throat and her eyes were beginning to bulge from more than fear.

"Don't kill me," she pleaded. "Oh, Lord, please! I didn't know about thisl I didn't!"

"Who were they?"

"Blimey, I don't know," she gasped. "It's the truth."

I increased the pressure. She would have screamed if she had the breath. All she could do was half whisper the words.

"I only did what they paid me to do," she said. "I'm telling you the truth, Yank." I remembered her scream of terror and surprise as the first shots nearly killed me. I let up so she could talk and the words spilled out of her.

"They never said anything like this was up. God, I swear it to you, luv. They just gave me the money and told me what to tell you and where to bring you. It was a lot, more than I could make in a year. Here, look, I'll show it to you."

She reached for her purse but froze as my hand clamped down on hers.

"I'll get it," I growled. I was taking no more chances. The little purse revealed no gun but a roll of bills was there. I handed the purse to her. She was half sobbing.

"I couldn't turn it down," she said. "I couldn't. But I would have if I'd known they were up to somethin' like this."

I wasn't so sure about that last bit but it was unimportant. She was genuinely terrified and not just of me. The whole affair had her shaking. I'd seen plenty of good actresses, but you can tell the real thing. She was essentially what I'd concluded earlier, a dupe, a pawn, a scroungy little bird out to make a fast pound without asking too many questions. But she had been contacted somehow and that she hadn't revealed to me, yet. I put a big hand at the back of her neck again and her eyes immediately widened in fear.

"How did you meet these men?" I growled. "No fancy talk, doll. You're on very thin ice."

"My boyfriend introduced me," she said quickly. "I'm a B-girl at the Jolly Good Pub and he hangs out there a lot. He told me I could earn a real big wad by doing a favor for some men he knew."

"What's his name? Your boyfriend."

"Teddy. Teddy Renwell."

"Then we're going to visit your boyfriend Teddy," I said, glancing at my watch. It was just one o'clock. I had time to make it back to the hotel. "But I've something else to do first. I'll drive."

I wanted to be in my room and waiting when two o'clock came. If the phone call didn't materialize, it could mean I'd been right all along about the whole thing being a trap. Or, it could mean that whoever they were, they'd gotten to the woman who originally called. But if it came, it was damned important I be there to get it.

II

Vicky sat quietly beside me as I tooled the little car back through the streets of London. Her glances at me, I noted, were a mixture of apprehension and a kind of grudging admiration. After a while, she began to open up.

"You're a bit of all right in a pinch, aren't you?" she commented. I let the remark go without answering.

She lapsed into silence again for another long moment.

"What are you going to do with me?" she asked a little later.

"Nothing, if you're telling the truth," I answered. "And well find that out when we visit your boyfriend. But till I'm certain of it, I'm going to keep you out of trouble."

More silence followed. I could feel her trying to decide whether to go along quietly or try to break for it. She kept glancing at me and she had more than enough street wisdom to read the score right. She also had enough guttersnipe in her to use everything she could in self-protection.

"I'll bet you re a bit of all right in other ways, too," she said, giving me a sly, sidelong glance.

"Maybe," I said. "Would you like to find out?" Two could play her little game, what the hell.

I might," she said, gaining immediate confidence at my rising to the bait. Her cleverness was of such a low-grade transparency I felt almost ashamed.

"Maybe well look into it," I said. "But I've got to wait for a phone call first."

She settled back and I could feel the tension go out of her, confident she had bought a degree of safety with the age-old weapons of woman.

When we reached my room at the hotel, my watch read five minutes to two. Vicky obediently sat down in a stuffed chair, letting me see plenty of leg. At precisely two a.m., the phone rang. It was a woman's voice again, but this time the accent Hawk had described was there, heavy, Russian or Slavic. I had thoroughly memorized the identification code she had set up and I waited.

"You have come to see me?" the woman's voice asked.

"I have come to see you," I echoed.

"Why?"

"Because you wanted me to come."

"Why did I want you to come?"

"Because the world needs help."

There was an almost inaudible sigh of relief, and then the heavily accented voice went on.

"You will go to Alton. Walk along the west bank of the Wey River. A quarter of a mile above Alton, you will find a rowboat. Take it and row toward Selborne. Stop at the second stone bridge. At dawn, six o'clock, I will meet you there. Do you understand clearly?"

"Perfectly," I answered. The phone clicked off and went dead. But the call had proven three very important things. First, that the original message to AXE had indeed been legitimate. Two, the woman was still alive, and three, she was being closely watched. Whoever was watching her had known about her call to AXE and decided to play it through, watch for my arrival and nail me. The question now was whether they'd get to her before I did. It all depended on how soon they found out their trap for me had backfired. I turned to Vicky.

"Take your stockings off, honey," I said. She looked up at me, indecision in her eyes and then, as I watched, she stood up, lifting her dress to unclasp her garter belt. She had a round little belly under white, modest panties.

"I'll take them," I said, reaching for the stockings. Sudden uncertainty tinged with apprehension leaped into her eyes. "What for?" she said. "What are you up to? I thought we were going to get chummier, luv."

She was still in there pitching. I grinned inwardly.

"The answer to that is still 'maybe, " I said. "Right now I have to go somewhere and I want to be sure you'll be here when I get back."

I tied her to a straight-backed chair, using the stockings to securely bind her ankles and wrists. Women's stockings make excellent bonds for a short period of time. They are resilient but tough. I put a handkerchief gag in her mouth, taking care to see that it was tight enough to keep her quiet and loose enough to keep her from suffocating.

"Don't bother answering the door," I said to her as I left. Her eyes glowered at me from above the gag. To add insurance, I hung the DO NOT DISTURB sign on the outside of the door and hurried downstairs. It was a quarter to three and I hadn't any time to waste. Vicky's little Sunbeam Imp was no Aston-Martin either.

The London streets were deserted now, except for a few girls still hopefully wandering about. Alton was south and a little west of London and I took the Old Brompton Road through Kensington and Chelsea. There was little traffic and hardly any when I got out of London. I bore down on the little car and winced as the engine strained. The ever-present curves of the English country roads kept me plenty alert as I passed road signs with the very English names of Brookwood, Farnborough, Aldershot.

Alton, when I reached it, was silent and sleeping. I found the wandering river Wey, really not much more than a large, placid stream, and pulled the Sunbeam off the road under a cluster of sturdy oaks. I began to walk along the west bank and saw that the sky was beginning to hint at the coming dawn. The woman's instructions had failed to mention the English fog which, alongside the river, was thick and constant I had to walk slowly to avoid going into the river by accident. Occasionally, the fog would lift enough for me to get a glimpse a few feet ahead. It was at just such a break that I avoided falling over the rowboat pulled halfway up on the bank. I pushed off into the water and began to row. Fogbound, silent, the only sound the soft splash of the oars in the water, I was in a world of my own. The gray of dawn was coming up, but it did nothing to dispel the fog. That would take the sun, which in England seldom burned it away until mid-morning. Then, looming up ahead, barely visible, I saw the arch of a footbridge over the river and caught a brief glimpse of the heavy stones that formed the arch. I passed underneath, rowing a little faster.

My eyes hurt from trying to peer through the fog. About a third of a mile on I dimly made out another bridge span. When I passed under it I saw it was a wooden bridge, with rails of wood and sides of log. I kept rowing and then, around a curve, I saw another arched bridge, ghostly, ethereal, substance made shadow by the fog. When I reached the bridge I saw the stones forming the arched sides. Only the walkway was wood planking. I stopped the rowboat and waited in the silent, shrouded river. My watch read six o'clock. I counted the minutes that passed. Two, three, five, ten. I wondered. Had they gotten to her first? Then I heard the sound of oars dipping into the water. I took Wilhelmina out and held her in my hand. The other boat, my ears told me, was coming from upriver and would pass under the bridge to get to me. Slowly, the rowboat began to materialize, more a shadowy shape than anything else. All I could see was the upright form of someone seated at the oars. The boat halted a distance from me, the voice across the water the same one I'd spoken to on the telephone. Obviously, the woman had chosen this spot because of the fog. She wanted to be sure I didn't see her.

"Good, you have come," she said. Her accent in person was, if anything, heavier. From her voice, I guessed she was not a young woman.

"First, you must understand something," she said, speaking with deliberate slowness for emphasis. "I am not a traitor. Do you understand that?"

"I have nothing to understand so far," I answered.

"I know they are watching me," she went on. "I spoke out too freely about how I felt They might decide to send me away any moment. That's why I had to arrange this meeting."

I decided to say nothing about the attempt on me, at the moment. She plainly was unaware how closely she was being watched. If I told her what had happened I had the feeling she might clam up and take off. The woman transmitted great inner torment, even in her fogbound, disembodied voice.

"I would not betray my country, do you understand?" she said again. "You must not ask me any questions that would do that. I will tell you only what I have decided to tell you. Is that clear?"

The thought of her being a traitor was bothering her tremendously. She seemed to be trying to convince herself, more than me, that she wasn't being disloyal. I wanted her to get on with it. The iog would be lightening before long and God knows what other complications might set in then.

"I will understand when you tell me what you have to say," I answered. "Suppose you start at the beginning.

"I just cannot sit by and watch it go on any longer," the woman said. "These men have a value to the world that comes before anything else. I cannot see it any other way."

"What men?" I pressed.

"It is a terrible thing," she said. "I thought long about it before I made up my mind."

She never went any further. The shot split the foggy air and I saw her figure topple silently forward, face down, into the rowboat. I dived to the bottom of my boat as the second shot thunked into the wood of the seat Whoever he was, he was a helluva a good shot, and he had a rifle. He was too accurate for a hand gun in this fog. The boat was drifting toward the bridge where he obviously was. In moments he'd be able to shoot right down at me. My fingers found the edge of the gunwale. Pressing down hard with my leg muscles, I half jumped, half flipped myself over the side. His shot sent slivers flying from the gunwale where my hand had been but I was underwater already. Fully clothed, I knew I hadn't much time underwater and I struck out for the bridge, surfacing underneath it just as my wind gave out. I treaded water, listening to the footsteps above on the wooden walkway of the little bridge. He'd already figured out where I would head and he was on his way to the end of the span. I swam for the same end, the wet clothes feeling as though I'd bags of cement tied to me.

Where the bridge arched down to the shore, I pressed myself against the flat underside of the span, still in the water but at the very edge of the bridge underside. I heard a loose stone roll into the water. He was carefully moving down the embankment. I hung there, waiting. The muzzle end of the rifle appeared first as he came carefully nosing down to the water's edge. Then he appeared, crouched over, his eyes searching the wispy fog floating beneath the bridge. He was a slender, wiry man wearing a one-piece coverall. Pushing off against the underside of the bridge, using the strength of my shoulder muscles, I dived at him. He spun at the sound but I was on him, catching him around the waist. He lost his footing and went backwards off the bank into the river with me hanging onto him. The rifle went slithering from his grip to sink at once. I drove a fist into his face and he went backwards in the water. He made a quick, shallow dive and tried to come up underneath me. I managed to move away, and he was on the surface again in front of me. We struck at each other and I felt the pain of his blow, felt my head go back. Again I swung and again he beat me to the punch. His one-piece coverall, not soaked through, spelled the difference. I might as well have had weights tied to my arms. He knew it, too, and he came at me, treading water and swinging. I backed water. Even if I struck out for the bank, he'd still have the advantage ashore. My arms were already tired. I backed again and dived, wrapping both arms around his right leg, pulling him under with me. I'd done some hard long-distance swimming on occasion. I was hoping he hadn't. That plus the fact that I'd taken him quickly. He'd had no time to draw a long breath. He was raining blows on my back but underwater they were nothing more than harmless taps. I clung to his leg, hunched over, like a crab hanging onto a fish. He was using up precious wind trying to twist away, while all I had to do was hold on. His struggles grew rapidly weaker, and my own lungs were burning now. Suddenly I felt his body grow limp. I hung on five seconds more, and then let go and struck out for the surface. I burst into the air a second before my lungs were ready to burst, drawing deep draughts of the precious stuff, fog and all. His body floated up alongside me and I pulled him onto the bank with me.

I unzipped the coverall and looked for identification. There was none, as I'd figured. But under the coverall he had a transistorized walkie-talkie hanging by a leather belt It was becoming increasingly clear that they, whoever «they» were, hadn't missed any bets. The man had been covering the woman all along, while the others were out trying to nail me. When I showed up, he knew something had gone wrong. No doubt he radioed his central immediately and was told to go into action. This was a professional outfit and their methods smelled of the Russians. The Russians had learned a lot about espionage since World War II, and while they were still pretty heavy-handed with anything that called for imagination, they were efficient enough at this kind of operation. The fog had lightened enough for me to see that both rowboats had drifted onto the far bank. I raced across the bridge and hurried to the woman. She was dead, of course. I knew that the minute he'd gotten off that first shot. I climbed into the rowboat and lifted her to a sitting position. She had on a light brown coat over a simple print dress. her face, wide and Slavic, was framed with gray-streaked brown hair. She was a woman of about forty-five, I guessed. There was no purse, nothing to identify her. Then my eye fell on the lining of the coat that had come open. A name tag was sewn into the inside. Maria Doshtavenko, it read. The name imprinted itself on my memory. I lowered her body gently to the bottom of the rowboat. I suddenly felt sorry for this woman. She had been disturbed about what she wanted to tell me. She was a woman who had been trying to do what she felt was the right thing. There weren't too many like that.

I felt the anger rising inside me. As I rowed back to where I'd left the Sunbeam, my mind raced and my plans crystallized. I wouldn't contact Hawk and tell him what had happened. Not yet, not until I had something more. I could just see the severe, disapproving set of his face, those steely eyes, if I reported in now. They'd nearly killed me, they'd shot the contact out from under me, and I still hadn't the faintest idea what the hell this was all about. But I did have a little blonde dish waiting in my hotel room. She was my one remaining lead, she and her boyfriend. I gunned the Sunbeam back toward London as the day lightened and the morning traffic began to crowd the roads. Anyone watching the Sunbeam would figure I was awfully late for work.

III

Vicky was still there, neatly trussed up. I left her that way while I shed my watersoaked clothes, letting her watch as I stripped, enjoying the appreciative look in her eyes. After I dried and changed into a fresh suit, I untied her. From the condition of the stocking, I saw she hadn't just sat there quietly.

"Blimey, I hurt," she said, rubbing her wrists. "And my mouth feels like it's full of cotton."

"Go into the bathroom and freshen up," I told her. "Run some cold water over your wrists. It'll bring back the circulation. Then we're going to visit your boyfriend, Teddy."

"He'll be asleep at this hour," she protested. "Teddy always sleeps in the mornings."

"This morning will be different," I said laconically.

She stood up and I watched her unzip the red dress, tossing it over her head with a quick motion. She had the round, young figure I'd expected, with that unvarnished sexiness to it, round breasts pushed high by her bra, rounded belly and a short waist. She walked toward the bathroom, throwing me a glance that asked if I were more interested. I smiled and watched her as she reached the bathroom door. She saw the smile was both hard and cold and the beckoning look in her eyes faded. She closed the bathroom door.

I sat down and stretched out in the stuffed chair, moving my muscles in cat-like fashion, using a system of muscular relaxation I'd come upon years ago in India. There was a knock on the door. It was probably room service but my hand was positioned to draw Wilhelmina as I opened. It wasn't room service. It was a tall girl with deep red hair, a gorgeous face and body to match, a girl called Denny Robertson. She wore a sheepish half-smile that would have melted an iceberg in seconds.

"I was on my way to work but I had to stop by and apologize for last night," she said, entering the room. "You told me you were here on business but I guess I just saw red, that's all. You know that damned temper of mine."

Her arms were around my neck and she was hugging me, her body soft, her breasts, even through the tweed jacket she wore, excitingly sensuous against my chest.

"Oh, Nick. It's unbelievably wonderful to see you," she breathed in my ear. That's when Vicky decided to walk out of the bathroom in bra and panties. I didn't have to see her. I knew it by the way Denny stiffened. When she stepped back her eyes were blazing pinpoints of dark fire.

"I can explain," I said quickly. She swung, fast, hard and on target. My cheek stung but she was already out the door. "Bahstad!" she flung back at me, making it sound as only the English can make it sound. I thought of going after her but I cast a glance at Vicky. She had the dress on and I knew she'd take off at the first chance. Once again I knew what I had to do and what I wanted to do. I swore under my breath at Vicky, at Denny, at bad timing, at everything in general.

I took Vicky by the arm and pushed her out the door.

"Let's move," I growled. "Let's get the show on the road." Once again that fleeting expression of smug satisfaction crossed her face but this time I got the impression that it was my discomfort she was enjoying. Her smugness did a fast fade as, some twenty minutes later, we neared her boyfriend's flat in the Soho district. She was back to the nervous, hand-twisting stage as we entered the narrow streets of Soho. Behind the night glitter, behind the strip joints, the betting shops, the mod centers, nightclubs and pubs, Soho was a grimy district of one-room flats and transient boarding houses.

"Can't we wait?" Vicky asked nervously. "Teddy's a sound sleeper and he doesn't like his mornings disturbed. He'll be smashingly mad, you know."

"I'm all upset," I answered, catching the flash of anger in her eyes. I knew damn well what Teddy would be smashingly mad about; her fingering him, that's what. It turned out that Teddy lived on the third floor of a run-down tenement, a dingy, gray building.

"You knock and you answer," I said to the girl as we stood outside the door of his flat. She was right about him being a sound sleeper. She was practically pounding on the door when a sleepy male voice answered.

"It's me, Teddy," she said, casting nervous glances up at me. I remained impassive. "It's Vicky."

I heard the lock being turned and the door opened. I shoved, pulling Vicky along with me into the room. Teddy was wearing pajama bottoms only, his hair long, curly and disarranged. There was a surly handsomeness to him and a cruel set to his mouth. He was pretty much what I'd expected him to be.

"What's all this?" he demanded, looking at Vicky.

"He made me come," she said, gesturing to me. "He made me bring him here, that's what." The alley cat in her was coming out quickly. The glower which I suspected was a part of Teddy grew deeper. A little sleep was still clinging to him but he was trying to shake it.

"What the hell's this all about?" he growled. "Who's this bloke?"

"I'll ask the questions, Teddy," I cut in.

"You'll get the hell out, that's what you'll do," he said.

"Careful, Teddy," I said evenly. "I just want a few answers and I'll leave. Be smart and you won't get hurt."

"I told him you'd be smashingly mad, Teddy," Vicky threw in, still bent on protecting herself.

A practiced glance had taken in the dingy room. The large double bed took up most of it There was also a dresser, with a porcelain dish, a water pitcher and an empty ale bottle on top of it. Teddy's clothes were carefully hung over the straight back of a wooden chair that stood beside the dresser.

"You get the hell out," Teddy said directly to me, an ugly note in his voice. It wasn't his fault that I didn't scare easily.

"The men you introduced Vicky to last night," I said, "who were they?"

A subtle change came over Teddy's eyes, a dangerous glint, immediately masked. He began to back away from me, at the same time snarling defiance.

"You've got three seconds to get out," he said. He was up against the dresser and I watched him reach back and pick up the porcelain dish. Though I was watching him, he still surprised me as with one quick motion he sent the dish skimming across the room. The dish became a wicked missile, skimming through the air viciously and accurately. I just managed to duck away, the hard, flat edge of it grazing my head to smash into the wall behind me. Teddy followed the dish with his body, diving across the room at me, leaping like a jaguar. The skimmed dish was a good, unexpected move that almost paid off. The follow-up was a mistake. I was in a crouch and he expected to take advantage of that. Instead, I came up on fast on my legs to meet his leap with a hard right. I heard the crack of his jaw, his cry of pain, and he arched backwards to land atop the big, double bed. I reached for him but he rolled off the other side.

Vicky had pressed herself into a corner of the room, but I kept one eye on her. Self-centered little alleycat that she was, I couldn't be sure how deep her loyalties ran. Teddy was on his feet again, his jaw swelling like a balloon. The knowledge of it seemed to infuriate him and he came at me like a windmill. He fought out of a crouch and he was quick, cat-like in his movements. Speed was his greatest asset and even that wasn't too great. I parried his blows, sneaked a hard left in that rocked him and brought through a sharp right to the gut. He doubled over but managed to half avoid a chopping right that nonetheless caught him hard enough to send him crashing into the dresser. Clinging to the dresser, blood trickling from his mouth, his face now swollen and misshapen, he looked back at me, eyes dark with hatred.

"All I want is some answers, Teddy," I said quietly. "Are you ready to give them to me?"

"Sure, cousin," he gasped, breathing hard for someone as young as he was. "I'll give you yer bloody answers." He grabbed the empty ale bottle from the dresser top, smashed the end of it against the wall and came at me, the jagged half in his hand. It was an old barroom brawl technique and made one of the deadliest of weapons, far worse than the ordinary knife. The jagged glass could slash equally well in any direction, leaving a much uglier wound than the sharpest knife.

"Put that down, Teddy," I said quietly. "Put it down or I'll cut your damned head off with it."

He was grinning, or trying to anyway, and his eyes were cold and cruel. His willingness to kill told me one thing, at least. He was more than casually involved. I backed away as he slowly came toward me. I could blow his head off with one shot, I knew, but I didn't want that. I wanted him alive, or alive enough to answer questions. But I was trying to walk a very dangerous road. I didn't want to kill him but he sure wanted to kill me. He swiped out at me in an arc, fast, almost too fast for the eye to see. I jumped backwards and felt my legs hit the edge of the bed. He laughed and drove forward with the bottle. I did a back-flip onto the bed, somersaulted and landed on my feet on the other side. I yanked the top sheet off the bed and held it before me, quickly pressing it into three folds. As he came around the end of the bed, I met him, tossing the sheet over his hand and the bottle. He ripped upwards and the sheet tore apart. I jumped back in time to avoid my stomach taking part.

I could have skewered him with Hugo, and my hand itched to let the pencil-thin shaft of the stiletto drop into my palm. I resisted the impulse. I still wanted the bastard alive, though it was beginning to look more and more like an impossible goal. Teddy feinted to the left, once, twice, and then slashed out from the right. The jagged glass ripped the button from my jacket. I grabbed for his arm at the end of its arc but he swung the bottle backhanded and I had to twist away again. This time I retreated fast to put some air between myself and the wicked, slashing weapon. The wooden chair with Teddy's carefully draped mod outfit on it stood in the corner. I grabbed it, dumping his clothes on the floor. I saw him stop in the center of the room as I advanced with the chair upraised.

"That's it, mate," he breathed. "Come on, now. Sock it to me." Of course the sonofabitch wanted me to swing the chair at him. One swing and I'd be ripped apart. He'd duck from the swing and come in on me before I could recover position. I let him think that was just what I was going to do. I moved toward him, the chair upraised, holding it with both hands. He waited on the balls of his feet, ready to duck away and counter. I came at him, and then, dropping the chair halfway, I drove forward, using it as a battering ram, putting all my strength and weight behind it. The four legs hit Teddy full face, driving him halfway across the room and into the wall with such force the whole flat shook. I had lowered my head, putting my shoulder behind the seat of the chair. When we hit the wall I looked up to see the blood spurting from Teddy s mouth. One leg of the chair had driven halfway into his throat. I pulled back and he slumped to the floor, his eyes open in the staring sight of the dead.

"Damn the luck," I growled. I was conscious of Vicky moving over, one hand on her mouth, eyes wide in horror.

"He… he's dead," she breathed. "Teddy's dead. You killed him."

"Self-defense," I said automatically. While she stood there transfixed, looking down at Teddy's lifeless form slumped on the floor, propped up against the wall, I went through the pockets of his clothes. They contained the usual trivia, money clip, loose change, driver's license, credit cards. Inside the inner jacket pocket I came upon a small, white card with a single name handwritten on it: Professor Enrico Caldone. It rang an immediate bell. Professor Caldone was an Italian, an expert on space biology. He'd recently gotten some award, I recalled, for his work on protecting astronauts from possible microorganisms in space and the possibilities of man contaminating other planets. What was a two-bit punk like Teddy doing with Professor Caldone's name on a card — handwritten, yet? I held it out to Vicky, who had finally torn her eyes from Teddy's inert form.

"What do you know about this?" I asked sharply. "Who was he dealing with? If you're holding out on me I'll find out, honey. I've had it with you."

"I don't know anything more… hardly," she said.

"What's 'hardly' mean?"

"Teddy told me about being paid to take messages back and forth," she half-sobbed. "He was paid real well by these people. He said there was someone else on the other end and that's all he ever told me. Teddy wasn't a bad sort."

"A matter of opinion," I said. I pocketed the card and opened the door. She called after me.

"What do I do now, Yank?"

"Get lost and find a new boyfriend," I flung back at her as I took the stairs three at a time. The little card with the name on it burned in my pocket. Maybe I had something at last. Maybe I had nothing, but I'd reached the end of the line here. It was time to dump this collection of bits and pieces into Hawk's lap. A woman with an important message to deliver. I had her name, Maria Doshtavenko. That much was to the good. I also knew that someone didn't want that message delivered. The last thing was a cheap punk with the name of an important scientist on a card in his pocket, handwritten by someone. Maybe Hawk had something that could make a picture out of the pieces.

I called Denny from the airport but there was no answer and I felt really sorry about that. The unfinished symphony would stay that way for us, for a while longer at least. I boarded the airliner and sat back. It had been a frustrating two days with bad luck and bad timing all around but I was onto something damned important. Too many people had taken too much effort for it to be anything else but important.

* * *

Not too many hours later I sat across the desk from Hawk, watching those steel-gray eyes as he listened to my briefing. He was digesting what I'd laid out before him, his face impassive. He hunched low in his chair, studying the little slips of paper on which he'd noted each item separately. He shifted them around as one shifts the pieces of a jig-saw puzzle. He had already called Vital Statistics for a check of the woman's name, Maria Doshtavenko. Vital Statistics kept a fantastic file of names on all known personnel employed by foreign governments in any capacity. Most of the major intelligence outfits keep a similar one on us. On some people, of course, they have quite a dossier of information. On others, nothing more than a name. As I watched, Hawk picked up the index card I'd taken from Teddy's pocket.

This could be the key item, Nick," he said. "This could be a light in the dark, a connection we'd never have made otherwise."

"Light it up a little more," I said. "I'm still in the dark."

"We don't know what this Maria Doshtavenko wanted to tell us," he answered. "But from this, we might deduce what it was about."

"From just that name?"

"This, my boy, is not an ordinary name, as you know. Take a look at these names."

He took a sheet of paper from the top drawer of the desk and pushed it at me. There were seven names on it, each one that of a leading scientist who I recognized at once. These were men whose contributions to the world covered a vast area, medicine, physics, metallurgy, abstract theory and applied science. Hawk's tone was grave, almost sad.

"The whole thing's been kept semi-quiet for obvious reasons but each one of these men is, today, nothing but a vegetable," he said. "A mysterious and terrible illness has hit each one of them during the past year, resulting in a complete mental deterioration. They exist today in a kind of living death, vegetables, their minds lost to mankind."

"Medical research hasn't come up with an explanation?" I asked. "A brilliant scientist doesn't become a vegetable without some reason, to say nothing of seven of them."

"The neurological reason is that their minds have absolutely disintegrated," Hawk said. "They are in the total mental collapse that comes only with congenital retardation or massive brain damage. The scientific community is terribly concerned, of course. Scientists like the rest of us, are human and subject to the same fears and alarms as everyone else. A team of leading neurologists and psychiatrists have examined each of these men. They're completely baffled."

"No theories at all?"

"Well, they've come up with a couple of theories, which, as they've admitted to me, are more conjecture than anything else. However, they support these theories with the kind of scientific reasoning which fills the vacuum. In other words, what they have to say holds up because that's all we have."

"What are they saying?" I asked.

"Two things; one of them presupposes tie existence of a form of virus unknown and undetected as yet. The other is based on the development of an electrical ray capable of inflicting enormous physical harm. They theorize that the mind is essentially like any other organ in the body. When it is harmed in some manner — either through so-called natural means, that is, by a virus, or man-made means, such as, for example, the electric ray — it can be drastically weakened or even destroyed. A hitherto unknown virus of a specialized strain could theoretically bring on such a neurological collapse. So could an electrical ray, if you think of it as an extra-strong X-ray mechanism."

I found myself grimacing. "I suppose they're possibilities," I said. "But I don't buy them. Maybe I'm out of my depth here."

"We do know one fact," Hawk added. "They have all been stricken right after a monthly meeting of the International Science Scholars."

The International Science Scholars was, I knew, a worldwide scientific association of very advanced scientific thinkers from every country on the globe.

"The fact that these men have collapsed after the meetings does lend credence to the virus theory," Hawk said. "Something picked up at the meetings, just as all viruses are picked up. At least it did lend credence to it."

I picked up the inflection at once. He was being cute.

"What do you mean by that?" I questioned. "What are you driving at?"

"Look at the list again," Hawk said. I studied the names again. For a while they were just names, but then my years of training in suspicion, in perceiving things differently than anyone else sees them, came to the fore. Two highly interesting facts took shape and grew like a genie coming out of a bottle. There was not a Russian or a Chinese scientist among the seven names. Nor was there even one who had associated himself politically with the leftist position. Secondly, every one of the seven men had been in some manner associated with the Western powers. The ISS was a worldwide group. Their monthly meetings involved heavy thinkers from almost every country. How come, if it were a virus or a weirdo X-ray, none of the leftist eggheads have been affected?

"I get it," I nodded to Hawk. "It seems to be a highly selective mode of destruction."

He smiled thinly. "Every one of those seven men had contributed or had been working closely with scientific development in the Western powers," Hawk said. "Dunton had developed the electronic advances we use in the latest military hardware. Doctor Ferris, the advanced method of treating battlefield injuries. Horton had worked on the new molecular theories. I could go on but you've got the picture, Nick. Frankly, I had sniffed around at this fact but until this card with Professor Caldone's name and the statements the woman made to you, I hadn't come up with enough to satisfy me. But now, I believe we're putting together a picture here."

The intercom sounded with a message from Vital Statistics. They had done their usual fast, efficient job, and it made the picture even clearer. Maria Doshtavenko was an office worker in the Russian Information Bureau in London, a cover, we knew, for all kinds of Russian activities, including the NKVD.

"Most interesting, I'd say," Hawk said, chomping down on a cold cigar. I was recalling how disturbed and tormented Maria Doshtavenko had been about not being considered a traitor. Yet something disturbed her even more, something she wanted to tell us. I kept thinking of one line she had uttered. "These men have a value to the world that comes before anything else." It tied in more than neatly.

"You think the Soviets are causing these men to become vegetables?" I asked Hawk directly. "How the hell could they do it?"

"I wish I knew the answer to both of those, Nick," the Chief admitted. "But I am convinced there's a connection and something is very rotten here. We are being robbed of our most valuable men — the Soviets are stealing the minds of our scientists before our eyes. Professor Caldone must not be the next victim."

He picked up the index card again and gazed at it. "This card is very disturbing, Nick," he said. "If this living death is man-made, Professor Caldone may be next on the list. He's working on an advanced space-biology grant from the NASA people and the next ISS meeting is in a few days on the Italian Riveria — Portofino. You'll go there and stick with the professor. We'll contact him and you'll be given a firm list of instructions but they'll all add up to one thing — see that nothing happens to him."

I stood up and Hawk also rose. "We've stumbled onto something," he said. "Up to now we, and the world, have lost seven brilliant minds. That's a loss beyond measuring. Whatever this is, Nick, we've got to get at it and get at it fast. I want you here tomorrow morning. We'll have a session with Tom Dettinger and our plans will be formulated then."

I left, feeling that this whole business was something apart from anything I'd ever faced before. There was a quality of latent horror to it, of something shadowy and unreal yet all too real. I knew Hawk would have me on a plane as soon as our briefing was ended in the morning so I spent some time packing and then got off a cable to Denny Robertson. I told her I'd be in Portofino on business for a few days but I'd try my damnedest to come back via London and see her. I had a lot of explaining to do and was still feeling lousy about the whole business with Vicky. As I sent the cable mentioning the Italian Riveria visit, I couldn't help thinking that the ISS held their meetings at very «in» spots.

Outside of a call from a girl I knew just outside Washington, Linda Smythe, the rest of the day was quiet, and I appreciated the opportunity to do nothing and do it slowly. Linda had wanted to do the town, and under other circumstances I would have leaped at the chance. But I couldn't shake the picture of seven brilliant men becoming vegetables practically overnight. It was a chilling, flesh-crawling thought. Our meager facts certainly pointed to the Soviets being involved but the nature of it didn't even fit their operations. When you've been in this game long enough you learn that every outfit has its own character to its operations. This one, in fact, didn't really fit into any niche, unless possibly the Chinese Communists. While the Russians could be ruthlessly cruel, they were esoterically diabolic. Perhaps the Russians were involved, but not the way we were thinking. I was still wondering about it when I went to sleep.

Tom Dettinger was the AXE expert on procedures and techniques for protecting important people. I listened carefully to him, making mental notes as he went on. Hawk sat by, seemingly lost in his own thoughts but, I knew, not missing a word.

"This is a little unusual, Nick," Tom said. "There's really nothing to guard against in a specific way. There's no direct threat of assassination, for example, or no known groups to watch for. We're working against something which we don't know even exists, or if it does, in what form or shape. Therefore, the only approach is the one we call the blanket approach where you become more than a bodyguard. You become glue. I'll detail it for you."

As he went on, I was tempted to ask how you protect someone against a virus, or an invisible X-ray, but I held back. They weren't theories I had bought and neither had Hawk, which just proves that people in different professions see things in very different ways.

What really made the difference about this affair was that Hawk and I usually could indulge in a fine exchange of thinly veiled jabs and banter. Neither of us felt like it this time. When Tom finished, he gave me a few routine protective devices to take along, and Hawk walked to the elevator with me.

"You'll be dealing with something completely unknown and frankly, rather horrible, Nick," he said. "Exercise as much personal caution as possible within the framework of duty."

"You mean I should be careful," I grinned. He coughed nervously. His essential concern broke through that mask every so often. I maintained my casual air. Anything else would have added to his embarrassment.

"I'll watch it," I told him. "I'm not so crazy about vegetables that I want to become one."

His eyes found a twinkle. "Really?" he said. "It seems to me that you're very fond of tomatoes."

I grinned. This was more like it. It gave me a good feeling, a lift I'd been missing.

IV

The Alitalia flight put me down in Milan and from there I rented a car and drove south to Genoa. Portofino was still further south and I continued on without stopping. The ISS meeting was quartered at the Excelsior and a room had been arranged for me adjoining Professor Caldone's quarters. I was to have the only key to both rooms. To add insurance, my instructions were to meet the Professor at a designated service station outside Portofino. He was driving up from Rome to meet me there. AXE had contacted him and thoroughly briefed him and he had agreed to cooperate fully. I turned the car in at Portofino and took an old and uncertain taxi to where I was to meet him.

I found Professor Caldone leaning against the hood of his car, a small Fiat sedan. He was short white-haired and genial with a small, round stomach from "too much pasta," as he put it, patting it fondly. He was immediately likable, a thoroughly unpretentious little man, I quickly concluded. He had an unexpected nugget for me when he announced that his wife and niece were with him to enjoy the Riveria while he attended the meetings. They had botl gone to the washroom in the little service station while he waited for me.

"Other than that," Professor Caldone said, "I am completely in your hands, Mr. Carter. I have been told I must do whatever you say."

I had to smile. He said it like a little boy. Only the twinkle in his small blue eyes set in the faintly cherubic face belied the quick mind at work. Signora Caldone emerged first, a short, square woman, a little more severe than her husband, but polite and pleasant enough.

"This is Signor Carter," he introduced me. "The American gentleman who I told you would be meeting us."

"Ah, si," the woman said. "The one you are supposed to obey." She turned to me and looked up somewhat skeptically.

"I hope you have more success with him than I have had in forty years," she said in mock seriousness.

"He will" the Professor replied before I could say anything. "He is a lot bigger than you, Mama."

I saw the girl approaching over Signora Caldone's shoulder and I tried not to stare. I'm afraid I didn't make it. To say she was beautiful would have been incomplete. To say she exuded sex would have been oversimplifying it. I saw black hair framing an olive-skinned face, falling loosely to her shoulders. Her lips, full and luscious, held the hint of a pout which disappeared when she saw me. Into those black-brown eyes I saw a dark fire suddenly leap as her eyes met mine. Full breasts billowed over the top of a white, scoop-necked peasant blouse, and thrust hard against the fabric. Wide hips emphasized a small waist, softly curving thighs and well-formed legs. I thought of what Byron had said about Italian women wearing their hearts on their lips. This kid wore a lot more than her heart on those full, red, lambent lips. She was sensuality incarnate. She throbbed. She was a smoldering volcano.

"This is Amoretta," the Professor said. Amoretta held out a hand that stayed in mine just a fraction longer than it need have, and I saw her eyes appreciatively examine my over six feet of hard-muscled body. I had a quick talk with myself. You, Nick Carter, I said, are here on a very sticky assignment. You can just ignore this luscious dish. Fat chance, I answered myself. She wouldn't get in the way of my work. They never did that, no matter what they looked like. But to ignore her would be equally impossible. Maybe, if I were lucky, some nice compromise would work itself out. Professor Caldone and his wife clambered into the front seat of the Fiat, leaving me to share the back with Amoretta. I felt the warmth of her thigh pressing lightly but definitely against my leg as she sat down beside me. There are advantages to the smaller European cars which their manufacturers should advertise more.

"I hope you do not mind Amoretta being along, Mr. Carter," the Professor said. "She is not happy to come with us but we didn't want to leave her alone in Rome." I could see why, I thought silently. "Amoretta is visiting us from her home in the hills of Calabria. She visits with us twice a year even though we bore her."

Amoretta answered quickly in Italian, her voice flaring in protest and I was happy to see that my Italian had remained good enough to understand.

"Zio Enrico," she said to her uncle. "That's not fair. You know I love visiting with you and Zia Theresa. It's these stuffy scientific meetings I hate."

"Even when they're at the Italian Riveria?" I cut in.

"Even there," she answered, giving me a long, sideways glance. "Though maybe this one will be better."

I read her right but I didn't say anything. She'd learn, soon enough, that I'd have less free time than Uncle Enrico. But I'd learned where that throbbing, undisguised sensuality came from — the hills of Calabria where the people wore all their emotions in the open, a region of passionate hates and loves where the old ways of life still held on. Amoretta, obviously, had more than a peasant girl's education, with knowledge and desires awakened of more worldly things.

The drive to Portofino was pleasant and short and I briefed the Professor on the basic procedures he would have to follow. They were simple enough but absolutely rigid. Special, bottled drinking water had been flown in and placed in his room. He was not to drink or eat anything during the formal luncheons and dinners that was not served to everyone. He was to take no pills of any kind. Most important, he was not to go anywhere without me or be alone with anyone unless I was there. I excepted Signora Caldone and he thanked me with that little twinkle in his eyes again. After we checked in, I went over the Professor's rooms, a living room and a bedroom, and checked out all the windows and door locks. There were afternoon seminars scheduled and the Professor wanted to rest a while first so I went into the adjoining room that was mine, closed the door and unpacked my one, small bag. I usually traveled light. I wasn't alone more than twenty minutes when there was a knock on the door and I found Amoretta standing there wearing a bikini of bright orange and a clear, plastic jacket over it. The bikini was valiantly clinging to her, fighting a lost cause for modesty. In the brief suit, I really got a look at her magnificent figure, an hour-glass come to life, glowing, olive skin, wide hips and magnificent thighs. She stood with her legs slightly apart, a stance that only emphasized the throbbing sensuality of her body. She took one step into the room, just enough so that her breasts were tantalizingly close to me. She carried a beach towel over one arm.

Tin going down to the beach," she said to me, making the statement an invitation.

"I'm not," I answered, and watched the surprise flare in her eyes. She gazed at me as though I were out of my mind. I half thought so, too.

'But this is the place for it, the time for it and the weather for it," she said logically. "Unless perhaps it is me you do not care to go with."

She threw in the last sentence with her lower lip forming the slight pout I'd first noticed at the service station. It was a typically female ploy and an old one. I wasn't going to go for it.

"You know better than that," I told her. The pout went away at once and she gazed seriously up at me. God, those eyes were enough to make anyone forget home and mother.

"All right, I heard you explaining everything to Zio Enrico," she said. "But there must be some time we can see each other. To be here in Portofino with a man like you and spend it alone would be more than a waste. It would be a sin."

'My sentiments exactly in regard to you, Amoretta," I agreed. "Let me work on it. Maybe something will turn up."

Amoretta turned away slowly, her eyes telling me that I'd better work on it. I watched her walk down the hall, slowly, her hips undulating with each step. I had to hold myself back from going out after her, grabbing that soft, seductive rear and dragging her back into the room. I hoped Hawk appreciated the sacrifices I made in the line of duty.

Letting Amoretta walk away was not all. By the end of the afternoon I'd attended three seminars with Professor Caldone, and I had scientific papers coming out of my ears on everything from the Interaction of Enzymes in Globular Disturbances to Reproduction Studies of the Hydroids. I never knew anything concerning sex could be so damned dull. But I also met a good number of the others attending the meeting. The list roughly broke down into four Norwegians, two Frenchmen, three Germans, four Russians, two Yugoslavs, three Chinese, four Americans and a scattering of other nationalities. There were a few I hadn't met attending other seminars being held concurrently. I also met Karl Krisst, a round, jovial-faced man, taller than his round shape indicated, with small, darting eyes that hinted at a shrewd, fast mind behind the surface blandness.

"Karl, here, is our most valuable man," Professor Caldone said as we were introduced. "As Secretary of the ISS his task is to arrange every one of our monthly meetings. He chooses the site, arranges for accommodations, plans the seminars and the dinners, sees that everyone gets an invitation and generally makes our get-togethers what they are."

Krisst beamed and squeezed the Professor's shoulder. He looked up at me with a mixture of interest and speculation in those small, quick eyes.

"I understand your accommodations were specially arranged, Mr. Carter," he said suavely. "But if there is anything I can do, anything you wish, please do not hesitate to call on me. Karl Krisst is always on call for the members and their guests."

Krisst had a faint accent I correctly diagnosed as Swiss and, had I met him in Chicago, I would have taken him for the typical convention glad-hander and back-slapper. He exchanged little asides with almost everyone, I'd noticed, was always smiling and seemingly pleased with everything. He slapped the professor on the back, gave my arm a squeeze and hurried off. I saw him often during the afternoon and at the dinner that night, hovering over everything, checking one thing or another, making quick shifts when necessary, tending to the personal whims of his distinguished assortment of guests. The eminent scientists plainly got a charge out of him and Karl Krisst did his job exceedingly well. He was just a type I never could warm to, the surface joviality always a hollow element to me. But, I knew, the world was full of Karl Krissts and they seemed necessary to this kind of thing. I had stuck with the professor like glue, carefully watching everything he ate and drank, and when the dinner was ended I found Karl Krisst at my elbow again.

"Do the meetings usually run like this one?" I asked.

"You mean this badly?" he returned, breaking into a storm of laughter at his little joke.

I went along with what I knew he wanted me to say. "I mean this well," I said. "Are the programs at each one similar to this?"

"Yes," he answered. "There are the general sessions comprised of the seminars, official dinners and luncheons and one main session with a formal speaker. Then the last day of the meeting is given over to relaxation. This is only a three-day meeting so the day after tomorrow we will all spend at the beach. Even the greatest intellectual likes the sun and the sea. A great mind and a lobster have that much in common." Again he convulsed at his witticism.

"You are also a member of the scientific community, I presume," I commented. He smiled, almost a little too sweetly.

"Heavens, no," he answered. "Not a professional member. I'm not smart enough to belong to the ISS. I'm perfectly content with my role as Official Secretary."

I hadn't asked him that and I wondered why he felt it necessary to throw it in. I beat him to a pat on the back and walked Professor Caldone back to his room. The elderly little man now showed the strain of the day.

"I'm tired, my boy," he said to me. "It is too bad you cannot go out for the night life here at the resort. Maybe, after I'm safely locked in for the night, you could slip away."

"Not a chance," I told him. "I'm going to be next door, making certain you're safe."

Signora Caldone admitted us to the room and I saw Amoretta seated in a chair, wearing a delicate pink lounging robe of silk. A magazine was in her lap and a pout on her lips.

"We were just going to bed if you hadn't come, Enrico," Signora Caldone said. "At least I was. Amoretta says she is too restless to sleep. She wants to stay up and read a while."

I suddenly realized something which I hadn't thought to check out "Amoretta isn't sleeping here," I said. "She has a room of her own, hasn't she?"

Signora Caldone turned in surprise. "Why, no, Mr. Carter," she said. "We planned to have her sleep here in the suite with us. The sofa makes into a bed, I understand."

"Sorry, but that's out," I ordered. "Only you, Signora, may stay alone with the Professor, unless I'm there."

Amoretta was on her feet, lower lip thrust out and her eyes flashing. "You are suspicious of me?" she flared angrily. "That is too much!" I shrugged. Actually I wasn't, but a certain kind of suspicion was ingrown with me. I didn't suspect her, while at the same time I did. I didn't really know a damn thing about her or the depth of her relationship to her uncle. I felt she was very fond of him. Yet I'd seen many a sweet young thing turn out to be a hardened agent. Personally, I felt she was trustworthy. Officially, she was as suspect as anyone else in Portofino. The question was how to answer Amoretta without causing the volcano inside her to explode.

"I cannot permit your staying here at night," I said. "I'd lose my job."

It seemed to strike the right note for the anger in those black eyes died out instantly. But my unwavering stand had brought on another problem, if you could call it that. I checked the hotel and there wasn't another room available, not a broom closet. There was only one solution and I was already thanking Hawk for the inflexibility of the instructions he'd given me.

"Signorita Amoretta can sleep in my room," I announced gallantly, making it sound like a sacrifice of truly heroic proportions. "I'm used to sleeping in a chair."

The professor and his wife protested my "sacrifice," both grateful and suspicious of my selflessness, and a slow smile flitted across Amoretta's face. She was up and getting her bag. While she did so, I hung one of Tom Dettinger's little devices on the door of the professor's suite. It was a silent alarm that went off when the lock was opened, transmitting a radio signal to a live alarm in my room. The windows were all properly locked and after rigging the device, Amoretta joined me in going back to my adjoining room where I locked the door between the suites. Looking as sly as a Cheshire cat, she draped herself over the sofa. I decided to set her right at once about our going out for the evening. She pouted for a moment and then brightened at once.

"So then we stay here," she said, getting up and walking to the window. "See, we have a lovely view of the bay and the moon. It is perfect."

Indeed it was. I was enjoying a lovely view of Amoretta. The silk robe was very light and outlined her legs in perfect silhouette as she stood by the window.

"Is there anything wrong in. your fixing us a drink?" she asked, her tone dancing on the edge of sarcasm.

"Nothing at all," I said. "I have bourbon. Ever had it?"

She shook her head as I made two good bourbon and waters.

She sipped hers, thoughtfully at first, and then with honest relish.

"This bourbon, it is like you," Amoretta said. "Direct, strong… how you say, no-nonsense."

Amoretta was pretty no-nonsense herself. I took off my jacket, stashed Wilhelmina in the side pocket and watched her fiddle with the hotel radio. She picked up a pretty good all-night station from Genoa and began to move sinuously to the music. She came into my arms and we began to dance. I could feel the firm fullness of her figure through the thin robe. She moved in close, rubbing her breasts against my chest. I was just starting to wonder about how far she would go when there was a knock on the door. Just to play safe, I retrieved the Luger from my jacket pocket before walking to the door. Actually, I thought it was probably someone complaining about the sound of the radio. I opened the door and then closed my eyes for a long minute. The tall, regal figure in the white silk dress, auburn hair falling softly to frame her classic features, said one word. She couldn't have picked a better one!

"Surprise!"

I stood still as she walked past me into the room. "Your cable was so thoughtful that I decided to come down and surprise you. It was simple to check the hotels here. After all, it's not…"

She broke off her entrance and her sentence at the same instant. I didn't turn around. I didn't need to. I could see her focusing on Amoretta in her lounging robe, drink in hand. It took her even less time to explode this time and I braced for what I knew would come. It came, a roundhouse swing that landed with full force. My cheek hadn't really begun to sting before she was out in the hall.

"Denny, wait!" I called.

"You don't waste a minute, do you?" she snapped back, her eyes wintry.

"I can explain" I said.

"Hah!" she snorted. "Explain! You probably haw explanations filed away by number. Excuse 12D, Explanation 7B, Apology 16FI!"

"Will you listen to me?" I called after her, but the only answer was the click of her heels as she stalked away. Once again, I knew what I wanted to do and what I had to do. I slammed the door shut angrily.

"I have caused you trouble," Amoretta said, and there was honest concern in her eyes, so very different from the sly triumph that little bitch Vicky had worn. I forced myself to smile at her and shrugged.

"Not really," I answered. "It wasn't your fault." I poured myself another bourbon and found her beside me, holding her empty glass up. She joined me in downing the bourbon and I poured another for each of us.

"You are upset," she said, leaning her head against my chest. It was true, but she was making me less so. The points of her breasts were soft against me, excitingly inviting. Anyway, I was really more angry at Denny tonight than I was upset. She seemed almost bent on popping up when she wasn't expected and being out when I tried to get to her. Amoretta was moving in my arms and we began to dance again, her body warm and firmly soft in my arms. I switched off the large lamp as we danced past it and there was only the soft glow of the moonlight filtering in through the window. If Denny wanted to jump to conclusions without even hearing what I had to say she could damn well stew about it by herself. Amoretta was pressing her hand hard against my back, her stomach touching my own. Her voice was husky, sensual, promising.

"In the mountains of my home, we have a saying," she breathed. "There is a reason for everything."

She nuzzled her face against my shoulder and I could feel the throbbing vibrations that emanated from her.

"In other words," I commented, "there's a reason for what happened a little while ago and there's a reason why you're here with me now."

Her shoulders lifted in a small shrug. Her old Calabrian saying fell on fertile ground. I was never one to look a gift horse in the mouth, anyway. Amoretta was obviously smoldering, eager, desiring and desirable. If it was that and nothing more, or if she had a reason, I'd find out in the only way to find out. I slipped my hands inside the silk robe. She had a thin nightgown on. Parting the robe, I let it fall from her shoulders. She quivered and her arms flew around my neck and her lips, those full, soft lips, closed on mine and in moments she was naked in my arms. I lifted her and put her down on the sofa, brushing her round, full breasts with my lips. She gasped and her hands reached out for me as I stripped off shirt and trousers. When I pressed my body down against her, reveling in the tactile pleasures of her skin against mine, Amoretta gasped and clutched at me.

"Oh, yes… yes… yes," she breathed. My fingers traced a slow path down her body, lingering on the full, smooth breasts, small nipples coming to life as they responded to the touch, rising, reaching upwards for my lips. Amoretta pulled my head down onto them, pressing me down so hard I was afraid she would cry in pain. But there were no cries of pain, only of ecstacy. She moaned in pleasure and cried out, small, urging sounds, while she writhed and moved, thrusting her body up against mine. Her skin was smooth, as though a thin film of oil covered her body, and as I moved down across her deep rib cage, down along her softly rounded belly and down further, her head tossed from side to side in uncontrollable rapture. I lingered for a moment, then left and pressed her luscious, full lips, now devouring. The probing, darting touch of my tongue acted like a spark of flame on a twig. Her body quivered and writhed and she gasped in desire, the volcano erupting into flame. All the throbbing sensuality exploded into feverish desire, a consuming passion that swept away all else. This was not, I realized, a girl who knew how to make love but a girl whose intense desires to be made love to were stimulus enough for two. Such hunger was a gift of itself and I responded, finding the very center of her femaleness, rewarded by the pleasure of her cries. As I held myself in her, I let her press her mouth against my shoulder to muffle her real cries of ecstacy. When her climax seized her body, her scream was into my chest or it would have wakened the hotel to say nothing of the professor and his wife next door.

Amoretta sank back upon the sofa for just a moment and then she turned to lie over me, her silken body a tingling blanket. She moved her legs over mine, her belly across my muscles and she whispered into my cheek. "More, cara mia," she said. "I must have more." This was a moment of escape for her, I could see. Her visits away from her mountain home of Calabria were obviously moments she waited for all year. Her sensuality was such that it could never be hidden anyplace, but I'd known the people of those hills. There she was equally desired, equally desirous, but their own strict code forbid it until she was wed and, unless I missed my guess, Amoretta had seen too much of the outside world to wed one of the peasant boys. And so her home was a kind of sexual prison for her. It was no wonder that away from it, she could not restrain the terrible pent-up hunger within her. I stroked her back, and she pressed her full breasts down into me as once again, small sounds of ecstacy began to well from her. There was no part of this throbbing creature that was not sensuously sensitive to the touch, I learned. I turned her over and she offered herself again as a flower offers itself to the sun. Her small nipples hardened under my tongue and she thrust them deeper into my mouth. Before the moon began to fade, I had made love to this fantastically hungry Venus three times, and each time she was a creature of pure passion, unsubtle and unwise, yet thrillingly responsive to the slightest touch. Finally, with a great sigh of contentment, she fell asleep with her breast in my mouth, cradling my head to her. I moved back to hold her quiet form, admiring the full-hipped lusciousness of her body as she lay still. I slept beside her till the sun, coming in through the window, reflecting brightly from the blue waters of the bay, woke me.

I lay quietly, watching Amoretta's deep, regular breathing. Her legs, slightly parted, were half-turned toward me, her round, full breasts stood out eagerly, as though she waited in her sleep for me to waken her in that most wonderful way of all. I wished I had the time but I didn't. The ISS seminars got off to an early start. I slipped from her encircling arm across my chest without waking her. I had shaved and dressed when she woke. She pouted some but eventually came and put her head against me.

"I have no words to tell you how it was last night," she said.

"You don't need words, Amoretta," I answered. "You told me already."

She smiled, a slow, comprehending smile, and I went to answer the polite tapping on the adjoining door. The professor was very much all right. After I took the alarm device from the front door, we went down and breakfasted together in the hotel lounge. If anything in the food was going to turn him into a vegetable, there'd be two of us.

The day was taken up with more seminars, more meetings and more of those brilliantly dull papers. I concluded, by the end of the day, that every scientist should be forced to take a course in creative writing. If there was anything sinister going on at the seminars it was those papers. In the evening Karl Krisst had arranged a conducted tour of the resort area. I stayed close to the professor and Amoretta stayed close to me. She wasn't purposely trying to be a distraction. She just couldn't help it. By ten everyone was safely locked up for the night and Amoretta was in my room waiting. She didn't have long to wait. She was everything she had been the night before, everything and more for she'd learned a few things. When dawn came neither of us had had too much sleep, but then, I consoled myself, how much sleep does a fellow really need? I'd stopped growing long ago.

It was the last day of the meeting, the time glad-hand Karl Krisst had called Relaxation Day, and he'd arranged a buffet at the beach.

'This is a happy day and a sad day," Amoretta said, running a slim finger down my chest. "Happy, because you will be with me all day and sad because when the day ends we must part. I will never see you again. I know it."

"Never is a word I never use," I grinned. "You may come to America or I may get to Calabria. Our paths may cross. I get around."

I didn't know it then, naturally, but I wished, later, that I had not been such a good prophet. As I hadn't figured on beach parties, I hadn't brought swimwear so I just took off my shut when we reached the beach, arranged the beach chairs so I could keep a constant eye on the professor, and relaxed. He was more than content to stay resting in his chair, and Amoretta curled up alongside me like a contented kitten. I brought the lunch from the buffet Krisst had set up, taking no chances on this last day. When the afternoon finally wore to an end, Karl Krisst made the rounds, looking even more rotund in shorts and a bright, yellow shirt of terry cloth. I watched him as he went from member to member, clasping an arm around each one, giving each a fond pat on the back, telling each one what a wonderful tan he had gotten. I found myself watching him with a mixture of amusement and irritation. The irritation bothered me and I decided it was because he seemed so out of place amongst these sincere men who were, for the most part, both brilliant and simple at once. When he reached Professor Caldone, he helped him struggle out of the beach chair, and between pats on the shoulder, helped him into a beach robe.

"I hope you enjoyed your brief visit with us, Mr. Carter," he said, turning to me. "Not that we do not welcome having you, but whatever reason prompted your government to send you along with the professor will soon disappear, I hope."

"I hope so, too," I smiled. "If it hasn't, I'll be back for another meeting."

"And we will look forward to having you again," he said, easily outsmiling me. He turned after a brief handshake, made his way through the others, and, as I watched him bound up the stone steps leading from the beach, I felt a touch of sympathy for him. I'd always felt there was something pathetically lonely about the professional glad-hander. The true face of the clown behind the mask is so often a very different one.

Feeling a little like a mother hen with her brood, I herded everyone back to the hotel, checked out every piece of the professor's luggage, and we piled into the professor's little Fiat for the drive to Rome.

I wasn't risking any last-minute occurrence after the meeting or just outside the immediate area. In Rome, there was another round of good-byes and thank yous. The professor and his wife had been nice people to know, erudite, pleasant and honest. Amoretta's eyes held a silent message. I knew she didn't want to return to the mountains of Calabria, and I was sorry for her. She really wasn't ready to leave the hills, there were still too many unfinished edges about her; yet she deserved something better than she could find there. Another few visits with her uncle and aunt ought to do it for her, I was sure.

I left for the Rome airport with the feeling of a job well done. If anything had taken place at the previous ISS meetings, it hadn't taken place this time. If there had been a plot against Professor Caldone, it hadn't come off. Of course, I also knew that this one instance couldn't be looked at as a victory. The horrible sinisterness of it was still very much there and it raised an even bigger question. Where did we go from here? We had prevented whatever might have been planned for this meeting, which left us really nowhere. I put aside those irksome questions for my meeting with Hawk. I had something I wanted to clear up first. I caught a direct flight from Rome to London. It was my turn to pop up unexpectedly, which is exactly what I did, only to have the thrill of talking to Denny's landlady. Denny was away at a horse show and wouldn't be back for two days. The woman, a pleasant-faced old gal, was kind enough to take a note from me which I scribbled on the back of an envelope. I made it short. There was too much to say for a note. I wrote:

Sorry, again. One of these days I will explain and you'll listen.

Love, Nick.

V

The sky fell in. The world stopped spinning. I hadn't heard correctly, I told myself. It just couldn't be! Hawk's steel-gray eyes facing me across his desk were expressionless. Maybe I was dreaming.

"Say it again," I asked. He nodded slowly.

"Professor Caldone is a vegetable," he repeated. "His wife contacted us last night."

"I don't believe it," I said angrily. "Damn it to hell, I covered him like a wetnurse. Nothing could have happened."

Hawk shrugged. "Something did," he said quietly. I did some fast calculating. I'd left him in Rome in the early evening and caught a plane for London. Finding Denny away, I had to stay overnight because I couldn't get a flight out immediately. Then I'd come back here yesterday and this morning arrived at AXE headquarters. Altogether about thirty-six hours had elapsed between now and the time I'd left the scientist. Someone could have gotten to him in those thirty-six hours. I had to go with it. I'd stuck too close to the professor during the meeting itself.

"I'd like to go see for myself," I said, still angry.

"I figured as much," Hawk answered blandly. "I've booked passage for you on the eleven o'clock flight to Rome."

"Damn it," I said, "there's got to be some explanation for this."

Hawk's expression was all I needed. "Okay," I said. "I'll find it. But then this has got to be the weirdest bit or the cleverest one I've seen in a long time."

I stalked out, angry at myself, angry at the world, but mostly angry at the unused-to feeling of having been taken. No one likes to fail, most of all me. But to fail is one thing. To have been taken, right under my nose, that was something else. It was a new experience for me and I fumed and thought about it all the way to Rome. I was sticking with the idea that whatever happened had taken place after I'd left the professor. As I said, I had to stay with it. But I wasn't that sure of it. Hawk had cabled on ahead for the team of medical specialists to meet me at the professor's house. He wanted me to hear what they had to say with my own ears. These were the doctors who had examined each one of the stricken scientists. At the professor's home a maid admitted me and Signora Caldone greeted me with more composure than I'd expected her to have.

My anger turned into something else as I was ushered into the living room where a white-uniformed nurse sat in a straight chair beside the professor. He was seated in a deep, leather chair and suddenly I wasn't so concerned over my own anger, my own feelings. The cherubic face was now a gray, lifeless mask, the twinkling blue eyes now expressionless, staring orbs. His mouth hung slack, a small, continuous line of drool trickling down the corners which the nurse wiped off periodically with a gauze pad. I went over to him and called his name. There was absolutely no response. Every so often his throat would make small, guttural noises, sub-human sounds. I turned away, an icy band wrapping itself around my innards.

"The doctors are in the study waiting for you, Signor Carter," Signora Caldone said quietly. I followed her out into the hall and across the foyer to a book-lined study where four men stood up to greet me, their faces equally grave and tired. The iciness inside me had already crystallized into a deadly anger, a desire to want to tear something or someone apart, to see that justice was done for what I had just witnessed.

"First, gentlemen," I said crisply, "is there any hope for a recovery?"

A tall, graying, distinguished man spoke up, introducing himself as Doctor Van Duetonnze. I'd heard of him. He was an eminent Belgian neurologist.

"None whatever, Mr. Carter," he answered. "The mind is completely gone. Neurological tests we have already conducted show that the brain's organic functioning is beyond repair. In fact, testing Professor Caldone was merely a formality. Our results taken from the other men stricken in this manner were more than sufficient. You see, the brain is a delicate organ and any complete interruption of its physiological functioning results in brain damage beyond our present medical ability to repair."

Another physician spoke up. "We understand that your people are in this to discover what there is of a criminal nature involved."

Hawk, I realized quickly, had given them a half-truth regarding my interest in the case, just enough to carry it over smoothly.

"That's right," I said. "I am going to investigate your suspicions of both the destruction ray and the virus theory I was informed about."

"Yes, though now we have been considering the possibility that perhaps someone in the ISS, someone attending the meetings, could be host-carrier and be himself immune. At the same time, the electrical ray — if indeed it is that — must be applied by a fellow-guest at the meetings. Everything centers around the ISS meetings and the seemingly impeccable people at these science seminars."

I nodded. It all sounded highly logical, the way they had presented it. Someone at the meetings… Yes — but who? And, more importantly, how? But then I supposed that was my job to figure out. I knew about a few things they didn't, about a woman named Maria Doshtavenko, about a little punk with a card with the professor's name on it, about killings designed to keep everybody quiet about something. They could play along with their X-rays' and viruses' theories. I wasn't buying, though I didn't tell them that. I thanked the good doctors and returned to the living room. I heard the hard, anguished sobbing as I approached and when I entered, there was Amoretta standing beside the old man, her cheeks wet and stained with tears. She brushed them dry at once as she saw me. Signora Caldone was beside the girl. Amoretta's eyes turned black with unmistakable hatred and fury as I approached.

"You have come back to see for yourself?" she spit out, her full breasts heaving under a blue blouse. She wore tight jeans and her thighs stretched the sides of them. "You were supposed to protect him!" she added accusingly. "He was fine until you came!"

There was a brightness in her eyes that went beyond the obvious hate in them, a sudden hardness, a look of vengeance. She was angry and unhappy to see me, that was plain. Signora Caldone gave me an apologetic glance and ushered Amoretta out of the room to return in moments.

"I am sorry about the way Amoretta spoke to you," she said simply. "She was terribly fond of her Zio Enrico. We had told her how he was possibly in danger when we were on our way to meet you in Portofino and that you would be there to protect him."

I told Signora Caldone that the girl's upset was certainly understandable. And it was. Hell, in a few short days I'd grown fond of the professor. Her emotions could well explain the hatred in her eyes but then I'd detected something more. Inside me there was ice, the icy hatred of my own. I was still convinced there was nothing wrong with the professor when I left them in Rome.

"Did you have any visitors after I left?" I asked. "That night or the next day?"

"No," the woman said tiredly. "No one. Amoretta was with us through the morning, and then she left for home."

Only Amoretta. I turned the two words over in my mind, hating the thought, hating the meaning of it, yet going on with it. Again I asked myself, what the hell did I really know about the girl, other than that she was a volcano in bed? Signora Caldone of course held her niece above suspicion. Hawk had once said I wouldn't hold my own mother above suspicion if circumstances warranted it, and he was right. Especially when I was feeling as I did now, which was ugly, the angry, ugly feeling I got when I saw something dirty done. I glanced at the glob that had been a man, and it got uglier. Hawk had characterized it so well… the living dead. The nurse was starting to get him to his feet. He slipped from her grasp and I rushed over but he was on his hands and knees, crawling across the floor. "It's all right," she said to me. "I'll take care of him."

I turned to Signora Caldone again. "You called Amoretta to tell her about her uncle," I probed. The woman nodded, keeping her eyes on me, refusing to look at the pitiful form crawling past us.

"Did you tell her I was coming here this evening?"

"Yes," she answered. "I had received the cable from your superior."

"And what did Amoretta say?"

"She said she was driving up at once," the woman replied. "She thought perhaps you were going to take her uncle away and she wanted to see him again."

Or, I thought quietly, she just wanted to be here while I was. I walked to the door. If I were wrong about the girl, I wanted to find out and give her a big, fat apology. If I was on the right track, she was in big trouble. I was still convinced that someone had gotten to him from the time I'd left them in Rome, somehow, somewhere. Who and how? Those were the two key questions. I was sure that if I got the answer to either of them I'd be able to answer the other. Right now it was question time for Amoretta. But the hallway was empty. I took a quick look outside but the streets of Rome were dark and still. I found Signora Caldone.

"Amoretta's gone," I told her. "Does she have anywhere else to go here in Rome? Any other friends, relatives?"

"No, no, we were the only ones," the woman said. "She has probably run into the streets. She is so upset. Please look for her."

I'd look for her all right, I said grimly under my breath and I raced outside, pausing for a moment to let my eyes adjust to the dark. The Caldones lived just off a small piazza, and I quickly searched the circle of light under each of the street lamps dotting the edges of the square. I saw her unmistakable form as she paused under the lamp at the farthest corner of the square. I took off on the run as she moved on. She was nowhere in sight when I reached the spot, and the street leading away was a narrow, cobble-stoned one of darkened shops, bakeries, groceries, and fruitstands, with a profusion of doorways. I listened for the click of heels on the stones but there was none. She was hiding in one of the doorways. I started to move down slowly, when she stepped out and stood waiting. Even in the dark I could feel the burning hatred of her eyes.

"Why do you follow me?" she asked.

"You're going to answer a few questions," I told her, coming up to her. She took a step backward and half-turned to run. I was just going to grab her when I heard the faint scrape behind me. I whirled, but not fast enough. The blow, it felt like a billy, crashed down on the side of my temple. My head exploded in shooting lights and stars and sharp pain. I pitched forward and forced myself not to black out. I heard footsteps, a lot of them. I grabbed at a pair of legs in front of my face and yanked. The owner gave a yell in Italian and went down. I leaped forward onto him, my head still fogged, glimpsing a short, sweatered man when a sharp kick in the ribs sent me toppling from him to one side. I continued on in a hard roll, hitting hard against more legs, grabbing out at them and pulling. One figure came down over me and I got in a sharp left to his belly, hearing him grunt in pain. My head had cleared a little now, and I knew there were at least four or five of them. Pressing my heels down on the spaces between the cobblestones, I got a lift and catapulted myself forward, head-on, into someone's mid-section, carrying him backwards with me. Managing to avoid flailing arms and wild swings, I grabbed the one I had knocked backwards by the arm, lifting him in a judo move and sidearmed him through the window of a bakery. I heard his yell amid the sound of the shattering glass. Still fighting more out of training and instinct than clear-headedness, I swung at a face that appeared before me, heard the satisfying crunch of my knuckles into a cheekbone, and the face disappeared. But now it was my turn to be tackled. It was a good, hard one from behind and I went down. A hard object crashed down on my skull almost at the same instant a heavy-soled shoe got me in the temple. I heard Amoretta's voice before the lights went out, damn her black heart. She'd figured I'd go after her. She'd led me right into it. I tried to lift my head to shake it but it wouldn't respond. Another blow crashed down on me. This one didn't hurt as much. It just rang the curtain down.

* * *

I don't know how long it was before I woke up but from the condition of my head I guessed it was a good while. I moved my neck slowly in a circular motion and the fuzzy cobwebs started to tear loose in my head. A tight sharp pain in my wrists told me that my hands were tied behind my back. A terrible bouncing and jouncing wasn't helping the throb of my head any, but I managed to focus on the surroundings. I wasn't alone. Four other men sat inside what was obviously the interior of a closed panel truck. I was against the driver's partition, the others sat in pairs on each side of the truck. They were stocky, hard-faced, black-eyed men wearing work clothes and heavy, peasant's shoes, their hands heavy, gnarled, thick-fingered. I noted that three of them sported cut faces and bruised cheekbones. One of them called out to the driver in Italian.

"The Americano is awake," he said.

"Si, be careful," the voice came back. "Watch him"

Then I heard Amoretta's voice. "Take no chances " she said.

They could all relax. This wasn't the time or place to act up. Besides, I wanted to find out more about where I was being taken. From the steep incline of the truck, we were going up into the mountains. The men spoke to each other in short, curt asides but enough for me to pick up the dialect as Calabrese. It wasn't hard to figure the rest. Amoretta was taking me up into the hills of her home. If I'd been out as long as I thought, chances were we were almost there. How she and the peasants of Calabria fitted into this dirty business was something else again. It was sure as hell an unexpected turn. But then, this whole thing had been weird from the very start. The road was getting rougher and the truck bouncier. I tested my wrist bonds. They were well knotted. They had taken Wilhelmina from me, but I could feel Hugo in his sheath around my forearm. They'd been in too much of a hurry to get me off the street and into the truck, and they plainly weren't professionals. I knew that from the way they'd been falling all over each other to get at me in that narrow street. If that first blow hadn't taken the edge off my reflexes, they'd be still back there putting themselves together.

The truck slowed and my muscles tensed automatically. I counted two more curves before it stopped and the rear doors were opened. I was pulled out and exchanged glances with Amoretta, looking intense and throbbing in the blouse and the tight jeans.

"Nice friends you've got," I said casually.

"These are my brothers," she said, gesturing to three of the men. "And the other two are my cousins."

"A family enterprise," I commented.

"When I heard you were returning to make sure of your work, I brought them with me," she snapped. "Now we are going to find out what you did to Zio Enrico and why."

"What the hell are you talking about?" I said frowning. She slapped me across the face. Hard.

"Take him inside," she said. "Enough of his lies."

I was still frowning as I was hustled into a low-roofed, long house of stone and terra cotta. They took me into the kitchen, a large, spacious room, and threw me into a sturdy, straight-backed chair, keeping my hands tied behind my back. As double security, they tied my wrists to the back of the chair. Amoretta stood in front of me, supervising operations. When they finished, they formed a semicircle behind her. Her eyes, blazing in anger, bored into mine.

"When I think that…" she began, and quickly broke off, a fleeting flush of embarrassment crossing her face.

"Go on, Amoretta," I grinned. She slapped me again, harder.

"I'll kill you," she hissed. "You are a creature from hell. You're going to tell us what you did to Zio Enrico."

"I didn't do anything to him," I said, studying her eyes. She slapped me again.

"No more lies," she shouted. There was nothing but hate and anger in those eyes, I saw. This was no act, no attempt to trick me into anything.

"By God, you really mean it, don't you?" I asked, incredulously beginning to realize it.

"Yes, I mean it," she said. "I'll kill you myself if I must."

"No, I mean you really think I did it," I said.

"Let us just kill him now," one of her brothers cut in.

"No," Amoretta snapped. "I must find out what he did and why."

"It is done," said a cousin, a vacant character with big ears. "What difference does it make? Just kill him."

"Silencio!" Amoretta shouted. "I'll handle this."

I listened to them in astonishment. They weren't kidding about anything, especially about killing me. Here I'd been suspecting her, and she was convinced I had done it. It might have been funny under other circumstances, but these characters were a wild bunch, fully capable and charged up enough to do anything.

"I didn't do it, Amoretta," I said, putting every ounce of sincerity I had into my voice.

"Stop your lies," she shot back. "It had to be you. You arranged it so you'd be with him all the time.

Maybe you put something in that special water you had him drink."

"No, I tell you," I yelled back. "I was sent to protect him."

"But you did just the opposite. Maybe you're not even the real man, this Nick Carter fellow. Maybe you killed him and took his place. But we're going to find out. You're going to tell us the truth."

"I am telling you the truth."

"This is going to take a long time," one of the brothers cut in. "Can't we question him later? The pigs haven't been fed. The cows haven't been milked."

"That is right," another chimed in. "You rushed us off this morning. We had no time to do anything. Besides, I'm hungry, too."

"I say just kill him and be done with it," big ears cut in.

"No, he will talk first," Amoretta insisted. "But we'll do it later, after you finish the chores." She turned to big ears. "Glauco," she commanded. "You stay here and watch him. If he tries anything, call out at once, understand?"

Big ears — Glauco — nodded. It was probably as complicated an order as he could absorb all at once. Amoretta shot me a last, hard look and left with the others. Listening to them, I had become convinced of one thing. Their emotions were running too high to listen to logic or reason. Besides, I had to admit, from where she saw it, I did have the best chance at doing in the old man. I had to get loose. Maybe then I could make them listen. I let my eyes rove over the kitchen — big stone oven, heavy iron pots and skillets hanging from wall hooks overhead. Glauco had settled himself in a straight-backed chair, propped his feet up on a long, sturdy table, and had begun whittling on a piece of wood with a pocket-knife. If I tried moving back to the oven to scrape my wrist ropes against the stone, Glauco would see me in an instant. With my wrists tied to the chair, the chair was a part of me for the moment. I measured the distance to where Glauco sat as I considered rushing him, head-down, barrelling into him. It was no good. He'd be on his feet before I reached him. I needed something that would take only one move. I bad only one shot at the brass ring, and all I had to use were my feet and my knees. The rest of me was chairbound.

I sat back and watched Glauco. He had grown more absorbed in his whittling but he cast periodic glances up at me. Feet propped up on the table, chair tilted back on its rear legs, he was a perfect target if I could only get close enough. Suddenly, I realized I didn't have to get all that close. All I needed was to get within range. I moved one leg of my chair, a scant inch, and waited. Glauco glanced at me, and returned to his whittling. I moved the other leg, another scant inch, and waited. Glauco continued on with his periodic glances. I edged closer, timing each laborious move between his glances, scooting each leg a fraction of an inch at a time. Glauco, I was glad to find, was neither too bright nor too alert. Finally I halted, not daring to move closer. I listened for sounds from the other room but everything was quiet. The others were all still outside at their chores. I leaped, kicking out one leg, hitting the back of Glauco's chair. It shot out from under him and he fell backwards with a shout. I was on top of him instantly, chair still tied to my back, dropping one knee onto his chest, the other onto his throat. His eyes began to pop at once and I let up, lifting my knee from his throat.

"One wrong move and you'll be dead in half a second," I cautioned him. "All I have to do is press down with this knee. See?" I pressed and his tongue flopped out. His eyes were wide with more than fear. I let up on the pressure again.

"Now you do exactly what I say," I told him in careful, measured tones. The look in my eyes and the feel of my knee against his windpipe was more than enough for him. "From where you are, you can reach up one hand and loosen the knots at my wrist. Slowly, now… slowly. A wrong move could make my knee come down automatically." I gave him a moment's increased pressure again for emphasis. I felt his hand go up my back, feeling for the wrist bonds. His fingers worked on the knots while his eyes looked up at me in fear. I felt the ropes loosen a little. "Keep on," I growled, bearing down a little more with my knee. His fingers speeded up and the ropes gave enough for me to work one hand free, then the other. I heard the sounds of voices entering the house. Without removing my knee from his throat, I smashed a hard right down on Glauco's jaw. His head lolled to one side and I got up. They'd be looking in in a moment, I knew. I didn't want to use Hugo. Misguided, stubborn and stupid as they were, they were still trying to do what they thought was right. I picked up one of the iron skillets. No wonder the Italian housewife has to eat plenty of pasta, I thought to myself. These things were better than weights for muscle-building. I stepped behind the door just as Amoretta led the others in.

She let out an instant scream. "Mio dio! He is gone," she howled. The others tumbled in on her heels. I swung the iron skillet, catching two of them with one shot. They went sprawling face forward as I grabbed Amoretta, and now I had Hugo in my palm, the point of the stiletto pressed against the tip of the girl's full breast. Her brothers froze and I heard Amoretta's breath draw in sharply.

"Wake them up, first," I said, indicating the three unconscious forms. One of the others dumped a pail of water over them, and they stirred into wakefulness.

"Now you wild characters are going to listen to me," I said. "I didn't do anything to hurt your uncle. Get that through your thick skulls. I was trying to protect him. I can't prove it because I don't know what happened any more then you do."

Amoretta's breast was soft against my hand holding the stiletto, and I had a thought. If I could prove myself to them it would save me hours finding my way out of these mountains or avoid their possibly chasing after me. God knows how many other relatives she had around here. If it worked, I'd be in the clear. If it didn't, I'd have my hands full. What the hell, I decided, you have to take a chance sometimes. I stepped back from Amoretta, releasing her. As she turned, I handed the stiletto to her. Her eyes widened in surprise. The rest of her kinfolk were equally nonplused.

"Take it," I said, pushing the handle at her. She reached out tentatively.

"Now do you believe me?" I asked. "I'm giving myself over to you to prove to you I'm telling the truth."

The others were watching Amoretta, waiting to take their cue from her. I saw her eyes suddenly melt, her full lips part and she was in my arms, head buried against my chest.

"Oh, Nick," she sobbed. "Please forgive me. I was so upset. I should not have suspected you, ever."

"I suspected you," I admitted. "So I guess we're even." I could have told her it was my job to suspect everyone while she was just an overemotional, wild tomato, but I decided against it. Besides, her brothers and cousins were crowding around, slapping me on the back. Apologies and comradeship had taken over with a vengeance.

"It all worked out and nobody really got hurt," I said to Amoretta, wiping a tearstain from her cheek. "I'm glad for that, really I am. Now I've got to get back to Rome as quickly as I can. I've got to find a lead somewhere."

"Si," Amoretta agreed, quickly. "Get the truck out, Luigi. We must leave at once."

Glauco had just handed Wilhelmina back to me with a longing last look at the Luger. I heard Amoretta's remark, but it took a few seconds to sink in.

"Whoa?" I said. "What do you mean 'we'?"

"I'm going with you, Nickie," she announced, matter-of-factly."

"Oh, no, sweetheart," I said. "I'm going back alone. This is my stick."

"No, I go with you," she said, thrusting her lower lip out. I saw the frowns gathering on her kinfolk.

"This is nothing for you," I argued.

"Why not?" It was Glauco who asked, belligerence in his tone. I wanted so to give his big stupid face a clout that might knock some sense in it, but I held back.

"Because this is my work " I shouted at him.

"And it is our uncle," he returned.

"This is a matter of family honor," Luigi chimed in. They were drawing close again and I could see tempers skyrocketing and all the ingredients for another brawl in the making.

"She is not good enough to help you, Americano?" another one glowered at me. If I had the time I'd have enjoyed bashing a few thick skulls but all I wanted was to get out of there as quickly and simply as possible.

"She's fine," I said. "She can come with me. In fact, I'll be glad for her help."

The relaxation was audible. Luigi got the truck out and took the wheel with Amoretta setding down beside me. Cries of good-luck and farewell resounded as I drove off. It was as though we were taking off for the front lines. I'd said I'd be glad for her help and I meant it. She would be more than helpful directing me down out of the mountains. When I reached the main roads, passionate, luscious Amoretta and I would be parting company. I knew it wouldn't exactly be a fond farewell but she'd get over it.

As we neared the bottom of the hills, I saw the lights that indicated a main road crossing in front of me.

"Have you ever walked to your home from down here?" I asked casually.

"Oh, si," she said. "As a young girl, I often did it. It's not too bad if you know the way and don't rush."

"Glad to hear that, honey," I said, braking to a sudden stop. "Because you're walking home right now!" I jumped from the truck, pulling her with me. A large clump of pine brush lined the road. I tossed, her into it screaming. The air was turning blue with Italian curses I'd never heard and more than a few I knew. I was in gear and starting off as she struggled out of the pine bush. I looked through the rear-view mirror to see her running out into the road, shaking her fist after me and still yelling.

"Nothing personal, doll," I grinned. "But this isn't your bottle of vino, to coin a phrase."

Dawn was just starting to tint the sky, but I was already thinking of where to go from here. One thought kept coming back like a recurrent melody. If it hadn't taken place after I'd left the professor, then it had to have occurred right under my nose. It just wasn't possible, I told myself again, all the time realizing that the impossible had obviously happened. I wanted a list of every son of a bitch who had attended the last eight meetings. I'd trace the background of every last one of them. There had to be a lead in there someplace.

The little truck, while slow, was reliable. Morning brought a hot sun but I kept steadily on with it. When I reached Rome I pulled the truck over into a side street and left it there. The carabinieri would find it and trace the registration. I was dog tired, and I got a room at a modest hotel, the Rafaello, and cabled Hawk I was staying with it from here. I gave him my hotel and room and told him to wire me if he had anything important to add. It had been along day and a longer night. I took a hot bath, stretched out on the bed and fell asleep. It was late afternoon when I awoke. There'd been no cable from Hawk, which meant he hadn't anything more for me. I decided the fastest way to get a listing of everyone at the past eight meetings was through Karl Krisst I did some fancy checking, found there was a Karl Krisst in Zurich and put a call in to him. He answered and recognized my voice at once, to my surprise. I could just see his round face wreathed in an unctuous smile while those darting little eyes snapped attentively. I told him what I wanted. "I want the complete attendance list for each of those meetings," I said. "I want every person, big, little, important, unimportant.

Karl Krisst's voice was cooperatively unctuous, his words just the opposite. It's not the policy of the ISS to give out such information, Mr. Carter," he intoned. "May I ask why you make this rather unusual request?"

"I can't divulge that," I said, feeling my temper rise irritably. "The list of each meeting was publicly announced at the time. Why can't I obtain a copy now?"

"Such announcements are never really complete," he answered smoothly. "To go back and compile a complete list for the past eight meetings would be a formidable task, I'm afraid."

He was being ever so helpful while continuing to hedge. I was getting angrier by the second. "Look, cousin," I began again, hearing the edge to my voice. "I know you sure as hell have a complete list for every meeting. You'd have to have them for your own records if nothing else. If you won't send me a photostatic copy of the past eight attendance lists, I'll go to the ISS governing board and see that they order you to cooperate."

His tone changed at once. "You misunderstand me," he said. "There's absolutely no need for that. I'm always happy to cooperate with any government officer on official business even when I don't know what it's about." The ending was a bait line tossed out that I didn't snap at. He could damn well wonder what it was all about. He was typical of minor officials, I concluded, always out to make themselves more important than they were.

"Please airmail the lists to me at the Hotel Rafaello here in Rome," I said. "If they do what I hope I'll see you get your name in lights."

I hung up and went out for a stroll and dinner in Rome. I wished I could enjoy the warm, friendly city, but I was on edge, anxious, irritable. I went back to the hotel and got some more sleep. The desk woke me early. Give him credit, or maybe I'd put the fear of God into him, but Krisst had gotten the lists off at once and they had arrived. I spread them out on the floor and spent the whole morning studying them, making my own work sheets with each man's name on a sheet. When the morning was over I'd a floor full of papers and a lot of names cross-indexed with the disappointing result that not one ISS member had attended all eight meetings. That seemed to rule out my thoughts about one man being responsible for all eight of the horrible post-meeting collapses. I went over it again. I had to be sure there were no errors, no slip-ups. But I'd been right. A lot of them had attended a lot of the meetings, but none had been to every one of the past eight As my eyes roved over the work sheets spread out all over the floor before me, I let my mind race along by itself in a stream-of-association technique I'd learned years ago, delving, skipping, probing, jumping about Eventually, something began to come through. The only name that appeared at every meeting was Karl Krisst. I sat back against the couch and let that turn around in my mind for a while.

I didn't try for reasons, for any kind of motivation for anything. I was only after leads and while it seemed an unlikely one, it was a fact He had attended every one of the past eight meetings. I'd seen plenty of unlikely facts become very likely in the past. I didn't ever discount anything, no matter how weird it seemed. Certainly in this wild affair I wasn't about to do it. Glad-hand Karl could be a dead lead — and then he could be something more than he seemed. It was the only lead I'd come up with, if you could call it that. I decided to call it that. I called Rome airport for a schedule of flights to Zurich.

VI

"Have you looked out your window, sir?" the pleasant, young voice asked me over the phone. I'd been so engrossed in my work sheets that I hadn't. When I did, I hung up. A thick fog was blanketing the city, the kind that doesn't go away for days. I checked out of the hotel and got a ticket on the Rome-Zurich Express. My compartment was in midrain and I boarded about twenty minutes before we left. Though listed as an express, it was far from what we call a through train back home. I had taken a sleeping compartment, and the conductor checked my passport and made up the berth. It was evening when we pulled out, and I watched the fog-shrouded lights of the Eternal City go by as we gathered speed. Like most European trains, it went like hell between stops, but then there were those innumerable stops for switching cars and adding new ones. I went to bed early and slept well. Trains always had a soporific effect on me. When I awoke we were just nearing the Swiss border at Bellizona. I went to the dining car and had a light breakfast. The countryside had changed, I saw as I looked out the train windows. It was hillier, with distant mountain peaks, snow-capped outlines, rising skyward. Spruce, evergreen and mountain laurel had replaced olive, cedar and grapevines. A crispness to the air had replaced the soft, indolent climate of Southern Italy. I strolled back to my compartment and was almost at it when a man's voice called out. I turned to see a man of medium height, balding, holding a gold cigarette case open as he came toward me.

" Scusi, Signor," he smiled, his Italian heavily accented. "Favorite darmi un fammijera?" I halted, fished a pack of matches from my pocket and handed them to him. As he leaned forward to take them, he spoke softly in accented English. "Do not move, Carter," he said. "There are two guns trained on you. One is here in my other hand, the other is behind you."

I stood still and saw the tip of the revolver jutting out of his jacket. I turned my head only enough to see the other man at the far end of the corridor.

"Open the door to your compartment and go in," the balding one said. "No tricks." Two more big, burly types in leather coats had appeared behind the man at the far end and they were closing in. I knew when I was in a sack. I opened the compartment and went in, my new-found acquaintances crowding in behind me. In a fast professional onceover they immediately relieved me of Wilhelmina. They missed Hugo. That was the great thing about the little stiletto. Even professionals, especially when in a hurry, often missed the leather sheath against my forearm.

"You seem to know my name," I smiled cordially at the first one who had asked for a match.

"Carter — Nick Carter." He smiled thinly. "Top AXE operative. N3, officially."

I sized them up quickly. If I hadn't been able to type the balding one, the last two were dead giveaways. They wore the stolid, poker-faced expression of NKVD work horses, heavy of hand and solid of head. The balding one was no doubt Soviet Intelligence, on an upper level.

"Since you know so much about me, am I to consider this some kind of special fan club?" I asked pleasantly. The balding one smiled again.

"Not really," he said. "But your reputation is well known."

"Especially to Soviet Counter-intelligence," I commented. "Didn't I meet some of your boys in and around London lately? A rather fatal meeting for them if I recall correctly."

He nodded and his smile was missing. "Unfortunately, you are correct," he said. "But things will end differently this time. I am Captain Vanuskin and I deplore bunglers."

"Me too," I smiled. My mind was racing. They had popped up out of nowhere. Either they were getting smoother or I was getting old. It actually bothered me more than being caught.

"I didn't notice you tail me to the train," I admitted. "I'm impressed."

"We didn't," Vanuskin answered and my eyebrows went up involuntarily. "As I said, your reputation is very well known. We were certain you'd spot a 'tail, as you Americans so quaintly put it. We staked out the hotel and we knew the airports were out because of the fog. So if you left, it had to be train or car. We had a man watching every outbound train track. When you left the hotel, our man merely radioed the fact. Then another of our men picked you up boarding the Zurich Express."

I felt better. They weren't getting smoother, only a little smarter. And the fog had simplified their task for them. Which brought me to another very interesting point. Only two people knew I was at the Rafaello Hotel — Hawk and Karl Krisst. Of course, Krisst could have let someone else know but I doubted that. I put it aside as an off-chance possibility, deciding instead on a little fishing expedition.

"Then he's one of your men," I said to the Russian. "He's the one who ripped you off that I was at the Rafaello."

"Who is this 'he'?" Vanuskin replied cagily.

"You can stop playing games," I said. "It's too late for that I'd still like to know how it's done though."

Vanuskin grinned, a wide, sly grin. "You are referring, I presume, to the unfortunate mental deterioration of certain scientists — to their stolen brains?"

I wanted to remap his grinning face, so much so that my hands were clenching and unclenching. I forced down the impulse. It would be certain death.

"That's more or less it," I said, forcing myself to sound casual.

"We don't know the answer to that any more than you do, Carter," the Russian answered blandly.

"Oh, come on now," I said. "Such modesty is something new for you boys, isn't it? I never figured it for your land of operation, though."

"It's not our operation, as you put it," the Russian said. "But we are only too happy to cooperate. And we're not being modest. We feel as though we have been given a very unexpected and most valuable gift. Naturally, we will do everything in our power to protect our unknown benefactor."

The Russian threw back his head and laughed at the incredulous expression I was wearing.

"Hard as it may seem for you to believe," he went on, "it's the truth. We were mysteriously contacted about a year ago by someone who wanted a list of those scientists we knew were engaged on scientific research for the Western powers. For our cooperation, he promised he would do us a great favor, which he certainly has done. We submitted such a list. He chose a name, returned it to us, and the next thing we knew, that scientist had suffered a total mental collapse. This man has contacted us each month since then in much the same manner, either by mail or special courier. We suggest a few names we know are on important work for the West He picks one and does the rest. Of course, we are only too happy to furnish him with whatever he wishes."

"Money, too?" I asked, wondering about motives.

"If he asks for it. He rarely does."

"What about Maria Doshtavenko?" I asked.

Vanuskin shrugged. "An unfortunate case, an eruption of bourgois feelings, you might say."

"You mean humanitarian feelings," I countered.

"Call it whatever you like," the Russian said. "She was in a position to know of our contact and the general outlines of what was happening. She wanted it halted. She had ideas of putting these few scientists before the interests of her country."

"Bull," I corrected him. "She had ideas of putting humanitarian ideals above local political maneuvers. You got wind of it and had her killed."

"I told you," the Russian said. "We will do everything to protect our contact and his work."

I smiled inwardly. I actually knew more than the Russians did about their dirty little game. All they knew was they had a contact. I knew who he was, and now they had actually fingered their benefactor without knowing it. Of course, there were a helluva lot of questions for which I had no answers as yet. What made Karl Krisst run, for one. And how was he accomplishing his dirty objectives?

"What took you so long to make your move?" I asked casually. "I've been aboard since last night, as you know."

"We waited to see where you were headed. Obviously, you are going to Zurich," Vanuskin said. He smiled again. "Or, I should more correctly say, you were going to Zurich."

Vanuskin and the others suddenly began to talk amongst themselves. My Russian was more than good enough to understand them and what I heard was not designed for relaxed riding. They were discussing the best way of doing me in. Things were getting too close. I needed out, and fast. I was safe for a few moments as the train slowed down to go through a small village. The cramped quarters of the compartment afforded me little room to do anything. Even Hugo was inadequate. I could get one, maybe two, and that would be that. I took in the situation and it was grim. The two heavyweights were at the door. Vanuskin was in front of me. The fourth man was off to the right I heard Vanuskin end the discussion with a decision. They'd take the least possible risks with me and do the job here in the compartment. A quick glance out the window showed me that we were starting to pass over a high trestle. I glimpsed blue water below, too far below. But it was my one chance. For a final moment they were concentrated on their conversation. I raised my arm slowly. The emergency brake cord hung directly overhead. I yanked and the train started its emergency halt with a terrific impact of brakes against wheels. Everybody went flying to the left side of the compartment. Everybody except me, that is. I was braced for it, and I made a running dive for the window, arms crossed in front of me to shield my face. I hit the window with full force, felt the shattered pellets of glass hitting my arms and forehead, and then I was falling, turning a slow, lazy somersault through the air. My ankles had banged against the trestle catwalk rail and flipped me sideways. I glimpsed the train above me grinding to a halt and the water too far below my falling body. It hadn't been a proper dive in any case and though I tried to condense my form, when I hit the water it was as though I'd run full-tilt into a concrete wall. My body shook and quivered at the impact. I went under and instinctively came up gasping for air.

I was dazed, hurt, bleeding from little glass wounds, my body paining in every bone and muscle. In semi-shock, I nonetheless managed to strike out for shore, fortunately not far away. When I pulled up on the graveled, rocky ground, my head had cleared just enough for me to know how much I hurt. My muscles and my bones seemed to be things apart from each other as I laboriously pulled myself up on the rocky shoreline. I hadn't gotten far when I heard the shot and felt the tearing, searing pain in my leg just at the thigh. The force of the shot sent my body turning almost completely around and I saw the four figures running across the trestle catwalk, the train halted midway across the narrow bridgeway. It would take them a while to find their way down to where I was. I looked down at my leg as another shot sent a shower of gravel flying at my foot. The leg was excruciatingly painful and bleeding hard. They must have used a forty-five. A line of trees beckoned just ahead, and I pulled myself forward into them, stumbling along on shaking, quivering legs. The wounded leg hurt badly, but it was the impact on the water which had really shaken me. Between the two of them, I felt myself growing dizzy.

I sank to the ground and crawled forward, feeling my arms growing weak, feeling the loss of blood. My trouser leg was a red-soaked rag, and I knew I was leaving a trail a mile wide. The line of woods suddenly ended and I looked across a pasture, a few cows grazing off to one side. Lifting my head was an effort now, and the scene was fuzzy. I made out a farmhouse and barn on the other side of the green pasture. I pulled myself upright, swaying dizzily, shaking my head to clear it. If I could make it to the barn I might hide out there, I thought dimly, and at the same moment realized the trail of blood would lead them right to me. I started to turn, to take a few unsure, weak steps along the edge of the trees, when I heard a child's cry, close at hand but strangely distant. Then I was on my hands and knees, the ground swimming in front of me. I fell forward and half turned on my back. I saw the child, a little blonde girl, about ten years old, pig-tailed and eyes wide. Then I saw the woman appear behind her, looking like an older version of the child. I lifted my head and fell back again. I hadn't blacked out completely, but I was seeing the world in moments of clarity mixed with moments of gray mist. I felt hands lifting my shoulders and the managed to focus on the woman's face above me. It was a nice face, a sweet, lovely face. I felt her trying to move me, to lift me.

"No… no," I managed hoarsely. "Wheelbarrow… get a wheelbarrow." I felt the woman stop, lay my shoulders back on the grass and I heard her talk to the child. I didn't hear or see anything else until I felt myself being lifted and the hard ride of a wheelbarrow shook its way through to me. The bumping managed to bring me around for a moment and I caught a glimpse of the farmhouse now close at hand and the lovely face looking down at me with concern.

"Men… careful… want me," I croaked out. It was all I could manage. The darkness came down again.

* * *

I woke up hours later, I found out in time, to the aching pain of my body. I was alone in a dark room that smelled of the dampness of a cellar. I lay quietly, letting my head clear. My groping hands told me I was on a cot, covered by a quilt, naked under the blanket I tried to stretch and almost cried out with the pain. Every damn muscle screamed. My leg hurt with a special pain of its own, and my groping hands told it had been bandaged with cloths. I lay back quietly and breathed deeply. That drop from the trestle had really banged me up. I lay there and heard the sound of a door opening. The door turned out to be in the ceiling and a shaft of light came down to illuminate the steep, short flight of steps. The woman's figure came down, a lamp in her hand, followed by the child in nightclothes.

"You are awake," the woman said, a faint Swiss accent to her English. "Very good." I'd been right, even in my fuzzy, hazy state. She had a lovely face, sweet and gentle, with fine lips and blonde hair pulled around her head in a halo-like fashion. She wore a dirndl skirt and a deep blue blouse that matched her soft blue eyes.

"How do you feel?" she asked, leaning over me and putting the lamp down on a little wooden table I hadn't seen beside the cot. A chair was also next to it.

"As though I'd fallen out of a speeding train," I said.

"Which is exactly what you did, Mr. Carter," she smiled. "Though jumped is the word, not fallen." She smiled and sat down on the chair. The blouse pulled tighter against deep, heavy breasts. "I went through your papers, I'm afraid," she apologized almost shyly, her lips soft in a slow smile. "And those men who stopped by, they told me they were looking for an escaped prisoner who had leaped from the train."

She shuddered and her eyes suddenly took on a faraway look. "They were frightening," she went on. "Ruthless. Cold. They'll be back. I'm sure of it."

"Why are you sure of it?" I asked.

"I've had experience with their type before," she answered simply, a terrible sadness clouding her face.

"But you didn't believe what they said about me?"

"No," she replied. "Prisoners don't carry the land of passport and papers you had on you, Mr. Carter. I don't know why they were after you, but it's not because you're a common escaped prisoner."

"Thank you for being so astute," I said. "What is your name?"

"Emilie," she said. "Emilie Grutska, and this is my daughter, Gerda."

"Is your husband away?" I asked.

"No," she said. "Gerda and I run the farm alone. My husband is dead. You rest now." She stood up, dismissing any more conversation about the matter. "I will be back later," she said. "I shall put Gerda to bed."

I watched the woman and the child climb the steps and close the trap door. The short conversation had taxed me, I was amazed and angry to find. My eyes closed, despite myself, and I was asleep in seconds. I woke only when I heard the trap door being opened. Emilie was alone this time, a shawl wrapped around an opaque nightgown and her hair hanging long behind her back. There was an old-style kind of beauty to this woman, I saw, delicate yet strong, young and yet womanly, a Vermeer painting come to life. She carried a small iron pot with a long handle and a spoon sticking out of it. The pot contained a soup which tasted absolutely wonderful. She sat down on the chair beside me and watched as I drank the soup, sipping it slowly. She propped me up with an extra pillow and looked at me as I sat up, my chest naked, the smooth hard-muscled skin belying the inner pain of my body.

"Your clothes were ruined, of course," she said. "Your personal things are in the corner there with some work pants and a shirt I think will fit you, when you're ready for them, that is. I think it may be a while yet."

She hesitated for a moment, and then smiled slowly, that half sad, slow smile of hers. "I hope you are not embarrassed that I stripped you," she said. "I think not, though. You are not the kind of man that embarrasses easily. That seems, somehow, obvious about you, Mr. Carter."

"Nick," I said.

"I did not want to talk about my husband before Gerda," she said. "The child knows enough. She need not know the details at this time. The Soviets killed my husband. He was a Hungarian and he became a freedom fighter during the occupation. I am Swiss, and we were living in Hungary at the time. The Russians caught him after a long search. That's why I know those men who stopped here. I've met their counterparts before, many times. My parents had died and this was their farm. I took the child and fled. We returned here and we have been working the farm ever since. It is hard work, but we are happy."

"No help at all?" I asked. "No young men interested in two such lovely girls?"

"I hire extra help dining harvest," she said. "As for your men, here in Europe they are not interested in women with children. Maybe sometime, someday, I will meet someone. Who knows?" That smile that was at once saddening and warming passed over her face.

"If they're coming back, I've got to get out of here," I said.

"You are not strong enough yet," the woman said. "You wouldn't get far between the shock to your system and the loss of blood from your leg. Besides, they won't find you here. You are safe."

She stood up. "I am going to change the dressing on your leg," she said, opening a wooden chest on the other side of the small cellar and taking out fresh strips of cloth. She worked quietly, tenderly, with a minimum of pain to me. Yet when she was through, I was more than happy to sink back on the cot. She gave me a final smile of encouragement as she disappeared up the steps and the trap door closed me in the darkness again. Nick Carter, I said to myself, sometimes you're a lucky bastard.

I slept late into the morning and was awakened by muffled voices from the floor above. I sat up. My body had stopped aching so completely but the leg was still plenty sore. After a while the voices died away and Emilie came down.

"I told you they'd be back," she said grimly. "There were two more this time, six in all." There was a set stubbornness to her face as I watched her change the dressing on my leg again. "They have been asking at every farmhouse in the area, I hear," she said.

"They're banking on the fact that I couldn't really travel far," I said. "And they're right, too. But they won't get me and they won't harm you."

"Do not worry about me," she said. "I am more happy than you know to help anyone against them. Nick…" she paused, "what do they want you for? Who are you, really?"

She deserved the truth and I told her without going into the details of the living death and Karl Krisst.

"I had imagined something like that," she said, pausing at the steps and looking back at me. "It is good to know there are men such as you on our side. They are cold and ruthless. They are hard to stop. But I think you could outmatch them, Nick. Yes, I think so… yes, I do."

I grinned at her. "You think I'm cold and ruthless?"

"When it is time for cold and ruthless action, I think so," she answered seriously. I shrugged. It was a pretty good evaluation. She left and I went back to my resting. It was paying off. By that evening, I was feeling decidedly better. The leg was my main problem. It had a good hole in it that luckily had missed tearing away vital muscle. But it still hurt like hell. When Emilie came down with milk and cheese she smiled, but I immediately detected a troubled expression in her eyes. I smelled it out at once.

They were back," I said flatly. She nodded.

"They traced the blood trail to where I put you in the wheelbarrow," she said. "It just disappears there and they are perplexed by that."

"Perplexed and suspicious of you," I added. She didn't answer. She didn't need to. I knew Vanuskin's kind of mind. Dogged, persistent, unimaginative, its very unimaginativeness an asset in this kind of operation. He couldn't imagine my doing anything clever to get away, and so he'd keep on plodding and searching. I made up my mind right then and there. I was going to clear out. I wouldn't jeopardizing Emilie and the child any longer. I changed the topic to talk about the farm. Emilie was happy to go along with it and told me of her two proud possessions, a four-disc plow on her tractor and a Volkswagen panel truck. The plow, she proudly told me, was seventeen feet across, and the four, razor-sharp disc blades could harrow an entire field in one day. We talked till it was time for her to put Gerda to bed and she left me alone again.

I lay awake, thinking of my next move. One thing was certain. I wasn't going to stay in the house any longer. If they came back again they might decide to get rough and really search the place. If I were there, they'd kill the child and Emilie as well as me. But I knew the leg needed another day of rest, at least. I decided on the barn. They had no doubt already given that a good going over. I could stay out of sight of everyone there. Satisfied with my plans, I lay back and Emilie returned before going to bed herself, this time wearing blue pajamas under the long shawl. We talked quietly a little while longer and then, as she started to go, I held her wrist.

"May I say something in my own way?" I asked. She nodded, her eyes soft. I leaned forward and kissed her gently. Her lips only parted for a moment, enough for a brief reply.

"Thank you for everything, Emilie," I said quietly. She understood and said nothing, except for the gratitude in her eyes. "You are as good as you are lovely, Emilie Grutska," I said, meaning every damn word of it.

I lay quietly in the darkness again, but this time I didn't fall asleep. I waited, far into the night, making certain they were both fast asleep. I slipped from the cot, dressed in the work pants and shirt I found in the corner along with my papers and Hugo, who I carefully strapped into place on my forearm. The leg still giving me plenty of pain, I carefully opened the trap door, found there was a small scatter rug over it which I carefully replaced, and made my way from the house. It was my way of saying thank you.

VII

I watched the dawn come up from my perch in the hayloft of the barn. From it, reached by a side ladder, I had a clear view of the house, most of the pasture and a deep ravine to the left, all through the two open doors. I'd noted the gleaming four-bladed disk plow standing in a corner of the barn, opposite the cow stalls. Every step up the ladder had sent tearing pains up my leg, and I'd been happy to lie hidden in the hay of the loft, letting the pain subside. As dawn rose, I closed my eyes and dropped off to sleep again. Pain, I concluded, is a great narcotic. The sounds of movement below awoke me and I peeked out to see Gerda letting the cows out to pasture. I gazed out the wide, open doorway and saw Emilie emerge from the house to scan the pasture slowly, her eyes covering every inch of the field. I knew what she was looking for — a sign of me. She had found me gone. I had no doubts that she'd understand.

Gerda finished hurrying the cows into the pasture and left. I turned over on my back and rested some more. I wanted to give the leg all the help I could. I'd be needing it soon enough. A scream almost made me sit bolt upright. I rolled over on my stomach and peered out the barn doors. I saw Vanuskin and his crew, all six of them. Two of them were holding Emilie and as I watched, Vanuskin slapped her again across the face, using the back of his hand. Emilie cried out again. Another of the Russians was holding Gerda by the arm. Then I saw what Vanuskin held in his other hand, a bundle of blood-soaked cloths. I put the picture together at once. They'd been snooping around and found the cloths Emilie had used to bandage my leg. She had put them into the garbage pile, probably, instead of burning them. I cursed myself for not having thought to tell her.

"Where is he, bitch?" I heard Vanuskin snarl. He was furious. He'd probably been catching hell from Moscow for letting me get away and now he had his first, real opening.

"Strip her and tie her to that tree," Vanuskin ordered one of his men, pointing to a young oak nearby. While Gerda gasped, they ripped the clothes from Emilie and she was dragged to the tree and tied to it. Her face had grown scarlet in shame and embarrassment as she stood helplessly naked. She had, as I'd guessed, a full-blown figure, heavy by American standards, but properly proportioned, large, heavy hips balancing the heavy breasts and legs that were shapely enough. Like her face, it was an old-fashioned kind of figure, girlish and womanly together. I saw one of the Russian heavyweights take off his leather belt at Vanuskin's direction. The Russian drew back his arm and lashed out with the belt. It slammed across Emilie's stomach, and she screamed in pain. A red welt appeared instantly over her white skin.

"That was only a sample," Vanuskin said. "Where is he? Where have you hidden him?"

"He's not here," Emilie spit out. "I don't know anything about him." Vanuskin signaled with a flick of his finger. The Russian with the belt stepped forward and swung again. He followed it with another and then another, beating the woman with a sadistic pleasure. I watched, teeth clenched in anger, as Emilie's white skin became a mass of ugly red welts and bruises. She screamed constantly now. Vanuskin ordered a halt and I saw Emilie's head fall forward, her body quivering in sobs.

"You are ready to talk now?" he demanded, pulling her head back by the hair. Emilie looked at Gerda, who had stood still in the Russian's grip, transfixed by horror and fear, her cheeks tear-stained.

'Tell them nothing, my darling," Emilie shouted. "These are the land who killed your father."

I saw the child suddenly tear her arm loose and twist away from the Russian's grab. She raced off, straight toward the barn.

"Let her go," I heard Vanuskin order. "Well get what we want to know from her mother. Go to work on her again."

Emilie's screams mingled with the heart-rending sobs of the child as she ran into the barn to stand for a moment almost directly below me, holding her hands to her ears, trying to shut out her mother's anguished screams. I'd have to act. Emilie wouldn't crack, there was steel-like determination behind that gentle exterior; but soon her lovely, full body would start to rip apart under the lash. She'd bear scars that time could never heal. I called to Gerda, who had run into one of the stalls to cower there. She looked up in astonishment.

"Up here, Gerda" I whispered. "Come here, quickly." She scrambled up the ladder, eyes wide. Desperate moments bring desperate plans. I had been studying the ravine I'd noticed to the left. It was about ten feet deep and not more than eighteen feet across, I guessed. That was fine. The tighter the fit the better. It ran about fifty feet or more.

"We're going to save your mama," I said to the child. "But I'll need your help. You've got to do exactly as I tell you, understand?"

She listened intently, and we descended the ladder together, Emilie's screams had halted for a moment. They were questioning her again. I couldn't ignore the searing pain of my leg but hate made me disregard it. While Gerda raced out of the barn back to the house, I clambered aboard the tractor attached to the four-disc farrow plow. The Russian with the belt had his arm upraised to start beating Emilie again when the child raced onto the scene.

"Stop it," she screamed. "I'll tell you where he is. He ran down into that ravine over there. He's hiding down there in it."

Vanuskin's smile was triumphant. He started for the ravine at once, gun in hand. The rest of his crew followed at his heels. I waited while they clambered down the steep sides. I wanted to give them time to get deeper into the ravine. Then I put the tractor into gear and roared out of the barn. It jounced down the steep sides into the ravine, nearly toppling over on me. I turned the disc plows on high speed and their whirring, whirling motion set up a hum. Running the plow down the steep sides of the ravine didn't do it much good, I knew, but it was either a bent plow or a broken body. I figured Emilie would prefer the former. The Russians were racing through the ravine, spread out in a horizontal line, when the crash of the tractor coming into the ravine made them whirl as one. I set the tractor on high, lifted the whirling blades about a foot and a half from the ground, and locked them in place. I lay flat on the seat of the tractor, letting my legs hang down over the back of the seat. Reaching up with one hand, I steered the tractor more by instinct than sight. I heard the shower of bullets ping into the metal of the plow and the tractor, richocheting off the frame of the plow. Too late, Vanuskin and the others saw what was happening. They tried scrambling up the steep sides only to fall back again. The plow was on them now, the whirling steel disc blades humming with their circular motion. I felt the blades as they struck human flesh and bone, heard the cutting, crunching, grinding sound and listened to the terrible screams of men being cut into pieces. It was sickening and my hand was tempted to pull back the lever stopping the whirring blades, but I thought of a woman who died because she cared about the world, of a wonderful old man crawling across the floor, of eight brilliant minds reduced to idiocy.

I lay flat and let the tractor go forward, pushing the whirling, circular blades before it. When there was silence, when the last of the broken screams had ended, I put the tractor into reverse and backed down the ravine. The blades had done their work. The scene ahead of me was not for the sensitive. I backed to the end of the ravine and climbed out.

When I reached the house, Gerda had already untied her mother, thrown a robe over her and helped her into bed. Emilie's body was still quivering, still shaking, and her sobs filled the room as I entered. She looked up at me and fright was still fresh in her eyes.

"It's over," I said. "They won t be back." I didn't need to say more. I sent Gerda to tend to the cows with orders to stay away from the ravine. Pulling the covers back from her, I let my eyes rove across Emilie's soft, full body, reddened with raised welts and ugly marks. She had her eyes closed but she reached out a hand and clasped my arm, I got towels, hot water, and bathed her tenderly with hot compresses. I kept her in bed and when Gerda returned later, I fixed dinner for us.

"My time to play nurse," I said. I asked if there was a lake nearby other than the one I'd hit when I leaped out of the train. She said there was a river to the north, about ten miles, that ran swiftly through the mountains. After midnight, I took the Volkswagen panel truck and drove to the ravine. Using a shovel and a blanket, I loaded up the remains of the NKVD group, drove them to the river and dumped them in. It was a grisly business.

I wanted a drink when I returned, just to let the fire burn away the taste in my mouth. I was surprised to find Emilie awake and sitting up in bed, waiting for me. At my question, she gestured to a cupboard where I found a bottle of kümmel. I poured two glasses and the strong flavor of the caraway seed was a welcome taste. I sat on the bed beside Emilie and, though she wore her nightgown, I could see that the redness and raised areas had subsided substantially. We finished our kummel and I felt her hand against my chest. Her face turned to me and she raised her lips. I kissed her, tenderly, gently. There was a quality about this woman that evoked tenderness.

"Stay with me tonight, Nick," she whispered. "Just let me feel your body against mine. Please." I stroked her cheek and lifted the nightgown from her. I stripped and lay down beside her, tie softness of her skin a warm and pleasant sensation. She turned to me, one full, heavy breast falling upon my chest.

"It has been long, so long, since I have lain with a man," Emilie said quietly. "I don't want you to make love to me. That would only open up passions and feelings I have long put aside. You will leave in a day or so. I know this. The hunger you would release would be too much for me to bear."

I held her close and she moved her legs against mine. I could have made love to her. She was certainly lovely enough in her own girl-woman way and her body had its own fleshy sensuousness. But I only held her close.

"Can you understand what I am saying, Nick?" she asked. "A man like you who can't afford to get involved with anyone."

"You'd be surprised what I can understand if I try a little," I said softly, cradling her head in my arms. I held her quietly and she fell asleep in my arms, a wonderfully sweet woman waiting for the happiness she deserved, waiting for someone to bring it to her. I wasn't the one. She was so right about that. I could only bring her a moment, a moment that could hurt more than help over the long pull.

When dawn came and the sun awoke us, she clung to me for a long moment and then quickly rose, grateful tenderness in her eyes.

I left that night. She drove me to a nearby town where I caught a milk train that eventually would end up in Zurich. I had a lot of dirtiness ahead yet, a lot of answers to ferret out. All the real questions were still unanswered. How? Why? When?

A man named Karl Krisst still lived untouched. We had a reckoning still due, though by now I imagined he was feeling secure again. Good. I liked that.

VIII

My first move in Zurich was to contact the AXE front there for financial arrangements for Middle Europe. I got enough money for new clothes and shoes. The dip in the lake had just about ruined every bit of paper currency I'd had on me. After making do with some ready-to-wear stuff, I debated whether to drop in on Karl-boy for a friendly visit. It could serve a purpose. It would reveal how surprised he was to see me, for one thing, and he might pull a boner or two. But then, I had an advantage now, why fritter it away? He had sicked his Russian friends on me and had heard nothing since. He'd figure they did their job. I decided to wait for dark and pay him a nocturnal visit.

As darkness fell, I took a taxi out to the address I'd gotten and had the cab stop a block away. Krisst lived in a modest private house, and I was glad I'd taken the precaution of approaching on foot. I almost ran into him as he was leaving, just managing to duck behind a tree, feeling somewhat like a character out of an animated cartoon. I watched his roly-poly figure go down the street and once again noted, as he passed a few other people, that his roundness was deceptive. He was close to six feet. He appeared dressed for at least a dinner out, perhaps a night on the town. I gave his house a careful once-over, circling it on all four sides. The lights were out. He was, I was glad to see, a bachelor. The windows were low and provided the most inviting method of entrance. I tried the ones at the rear first, out of sight of strollers passing by. Surprisingly, they were unlocked, and in fifteen seconds I was inside the house. I closed the window after me. He had also thoughtfully equipped each room of the house with softly glowing night lights. Not very much illumination but enough for a cursory examination. The living room, bedroom and kitchen revealed nothing out of the ordinary. I found what appeared to be a small study leading from the living room, closed the door and switched on a lamp. It revealed nothing out of the usual, either. ISS correspondence and financial reports made up most of the papers on the desk. I flicked off the lamp and went out into the hallway where I saw a door and a flight of steps leading to the basement. At the bottom of the stairs I found a light switch.

The light bathed a large, rectangular room paneled with soundproof wallboard. In the center of the room stood a laboratory table with a series of corked test tubes and neatly arranged vials. But it was the device lying on the table, partially disassembled, which caught my eye. A blueprint lay alongside it, and I felt my pulse quicken. I'd only seen two or three of them before, but I recognized it at once as a high-power compressed-air gun. It was one of the latest models, and suddenly tie lights were going on in my head. Compressed-air guns were the newest device for giving injections, eliminating the actual physical and the psychological pain of the hypodermic needle. The gun was pressed against the patient's skin and under extreme pressure, the injection itself, the very fluid, was shot directly through the skin into the veins. Under the extreme compression, the fluid itself became a jet-stream, a needle of fluid that penetrated painlessly and instantly. Except for one important fact, I was looking at the device that could shoot a poison or a virus or an electrical current into a man he wouldn't know it The one important fact was that the compressed-air injection guns I'd ever seen were like this one — big, heavy, unwieldly. The injection itself might be painless but you'd sure as hell notice someone using one of these things.

I was studying the blueprint of the gun and wondering about a number of small figures that had obviously been noted in pencil on the diagram. I was concentrating on the blueprint, but nonetheless I suddenly noticed the hair on the back of my hand standing up. My never-fail, built-in alarm system told me I wasn't alone. I turned slowly, to see Krisst standing at the foot of the stairs, gun in hand. The round face was unsmiling and the little eyes were darting pinpoints of bright anger. I saw that he was in his stockinged feet which explained his silent approach. It was only a partial explanation, I found out.

"I am surprised, I must admit," Karl Krisst said. "I am disappointed, too, in my Soviet friends. I thought they had done their job."

"Don't be too hard on them," I answered. "They tried. I'm hard to get rid of, like a bad penny, you know."

"You have also underestimated me," Krisst said, moving down to the floor, keeping the gun trained steadily on my belly. "You are no different than the rest of them in that respect. I have always been underestimated. I knew someone had entered my house the minute you went through the window. I have every window and door protected by an electric eye that sets off a small alarm, a buzzer, in a receiving unit I always carry with me. Of course, I didn't know it was you, Carter."

"I was right then," I said. "You are the one behind it all. You use a compressed-air injection gun."

Krisst smiled his usual unctuous smile. I was still unable to understand how he did it, though. There was no possible way he could have made use of such a big, clumsy device on Professor Caldone without my seeing it. I got my answer as he went on.

"Of course, I don't use anything as large as that. You were studying my calculations on the blueprint as I came upon you. They are reductions. I've had the entire principle reduced to the size of a book of matches or a small cigarette lighter." He held up his hand and I saw the small, square object cupped in his palm. It made a tidy — and hideous — destruction machine.

"You got him during the session at the beach," I said, realization suddenly flooding over me. The compressed-air injection gun had to be pressed directly against the persons skin. All that backslapping hid his special purpose.

"Correct," he admitted. Reducing the unwieldly compressed-air injection gun was a piece of applied science that somehow didn't fit Krisst. I couldn't see him having that land of skill or knowledge.

"Where'd you have the gun reduced in size?" I shot out.

"An old friend right here in Switzerland," he said, his smile suddenly an evil, gloating thing. "He was a leading craftsman for the watch industry. You forget, miniaturization has been a part of our precision watchmaking for generations."

"Your old friend, where is he now?" I asked, having a nasty idea what the answer would be. I was right again. The round bastard smiled that unctuous smile.

"He had a sudden mental collapse one day," he chuckled. "A real tragedy."

"Why?" I asked directly. "Why all this?"

"Why?" he repeated, his little eyes growing still smaller. "Because they needed to be taught a lesson. Yes, a lesson in humility. It was quite a good number of years ago that I applied to the International Science Scholars for membership. They turned me down. I wasn't good enough. I hadn't the credentials to belong to their elite little group. I was only a self-taught physics teacher at a private school. They looked down on me. Later, when I conceived my plan, I applied for my present position with them. They were glad to have me for that, their paid lackey, a glorified servant."

Krisst was a fifteen-carat, first-grade psychopath. It was plain to see he'd been harboring his monumental grudge all these years.

"Why only those men working with the Western powers?" I probed further. That one still eluded me.

"Those who rejected me were all men belonging to the Western powers or working with them," he answered with some heat. "The Russian and Chinese scientists did not join the ISS until some years later, under the International Science Agreement. I am about ready now to go to the Soviets and reveal myself. The world will see how eagerly they will accept me into the Soviet Academy of Sciences. They will recognize me for the genius that I am."

I gestured to the vials on the laboratory table. Maybe he was nutty as fruit cake but he seemed to have come up with something horribly effective.

"Is what you use in those vials?" I asked. He nodded in triumph. "Yes, indeed it is," he smiled. "It is a concentration which specifically attacks the brain tissue, causing a fungus to grow in twenty-four hours which chokes off the oxygen supply to the brain cells."

I felt myself frowning. A fungus that specifically attacked the brain tissues. It rang a bell for me. A few years ago I knew of a Doctor Forsythe who had been working with such a fungus in an effort to develop a growth that would halt the spread of braindamaged or cancer cells. I gave Krisst a hard look.

"Isn't that what Dr. Howard Forsythe had been working on for positive purposes when he had his heart attack a few years ago?" I questioned. Krisst's round jaws began to shake and he reddened. "Yes, and I managed to get his formulae," he shouted. "But I developed my own use for them."

He was apoplectic. "I made it into a powerful instrument… I unleashed its force!

"They tried to rob me of my rightful place in the scientific community. But I showed them! I stole the minds of their so-called brilliant men. I'm better than all of them — better, do you hear, the best!"

About that time I stopped listening to his ranting. Clearly, the man was mad. Deluded — but dangerous, making deadly use of a respected physician's research findings. I wondered how Krisst got hold of someone to miniaturize the compressed-air injection gun. What luck, for him to have a friend in the watch industry — certainly he himself was totally incapable of accomplishing such a complex feat. His voice rose to a screech and I came alive to his words again.

"I'll get you too!" Krisst shouted, lunging for me. His shot, fired in insane fury, went wild. I had Hugo in my palm and slicing through the air in the flash of an eye. Krisst twisted away and the stiletto went right through the wrist of his gun hand. He cried out in pain and the gun dropped to the floor. I dived for it, but he kicked out and I had to roll away from the kick. Before I had another chance he kicked the gun away and I saw it slide into the narrow space beneath the lab table. I grabbed for him but, like so many fat men, he was surprisingly light on his feet and he avoided my grasp. Then, in his weird, twisted way, he did something I hadn't expected. Instead of pulling the stiletto out of his wrist, he struck out, flailing with the arm. The sharp point of the stiletto sticking through the wrist acted as a kind of spear tip at the end of an arm instead of a lance. I backed up, ducking under the thrusts of his arm, and got in a hard right to the mid-section. My arm sunk in and though he felt the blow, he had natural padding for protection. He swung a vicious right at me. I ducked under it and grabbed for his wrist to get a judo hold on him. I had to pull back to avoid getting my hand run through by my own weapon. Krisst came at me again, flailing with the right arm. I gave ground and we circled around the edge of the lab table. Suddenly I saw an opening and I stepped in with a right that was partly uppercut, partly right cross. I threw it from a crouch and saw it lift him off his feet and send him sprawling across the smooth table. His body crashed into the vials and the sound of smashing glass echoed as the entire row was swept onto the floor. I reached across the table for him. He drew back and kicked out with both feet I turned enough to avoid catching the kick full force but it knocked me backwards. He dropped off the other side of the table and raced for the stairway in an unexpected move. It took me an added two seconds to get around the long table. I reached the bottom of the steps just as he slammed the door shut and I heard the lock click. I stepped back and looked around for something to use to break the door open. Using a shoulder when you have to hit upwards from a flight of steps is pretty ineffective. I heard a hissing sound and looked up at an air vent near the ceiling. A whitish cloud was blowing into the cellar through the vent. I felt my lungs starting to contract already. Desperately, I looked around but there were no windows whatever. The room was a rectangular box. I flung myself against the door but it held. The gas was being blown through the vent in huge quantities. I felt my eyes tearing and the room was starting to swim. It was with a combination of apprehension, surprise and relief that I realized the gas was not one of the killing types but the disabling land. I clutched at the stairway bannister as the room circled faster. The thought raced through my fuzzy mind. Why is disabling gas? Why not the real deadly stuff? As I ditched forward I knew it wasn't because he was kindhearted. I wondered if I would become a vegetable in twenty-four hours. An incongruous thought minced through my mind before I passed out. If it had to be, I hoped I'd become a cucumber.

IX

The gas was wearing off. My eyes were tearing so that I hadn't any idea where I was. But I knew one thing. I was cold. In fact, I was so cold I was shivering. I rubbed my eyes with the backs of my hands. Gradually, I began to see, but at first all I could make out were large areas of black and white. I fell biting wind along with the cold and as I focused my eyes, I began to see snow, snow and darkness and feeling of being suspended in mid-air which is exactly where I was, sitting in a chair lift that was moving up along its cable over a ski slope. I looked down and saw Krisst standing by the operating mechanism. Beyond him was a darkened ski supply cabin. I could hear his voice calling to me.

"Consider yourself lucky, Carter," he said. "My injector case was out of fluid or I would have destroyed your mind immediately. As you shattered all the vials in the lab it will be at least a month before I can ready a new batch. You, of course, will be dead in a few minutes. But it will be a clean death, much as that prospect displeases me. The authorities will write it off as the results of a fool skier trespassing, bringing on his own death."

Krisst's figure was rapidly growing smaller as the ski chair carried me upwards, but I glimpsed the moonlight glinting from the blade of the axe he held in one hand. I saw the picture all too clearly. When I got up higher he was going to snap the cable. I'd be plunged to my death. I saw the lights of Zurich twinkling in the distance below. He had driven me up into one of the towering mountains just outside the city, deposited me in the chair lift and set the lift in motion. If I hadn't come around from the cold, I'd never have known what happened. I wondered what he was waiting for. I was more than high enough now, but the lift kept going up still farther. I looked up at the cable on which it hung. When it was snapped, the chair with me in it would be plummeted down. But the cable, I calculated, would also fall loosely. There be a moment, no more than a fleeting moment, if I knew my gravitational principles, when the snapped cable would hang in mid-air before slackening loose to plunge the chair downward. I raised myself slowly, cautiously, bracing my feet against the straps where I had been sitting. The chair swayed and I lowered my center of gravity slightly. I didn't want to beat Krisst to his objective.

Suddenly I heard it, a sharp crack that echoed up through the cold night air, bouncing from the mountains. I felt the cable shudder, the chair begin to plunge and I leaped upwards, my hands grasping at the air. My fingers coiled around the cable, sliding down. I got my legs wrapped around the still twitching, lashing cable and slowed my slide a little. I lowered myself along the length of the cable as I heard the soft thud of the chair as it struck the snow below. I was sliding faster than I wanted to and my hands were burning, the skin tearing off against the friction of the smooth cable. The cable, still held at the top end of the lift, had swung loosely in a wide arc and I felt like the very small end of a giant pendulum. Krisst was a long way away, at the other end of the chair lift, so I didn't have him to worry about at the moment. All I had to do was to get to the end of the cable before my hands gave out altogether and then try to avoid freezing to death in the snow and ice of the mountain.

By pressing my legs together so tightly my muscles groaned, I slowed my descent enough to save my hands. Finally, I reached the end of the cable. There was still a helluva drop to the ground. I said a fast prayer for soft snow and let go. The snow was soft. I went in almost to my head. My teeth were chattering as I pulled myself out. I wished I had some idea where the hell I was on the dark, snowy mountain. I started downwards. It had to lead someplace. The moon had risen higher and was bouncing off the snow to give me plenty of light, at least. My feet were turning to chunks of ice before ten minutes had gone by. Krisst might win after all, I realized despairingly. Even dressed for it, a man could easily freeze to death in the snow. Dressed as I was, it was almost a certainty. I slapped my legs to find that they were rapidly losing all feeling, too. I wasn't walking any longer. I was dragging lifeless limbs through the snow. Suddenly I saw a dark, square ihape ahead. I stumbled into it, a shack on the trail, a resting place for skiers. It was only a shack and no more. There was no fireplace, but it was protection from the biting wind and free of the numbing snow. I also saw four pairs of skis standing against one wall, replacements to be used in case of broken skis or bindings.

I grabbed a pair and almost cried out for joy. They could get me to the bottom without freezing to death. I slapped the circulation back into my feet and legs, fastened the skis onto my shoes as best I could and started downhill.

I took it as easily as possible. Without proper ski shoes, I was in danger of losing a ski at every turn, and without poles, I couldn't make time. I was still cold, my body freezing from the wind generated by skiing, but I could stand it till I reached bottom. It was then that I heard the soft whooshing sound of skis on snow, the periodic slap of the snow as the skier made a sharp turn. I looked back to see the figure coming down after me, his round shape unmistakable. The bastard hadn't left anything to chance. He had skied out to make sure I was lying dead at the end of the cable and when he found only the chair, he knew I was still with it, still living. He had spotted me now, and I speeded up, but I knew there'd be no outrunning the speeding figure. He was coming fast behind me, and I watched over my shoulder. As he hurtled at me, I saw him lift one of the sharp poles and plunge it forward at me. I executed a sharp turn, and he hurtled past while I just managed to keep my skis on. He went on ahead and the trees were getting thicker as we neared the bottom of the slope. I lost him only to suddenly find him behind me again, coming at me again, this time from the side. He slashed again with the pole. This time the dagger-like point slashed through the shoulder of my suit as I just managed to twist away. He did a half circle and as I went by, holding to a straight line as much as possible, he tried to get me again. He came in fast, pole upraised, but this time instead of turning away in an effort to avoid him, I turned into him, ducking, slamming my shoulder into his belly as the pole hurtled over my head. He went flying backwards, the breakaway bindings parting as we collided. My shoes came out of the skis, too, and I felt myself pitching forward. Krisst was on his feet as quickly as I was and rushing at me with wild swings. He had taken Hugo out of his wrist, I saw, and wore a thick bandage there. He was on the higher part of the slope, and one wild swing caught me on the cheekbone. It didn't hurt too much, but I was off balance and I fell backwards. His heavy ski-boot caught me on the side of the head. I grabbed his ankle and twisted. He screamed and went stumbling forward on his hands and knees. I caught him with a hard right to the jaw as he got to his feet. He went somersaulting backwards into the snow. I went after him and got him with another hard right as he staggered to his feet. This time he sailed back a good six feet before hitting the snow. He got up, head down, trying to charge. I straightened him out with a shattering left uppercut and a perfect right cross. I felt the impact on the point of his jaw. He half whirled and fell backwards. As he hit the ground, I saw the snow part with an unreal quality, and he plunged down into a crevice, a deep fault in the mountain. I saw the figure go down followed by a good half-ton of snow. I didn't dare risk going too close. There was no seeing where the snow would give way and do the same with me. Once again, the silence and the wind were the only companions I had. Karl Krisst would not be found until the snow melted, if it ever did in these mountains. I got my skis on again and continued down the slope, finally reaching a brightly lighted chalet. The after-ski crowd was in full swing inside, dancing to records, a kind of alpine discothèque. I rested the skis against the wooden walls of the chalet and walked on. An old taxi stood empty at a taxi stand. I hunted up the driver, found him enjoying the warmth of a small waiting room. I thawed out as he drove me back to Zurich proper.

The whole, dirty business was over. I had come close to death many times before, but when I thought of how near I'd come to ending up as a vegetable, alive but really dead, my flesh crawled. I had seldom been so glad to see an assignment end. I didn't even try to get a hotel for the remainder of the night. Rumpled clothes, dirty and unshaven, I went directly back to Krisst's house, getting in the same way I first did. I went down to the basement; the faint smell of gas still lingered in the air. The broken vials lay scattered about, their contents already forming a thick, paste-like ooze on the floor. I j was taking no chances with the stuff. I stepped carefully around it, making sure none of it touched my shoes. It had proven its virulence and potency. A nicked finger brushed against it might be all that it needed. Gathering the compressed-air injection gun diagrams with the miniaturization notations, I found a brief case to put them in and went upstairs. I did a fine-comb search of the house, finally turning up a sheaf of papers which appeared to be Dr. Forsythe's original notes on the substance Karl Krisst had turned to his own end. Our scientists would be able to do something with the base material, I was certain.

It was daylight when I arrived at the airport and was lucky enough to get a seat on an early flight to London where, despite my appearance, they let me check in at the Royal Albert Hotel. I had to use my official credentials to do it, though. The English still believe that a gentleman should look the part. After a good sleep, I went out and did my best to uphold tradition, buying a suit worth buying at King's Row. The one I'd purchased in Zurich had had a short but active life. But then, not too many suits are used for siding or sliding down cables. It's hard on the threads. And, truthfully, I was damn glad I wasn't being fitted for another kind of suit.

X

I was feeling better when I called Hawk, more myself. I was never one to let an assignment stay with me once it was over. That was fatal in this business. Never look backwards. Never see how close death had come. Never think about it.

"You've done a superb job on this, Nick," Hawk said in a rare moment of effervescence.

"It was a sticky thing from the vary beginning. You were working in the dark most of tie time. You say you've forwarded all the data and material you found. I'm sure our people will be able to utilize it fully. Good work, N3."

I knew when to strike. This was as good a time as I'd had in a long while.

"I want the rest of the week here in London, Chief," I said, plunging right in. If I hadn't been sitting down I'd have fallen right over.

"Why, I think that can be arranged, my boy," he said. I shook the phone to make sure it wasn't static. "In fact, I'm going to do whatever I can to see that you enjoy yourself in London for a few days. Great town, London. I had a number of good friends there at one time."

Before he got too far into reminiscing and changed his mind, I thanked him and hung up. His reference to helping me have a good time for a few days was in regard to his magnanimity in giving me the time off. At least, that's how I took it at the moment. Things were falling beautifully into place, for a change. Even Denny was home when I called. She was cool, or rather she tried to sound cool. It didn't last more than a few minutes when she was agreeing to meet me at the Royal Albert.

"No girls emerging from closets," she said.

"No girls," I promised. "I can explain all that."

"It seems to me I've heard that somewhere before," she laughed.

"Maybe you have," I agreed. "But this time I'm going to explain."

"All right," she laughed. "If we're going to do the town tonight, I want to shower and change. Give me half an hour or so."

The half hour was no more than that. It only seemed it. When she arrived, she was magnificent in soft beige that clung in all the right places, rounding her hips and falling from the sharp points of her upturned breasts with tantalizing effect. She came over and stood before me, her arms reaching up to encircle my neck. I found bar lips, but she turned her head away.

"Not so fast, Nick Carter," she said. "I've waited this long and I can wait a few moments longer."

She stepped back and surveyed the room and I saw her foot tapping impatiently as she folded her arms across those lovely, thrusting breasts.

"Waiting for something?" I grinned.

"Just want to make certain, this time," she said, flashing a fast smile.

"You've gotten suspicious in your old age," I said confidently.

"I'm not in my old age and I'm not suspicious," was her answer. "I've just had all the surprises I want for a while."

Finally she came over to me again and smiled that marvelously infectious smile that could light a room and sweep everything along with it.

"I guess I'll have to believe you this time," she laughed. "And I guess I'll have to listen to those explanations."

We sat down on the couch and I found her lips as honey-sweet as I'd remembered them. She had the same wonderful way of kissing, starting off with the almost prim and proper touch of her rips that became a sweet, tender yearning that turned into a wildly sensuous whirlpool.

"How long can you stay?" she asked. My answer was interrupted by the doorbell. I opened it to see the tall, saucy, miniskirted lovely standing there, her long, gorgeous legs spread apart provocatively.

"Surprise, Nick!" she said. "Well, aren't you going to ask me in? You did expect me, I do believe."

I was still blinking when Denny brushed past me and disappeared down the hall.

"Wait a minute," I yelled after her. "Denny, come back!" As luck had it, an elevator stopped just as she rang and she got on it, flinging me a scathing look of pure fury. I turned to the girl still standing in the doorway. She was as pretty as a picture but I didn't really care.

"Who the hell are you?" I asked.

"Joan Treadder," she answered. "Your boss, Hawk, and my mother were very good friends, once. He called her not long ago and suggested I pop over to see you and here I am."

"Good God," I groaned. "Spare me from my friends."

"I thought he told you I was coming," she protested.

"No, but it's not your fault, honey," I said. "I'm sorry, but I can't see you now. I've got some important, unfinished business that I'm going to finish come hell or high water."

As I said it, I thought that those were about the only two things, that hadn't conspired to keep Denny from me. I left her standing there, flashed her an apologetic smile and raced down the stairs. I grabbed a cab and directed him to Denny's house. Her landlady was happy to see me again.

"Miss Robertson just left," she said with concern. "She had gone out and then she came back again and now she's gone out again. You do seem to have trouble catching up to her, don't you?"

"How right you are," I agreed. "Do you know where she's gone this tune?"

"She took her small overnight bag, said she was going to Devonshire for the horse show tomorrow."

I gave the surprised old gal a hug and a kiss and was off. I returned in an instant before she'd had time to collect herself. "How is she going, do you know?" I yelled.

"She's driving her car," the landlady said. "A little red Morris Minor."

I raced back to the cab. "Devonshire," I told him. "There can't be that many roads. Take the main one — the one that a girl driving a red Morris Minor would be apt to take."

He looked at me suspiciously and swung into traffic. I settled back and watched for her. I was amazed at how damn many little red cars there were. We were almost in Devonshire when I spotted her, roaring down the road, the top down, her auburn hair streaming behind her.

"Pull in front of that car and bring it to a stop," I told the driver.

"Look, here, Yank," he said, "this ain't no Hollywood movie, is it?"

"No, it's strictly an amateur production" I said. "And I'll make it worth your while." Those magic words did the trick. He pulled in front of Denny and forced her to stop, picking a spot where the stream of passing traffic didn't permit her to pull out. I shoved a fat tip at him and raced back to the little red car. She was surprised at seeing me and was almost going to be pleasant but thought better of it. I climbed in beside her and she started off.

"I can explain it," I grinned. She looked at me and suddenly we were laughing together.

"Stop trying to explain," she said. "Maybe that's the jinx."

"Good enough," I said. "I seem to remember that there's a little inn not far ahead, just outside of town. I could get a room for two there. You could still take in the horse show in the morning — if you want to, of course."

She pulled up at the inn and minutes later we were in a chintz-covered room with a fourposted bed. Her lips were eager, hungry, and I began to undress her, slowly, step by step. Her body was everything I'd remembered it to be — vibrant alabaster, created by a master craftsman. She reached out for me and her head was on my shoulder, her hands stroking my body.

And it was still there, that special something, that quality that trenscended the body, the went beyond the senses and yet was a part of the senses. I caressed her white breasts, twin peaks of temptation, caressed them with my fingers as the pink tips reached up, and then let my tongue circle each one. Denny began to cry softly, but it was not a cry of sorrow or pain. Each tear was a tear of ecstacy.

"Oh, Nick, Nick," she breathed. "I've waited so long for you. I've waited so long. Once with you, and anything else is boy scout night."

From the way I felt, and the way I responded, she had not been alone in waiting. I stroked her body until she was a leaping, crying, pleading mountain of desire and then I came to her, fully and completely. We made love with ever mounting intensity, a hymn of rapture sung together, a harmony of the body. When Denny reached the top of her climb, she screamed, a scream of pure rapture, a sound never heard before, never to be heard again, not exactly.

When we sank down on the bed in the wonderful exhaustion of passion, we both knew that the unfinished symphony had been finished. But we also knew that it never really would be finished. It was a self-winding, self-perpetuating melody.

"Nick," she said, thoughtfully, laying her breasts across my chest, her hand holding me gently, softly. "I know now that there'll never be anyone but you."

I started to protest but she stopped me with her lips and then drew back. "Oh, I'll probably have to marry some terribly decent chap from some terribly good family someday, but you'll always know and I'll always know that it was because you can't be mine — your work is between us."

"Maybe you'll forget all about me someday," I said.

"It's more likely that I'll keep turning away terribly decent chaps because I'd rather have you whenever those rare times occur than anyone else anytime."

I looked at Denny Robertson. If she were still in circulation when the day came that I bowed out of the spy racket, I knew damn well what I'd do. I didn't tell her, though. It would only muddy things up more.

"What are you thinking?" she asked.

"I'm thinking I've only just begun to make love to you, you gorgeous creature," I said.

"How yummy!" she said. "Prove it."

I did, and the world went on without us. It didn't really care and we didn't, either. We had our own world.

Content

Nick Carter
The Living Death

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